10 things about doing business with Japan
2008-12-09 2:56AM / 標準BLOG
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Running an international startup is definitely quite stress-inducing and not exactly what I'd call a healthy way to live your life. But if you're crazy enough and believe strongly in whatever it is that you're involved in, you'll do it.
The following is a list of 10 things you can expect while working between America and Japan:
1. Expect to sleep at really weird hours, or not sleep much at all.
2. Every time you call Japan and ask if they can speak English, expect that they will never tell you "NO." Come to think of it "NO" does not really exist in the Japanese vernacular because it's considered rude to flat out turn down someone. Subtlety is the key to doing business in Nippon.
3. Be prepared to never be told what someone really thinks if they don't like something about you/your business/your business practices. If someone holds a grudge against you in Japan, they will hold it forever.
4. Be prepared to go insane and have mental breakdowns. Address this situation with liberal amounts of ice cream, take out, and Crunchyroll.com.
5. Give someone unready for a position of leadership a little power and they'll get too big headed and start powertripping with gusto. (This is not partial to Japan, as it's a universal phenomenon.)
6. Skype is your best friend on earth.
7. If traveling between the US and Asia and you want to skip that horrific thing called jet lag, do not sleep the night before. Snooze on the plane and you will not regret it.
8. Virtual offices such as the type 37 Signals puts out are the best things to ever hit the internet for entrepreneurs. We use Backpack, Basecamp, and Highrise religiously. There was one point where we were heavily using Campfire, but that's subsided a bit in recent times.
9. Expect decisions to take forever to come down, and once they do come down, expect to do everything LAST MINUTE! Japan is so efficient at how they do business that they aren't quite used to the long, meticulously planned out ways of doing business we here in the US take for granted.
10. Expect that everyone in Japan will think the way they do business/marketing/promotions [fill in the blank here] in Japan will work in America and expect you to do it their way. Only a rare few are brave enough to do business the way it should be done overseas: a different practice, a different strategy to cater to different markets.
In any case, this is just a small little bird's eye view into what it is like to do business between the US and Japan. Anyone else have any horror stories to share about intercontinental business?
On a side note, thanks for the spotlight, AnD! (However short lived it might be...) ♥ ♥ ♥
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