Sushi Lessons for Stronger Teams with Kaz Matsune

Tullio Siragusa (0:04)

The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

Stephen Sakach (0:18)

Well, welcome back to the show, everyone. I'm Stephen Sakach here once again with my co-host Tullio Siragusa, and a special guest who we'll introduce in a moment.

Some knowledge is easy to write down, checklist, recipes, a process, the manual, standard operating procedure, but some knowledge is harder to transfer like experience, observation, judgment, and in many businesses, too much of that knowledge lives inside too few people, and when one key person leaves, gets promoted, takes a vacation, or just becomes overwhelmed, the whole team can feel it. Today, we are exploring these aspects of business through the lens of apprenticeship, team learning, and sushi. The idea is to get to how leaders help people learn, and how knowledge moves through a team, and why observation matters, and even how empathy can create workplaces where people do not just receive information, they learn how to see, understand, use, and pass it on. Tullio, introduce our special guest today.

Tullio Siragusa (1:24)

It'll be my pleasure. Our guest today is Katsu Iku Matsune. He's a sushi chef, founder of Breakthrough Sushi, six times best-selling author, mentor, and keynote speaker. Kaz founded Breakthrough Sushi in 2012 after starting with a small sushi class advertised on Craigslist. Since then, Breakthrough Sushi has grown into a substantial sushi class and team building company that has hosted more than 1,500 events and worked with major organizations, including Amazon, Adobe, and Facebook. Kaz's work now brings lessons from the sushi counter to the corporate stage. His framework, Steal With Your Eyes, teaches leaders how people learn through observation, practice, humility, and shared knowledge. His keynote work uses sushi mastery as a way to help teams think differently about leadership, decisions, and the art of doing less with more precision.

Kaz, welcome to The Bliss Business Podcast.

Kaz Matsune (2:25)

Thanks for the intro, Tullio. I'm excited to talk to you both and find out what comes up.

Stephen Sakach (2:34)

Kaz, you've said that on your first day as a sushi chef, you still watched other chefs work, got paid to do nothing. But what did that first day teach you about learning, and patience, and humility?

Kaz Matsune (2:49)

So first day, it taught me, looking back now, it taught me what I've been known already, what I was taught in Japan, I wasn't practicing. And it's called the Mede Nusume, which translates to Steal With Your Eyes. And the lesson is everything you need to know is right in front of you, as long as you pay enough attention to it. The last part is more important, as long as you pay attention to it.

So that's been said, and I knew that saying, but I haven't practiced it until that moment. And it took me probably a couple of days. Oh, this is what I'm doing, because I got hired at this Rock and Roll Sushi restaurant in LA, with no experience and no restaurant experience, no sushi chef. I enjoy cooking. But I said, would you hire me? And the owner said, come back two days later. And I got really excited because I wasn't wanted to work in a restaurant. And on the first day at the sushi bar, I said, so what can I do? And this head chef said, oh, just stand there and watch us. And that's what I did for what, six, eight hours. And I got really disappointed because I thought, hey, I get to learn all the filet and the fish and learning how to make sushi rolls and nigiri. And then, but that's what I was told. So, but then I started to pay attention. Like first couple of hours, like, oh, boring. It's like, what I'm doing here? Like, you know, slicing the fish. But then, so I start paying attention to what they were doing. It kind of, so the environment forced me to just observe, be a be a observer, to see what's taking place in front of you. And then it also forced me to realize maybe there's an ego or, you know, something like, but eagerness, but also maybe that my ego is like, I can do this on my first day. Like, no, no, no. Traditionally, they won't allow you to touch fish for like three, five years, which you made up part of the Japanese sushi chef apprenticeship. So that's what I learned on my first couple of hours. And I said, okay, what are they doing right now? And I saw chefs picking up plates, and they pick up different plates based on the order that you get. Tickets, small tickets, smaller plate, and the long ticket, bigger plate. So I thought, oh, instead of them reaching back, grab the plate. Maybe I could have just grabbed, because I'm just right by there. So I started handing those plates, and then I realized that's one thing I can do to help them, to assist them. And that's a big part of, you know, that's one aspect. It could be a small part, but that's one aspect of making a sushi at the sushi bar.