80% of Anything is Just Showing Up

In the ‘50s, Honda was a small Japanese company that manufactured small lawnmowers and scooters. They were interested in expanding their business beyond Japan to America and began developing a line of larger, more powerful motorcycles. These would be more suited than the small scooter to handle the country’s big highways and consumers’ long trips.

They called it the Honda Dream and sent a small team of employees to California to figure out how to market the new motorcycle. To save expenses, the team shared a one-bedroom apartment and used scooters to make sales calls.

One day, so the story goes, one of the crew rolled into a Sears store on a scooter, parked it, and walked in, ready to present the new Dream motorcycle. Before he could begin, the manager said, “What is that thing you drove up here with?” “Well, it’s a scooter.” “How quickly can you send me 200?” All of a sudden, the team discovered there was a market for their small scooters. There was no way that someone sitting behind a computer back in Tokyo could have discovered this fact; it had to be experienced.