#397 Jiro Ono: Simplicity Is The Ultimate Advantage

Jiro Ono is the greatest living sushi chef. He was kicked out his house when he was 9. He started working in a restaurant so he wouldn't have to sleep under a bridge. He never stopped. Over his 75 year career he rose to the very top of his profession. People travel from all over the world to eat at his restaurant. The meal costs $400 per person and lasts 15 minutes. This episode is what I learned from reading the transcript of the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi and is full of ideas you can use in your work. Episode sponsors: ⁠⁠⁠Ramp⁠⁠⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠⁠by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money.⁠⁠⁠ https://ramp.com Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta. Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort. ⁠⁠⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠⁠⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. https://www.vanta.com Join my free email newsletter to⁠⁠⁠ get my top 10 highlights from every book⁠⁠⁠ https://davidsenra.com

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00David Senra?

  This will be one of the most incredible stories you will ever hear. For his entire 75-year career, Jiro was solely focused on serving his customer and making the very best product for them. Jiro invented new ways to make sushi that no one else was able to create, was absolutely obsessed with crafting a high-quality product, and ran tens of thousands of experiments throughout his entire life. Every single experiment was aimed at making a better product for his customer. Jiro's relentless dedication to improving his craft and his products reminds me of my friend Kareem, who's the co-founder and CTO of Ramp. Kareem is one of the greatest technical minds working in finance. I spend a lot of time talking to Kareem, and every single conversation centers around his obsession with crafting a high-quality product and using the latest technology

• 0:45David Senra?

  to constantly create better experiences for his customers. Kareem and Jiro both believe that nothing is ever good enough and can always be improved. Kareem is running one of the most talented technical teams in finance, and they use rapid relentless iteration to make their product better every day, just like Jiro. So far this year, Ramp has shipped over 300 new features. Ramp is completely committed to using AI to make a better experience for their customers and to automate as much of your business's finances as possible. In fact, Kareem just wrote this. "AI is all I think about these days. It is our duty to be first movers and push limits so we can make the greatest possible product experience for our customers." That sounds a lot like the approach

• 1:30David Senra?

  used by a lot of the great founders that you and I study on this podcast. They use a combination of craftsmanship and rapid iteration to invent new products for their customers. Many of the fastest-growing and most innovative companies in the world are running their business on Ramp. Make sure you go to ramp.com to learn how they can help your business save time and money. Let AI chase your receipts and close your books so you can use your time and energy building great things for your customers. Because at the end of the day, that is what this is all about. Building a product or service that makes someone else's life better. That is what I'm trying to do. That is what Jiro dedicated his entire life to doing, and that is what Ramp has done. Get started today by going to ramp.com. Another way to better serve your customers is by keeping their data secure and proving you're doing so by using Vanta.

• 2:15David Senra?

  Vanta's value prop is very clear. Vanta helps your company prove you're secure, so more customers will use your product or service. Many companies will not sign contracts unless you're certified and this is causing you to lose out on sales. That is why the average Vanta customer reports a 526% return on investment after becoming a Vanta customer. Automate compliance, security and trust with Vanta. You can think of Vanta like an intelligent security assistant that helps your company pass audits without tons of manual work. So not only do you make more money with Vanta, but you also save more time with Vanta. Manual compliance is slow and painful. Doing everything by hand takes months. The best companies absolutely will not tolerate that.

• 2:57David Senra?

  They will not tolerate wasting valuable company time doing something with labor when technology can automate it. That is a very old and powerful idea that goes all the way back to Andrew Carnegie. And you and I see it over and over and over again in these biographies. Vanta will help you win trust, close deals and stay secure faster and with less effort. Go to vanta.com to learn more. And if you want to get set up right away, email me [email protected]. Put Vanta in the subject link and I will introduce you personally. One of my favorite documentaries that I've watched over and over again is this documentary called Jiro Dreams of Sushi. It is about the greatest sushi chef of all time. His name is Jiro Ono. At the time that the documentary was created, he's 85 years old.

• 3:40David Senra?

  What I did for this episode is I actually transcribed the entire documentary and then I went through that document, just like I go through every single book that you and I talk about together. So I want to start with the very beginning of the documentary. You see Jiro, he's talking directly through the camera and he tells us exactly why the documentary is named Jiro Dreams of Sushi. He says, "I would see ideas in dreams. My mind was bursting with ideas. I would wake up in the middle of the night. In dreams, I would have visions of sushi." The very next thing he says is advice to other people, but it's really the advice that he lived his life by. He had the Same job at the time the documentary is made for 75 years.

• 4:21David Senra?

  Once you decide on your occupation, you must immerse yourself in your work. You have to fall in love with your work. Never complain about your job. You must dedicate your life to mastering your skill. That is the secret of success and is the key to being regarded honorably. So, right at the very beginning, they described Jiro as a shokunen. So, a shokunen is a Japanese word roughly translates to an artisan or craftsman. If somebody is referred to as a shokunen, that means that's somebody that has mastered a craft. They tend to have a lot of similar traits regardless of what that craft happens to be. Dedication to excellence in one's craft will be present in every single shokunen. You'll have a sense of moral duty to do the job perfectly, not just for personal pride,

• 5:06David Senra?

  but to serve society. They have lifelong discipline to continuous improvement. This idea of kaizen or kaizen that pops up in a lot of these biographies that you and I discussed together. And they have a almost spiritual respect for tradition and the process of the craft itself. Now, in the documentary, they introduce you to all these other people around Jiro. Some of them are his apprentices, his two sons, every single one of his vendors, the writers and the food critics. And what they all have in common with Jiro is they do things for an excessively long time and they've done it in a volume and a quantity more than anybody else. So, the very first food writer or food critic that we're introduced to, he says, "Listen, I went to every single sushi restaurant in Tokyo. Nobody has eaten more sushi than me.

• 5:51David Senra?

  Out of the hundreds of restaurants that I ate at, Jiro was by far the best." So, I have a funny story. I went to Japan for the first time last year. I have never had sushi in my entire life, even though I've watched this documentary probably 10 times. A friend of mine got us a reservation at Jiro, which is almost impossible to do. So, the very first time I ever had sushi in my life was at Jiro. It was incredible. So, I left that meal. I was like, "I cannot believe I wasn't eating sushi before. I love sushi now." Wrong. No. No. The next day, we went to another spot, not remotely the same experience. And since then, every single time I've tried to eat sushi, I really didn't like it that much,

• 6:34David Senra?

  where I think Jiro's excellence had completely ruined it for me. And something that stands out in the documentary, again, what I'm trying to do is like, I'm not really trying to talk about sushi or sushi chef. I'm interested in these ideas, like you can extract, turn everything into an extraction, take the ideas out of his approach to his craft and think about how can we use them for ours. What, one of my favorite quotes about James Dyson, who's obviously a big hero of mine, I won't stop talking about him. I've done, you know, four or five episodes on him. I do a new episode every hundred, uh, hundred episodes. He has this idea that difference for the sake of it, that you must insist on differentiation. And so this food critic is describing just how unusual the fact that the greatest sushi chef that has ever lived

• 7:16David Senra?

  is in this tiny 10-seat restaurant next to the subway station. And the entire meal is going to be over in 15 or 20 minutes. So he says, "It's comfortable for people who like to have sushi served at a fast pace. But for people who want to drink and eat slowly while chatting, it will not be a comfortable eating experience." Again, difference for the sake of it. "All of the sushi is simple. It is completely minimal. Master chefs from all around the world come to eat at Jiro's and say, how can something so simple have so much depth and flavor? If you were to sum up Jiro's sushi in a nutshell, it says, ultimate simplicity leads to purity." One of my favorite quotes that I keep on my phone and I look at all the time.

• 7:58David Senra?

  It says, "A novice is easily spotted because they do too much. Too many ingredients, too many movements, too much explanation. A master uses the fewest resources required to fulfill their intention." That could have been written about Jiro. Back to the way that Jiro designed his business. Reservations are mandatory. Price is around $400 per person. So the time the documentary came out, it was 30,000 yen. I think now the minimum price is 60,000 yen. And so that conversion today is about $400 per person. They only serve sushi, no appetizers, nothing but sushi. The counter only fits 10 people total. The meal lasts about 15 to 20 minutes. So it's roughly, you're spending about $25 per minute.

• 8:40David Senra?

  In that sense, it's one of the most expensive restaurants on a per minute basis in the world. And yet, the people who eat there are convinced it's worth the price. And so a large part of the documentary is the actual process. Like what, how is this tiny little 10-seat restaurant, this three-star Michelin restaurant in a Tokyo subway? Why do people come from all over the world to eat here? And so they talk about, it's like, listen, the techniques that we use, they're not a big secret. It's just about making an effort and repeating the same thing every day, which again is what the shokanen do. Says Jiro repeats the same routine every day. He even gets on the train from the same position. He dislikes holidays. He thinks holidays are too long. He wants to get back to work.

• 9:23David Senra?

  His routine, this idea of doing the same thing every day, this really, the spirit of the shokanen, he says it's unthinkable for normal people. And so one of the main ideas that's implied throughout the entire documentary, they just said, listen, the techniques we're using, it's no big secret. You can see what we're doing. It's just about making an effort and doing so for seven and a half decades. So you will see them run countless tastings and experiments every day in the documentary. And they've been doing, in Jiro's case, he's been doing that for over seven decades. So he's learning new things every single day and just iterating day after day after day with making his product better. That's one of the main points of the documentary. And he says, if it doesn't taste good, you can't serve it. It has to be better than last time.

• 10:06David Senra?

  That's why I'm always tasting the food before serving it. Jiro's not just the chef, he's the first customer. And then he's going to have another trait where you see over and over again with a lot of history, great entrepreneurs, the inner monologue, they are unbelievably self-critical. Nothing is ever good enough. Says, I've seen many chefs who are self-critical, but I've never seen a chef who is so hard on himself. He sets the standard for self-discipline. And when we go into his childhood and the just atrocious way he grew up, this will make perfect sense to you, and why he realized that just having a skill that no one can take away from you is a way for him not to starve. It's a way for him not to sleep on the street. It makes perfect sense when you learn about childhood. I've seen many chefs who are self- Critical, but I've never seen a chef who's so hard on himself. He sets the standard for self-discipline. He's always looking ahead.

• 10:51David Senra?

  He's never satisfied with his work. He's always trying to find ways to make the sushi better. Even now, that's all he thinks about all day, every day. He is obsessed. He is focused. He's 85 years old. Again, I already said this a few times. He's 85 years old at the time this documentary comes out. But if you go back to what he says, really hard on himself, very disciplined, always looking ahead, never satisfied with his work. Look at the biographies and autobiographies you and I have been discussing over the past few weeks. If you look at the Ferrari, Michael Ferrero, the Michelin brothers, Leonardo da Vinci, every single one of them was like this. They didn't sleep on wins. They didn't rest on laurels. They're never satisfied. They're constant.

• 11:33David Senra?

  They worked on what they, in many cases, I think the average length of their career and running their business was somewhere anywhere from 45 years to 70 years. And it didn't matter if they're making tires, chocolate, eyeglasses. Ferraris, they were always looking ahead. They were never satisfied with their work. Just like Jiro at 85 years old, even now, that's what he thinks about all day, every day. I just want to make sushi better. He's dreaming about it. Later on, he's got one of my favorite quotes in the entire documentary is that he says when he makes like really good sushi, he just feels victorious. He's like hyped up. I absolutely love it. The food critic is like, hey, you know, I analyze a lot of great chefs all over the world. They tend to have these five attributes. Jiro has them all as well.

• 12:17David Senra?

  They have a lot of commonalities in the way they approach their work. Number one, they take their work very seriously and constantly perform on the highest level. Second, they aspire to improve their skills. Three, they're obsessed with cleanliness. This is again, this is something that popped up in the da Vinci episode, the Ferrero episode. Remember? Michael Ferrero built a $40 billion, probably worth way more than that now, $40 billion private company. And the guy would take his helicopter and he'd land at all the other factories making his chocolates. And he'd take out a glove and he'd run his finger over the machines. This is very fascinating to me, how you just see this obsession with cleanliness over and over again. Third is cleanliness. If the restaurant doesn't feel clean, the food isn't going to taste good.

• 13:02David Senra?

  I read a bunch of other profiles on Jiro and I found something that's very fascinating. Says his restaurant remained immaculately clean, leading another food critic to say that Jiro's establishment might be the cleanest restaurant in the world. "From the gleaming knife blades to the polished countertops, everything at Jiro reflected its owner's belief that excellence was a habit, practiced every day with no shortcuts." The fourth attribute is impatience. "They are better," this is a great line, "they are better leaders than collaborators. They're stubborn and they insist on having it their way." And finally, number five, a great chef is passionate. Jiro has all of these attributes. He's a perfectionist. And Jiro was like this decades before he became famous. He doesn't start his restaurant until he's 39 years old.

• 13:47David Senra?

  I think he wins the Michelin star when he's like 82. So they actually interviewed this guy who apprenticed for Jiro up until Jiro was 60. So it says, "When I apprenticed for him, he wasn't famous yet, but he always worked incredibly hard. He would not take a day off. The only time he would not be at the restaurant was when there was an emergency, like a funeral." I would not say he is eccentric. He just works relentlessly every day. That's how Shokanen are. The way of the Shokanen is to repeat the same thing every day. They just want to work. They are not trying to be special, but that's, this is the beauty of this. The fact that if you just love the activity for the sake of itself, if you work on it every day, if you do it for a long time, you become special.

• 14:32David Senra?

  Nobody becomes great at something to do part-time or temporary. They do it decade after decade after decade. Another great line that came to my mind when I got to this section. It's one of my favorite things Walt Disney ever said. He says, "If we lose the details, we lose everything." Jiro says to us, "It is essential to check every detail." I guess the way I think about Jiro. Is he limited the the number of details to perfect? And then he made every detail perfect. So he says, it's essential to check every detail. What the staff might not notice, I notice because I've been doing it for so long. I give them detailed instructions on what to do. There's this great profile on Bernard Arnault, the founder of LVMH. In that profile, his kids, so Jiro's two sons work with him.

• 15:16David Senra?

  Bernard Arnault's kids work with him. One of his sons says something that's very fascinating is exactly what Jiro just said. He's like, well, I noticed a bunch of details. They might not notice it. The reason I noticed this is because I've been doing it for so long. Let me read what Bernard Arnault's son said. He's talking to his father. He made a bunch of comments that were very, very detail oriented. Things that you wouldn't typically notice, but once you've seen tens of thousands of stores over the years, it's what comes to your mind immediately. There's another great line in that Arnold profile. It says, Arnault spots any intricacies that might disrupt the aura of opulence that he has carefully constructed.

• 15:58David Senra?

  You could say that line with Walt Disney and Walt Disney's construction of Disneyland. There's ideas in that book where he's walking on Main Street. There's something that's 50 feet in the air and he sees something's off with it. He spotted any intricuity that might disrupt the aura of opulence that he has carefully constructed. Same thing with Jiro and his 10-seat restaurant. Something that's repeated over and over again. I've already brought it up several times to you. Jiro is constantly tasting his own food. Are you constantly using your own product? Just to make a very basic, simple idea that almost no one does. There's another great example. It's one of my favorite ideas. It jumped out the very first time I've seen the documentary and it's one I think about all the time. So each vendor that Jiro uses, again, these are just like simple ideas, a handful of

• 16:42David Senra?

  simple principles, but he applies them relentlessly and vigorously over a long period of time. So each of his vendor has to be the best vendor for that specific ingredient. So for example, the, obviously he's obsessed with focus, right? The tuna vendor works exclusively with tuna. The shrimp vendor only sells shrimp. Each of the, this is how they describe it. Each of the vendors are specialists in their fields. We are experts in sushi, but in each of their specialties, the vendors are more knowledgeable. We have built up a relationship of trust with them. So Mr. Beast is the biggest creator in the world. He listens to founders. He invited me to actually go to where his headquarters are. And I actually sat in a bunch of meetings. It was very fascinating.

• 17:26David Senra?

  And again, one of, you know, he's, he's going to go down with one of history's greatest obsessives too. He's like completely obsessed with what he's doing, just like what Jiro is, just the way Bernard Arnault is, just the way Walt Disney was. And what I learned that day was the way that Mr. Beast sets up his business is like this. So every person is focused on one thing that they are the best in the world at that one thing. So like the, the person that does thumbnails, the best thumbnail designer in the world. That's all he focuses on. Person that comes up with the titles, the video editor, the person that's responsible for the onset operations. Every person is focused on one thing and they are best in the world at that one thing. That's exactly what Jiro does with the ingredients for his product.

• 18:08David Senra?

  So they, they interview his tuna dealer, which is hilarious. He's got a tuna dealer. He's got a rice dealer. This is what the tuna dealer says. My methods and standards are unusual compared to other vendors. I'm what you might call anti-establishment. Later on in the documentary, Jiro refers to himself as a rebel. You know, these are people that are very comfortable thinking for themselves and inventing new ways to perfect their craft. So tuna dealer, the best tuna dealer that in Japan is saying, I'm anti-establishment. I either buy my first choice or I buy nothing. If 10 tuna are for sale, only one can be the best. So I buy that one. And if he can't buy that one, he buys nothing at all. Their standards will never be compromised.

• 18:52David Senra?

  So then they interview the octopus and the shrimp vendors and they are shoken in two. In many cases, they're, they're. They've been doing it for decades. These are older people. This is what they said. "We are picky about who we sell to. We want customers who appreciate good fish. Even at my age, I'm discovering new techniques." Never says his age. By looking at the guy, I thought he was maybe like 60 years old. But when you think, this is fascinating what he says here. "Even at my age, I'm discovering new techniques. But just when you think you know it all, you realize that you're just fooling yourself and then you get depressed." There is one of my favorite quotes, again, that I have stored on my phone. It's from Mickey Mantle, the baseball player. And he says, "It's unbelievable how much you don't know

• 19:36David Senra?

  about the game you've been playing all your life." I have this weird obsession with talking to older entrepreneurs. Obviously, like, I like people that have decades and decades of experience. And, you know, my favorite entrepreneurs, the most impressive entrepreneurs that I've ever met and spent time with. In all cases, you know, tens of billions of dollars of net worth, just insane scale to what they're doing. But they're all over 70. And they talk about this. In many cases, they've been running, in one case, I talked to a person that was 76. He's been working in the family business since he was six. So he had 70 years of experience. Another case, they were running their business for 45 years. Most of them are these like private, you know, family-held businesses you've probably never even heard of. And they tend to just secretly dominate an industry, but they say the exact same thing, that like they're never going to retire and they're still learning.

• 20:19David Senra?

  They're four, five, six decades into what they're doing and they're still learning new things. "Just when you think you know it all, you realize that you're fooling yourself." And then the shrimp vendor actually says something that I thought there's like a lot of embedded in what, you know, this casual conversations, there's actually a lot of wisdom in what he's saying. And so he says, "Sometimes when I see this shrimp in the morning, I say, 'Oh, this is worthy of Jiro.'" "That's the way I do business. It's not about the money. These days, the first things people want is an easy job. Then they want a lot of free time. And then they want lots of money. But they aren't thinking of building their skills." So again, this is what jumped out to me. And I think it was like the fourth time. That I saw the video that I actually realized, or the documentary I actually realized is like,

• 21:00David Senra?

  when you, what you realize about Jiro is his belief that competence is the only safe harbor. So a skill that no one else can take from you, you need to develop. Why? If you are one of the greatest sushi chefs, you will never go hungry. And starving to death was a very real possibility when Jiro was a kid. What should I get to in a minute? So the shrimp vendor continues, "When you work at a place like Jiro's, you are committing to a trade for life. Most people can't keep up with the hard work and they quit." So then they've talked about the fact that Jiro received three Michelin stars. So if you haven't listened to it, this is a few weeks ago. Episode 393 is on the Michelin Brothers. I've heard from many people that have listened to over 100 episodes of Founders.

• 21:45David Senra?

  They think that is a top 10 Founders episode of all time. So the first Michelin guide, if you listened to the episode, you already know this, comes in, came out in 1900. I don't think they get to Japan until like 2007. And then as soon as they get there, they're like, Jiro's insane. This guy's like, the only possible rating for this restaurant is three stars. So it says, "Michelin inspectors first look for quality. Next, they look for originality, and finally, they look for consistency." Jiro's restaurant easily meets these standards. A perfect three-star Michelin rating means that it's worth making a trip to that country just to eat at that restaurant. When Jiro got three stars, everyone was astonished. They named all the stuff it didn't have. There's only 10 seats. The restroom is outside of the premises.

• 22:26David Senra?

  There is no other three-star restaurant in the world like Jiro's. But the Michelin investors, investigators say, no matter how many times you eat at Jiro's, the sushi there is incredible. They said that three stars is the only rating adequate for this restaurant. They said, "I've never had a disappointing experience there. That is nothing short of a miracle." So again, this is gonna sound really funny. If you think about, when I got to this section, I thought of Todd Graves, who's the founder of Raisin Canes. That's episode 383. I think the title of that episode is, you know, Todd Graves and His $10 Billion Chicken Finger Dream. That title is outdated. Now, the, his company that he owns over 90% of is worth $20 billion. 25 years into Todd Graves' career,

• 23:11David Senra?

  his business is growing faster than it's ever grown before. And Todd Graves lives by a simple model, motto, rather. He says, "I believe in doing one thing and doing it better than anyone else." That's exact, so at the very high end, right? Where you're spending $25 a minute, Jiro would say the same thing. "I believe in doing one thing and doing it better than anyone else." That works the high end. It also works on the other end of the spectrum. Raising Canes, it's my favorite fried chicken. It's fast food. And I've never had a disappointing experience at Raising Canes either. Todd Graves, Jiro, they did the same thing. They limited the, they limited the amount of details to perfect and they made every single detail perfect. I've eaten at Raising Canes, I don't know, 100 times. Not a single bad experience.

• 23:55David Senra?

  Now, another main theme of the story is the fact that two of Jiro's apprentices are his sons. So in Japan, it says the older son is expected to take over the family business. That's the one that actually served me. Jiro wasn't there. He's in poor health from what I hear. And his oldest son has been apprenticing with Jiro since he's 19, since he was 19. I think he's in his 70s by now. And then Jiro's younger son opened his own sushi restaurant, which is like in a mirror image of Jiro's restaurant, just at a lower price. And that winds up getting a two-star rating from Michelin. But there's a part in the documentary I want to bring up to you where Jiro and his son are sitting next to each other and they're having this conversation. And you'll see how Jiro thinks about things. So Jiro's son says, "When I opened this restaurant, my father said, 'Now you have no home to come back to.'

• 24:38David Senra?

  He said that I would be buried in Roppongi, which is where the restaurant is. Failure, he said, was not an option." Jiro's explaining his, the way he thinks about this. "When you open your own restaurant, you need to be tough. I told him to leave and open this restaurant because I knew he could do it. If he wasn't ready, I wouldn't have made him go. But I felt he was ready, so I gave him a gentle push out the door. But I told him, 'There is no turning back. You must make your own way.' When I say things like this, people often disagree. But when I left home at the age of nine, that's what I was told when I was..." This is so crazy. When I was in the first grade, I was told you have no home to come back to. Go back to what I just said.

• 25:22David Senra?

  If you look at everything through this crazy experience that happens. Kicked out of his house. His dad's, you know, poor and a drunk, loses all his money. Jiro was forced to support himself, starting at nine. But when I left, so it makes perfect sense why he was so obsessed with getting a skill. So he doesn't have to sleep under a bridge so he can actually feed himself. When I was in the first grade, I was told you have no home to come back to. That's why you have to work hard. I knew that I was on my own and I didn't want to have to sleep at the temple or under a bridge, so I had to work just to survive. That has never left me. I'm going to pause there. Think about Leonardo da Vinci, the founder of Luxottica. He built a business valued well over a hundred billion dollars.

• 26:06David Senra?

  Mark Zuckerberg just paid, I think, three billion or three and a half billion to buy 3% of it. You have Jiro saying, I didn't want to sleep under a bridge, so I had to work just to survive. That has never left me. Da Vinci said in his biography, I grew up in an institution and without a family. That marks you. It is the same exact idea. And the response to these two people that didn't know each other, lived at different times, worked in different industries and in different parts of the world was exactly the same. That is why Munger said, you have to tie the ideas to the personality that developed them. That is why Charlie Munger, who could have learned from anybody else in the world, chose to read hundreds of biographies in his lifetime, back to Jiro.

• 26:48David Senra?

  I worked even if the boss kicked or slapped me. Nowadays, parents tell their children you can return if it doesn't work out. When parents say stupid things like that, the kids turn out to be failures. I don't know much about my father. He made good money taking people on boat rides, but then his business failed and his life fell apart. Again, a great sushi chef will never go hungry. What if I just develop a skill set that no one can take from me? And then do that decade after decade till he is the best in the world at what he does. Go back to this. But his business failed and his life fell apart. All he did was drink. I heard that he died. I didn't go to the funeral. I lived with him until I was seven. I never heard from him again.

• 27:33David Senra?

  I was on my own after that. So think about that. Seven, seven, you're old enough. It doesn't matter if you're an adult. You have memories from when you're seven. Jiro kept these memories with him his entire life. So then you fast forward. That's how he grew up. Then he starts talking to his kids now. They do a great job of documenting this. Now his kids are talking about how they grew up. Our father started out as an apprentice and was paid almost nothing. According to our mother, when they got married, they had only 10 yen in their bank account. That's like less than a dollar. That is how poor we were. They then tell a story when they were little kids and Coca-Cola comes to Japan for the first time ever. They had to save for months to buy one can of Coca-Cola.

• 28:18David Senra?

  That was the economic conditions of Jiro when he starts his family. Now he has people flying all over the world to try to give him $400 for 15 minutes. Jiro talks about this time in his life. When the kids were small, on the rare occasion that I was at home sleeping in on a Sunday, they'd come into the room and say, Mom, there's a strange man sleeping in our house. It is a true story. I would get up at five in the morning and go to work. I would get home after 10 at night when they'd be asleep. When they were young, I didn't get to see them often. I wasn't much of a father. I was probably more like a stranger. And so if you really think about this, Jiro's, he's describing trying to make it in his trade, right? Jiro's training, the one he went through and then the one he puts other people through. It's the opposite of an overnight success.

• 29:02David Senra?

  So they called it, they said he labored through the classic sushi apprenticeship gauntlet. So you start from cleaning, then you do prep work to eventually being able to handle fish after years of proving your dedication.

• 29:17David Senra?

  So he starts working restaurants when he's nine. Eight, he's 39. It takes him 30 years before he opens his first restaurant. That is the restaurant that still exists to this day, the one that is still thriving to this day. And so then he's talking about what it was like when he was in his early twenties. We came back to work after World War II. The masters said that the history of sushi is so long that nothing new could be invented. They may have mastered their craft, but there's always room for improvement. I created sushi dishes that never existed back then. I would make sushi in my dreams. Good luck competing with somebody that's dreaming about their work. I would jump out of bed at night with ideas. This is spooky.

• 29:59David Senra?

  Think about this, think about what's been going on the last few episodes that you and I've been talking about. Leonardo da Vinci did this. Michael Ferrero did this. Colin Chapman. They literally say that same thing. They had so many ideas, they would wake up, they'd either have a tape recorder next to their bed or a pen and pad.

• 30:16David Senra?

  They were dreaming about their work. They would jump out of bed at night with ideas, just like what Jiro is saying. And then the way he developed these ideas, what is it? It's very basic. Countless iterations over decades. How many people are going to willing to do thousands, tens of thousands of experiments in your particular craft? Right from the rip, that's going to eliminate 99.99% of the people in any endeavor. Every day, Jiro is just in there making constant iterations on trying to figure out how to improve things. And I'm just going to give you a few examples. So they talk about how they used to serve shrimp. He's like, well, I just, when I started out, I just did shrimp how everybody else did. Like everyone else, we just boiled it in the morning and then we put it in the refrigerator. And then we took it out when it was time to serve. And he says something fascinating, he says, it was a lot easier back then. He feels like, oh, I'm just, I'm taking the easy way out, but I can actually improve this process.

• 31:01David Senra?

  Now we wait to boil the shrimp until the customer arrives. It's more work, but it's worth it. Octopus is another example. I always felt that my preparation was decent, but I've since refined my technique. Back then I would massage the octopus for about 30 minutes, which is still much longer than what anybody else does, right? But it's the volume, volume, volume. Now it's massaged for 40 or 50 minutes. We massage it to give it a softer texture. He does this for everything he does. And he's, again, he refers to himself as a shokanen. Shokanen tried to get the highest quality fish and apply their technique to it. All I want to do is make better sushi. I do the same thing over and over, improving bit by bit. There is always a yearning to achieve more. I'll continue to climb, trying to reach the top, but no one knows where the top is.

• 31:44David Senra?

  Even at my age, after decades of work, I do not think I have achieved perfection, but I feel ecstatic all day. I love making sushi. That is the spirit of the shokanen. I have never once hated this job. I fell in love with my work and gave my life to it. Even though I'm 85 years old, I don't feel like retiring. That's how I feel. And then another part of being a shokanen is you have to pass what you know on to the next generation. And in this case, it's through decades of apprenticeship. So it says, "When you work for Jiro, who teaches you for free, but you have to endure 10 years of training. If you persevere for 10 years, you will acquire the skills to be recognized as a first-rate chef."

• 32:27David Senra?

  When you first sit down as a customer of Jiro's, they give you a hot towel. Well, those towels are prepared by hand, so an apprentice must first be able to properly hand-squeeze a towel. At first, the towels are so hot that they burn the apprentice's hand. And this part was fascinating. It is a very painful training, which is very Japanese. Until you can adequately squeeze a towel, they won't let you touch the fish. Then you learn to cut and prepare the fish. After about 10 years, they let you cook the eggs. And so one of the apprentices, they interviewed one of Jiro's apprentices, and he talks about the fact that they were trying to teach him how to make egg sushi. And it was just iteration after iteration after iteration. They would just reject over and over again. He says, "I've made over 200.

• 33:11David Senra?

  Every single one was rejected. When I finally did make a good one, Jiro said, 'Now, this is how it should be done.'" And he did that by tasting it. Again, I'm going to read, I'm going and order the documentary. This guy repeats the same stuff over and over again, the same ideas. It's taking a simple idea, find a simple idea and take it very seriously. And this is what Jiro says, "In order to make delicious food, you must eat delicious food." In order to make delicious food, you must eat delicious food. You need to develop a palate capable of discerning good and bad. Without good taste, you cannot make good food. And then he talks about people that he admires. And again, there's all these other chefs and all these profiles I read on Jiro that are in the documentary. They admire him and then he's talking about, well, like, I'm not even close to what this guy is.

• 33:55David Senra?

  When I think of someone with a highly acute sense of taste and smell, the first person I think of is the great French chef, Joel Rubashan. I wish I were as sensitive as he. I have a very good sense of smell, but he's on another level. His sensitivity is very high. If I had his tongue and nose, I could probably make better food. And so then they go into the fact that if you're doing these experiments constantly, so seeing a couple, you know, dozens or maybe hundreds, maybe even a thousand a week, you do that week after week after decade after decade, you're gonna develop a certain process that is going to be much better than anybody else's. So there's this, him and his rice dealer, which is just hilarious, that he has his own rice dealer who doesn't sell to anybody else, which is also interesting to me. They start to have this conversation.

• 34:38David Senra?

  And Jiro again brings up the fact that when you've seen, you know, what did Bernard, Bernard Ono's son say? You know, my, my father Hassan has seen tens of thousands of stores. So of course he, he knows what's good just because he has those volume to compare to. And so Jiro has gone through how many different people have tried to sell him rice. He's talking about his rice dealer, the best in the world at what he does. He knows everything about rice. He's different from the other rice dealers. And so the rice dealer talks about one of the nicest hotels in, in Tokyo is the Grand Hyatt. They tried to, they wanted to get the same rice that Jiro, that Jiro uses. And he told him, even if I wanted to sell it to you, you wouldn't know what to do it because only Jiro knows how to cook it. And so then Jiro's describing essentially what he learned

• 35:22David Senra?

  from these thousands and thousands, tens of thousands of iteration. It takes significant skill to make this rice. What is the point of buying rice that you can't cook? And so they show the process they've refined to cook rice in the documentary. We put a lot of pressure on the rice. The lid itself is so heavy that it takes two hands to lift. And then we place a big pot of water on top of that. With the type of rice we use, you need a lot of pressure. I cannot think of a single restaurant that puts this much pressure on the rice. But that's fine with us because we can keep using the best rice and our rivals won't be able to imitate us. And he talks about down to not only the pressure, but the temperature is so important. The temperature of the rice is very important. Most people think sushi is cold,

• 36:06David Senra?

  but actually, the rice should be served at body temperature. We then devise techniques to maintain the perfect temperature when serving. It shows this in the documentary as well. The temperature and the freshness of the fish is crucial. Each ingredient has an ideal moment of deliciousness. That is a really important part. I don't want to skip over this part. This is why the meal at Jiro goes so fast. He puts it on your plate and you need to eat it right away. You have like 10 seconds. The temperature and the freshness of the fish is crucial. Each ingredient has an ideal moment of deliciousness. Mastering the timing of sushi is difficult. It takes years of experience to develop your intuition. The sushi must be eaten immediately after it's served. Jiro then expounds on this.

• 36:49David Senra?

  I love hearing masters of their craft describe their craft. To explain umami, it takes more than just a good piece of tuna to create the sensation of umami. The umami is brought out through the balance of the flavors. The most important part of making good sushi is this, creating a union between the rice and the fish. If they are not in complete harmony, the sushi will not taste good. There is an ebb and flow to the menu, so Jiro's sushi courses. They say it's like a concerto. And they say they compare him over and over again to like the maestro, the one that conducts the orchestra. There are dynamics in the way the sushi is served. Just like in music, you're consuming Jiro's philosophy with every bite. He watches his diners very closely. If, for example, like the little detail,

• 37:33David Senra?

  it says, there's another great line in one of the profiles I read that says, "Every detail is calibrated." If Jiro notices a guest using his left hand, the next piece of sushi will be placed on the left side. More than seven decades into his career, Jiro is making more sushi now than ever. Jiro is the oldest chef to have been awarded three stars by Michelin. Nobody in their 80s is working day and night like Jiro. This is one of my favorite stories about Jiro. Jiro was given the Miko Award by the Japanese government. He went to the award ceremony during the day and was back at work in the evening. He got tired, he said he got tired of sitting around. One of my favorite biographies and really favorite founders I've ever come across is this guy named Sam Zemurray.

• 38:16David Senra?

  The biography is called "The Fish That Ate The Whale." There's a story in that book that I never forgot, that when I got to this part of the transcript, I actually pulled. And it's, I think it perfectly captures the personality types of these kind of people. So it says, "Zemurray was being honored at a reception in Havana, Cuba, a party which was thrown specifically for him. Zemurray didn't even show up. When a lieutenant was sent to track him down, they found him at the port going over manifest documents with the ship's purser. This exemplifies Zemurray's complete dedication to his work over social recognition." And to take a line from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, it's the most inner scorecard behavior possible.

• 38:56David Senra?

  You're so focused on the actual work that you skip, that you skip your own honor ceremony to review shipping documents. Again, it's hard to compete people that love, that have a love for the activity itself. This is probably my favorite line in the entire documentary. "When we have good tuna, I feel great. When I'm making the sushi, I feel, while I'm making sushi, I feel victorious. That's how it makes me feel. Until the end, I only want to work with the best fish." Now, it was very fascinating. He goes back to where he grew up, and this is towards the end of the documentary. And it's just, you know, it's obviously something devastating to have to go through, to have to experience.

• 39:38David Senra?

  And then it's remarkable if you think about what he experienced to what he achieved. And so he visits his parents' grave, and they, they, they show this on camera. And he says something that's completely heartbreaking. Says, "I don't know why I come here. My parents didn't take care of me." And he worked all the time when his kids were younger, but he actually gets to work and see his kids his entire life. And he talked about how important that was to him as a father. He says, "I want both of my sons to continue on. They both will run their own restaurants. I will admit, I train my sons more strictly than other apprentices, but I did so for the sake of their future, not because I wanted to be mean to them. It's something that I thought about from the beginning.

• 40:20David Senra?

  Even if I were to be gone right now, I know they can go on." And then this is the perfect way to end. If you really think about what he's saying here, it's not up to him. "I will keep working and keep practicing my craft until my body gives out." And then he just ends with excellent advice. "If I don't keep working, my body will become worthless. If my body stops functioning, then I'll have to quit. It's not up to me. If I stopped working at 85, I'd be bored out of my mind. I have been able to carry on with the same job for 75 years. It's hard to slow down. This is what's most important. Always look ahead and above yourself. Always try to improve on yourself. Always strive to elevate your craft."