This is the story of Soichiro Honda, the founder of the Honda Corporation, the maker of Honda cars and motorcycles (as told by Anthony Robbins)
In 1938, Mr. Honda, a poor student had a dream of designing a piston ring that he would sell and manufacture for Toyota Corporation. Every day he would go to school and at night he would work on his design. He spent whatever little money he had on his project and he even pawned his wife’s jewellery to continue working on it. After years of effort he finally completed his design and was sure Toyota would buy it, but they rejected it.
He had to go back to school and suffer the humiliation of his teachers and friends telling him what an idiot he was for wasting his time and designing something so ridiculous. He spent the next two years continuing to find way to make the piston ring better and finally after two more years he refined his design and Toyota bought it.
Now in order to built his piston factory, Mr. Honda needed concrete, but the Japanese government was preparing for World War 2, so none was available. So he got together a group of his friends, and for weeks they worked round the clock trying different approaches until they found a new way to manufacture concrete. Finally he was able to build his factory and start manufacturing his piston rings.
The story doesn’t end here…
During the war the United States bombed Honda’s factory, destroying most of it. Again instead of feeling defeated he rallied all his employees. He said, “Quickly! Run outside and watch those planes. What they’ll do is drop their fuel cans out of the sky. We need to find out where they drop them and get those cans, because they contain the raw materials we need for our manufacturing process!” These were raw material they couldn’t get anywhere else in Japan. Mr. Honda found a way to use whatever life gave him, but luck was never on his side. After all that finally an earthquake leveled his factory and he was forced to sell his piston operation to Toyota.
But the story continues
When the war ended, Japan was in total turmoil, resources were scarce in all parts of the country, gasoline (petrol) was rationed, and in most cases nearly impossible to find. Mr. Honda couldn’t even get enough gasoline to drive his car to the market to buy food for his family. That’s when he got this unique idea. He noticed a little motor he had. It struck him that the motor could be hooked on to his bicycle and in that moment the world’s first ‘motorbike’ was created.
He drove it to and from the market and it wasn’t long before his friends were asking him to make some for them too. Shortly thereafter he’d made so many ‘motorbikes’ that he ran out of motors, so he decided to build a new factory to manufacture his own motors.
Yet again another obstacle stood in Mr. Honda’s way. He had no money and Japan was torn apart so how could he do it? Well he came up with a brilliant idea to write to almost every (nearly 18,000 of them) bicycle shop owners in Japan, telling them about his idea and asking them to invest. Out of those 3,000 bicycle shop owners gave Honda the money to manufacture his first shipment of motorcycles. But again there was a problem. The ‘motorbike’ was too big and bulky and very few people bought it. He then reworked on his design, changed his approach, and he stripped the motorbike down making is much lighter and smaller. He called it ‘The Cub’ and it went on to become an ‘overnight success’, winning Honda the Emperor’s Award.
Everyone looked at Honda and thought how ‘lucky’ he was to have come up with the idea but luck had nothing to do with Honda’s success. The key to his success was how he reacted to all the problems and circumstances he encountered.
“My biggest thrill is when I plan something and it fails. My mind is then filled with ideas on how I can improve it.” – Soichiro Honda
“Success is only 1% of your work, and the rest – bold overcoming of obstacles. If you are not afraid of them, success will come to you itself.” – Soichiro Honda
Credits: The inspiring story of Soichiro Honda, the founder of Honda Motor Company as told by Anthony Robbins.
“We can’t always control the events of our lives, but we can control what we decided to think, believe, feel and do about those events” – Anthony Robbins
Jothsna is the co-founder of Academy One, a career guidance and study abroad counseling venture. Prior to founding Academy One in 2005, Jothsna worked as an IT and business consultant with companies like Motorola and Trajen Inc. in the USA. She holds an engineering degree in computer science from Andhra University and a MS from the University of Texas. She also received her MBA from the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University, USA.