Ryosuke Kubodera
President of Doox Inc.
Ryosuke Kubodera started his own business at the age of 34, making use of his experience working for two different companies. He is mainly developing businesses that support “Do” in companies and local communities. What does he see for the next five years?
Profile
Born in Gifu Prefecture in 1987. After graduating from the Department of Electronic Control Engineering at Gifu National College of Technology, he went on to study at the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Tokyo.
After graduating from university, he worked at Dentsu Inc. before joining Prudential Life Insurance Co. where he worked on business succession and inheritance-related matters for owner-managed companies. During his time as a new employee, he recorded the highest results in the company's history. Through his work, he felt that medium-sized and small businesses in particular needed a role like a CEO's office to provide support to business owners, and in June 2021 he established Doox Inc. Dooox has developed several businesses centered around a “special mission CEO's office” that provide one-stop support for “important, but not urgent” issues in management, from planning to implementation.
The basics of work I learned at my first job and the aspirations I discovered
After graduating from university, I worked at two different companies in different industries before setting up Doox. The many things I learned and acquired at each of these jobs are still useful in my current work. At Dentsu, the advertising agency, I was taught the basics of the job. The biggest thing I learned was to do work that achieves a client satisfaction level of 101% or more. To achieve this, I learned how to design work in advance, and that proposals and behavior that clients have not imagined can be valuable.。
From this learning, I always tell my employees to “always have a stance of making proposals”. When daily work becomes busy and the amount of work increases, it is inevitable that you think you just need to finish the work in front of you to 100% completion, but a company with 100% work completion has no value, and I think that the value of Doox lies in exceeding people’s expectations and always providing as much value as you can think of.
At Prudential Life Insurance, I wanted to do work that was not limited to selling insurance products, but that was also essential and useful for people and society, so I was involved in work for owner-managers centered on business succession and inheritance. In my dealings with many business owners, I felt that it was precisely small and medium-sized companies that needed a one-stop service that could take on a variety of problems and issues and provide support for implementation, and in 2021 I established Doox, a company that focuses on the “Special Mission President’s Office Business”. The best thing about starting my own business is when clients say to me, “We were able to achieve something new thanks to you. I’m grateful.” It makes me really happy.
Going to Tokyo University was a major turning point for me
I went from Gifu National College of Technology to Tokyo University. As the example of Konosuke Matsushita shows, I don’t think that having a good academic record will necessarily lead to success in life. However, I often think that going to Tokyo University has given me the opportunity to meet good friends. You can expand your own potential no matter what your background, but there are inevitably limits to what you can do on your own. When you’re looking for a starting point, it’s easy to get in touch with Tokyo University graduates, and you can gain their trust from the outset, so it’s a good place to be in terms of making it easier to get together with friends and create a chemical reaction.
My parents didn’t go to university, and my family environment didn’t place much importance on academic background, but one of the things that made me want to aim for Tokyo University was the TV drama Dragon Zakura. The electronics and control engineering department at the technical college I attended, where I wanted to develop robots, was full of exciting students who would hack the classroom air conditioning and change the temperature from 25 degrees to 18 degrees. Watching them, I thought that this field would be better left to them. Then, when I was thinking about what I could do, I happened to see Dragon Zakuraand had a flash of inspiration that even I could go to Tokyo University.
I didn’t know how to choose a cram school, so I studied using only the textbooks, and on the day of the exam I went in with the confidence that I would definitely pass. I was full of confidence, thinking “If I don’t pass, no one else will pass either”. My homeroom teacher told me to apply to other universities as well, but I didn’t listen to his advice and only applied to Tokyo University. My parents and friends were more surprised than happy that I had passed. The reason I only applied to Tokyo University, apart from the fact that I was inspired by the TV drama “Doragon Zakura”, was because I had read a book by Hiroshi Naito, an architect and professor at Tokyo University at the time, who is now an honorary professor, and I thought “I want to study under this person”. For me, the main focus was not so much on going to university itself, but on finding a turning point in my life that would help me become a person who could be of use to society, so it wasn’t a case of just applying to any university.
Don’t just say “I’ll give it a try” and leave it at that
Dooox’s corporate message, “Changing the world through action”, which has been with us since the company’s founding, has recently been further refined into a mission statement: “Updating the world’s aspirations, dreams and curiosity into action”. What I really want to do is to increase the number of people who are willing to try things out and take action, people who will become the driving force behind change in Japan and the world. It’s just a hypothesis, but I think that because it’s now so easy to get hold of all kinds of information on the internet and other sources, there are a lot more people who are easily influenced by other people’s opinions and give up, or who set their own limits and don’t take action for fear of being criticized. I think that this excess energy can lead to negative behavior that holds others back. On the other hand, if you are able to do what you want to do, you will stop comparing yourself to others and you will not worry so much about what others are doing. In other words, I think that if more people do what they want to do, the world will change for the better and become a more exciting place.
Whether it was taking the entrance exam for Tokyo University, changing jobs, or starting my own business, it all started with the thought, “Let’s give it a try.” But just trying something without a clear goal is meaningless. It’s important to give it your all and complete it first, with a clear goal in mind. I also think that speed and deadlines are important. If you want to achieve something, you need to set a deadline for when you want to complete it, and then quickly take action to improve the results.
Creating an economic zone where you can make use of your failure stories
I spend my days so busy that there is no clear line between work and private life, but no matter how busy I am, I still have the same passion for my work because I started this business because I wanted to. However, through working with various companies, I have noticed that sometimes employees get caught up in the work in front of them and their initial motivation drops. I think that the challenge of how to maintain the motivation of employees when they first join a company and how to keep them from forgetting their original goals is not unique to our company, but is a challenge faced by many companies.
In addition to maintaining motivation, there are many other issues and challenges that managers and companies face in common. At our company, one of the founding members had to leave, and I myself was also quite mentally damaged by the experience. I think that the solutions to these problems are the same, regardless of the company. However, people don’t like to talk about their failures or things that didn’t work out, so it’s difficult to share information. If we could record and share information about problem-solving methods and failures, I think it would help business owners to improve and take on new challenges. In addition to increasing the number of people and companies that do things, it is also very important to record failures and make use of that data, and our company is creating a system to thoroughly record all of our clients’ information and support the use of that data for the next step.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, I was traveling to two different countries every month, which was a great way for me to gather information and learn. I have visited around 40 countries so far, but my favorite is Central America. Cuba in particular is said to be the most racially non-discriminatory country in the world, and the locals are friendly and I was inspired by them. Once things have settled down, I would like to visit Africa, which I have not yet been to. Now that I can’t travel abroad, I try to switch between my public and private time more consciously, by doing things like training and making time for meditation.
From Japan to the World
In order to achieve our company’s vision and my personal goal of “increasing the number of people who ‘do’ things and producing more and more human resources from Japan to the world”, we are thinking of expanding overseas in the next five years. I want to create a world where all 7.8 billion people on the planet are doing what they want to do, or are working towards what they want to do. To make this a reality, I am currently planning to develop our overseas business and create a system for raising funds. 。
I imagine that in five years’ time, I will have a higher perspective than I do now. As I work to achieve my clear goals, I will encounter various challenges as I change stages and grow. The fact that challenges arise is proof that you are moving forward, so by clearing them one by one, you can grow as a person and as a manager. As you grow and the scenery you see changes, you will be able to understand more than you do now what kind of world and company you should create, and what kind of person you should be, and I think you will be able to raise the stage of your company and yourself step by step.
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