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- How Nobu Achieved Longevity (part one)
Hey team,
LaToya here! Welcome back to The Strategy Files, the newsletter where I study the most successful people in beauty, art, fashion, and entertainment. You apply it to your startup, agency, or side hustle.
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Please share this with two people you know who are building a business; it helps me tremendously.
Nobu Hospitality, LLC owns and operates 36 hotels and 56 restaurants across four continents. They haven't closed a single hotel or restaurant in over three decades. The CEO plans to expand the number of hotels from 36 to 80. This is exactly the kind of business you and I should be studying so we can stay motivated, steal their strategies, and accomplish our goals.
None of this would have been possible if early in his career, Chef Nobu Matsuhisa didn’t master the basics of his craft. And the only way to master the basics is to take advantage of the grunt work - the tasks most people would consider boring, repetitive, time-consuming, or meaningless. The work we all hate doing, the work that makes us want to quit our jobs, build companies, and work for ourselves.
I have a theory that people who take advantage of the grunt work will always accomplish their goals. So let’s talk about it.
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Today’s Lesson: Do The Grunt Work
It all started in 1963, the night before Nobu was set to take his end-of-term exams.
Nobu was 17 years old, in 11th grade, and decided to do something incredibly stupid. Nobu and his friends decided it would be a good idea to “borrow” his brother's car.
Any other night, in any other year, this might not have been a bad decision. But on this night, Tokyo was preparing for the 1964 Summer Olympics. There was a ton of construction on the highway. So on this night, there was significantly more traffic than young Nobu and his friends expected.
The car slammed into another, flipped, and hit a third car. Thankfully, everyone escaped with minor injuries. The next day, Nobu didn’t take his exams. When the school found out about the accident, he was expelled. Nobu was put on a three-year court order probation.
Nobu became an apprentice at Matsuei-sushi. This was his first time living away from his family. He shared a room in the back of the restaurant with two other people and was given only two days off per month.
Every morning, Nobu and his boss took the bus to the fish market. His only task was to carry a basket full of the fish his boss purchased. This sounds like grunt work: the stuff we all hate to do at work because we think it's beneath us. But this was an incredibly valuable experience for Nobu for four reasons:
He learned the difference between good fish and bad fish.
He studied the techniques the fishermen used to dress the fish.
He was learning a skill that all founders need to learn - how to pick up skills outside of a structured environment. There is no classroom that is going to teach us what we need to know.
He was practicing Y Combinator’s “Do things that don’t scale” philosophy. The grunt work is the work that doesn’t scale.
Back at the restaurant, Nobu continued to learn from his colleagues. As a dishwasher, he wasn’t allowed to make sushi. Did that stop him? Absolutely not! Nobu carefully watched how everyone else made sushi so he could understand technique. He wasn’t allowed to use the rice, so he used a towel to practice rolling sushi. Instead of doing nothing, or waiting for someone to give him to practice, he took matters into his own hands. It’s a nice reminder that if you wait for someone to give you permission, you’re gonna be waiting a long time.
So, when you’re at work this week and you find yourself being given work that feels boring, feels time-consuming, or meaningless just remember - you can use it in the future.
And don’t wait for permission. Do it anyways.