Two years ago today, I was in Ethiopia. It was my first time to go to Mojo, Ethiopia, and it took 24 hours to get there from japan. I was so excited and happy all the time that I couldn’t stop smiling. ( even on the street in this picture) every morning, my breakfast meeting started at 8am and finished my meeting at 9pm with One of the biggest companies over there. I spoke English 30% of all conversation, but most of the time meetings were held in Chinese, which situation truly made me decide to hire Chinese speaker in my company. And yes I did right after this trip.
I appreciate the fact that I was able to go to so many countries since I established my company and it’s interesting to see how I changed.
At first, I always tried to perfectly insist what my company’s strengths were, so that my customer placed me the order. I always pursued THE results which I fortunately could get pretty much every time.
But as time goes by, I became to truly understand my customers business and vision and find a point of intersection of both of our benefit to make each other’s business better. When I could find it, i wasn’t even “Just a supplier “ to them. I became their consultant, advisor, and best friend in their business. It took me awhile and never been an easy path but I enjoyed interacting with each of my customers so much!
I used to set my goal to accomplish ~ million dollars or ~ % of profit, but not anymore. I just love to be needed by the society, industry, and people around me.
Number is not my vision.
Honesty, loyalty, quality, price,.... I’ve seen many business owner act big to tell everyone what they value those words the most in their business and I realized people whoever say those normal things don’t even give a shit about them. You don’t have to say but just maintain them.
So, if I mention one thing that I value the most, it’s definitely this. Consistency.
It’s gonna be really busy Monday tomorrow but I’ll do my best as usual 😊
thanks for reading!