#397 Jiro Ono: Simplicity Is The Ultimate Advantage

**David Senra** (0:00)
This will be one of the most incredible stories you will ever hear. For his entire 75 year career, Jiro was solely focused on serving his customer and making the very best product for them. Jiro invented new ways to make sushi that no one else was able to create, was absolutely obsessed with crafting a high quality product, and ran tens of thousands of experiments throughout his entire life. Every single experiment was aimed at making a better product for his customer. Jiro's relentless dedication to proving his craft and his products reminds me of my friend Kareem, who's the co-founder and CTO of Ramp. Kareem is one of the greatest technical minds working in finance. I spent a lot of time talking to Kareem in every single conversation, centers around his obsession with crafting a high quality product, and using the latest technology to constantly create better experiences for his customers. Kareem and Jiro both believe that nothing is ever good enough and can always be improved. Kareem is running one of the most talented technical teams in finance, and they use rapid, relentless iteration to make their product better every day, just like Jiro. So far this year, Ramp has shipped over 300 new features. Ramp is completely committed to using AI to make a better experience for their customers and to automate as much of your business' finances as possible. In fact, Kareem just wrote this, AI is all I think about these days. It is our duty to be first movers and push limits so we can make the greatest possible product experience for our customers. That sounds a lot like the approach used by a lot of the great founders that you and I study on this podcast. They use a combination of craftsmanship and rapid iteration to invent new products for their customers. Many of the fastest growing and most innovative companies in the world are running their business on Ramp. Make sure you go to ramp.com to learn how they can help your business save time and money. Let AI chase your receipts and close your books so you can use your time and energy building great things for your customers. Because at the end of the day, that is what this is all about. Building a product or service that makes someone else's life better. That is what I'm trying to do. That is what Jiro dedicated his entire life to doing. And that is what Ramp has done. Get started today by going to ramp.com. Another way to better serve your customers is by keeping their data secure and proving you're doing so by using Vanta. Vanta's value prop is very clear. Vanta helps your company prove you're secure so more customers will use your product or service. Many companies will not sign contracts unless you're certified, and this is causing you to lose out on sales. That is why the average Vanta customer reports a 526% return on investment after becoming a Vanta customer. Automate compliance, security and trust with Vanta. You can think of Vanta like an intelligent security assistant that helps your company pass audits without tons of manual work. So not only do you make more money with Vanta, but you also save more time with Vanta. Manual compliance is slow and painful. Doing everything by hand takes months. The best companies absolutely will not tolerate that. They will not tolerate wasting valuable company time, doing something with labor when technology can automate it. That is a very old and powerful idea. It goes all the way back to Andrew Carnegie, and you and I see it over and over and over again in these biographies. Vanta will help you win trust, close deals and stay secure faster and with less effort. Go to vanta.com to learn more. And if you want to get set up right away, email me, David at founderspodcast.com. Put Vanta in the subject link, and I will introduce you personally. One of my favorite documentaries that I've watched over and over again is this documentary called Jiro Dreams of Sushi. It is about the greatest sushi chef of all time. His name is Jiro Ono. At the time that the documentary was created, he's 85 years old. What I did for this episode is I actually transcribed the entire documentary. And then I went through that document, just like I go through every single book that you and I talk about together. So I want to start with the very beginning of the documentary. You see Jiro, he's talking directly through the camera, and he tells us exactly why the documentary is named Jiro Dreams of Sushi. He says, I would see ideas in dreams. My mind was bursting with ideas. I would wake up in the middle of the night. In dreams, I would have visions of sushi. The very next thing he says is advice to other people, but it's really the advice that he lived his life by. He had the same job at the time the documentary is made for 75 years. Once you decide on your occupation, you must immerse yourself in your work. You have to fall in love with your work. Never complain about your job. You must dedicate your life to mastering your skill. That is the secret of success and is the key to being regarded honorably. So right at the very beginning, they described Jiro as a shokunin. A shokunin is a Japanese word, roughly translates to an artisan or craftsman. If somebody is referred to as a shokunin, that means that somebody has mastered a craft. They tend to have a lot of similar traits, regardless of what that craft happens to be. Dedication to excellence in one's craft will be present in every single shokunin. You'll have a sense of moral duty to do the job perfectly, not just for personal pride, but to serve society. They have lifelong discipline to continuous improvement. This idea of kaisan or kaisan that pops up in a lot of these biographies that you and I discuss together. And they have a almost spiritual respect for tradition and the process of the craft itself. Now, in the documentary, they introduce you to all these other people around Jiro. Some of them are his apprentices, his two sons, every single one of his vendors, the writers and the food critics. And what they all have in common with Jiro is they do things for an excessively long time, and they've done it in a volume and a quantity more than anybody else. So, the very first food writer, food critic that we're introduced to, he says, listen, I went to every single sushi restaurant in Tokyo. Nobody has eaten more sushi than me. Out of the hundreds of restaurants that I ate at, Jiro was by far the best. So, I have a funny story. I went to Japan for the first time last year. I have never had sushi in my entire life, even though I've watched this documentary probably 10 times. A friend of mine got us a reservation at Jiro, which is almost impossible to do. So, the very first time I ever had sushi in my life was at Jiro. It was incredible. So, I left that meal. I was like, I cannot believe I wasn't eating sushi before. I love sushi now. Wrong. No. No. The next day, we went to another spot. Not remotely the same experience. And since then, every single time I've tried to eat sushi, I really didn't like it that much, where I think Jiro's excellence had completely ruined it for me. And something that stands out in the documentary, again, what I'm trying to do is like, I'm not really trying to talk about sushi or sushi chef. I'm interested in these ideas. Like you can extract, turn everything into an extraction, take the ideas out of his approach to his craft and think about how can we use them for ours. One of my favorite quotes about James Lyson, who's obviously a big hero of mine, I won't stop talking about him. I've done, you know, four or five episodes on him. I do a new episode every 100 episodes. He has this idea that difference for the sake of it, that you must insist on differentiation. And so this food critic is describing just how unusual the fact that the greatest sushi chef that has ever lived is in this tiny 10 seat restaurant next to the subway station. And the entire meal is going to be over in 15 or 20 minutes. So he says, it's comfortable for people who like to have sushi served at a fast pace. But for people who want to drink and eat slowly while chatting, it will not be a comfortable eating experience. Again, difference for the sake of it. All of the sushi is simple. It is completely minimal. Master chefs from all around the world come to eat at Jiro's and say, how can something so simple have so much depth and flavor? If you were to sum up Jiro's sushi in a nutshell, it says, ultimate simplicity leads to purity. One of my favorite quotes that I keep on my phone and I look at all the time. It says, a novice is easily spotted because they do too much. Too many ingredients, too many movements, too much explanation. A master uses the fewest resources required to fulfill their intention. That could have been written about Jiro. Back to the way that Jiro designed his business, reservations are mandatory. Price is around $400 per person. So the time the documentary came out, it was 30,000 yen. I think now the minimum price is 60,000 yen. And so that conversion today is about $400 per person. They only serve sushi, no appetizers, nothing but sushi. The counter only fits 10 people total. The meal lasts about 15 to 20 minutes. So it's roughly, you're spending about $25 per minute. In that sense, it's one of the most expensive restaurants on a per minute basis in the world. And yet the people who eat there are convinced it's worth the price. And so a large part of the documentary is the actual process. Like what, how is this tiny little 10 seat restaurant, this three star Michelin restaurant in a Tokyo subway? Why do people come from all over the world to eat here? And so they talk about, it's like, listen, the techniques that we use, they're not a big secret. It's just about making an effort and repeating the same thing every day, which again is what shokunin do. Says Jiro repeats the same routine every day. He even gets on the train from the same position. He dislikes holidays. He thinks holidays are too long. He wants to get back to work. His routine, this idea of doing the same thing every day, this really the spirit of the shokunin, he says it's unthinkable for normal people. And so one of the main ideas that's implied throughout the entire documentary, they just said, listen, the techniques we're using, it's no big secret. You can see what we're doing. It's just about making an effort in doing so for seven and a half decades. So you will see them run countless tastings and experiments every day in the documentary. And they've been doing, in Jiro's case, he's been doing that for over seven decades. So he's learning new things every single day and just iterating day after day after day with making his product better. That's one of the main points of the documentary. And he says, if it doesn't taste good, you can't serve it. It has to be better than last time. That's why I'm always tasting the food before serving it. Jiro is not just the chef, he's the first customer. And then he's going to have another trait where you see over and over again with a lot of history-based entrepreneurs, the inner monologue. They are unbelievably self-critical. Nothing is ever good enough. It says, I've seen many chefs who are self-critical, but I've never seen a chef who is so hard on himself. He sets the standard for self-discipline. And when we go into his childhood, and the just atrocious way he grew up, this will make perfect sense to you. And why he realized that just having a skill that no one could take away from you is a way for him not to starve. It's a way for him not to sleep on the street. It makes perfect sense when you learn about childhood. I've seen many chefs who are self-critical, but I've never seen a chef who's so hard on himself. He sets the standard for self-discipline. He's always looking ahead. He's never satisfied with his work. He's always trying to find ways to make the sushi better. Even now, that's all he thinks about. All day, every day. He is obsessed. He is focused. He's 85 years old. Again, I've already said this a few times. He's 85 years old at the time this documentary comes out. But if you go back to what he says, really hard on himself, very disciplined, always looking ahead, never satisfied with his work. Look at the biographies and autobiographies you and I have been discussing over the past few weeks. If you look at the Ferrari, Michael Ferraro, the Michelin brothers, Leonardo Dovecchio, every single one of them was like this. They didn't sleep on winds. They didn't rest on laurels. They're never satisfied. They're constant. They worked on what they, in many cases, I think the average length of their career and running their business was somewhere anywhere from 45 years to 70 years. And it didn't matter if they're making tires, chocolate, eyeglasses, Ferraris. They were always looking ahead. They were never satisfied with their work. Just like Jiro at 85 years old, even now, that's what he thinks about all day every day. I just want to make sushi better. He's dreaming about it. He later on, he's got one of one of my favorite quotes in the entire documentary is that he says when he makes like really good sushi, he just feels victorious. He's like hyped up. I absolutely love it. The food critic is like, hey, you know, I analyze a lot of great chefs all over the world. They tend to have these these five attributes. Jiro has them all as well.