“Do nothing that is of no use.”
~ Miyamoto Musashi, greatest swordsman in Japanese history
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Probably my favorite ‘person’ to learn about productivity from is…
… actually not a person…
… but the greatest manufacturing company in history, Toyota.
Because:
Not only does everything they do, say, or teach about getting stuff done faster, easier, simpler, and at a much higher quality than anyone else rank thousands of notches above… probably every other business or marketing ‘egg-spurt’ on the planet… but their unique Japanese approach and philosophy on getting things done literally transformed the way the entire world made stuff.
Which used to be total garbage all around.
Especially in America.
Because after the second World War, American companies kept on producing stuff, and producing stuff, and producing stuff.
100% focusing on speed and profits.
Without nary a clue on how to make quality stuff that.. at least wouldn’t ‘electrocute’ or ‘accident’ so many people to death.
(Much like the AI gurus today, pushing speed and quantity no matter how sloppy it is, or how many people it kills… like the AI-generated book on mushroom picking that killed the readers who ate the poisonous mushrooms it recommended… and thinking that whoever mass produces the most garbage the fastest is going to be the next ‘world superpower’… which is absolutely insane)
But it was to the point that:
Two American management consultants, Dr. Edward W. Demings and Dr. Joseph Juran went up to all the companies back in the early 1950s and said…
“Listen. Your stuff’s no good. We can teach you how to make your stuff better quality. And make it faster and easier to produce too.”
But Americans were like:
“We don’t care about quality. As long as we make it fast, we can sell it fast. And make a profit fast. Who cares about quality.”
So instead, Juran and Demings flew over the to Japan, who…
… in their post-war rebuilding phase…
… willingly listened and learned with opened arms!
And:
Instead of going on the wild goose chase of making stuff fast, making garbage cheap, selling lots, getting lots of money rolling in, and screwing customer satisfaction like a hand-drill… Japanese companies like Toyota decided to go all in on making stuff as good as possible, as reliable as possible, while letting simplicity, speed, and ease naturally ‘pop in’ as a by-product.
The result?
So many high-quality Japanese cars and appliances started getting exported to the US en masse with rave reviews that…
… American manufacturers realized:
“We’re screwed.”
And it was to the point that…
Basically every American company, from Ford to GM to Harley Davidson and more, started flopping SO bad, they begged Toyota (who mastered quality and productivity to a higher level than almost anyone else) to teach them how to make stuff that not only ‘didn’t suck’, but how to make their work faster, easier, and simpler, while sending quality through the roof.
Which they generously did.
To repay Juran and Deming’s generosity back in kind.
But fast forward to today, nowadays every single successful company who knows what they’re doing learns from Toyota.
Not just car companies.
From Tesla, to Boeing, to even Amazon…
… who bought tens of thousands of copies of one of my process engineering mentor’s books (he’s a Toyota-trained consultant) on Japanese Lean productivity and secretly gave them to every single employee from the janitor to the chief executives of every department, and told them to read and start applying what was inside…
… a fact my mentor only discovered after seeing a whopping number of his books sold, and digging into why Amazon bought so many of them.
But it’s insane how:
Marketers, business owners, entrepreneurs waste their time trying to learn about ‘how to get stuff done’ from influencers.
On YouTube.
Or Instagram.
On TikTok.
Or even whoever’s on the NYT bestsellers list this week.
Instead of going straight to the people who even Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Allen Walker learn from.
Like Toyota.
The result of which is them cluelessly churning out AI slop in a frenzy, thinking (like America back then, and China right now) that quality doesn’t matter, all you need is to put out garbage fast, collect profits fast.
And it reminds me of how…
Godfather of Direct Response Marketing, Dan Kennedy, once said it was crazy how many people come up to him and ask him for advice on their health and love life.
As if being a marketing expert makes you an expert at everything.
But my point being?
When you focus on quality first…
… speed, simplicity, and ease come along with it.
Like a bonus package.
And like how Toyota focused on quality, but doing that naturally pushed their production time per car from weeks to manufacture a single one, to an insane under 8 minutes per car (last time I checked, but I think it should have approached one minute by now).
But it’s also why I think all the AI guroos are spewing total and utter crap.
And…
… they’re just making the same mistake American companies made in the 50s…
… and it’s the same mistake that everyone who thinks China is gonna be the next ‘superpower’ too is probably making, thinking whoever mass produces the most garbage the fastest wins.
But I guess that’s enough of that.
My latest work, Scam Your Brain Productive, isn’t about hustling.
Or forcing, or prodding, or pushing, or threatening yourself with a gun pointed at your head to get stuff done faster and getting you to stop procrastinating.
It’s all about quality first.
Which has always been my philosophy to both life and business.
And how to leverage that quality to get things done 10X, 100X, even 1000X, faster, easier, and simpler than you thought possible… and much more effortlessly than you thought possible.
And not just the quality of your work.
But also the quality of your life.
Because my approach ‘persuades’ the brain using (probably) the gentlest, and most fun way you could do it, with psychological copywriting hacks from the world’s greatest scammers and con artists who are masters at this…
… namely, getting stuff happening and done before you even know it.
And if that sounds like your cup of tea:
I’ve squished everything I’ve learned over the last 2 decades on this topic, Japanese productivity combined with con artist level persuasion, specially tailored to how you can use it in business and marketing, into a little report you can grab right here…
https://themysteriousmarketer.com/scam-your-brain-productive/
Allen Walker
The Mysterious “Toyota-Style” Marketer
Allen Walker, the Mysterious Marketer, is the marketing genius who’s deleted more 6 & 7 figure businesses than anyone else on the planet (*all because he gets bored). He’s also known as the world’s most genius renaissance marketer. Visit his blog to read thousands of his ‘secret’ copywriting tips for getting paid to grow your email list.
This post (https://themysteriousmarketer.com/japanese-ninja-productivity-secrets) was originally published by Allen Walker, The Mysterious Marketer. And yes, you can click that link to read his newest secrets for free…