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SY: So this is sort of now to start a business like that, do you think it takes mainly guts or cleverness or...

FK: Well, I have a... my formula of what it takes to become an entrepreneur, I didn't say successful person, I'm just saying entrepreneur.

SY: Please share it with us.

FK: Okay, let me give you some choices, money, so having money, having the intelligence or the schooling, the intelligence, luck, having luck and timing, good personality. Of the five, which two would you pick as a basic need?

SY: Well, in your case...

FK: No, I'm asking you.

SY: I get to ask the questions.

FK: Well, I'm asking you.

SY: Well, obviously the intelligence was not a big factor because you never went to school and you never graduated.

FK: That's below the belt there.

SY: Well, school wasn't your biggest success. Natural intelligence, yes, I would say. Natural intelligence and timing probably, and money I would think would be important. Is that three?

FK: Well, yeah, you named three and out of the three you got one that I feel. I feel that money and intelligence it's good to have all of the five. It's good to have all of them, but if there might be a drawback with one of the five that you selected and that's intelligence. Intelligence is when you're the top of the class or you're straight A, you're expected to know everything of what you're doing. And in that field, you may go to a point where you're deciding what to do, and you use your judgment which may not be right. Rather than if you're not that intelligent you go ask people. I asked everybody whether it's accounting procedures, law, legal things, health things, if I don't know I'll go and ask. That's, I think what is a good C minus student is one of the plusses of a C minus student if there is any would be that and they have to have the sense to ask. Money, if you have a good idea, people will reach in their pockets to help you to get your business started. But you need good timing and you need a certain amount of luck. Timing and luck is the most important. In my list there I have thirty-nine businesses that I started, and I'd say most of them didn't succeed and it's not because I had the wrong idea, my timing was off, everything was too early. I started a restaurant, Mexican restaurant in Tokyo twenty years too early.

SY: Sounds good.

FK: Twenty years too early. I opened it up and I took a burrito, taco and I thought this is going to start a revolution there. Well, it ended up with the people that came were fifty, sixties, the ones that experienced the war years and they ate beans and corn and potatoes. The smell of the corn threw them off immediately so the taco was out the door and so it was a dismal failure. But timing is very important. Having a good idea is not enough, you need to really research and find out if the people is ready to accept it.

SY: So tell us some of your other failures. I'm interested in that.

FK: Well, Sea Bon Seafood, yes and then I started, gosh, the National Fortune Company which is a fortune cookie company. We were at one time the largest fortune cookie manufacturer in the United States. That's a bad business because it's again against my philosophy. You're burning off the moisture, you start off with ten pounds you end up with three. And then that became a commodity and the market is limited to the Chinese restaurants, not today's Chinese restaurants but the old Chinese restaurant where after you finish they give you a fortune cookie and that's a freebie. So if you're a restaurant owner you had to give freebie you would look for the cheapest, it didn't matter what it tastes like, it's a giveaway so you're always constantly fighting prices and trying to make something cheaper. We used to sell across the country and they sent us back thirty percent claims because they broke. So we make tougher cookies, can you believe that? Making stronger cookies that if you dropped it it won't... it will chip but it won't break. [Laughs] So you end up with a... I mean you break your teeth if you bit into it if you didn't crack it with your hand you break your teeth. Well, that didn't work out too well and then it didn't make any sense, the equipment was so expensive it would take you twenty years to recoup. So we got out of the business as soon as the machinery wore out. That was another one and...

SY: There are too many.

FK: There's just too many.

SY: Let me ask you this, when you had a failing, a big failure like that, what is it that gave you the strength, the wherewithal to keep going.

FK: My three children. I'd come home and woe is me the bank is after me and this and that and I almost faced bankruptcy twice and I had to work it out with the Sumitomo Bank manager to walk me through and they're very patient and they walked me through both of them. But I would come home, my stomach is just churning and years before I used to come home and Sachi would say, "What's wrong?" and I say ah this and that. And then she's say, "Well, why don't you do this or why don't you do that?" and then sure enough about in ten minutes we get into an argument. "What the hell are you talking about you" -- and so we got to a point where it was double whammy now. I go home now and my wife won't talk to me and so I made it my point many years later that when I come home, I take a deep breath open the door, hi kids and the wife asks me how's it. Oh, everything's fantastic. My stomach is... everything is fantastic and that's how I lived through these ups and downs.

SY: Wow, positive attitude.

FK: You know the wife is an important part, an intricate part of the family but there's things you could tell and you should tell and there's things you should not even mention because that opens the door and if it was Japanese two hundred years ago it would be chanbara, it would be a sword fight. [Laughs]

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.