Success – The Samurai Coach

Failure is never possible till you quit

It’s truly that a winner never quits and a quitter never wins. You can’t fail unless you quit.

As I am re-reading Think and Grow Rich, something is jumping out from the pages. I re-read several books annually.

Edwin Barnes was an unknown, poor man with no experience. Yet, he became the business partner of the famous inventor Thomas Edison. Barnes nurtured a thought/wish into a burning desire to become Edison’s business partner. Once the thought became a dominant thought, Barnes cut off everything else and set out a journey to join Edison (it sounded impossible given Barnes’ background). Barnes was so determined that he left himself no other options. It was rather a success or die. Barnes was like a great warrior facing a powerful enemy. The warrior burned off his boat, let go his horse, and left no other way to retreat but to win (Win or Perish).

It’s common that majority of mankind play safe. People stay on the job they hate or work with people they dislike because it’s safe. They maintain unhealthy relationships because it’s safe.

Fortunately, the world still has many people who burn their ships and cut all sources of retreat and leave themselves no other options but to win. More often than not, they did. Just like Edwin Barnes. Stef Wertheimer left a stable job with a good salary and a high status to start his own company with no capital. He built it into a multi-billion dollar business in a country where everyone thought was impossible. He left his job when he had a family with two young kids to take care of. It was that kind of decisions that separated the successful from the crowd who only wish to be successful.

It’s truly that a winner never quits and a quitter never wins. You can’t fail unless you quit.

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About the author: Hoan Do is a certified leadership coach, a value-oriented investor, and an entrepreneur. Hoan led multiple teams at Symantec Inc. across the globe delivering world-class solutions to protect consumers and businesses. Hoan is an expert in building highly performing teams. He believes that the best leader is the leader that could grow his followers to be leaders. Hoan has trained many leaders via mastermind groups, workshops, and one-on-one coaching.

If you would like to have a conversation, open your email and send me an inquiry at coach@hoanmdo.com

Masayoshi Son: how to build a billion dollars company from a big dream

Masayoshi Son is the founder of Softbank and the richest man in Japan. He’s known to the world as:

Lost 99% net worth ($70 billion) overnight in the dotcom crash.
Invested $20 million into Alibaba which is now worth $140 billion
Bought Vodafone Japan for $15.1 billion
Bought 70% Sprint for $20.1 billion

When asked what he would want people to remember about him after he leaves the earth: “A crazy guy who bets on the future.”

The following is the except from Son’s interview with HBR in 1992 when Softbank was 10 year old. This is how Masayoshi Son started Softbank:

“For a year and a half, I did research and made business plans. While I prepared, I had no income. I spent money, I had a new baby. My wife was worried. All my friends, my father, my mother, everybody was worried. They asked me, what are you going to do? You spent years studying in the United States, and now you aren’t doing anything. I spent all my time just thinking and thinking, studying what to do. I went to the library and bookstores. I bought books, I read all kinds of materials to prepare for what I would do for the next 50 years.

I came up with 40 new business ideas—everything from creating software to setting up hospital chains, since my wife’s father is a doctor and has a hospital. Then I had about 25 success measures that I used to decide which idea to pursue. One success measure was that I should fall in love with a particular business for the next 50 years at least. Very often, people get excited for the first few years, and then, after they see the reality, they get tired of the business. I wanted to choose one that I would feel more and more excited about as the years passed.

Another factor was that the business should be unique. That was very important to me. I didn’t want anyone else doing exactly the same thing. A third was that within 10 years I wanted to be number one in that particular business, at least in Japan. And I wanted to pick a business where the business category itself would be growing for the next 30 to 50 years. I didn’t want to choose a sinking ship.

I had all those measurements, about 25 in all, and 40 new ideas. I took a big sheet of paper, and I drew a matrix and put down scores and comments for each. Then I picked the best one, which turned out to be the personal computer software business. That was the start of Softbank.

…….

I thought about making software myself and starting a software business, like I had done while I was at Berkeley. But, I thought, if I make good software, who would sell it? Making software and selling software are entirely different businesses. Even if I make good software, if there’s no one to sell it, I’d have to close the business.

I looked around for someone who was selling software, and I couldn’t find anyone. So, I thought, if no one is going to do it, I should do it. I made a list of the software producers and went to see them to find out what kind of software was available.

………

I had a very long-term vision. I didn’t have any evidence, but I believed in myself. I believed that someday I would have a very big company, a global business, and a very successful company.”

While in college, Masayoshi Son wanted to become financially independent as soon as possible. He started looking for jobs that only required 5 minutes working and would pay $10,000 a month. His friends thought he was crazy. There were illegal jobs such as selling drugs but Masayoshi Son did not want to do anything illegal.

Masayoshi Son learned from Konusoke Matsushita, the god of management, that inventions can generate money. He set out to do inventions. His goal was to have a new idea for inventions every day. He would set his clock to go off in 5 minutes and in these 5 minutes he would come up with one invention. He wrote all those ideas in a notebook. This notebook has 250 ideas logged.

Through this process, Masayoshi Son chose one idea and created a patent which later sold to Sharp for $1 million. This was when he was still at University of California Berkeley and 21 years old. When also in college, Masayoshi Son create video games and later sold for $2 million when he returned to Japan.

Reference: https://hbr.org/1992/01/japanese-style-entrepreneurship-an-interview-with-softbanks-ceo-masayoshi-son

Quotes from Masayoshi Son:

“Life is short. I will regret if I don’t act boldly when I am young.”

“Because time is limited. We must live life to the fullest.”

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About the author: Hoan Do is a certified leadership coach. Hoan have led multiple teams at Symantec Inc. across the globe delivering world-class solutions to protect consumers and businesses. Hoan is an expert in building highly performing teams. He believes that the best leader is the leader that could grow his followers to be leaders. Hoan has been organizing mastermind groups to share with other leaders about transformational leadership and coaching. He has trained many leaders via mastermind groups, workshops, and one-on-one coaching.

If you would like to have a conversation, open your email and send me an inquiry at coach@hoanmdo.com

10 traits of megasuccessful entrepreneurs

I wanted to look for a list of commonalities among CEOs and founders of unicorns, which are startups that surpass billion dollar valuation.

Ray Dalio, the billionaire founder of BridgeWater which manages $160 billion in 2017, wrote in his best-selling book “The Principle” about his research for commonalities among successful entrepreneurs whose companies and products disrupted the industry. Ray called them shapers. I have heard others called them builders, disruptors, or simply entrepreneurs.

The following is from Ray’s book “The Principle”.

Shaper is someone who comes up with unique and valuable visions and builds them, typically over doubts and opposition of others.

Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Ray Dalio are shapers.

Ray researched shapers (Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos….) and came up with their commonalities:

1. They visualize remarkable concept and build organizations to actualize them.
2. They are independent thinkers who do not let anyone or anything stand in their way of achieving their audacious goals.
3. They have very strong mental maps of how things should be done, a willingness to test those mental maps, and change the ways they do things to make them work better.
4. They are extremely resilient because their need to achieve what they envision is stronger than the pain they experience.
5. They have a wider range of vision than most people.
6. They are able to see big pictures and granular details and synthesize the perspectives they gain at those different levels.
7. They are simultaneously creative, systematic, and practical.
8. They are assertive and open-minded.
9. They are passionate about what they are doing, intolerant of people who work for them who aren’t excellent at what they do.
10. They want to have a big, beneficial impact on the world.

Shapers would rate low on the question “Concern for others”. The reason is that when faced with a choice between achieving their goal or pleasing others, they would choose achieving their goals every time.

True shapers consistently move from one success to another and sustain over decades.

Check out Ray’s amazing book at https://www.principles.com

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If you are curious about the above method and how you can apply it to your life successfully, open your email and send me an inquiry at coach@hoanmdo.com

How to be a millionaire – the Arnold Schwarzenegger way

Arnold Schwarzenegger was born in Austria. He got into bodybuilding when he was 15. Using bodybuilding as a career and passion, he made a huge success, popularized bodybuilding, and got into acting with many box office movies. He was elected to become the Governor of California in 2003.

Even when Arnold did not have enough money, he invested in real estate. Instead of buying a house, he bought rental properties which enabled him to live for free while the properties paid for itself.

Since childhood, Arnold thought of himself as special and unique. He never set out to become average Hans or Franz. He never wanted to become like everyone else. Being different is the Arnold Schwarzenegger way. He didn’t have the same body as everyone else, has unique accent, drove different cars as everyone else. Even his last name is not like everyone else.

The Arnold Schwarzenegger way:

Turn your liabilities into your assets. When Arnold wanted to get into movies, agents told him that his name, his body, and his accent were too weird. He worked on his accent as hard as bodybuilding to transform himself into a leading man.
When someone tells you NO, you should hear YES. The only way to make the possible possible is to try the impossible. If you fail, so what? It’s what everyone expects anyway. If you succeed, you make the world a much better place.
Never follow the crowd. Go where it’s empty. When everyone was buying a house, Arnold bought an apartment building. When every actor was trying to land a part in movies, Arnold held out to be the leading man. It’s easier to stand out when you aim for the top.
No matter what you do in life, selling is part of it. No matter what you do, the most important thing is to make people aware.

In addition, 10 rules Arnold followed to be successful:

Never let pride get in your way.
Don’t overthink. Your mind needs relaxing time in order to have energy when needed. Turning off the mind is an art.
Forget plan B. To test yourself and grow, you have to forget the safety net.
You can use outrageous humor to settle a score.
The day has 24 hours. When he was young in the USA, Arnold took classes, trained 5 hours, worked in construction, and did his homework.
Reps, Reps, Reps. No matter what you do in life, it’s either reps or mileages. If you have done your reps, you don’t have to worry when the actual event happens. Arnold wrote down his goals every time he came to practice. Each time he crossed off a goal, he felt a sense of accomplishment.
Don’t blame your parents.
Change takes big balls.
Take care of your body and your mind. “You have to build the ultimate physical machine but also the ultimate of the mind.” Arnold trained 5 hours everyday on his body and later on trained his mind by absorbing knowledge and reading. Clint Eastwood exercised even when he was directing and acting in a movie. Dmitri Medvedev when he was president of Russia worked out 2 hours everyday. The Pope in his sixties was known for getting up at five in the morning, reading newspapers in 6 different languages, doing 2 hundred pushups and 3 hundreds sit-ups before breakfast.
Stay hungry. Be hungry for success, hungry to make your mark, hungry to be seen and to be heard and to have an effect. As you become successful, be hungry for helping others.