In 1938, Soichiro Honda was still in school, when he started a little workshop, developing the concept of the piston ring. His plan was to sell the idea to Toyota. He laboured night and day, even slept in the workshop, always dreaming that he could perfect his design and produce a worthy product. Finally, came the day he completed his piston ring and was able to take a working sample to Toyota, only to be told that the rings did not meet their standards! Soichiro suffered ridicule when the engineers laughed at his design, but he refused to give up. Rather than focus on his failure, he continued working towards his dream. After another two years of struggle and redesign, he won a contract with Toyota. With the contract in hand, Soichiro Honda needed to build a factory, but building materials were in short supply. Still he would not quit! He invented a new concrete-making process that enabled him to build the factory. The factory was bombed twice and steel became unavailable, too. He started collecting surplus gasoline cans discarded by US fighters – "Gifts from President Truman," he called them. Finally, an earthquake destroyed the factory. After the war, an extreme gasoline shortage forced people to walk or use bicycles. Honda built a tiny engine and attached it to his bicycle. Mr Honda wrote to 18,000 bicycles shop owners and, in an inspiring letter, asked them to help him revitalise Japan. 5,000 responded and advanced him what little money they could to build his tiny bicycle engines. He continued to develop and adapt, until finally, the small engine 'The Super Cub' became a reality and was a success. Honda began exporting his bicycle engines to Europe and America. In the 1970s there was another gas shortage, this time in America and automotive fashion turned to small cars. Honda was quick to pick up on the trend. The company started making tiny cars, smaller than anyone had seen before, and rode another wave of success. Today, Honda Corp employs over 100,000 people in the USA and Japan, and is one of the world's largest automobile companies. Honda succeeded because one man made a truly committed decision, acted upon it, and made adjustments on a continuous basis. Failure was simply not considered a possibility.
My Message
We've all heard of Honda's Slogan "The Power Of Dreams" but up until this day I never realised that the success of this Billion dollar corporation was built by one mans dream and his willingness to never be defeated. Mr Honda made his dreams a reality with a series of failures and fortunate turns of luck. Steve Kirk, Honda's Communications Manager said in an interview "Mr Honda believed that success is 99% failure; in other words, he wanted the people who worked for him to keep trying, not to fear getting something wrong because they would get in trouble with management, but to feel free to dream dreams and try the impossible. He said: "We only have one future, and it will be made of dreams if we have the courage to challenge convention.'" Soichiro Honda never ever gave up and neither should you. Don't expect overnight success. Transformation can take years, and this story is evidence that many successful people fail many times before they get their desired results. Never
stop dreaming and never stop finding practical ways to make your dream a reality!
Enjoy this beautiful short animation of Soichiro Honda's initial inspiration for his motor company and how it became a reality.
"There is a Japanese proverb that literally goes 'Raise the sail with your stronger hand,' meaning you must go after the opportunities that arise in life that you are best equipped to do." - Soichiro Honda
"Success represents the 1% of your work which results from the 99% that is called failure." - Soichiro Honda
May you have an awesome week.
Darren Zwiers
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