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- How Nobu Achieved Longevity (part four)
Hey team,
LaToya here! Welcome back to The Strategy Files, the newsletter where I study the most successful people in, art, music, fashion, and culture. You apply it to your startup, agency, or side hustle. It’s a team effort!
If you like this, please forward it to someone you think would enjoy it. If you don’t, please send it to someone you can’t stand.
Here’s what you’ve missed so far:
Today’s Lessons:
Just keep going
Avoid Power Imbalances
Keep your network alive and well
Stick to your core business values
If you’re gonna fail, fail in the right direction
Sometimes failure is trying to show you what you don’t want
Nobu and his wife, Yoko, moved to Lima, Peru in 1972. The only person they knew was Nobu’s business partner, Louis Matsufuji. Louis was wealthy, well-connected, and well-respected, and came from a large family that had lots of influence around town. He owned 51% of the business he started with Nobu. This created a power imbalance, but it was worth the risk; he made their lives easier. When Nobu and Yoko arrived from Japan, they had a place to live, and renovations to the restaurant, which they named Matsuei-sushi, started right away.
Matsuei-sushi held 100 guests, a twelve-seat sushi bar, and two private rooms. Nobu hired friends from back home to help run the restaurant, which was a smart move. Not only was he working with people he could trust (remember - he knew no one other than Louis in Peru), but he could rely on the collective skills they’d built in Tokyo to run the restaurant the way Nobu liked. This allowed Nobu to prioritize his core business value: serving great food made with high-quality ingredients.
Once the restaurant started succeeding, Yoko and Nobu moved into a mansion that came with a gardener and a maid. They welcomed their first child three years after living in Peru. By any measure, life for Nobu was good; things were moving in the right direction.
One night, Nobu went to visit Louis and his family. Nobu was sober, but the Matsufuj family was far from it; they had been drinking for a while. They were a bit more loud and energetic and lively than usual (Honestly - they sound like fun). According to Nobu’s side of the story, Louis decided, seemingly out of nowhere, that profit was more important than serving high-quality ingredients to customers. Nobu does something that ruins the vibes of the gathering and sucks all of the fun out of the room. Nobu quits his job.
From a certain perspective this makes sense; Letting the quality of your product fall so that you can prioritize profits in the short term can be detrimental to any business. And it wasn’t in alignment with Nobu’s core business values - to serve good food with high-quality ingredients. But from another perspective it sounds wildly impulsive. His friends and family uprooted their lives and moved to another country to make Nobu’s dreams come true. His wife and one-year-old child had a comfortable life because of the restaurant, and because of his partnership with Louis Matsufuji. Would I have quit? No; but that’s probably why I have a boss, and Nobu has an empire.
Nobu’s network was alive and well, so he found work quickly. He got a job working at a restaurant in Buenos Aires, Argentina, so they moved again. This time, they did not live in a mansion with a maid and a gardener - the family of three shared a one-bedroom apartment. The move provided his family stability, but it didn’t help Nobu move forward with his goals; the restaurant never got busy, and people in Argentina preferred beef over fish. Life was giving him a lot of what he did not want, and he had no idea what to do with it. So he reached out to an old friend from back home for advice. The friend made Nobu realize there was no real reason to stay in Buenos Aires.
So Nobu and his family moved back to Tokyo. Unfortunately, his network was no longer alive and well. He says “Having been away for years, I called up everyone I knew and suggested we get together, but they all made excuses. I’m pretty sure they were afraid I would ask them for money.” He worked a few smaller jobs, before relocating to Alaska to open another restaurant, with another partner.
But the restaurant burned down.
That would have been the last straw for me. Call it fate, God, The Universe, whatever you believe in - I would have seen this as a sign that it was time to quit. But Nobu didn’t look at the world like that. Nobu looked at his fate like something he was supposed to shape. He was so focused, so determined, and so sure of himself that he was only ever going to do one thing - keep going.
And he finally got the break he was looking for.
Best,
LaToya