Founders - #397 Jiro Ono: Simplicity Is The Ultimate Advantage
Episode Date: August 4, 2025Jiro 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 ye...ar 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
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This will be one of the most incredible stories you'll 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 spent 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
to constantly create better experiences for his customers.
Kareem and Giro 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 Giro.
So far this year, R 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 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.
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Vanta's value prop is very clear.
Vanta helps your company prove you're secure
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wasting valuable company time doing something with labor when
technology can automate it. That is a very old and powerful idea.
It goes all the way back to Andrew Carnegie,
and you and I see it over and over and over again
in these biographies.
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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.
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 was made
for 75 years.
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 describe Jiro as a shokunin. So a shokunin
is a Japanese word roughly translates to an artisan or craftsman.
If somebody is referred to as a shokunin, that means that 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 shokunin.
You'll have a sense of moral duty to do the job perfectly,
not just for personal pride, 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, food critic that were introduced to says, Listen, I went to every single sushi restaurant in Tokyo, nobody has eaten
more sushi than me. 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 for 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. Where I think
Jericho'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 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
Lyson, 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 100, 100 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 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 I look at all the time. 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 document 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.
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 shokunin
do. So 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.
His routine, this idea of doing the same thing every day, this really the
spirit of the shokunin, 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
jurors 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. That's why I'm always tasting the food before serving it.
Jiro is 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, space, 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. 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
Ferraro, the Michelin brothers, Leonardo Dovecchio,
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, 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. He 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 these five attributes. Jiro has them all as well. 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 Dovecchio 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. I read a bunch of
other profiles on Jiro and I found something that's very fascinating says his restaurant remained immaculately clean, the food isn't going to taste good. I read a bunch of other profiles on Giro and I found
something that's very fascinating says his restaurant remained immaculately clean, leading
another food critic to say that Giro's establishment might be the cleanest restaurant in the world.
From the gleaming knife blades to the polished countertops, everything at Giro 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.
Giro has all of these attributes.
He's a perfectionist.
And Giro was like this decades before he became famous. He
doesn't start his restaurant till he's 39 years old. I think he wins his the Michelin star in when
he's like 82. So they actually interview this guy who apprenticed for Jiro up until Jiro was 60. So
it says when I apprentice 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 shokunin are the way of the
shokunin 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. 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 the section. So 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 with the staff might not notice I noticed
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 Arnaud, the founder of LVMH.
In that profile, his kids, so Giro's two sons work with him.
Bernard Arnaud's kids work with him.
One of his sons says something that's very fascinating is exactly what Giro 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 Bernardo knows. Son said, let's talk about 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 says are no
spots any incogruities that might disrupt the aura of
opulence that he is carefully constructed. 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 integrity that might disrupt the aura of opulence that he has carefully
constructed.
Same thing with Giro and his 10 seat restaurant.
Something that's repeated over and over again.
I've already brought it up several times to you.
Giro is constantly tasting his own food.
Are you constantly using your own product?
It's like 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 time.
So each vendor that Jiro uses, again, these are just like simple ideas, a handful of 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, that obviously is obsessed with with focus, right? The tuna vendor works exclusively
with tuna, the shrimp vendor only sells shrimp, each of them. 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 special out 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 And I actually sat in a bunch of meetings. It was very fascinating.
And again, one of, you know, 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 way Jiro is, just like where
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 person that does thumbnails, the
best thumbnail designer in the world, that's all he focuses on. Person 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. So 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.
So then they interview the octopus and the shrimp vendors
and they are shoken in two.
In many cases, 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. I
would 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 from Mickey Manil, the baseball player. And he says, it's unbelievable how much you don't
know 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,
10s 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 were running one in one case, I talked
to a person that was 76. He's been working in the family
business. He was six, he had 70 years of experience.
In 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, 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. He says, so he says, sometimes when I see the 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 meiro 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, which I'll get to in a minute.
So that 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, they think that is a TEP 10 founders episode of all time. So the first Michelin Guide,
if you listen to episode, you already know this count comes in came out in 1900. I don't think
they get to the 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 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 would named all the stuff it didn't have. There's
only 10 seats. The restroom is outside of the
premises. There is no other three star restaurant in the
world like Jiro's. But the Michelin investors and
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 at 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 racing 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, 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,
Giro 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, Giro, they did the same thing.
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, a hundred times. Not a single bad experience. 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 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 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 Giro and his son
are sitting next to each other and they're having this conversation and you'll see how
Giro thinks about things.
So Giro's son says, when I opened this restaurant, my father said, now you have no home to come
back to.
He said that it would be buried in Roppongi, which is where the restaurant is.
Failure, he said said was not an option. Jiro's
explaining his 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 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 if you look at everything through
This crazy experience that happens from kicked out of his house, his dad's a you know, poor
and a drunk loses all his money.
Jira was forced to support himself starting at nine.
But when I left it 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 Del Vecchio, the founder of
Luxottica. He built a business valued well over $100 billion. Mark Zuckerberg just paid I think 3 billion or three and a
half billion to buy 3% of it. You have Giro saying, I didn't want to sleep under a bridge.
So I had to work just to survive that has never left me. Del Vecchio 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 Gerald. I worked even if the boss kicked or slapped me. Nowadays, parents tell
their children you could 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's 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. 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. 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 trait, right?
He 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.
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.
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 20s. We came back to work
after World War Two, 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
Think about this think about what's been going on the last few episodes that you and I've been talking about
Leonardo, Vecchio did this Michael Ferro did. Colin Chapman, they literally say that same thing.
They had so many ideas, they would wake up, they need to have a tape recorder next to their bed,
or a pen and pad. 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 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 gonna give you a few examples. So they talked 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
bought it in the morning. And then we put it in the
refrigerator. And then we took it out when it was time to surf.
And he says something's fascinating. It was a lot easier
back then he feels like, oh, I'm just taking the easy way out.
But I can actually improve this process. 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 when anybody else does, right, but
it's the volume, volume, volume. Now it's massage for 40 or 50
minutes, we massage it to give it a softer texture. He does
this for everything he does. And he's to he again, he
refers to himself as a shokunin shokunin 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. 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 shokunin. 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 Shokan is you have
to pass what you know on to the next generation. And in this case, it's two 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. When you first sit down as a
customer jurors, 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 apprentices 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 the Jira'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. 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 to order the documentary,
this guy repeats the same stuff over and over again, the same ideas, it's taking a simple idea, find a supply didn't take it very seriously. And this is what Jira 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 are right on the
jury. They're in the documentary. They admire him.
And then he's talking about like, I'm not even close to what
this guy is. 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 Rubichon. 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 you're doing a couple, you know, dozens or maybe hundreds, maybe even
1000 a week, you know, week after week after decade of decade, you're going to develop
a certain process that is going to be much better than anybody else's.
So there's this, that 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.
And Giro again brings up the fact that when you've seen, you know, what did
Bernard, Bernard O'Know's son say, you know, my, my father has said, has seen tens of thousands of stores.
So of course he, he, he knows what's good just because he has those
volume to compare to.
And so Giro 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 it, 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 is describing essentially what he learned from
these 1000s and 1000s, 10, 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 documentaries, 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
it 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,
but actually the rice should be served at body temperature.
We then devise techniques to maintain
the perfect temperature when serving,
and 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 wanna skip over this part.
This is why the meal at Jiro goes so fast. He puts
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. I love hearing masters of
their craft describe the 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 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 says, there's another great line in one
of the profiles I read that says every detail is calibrated. If Jiro notices a guest losing
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,
this is a guy named Sam Zimurri,
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 I think it perfectly captures the personality types of these kind of people.
So says Zamurri was being honored at a reception in Havana, Cuba, a party which was thrown
specifically for him.
Zamurri 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 the Murray's complete dedication to his work over social recognition.
And to take a line from Warren Buffett and Charlie Martin, it's the most inner scorecard
behavior possible. You're so focused on the actual work that you skip that you skip your
own honor ceremony to review shipping documents. Again again It's hard to compete people that love to have a love for the activity itself. This is
Primitive my favorite line in the entire documenting when we have good few good tuna. I feel great when I'm making the sushi I
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's 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.
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 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. 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.