Honda Motors are everywhere, but not many of us know the real story of how challenging it was for Mr. Soichiro Honda to establish Honda Motors. He had opened a little workshop while he was still in school where he was developing the concept of a piston ring with the hope of selling it to Toyota. He even pawned his wife’s jewelry for capital and slept in the workshop every night to complete the design. When he finally took the design to Toyota, he was told the piston was substandard.
Despite the rejection coupled with the ridicule he suffered when the engineers laughed at his design, Honda went back to school focusing on his work instead of the failure. After two years of struggle and redesign, he won the contract with Toyota.
Meanwhile, he needed to build a factory so that he can deliver the product to Toyota, but building materials were in short supply as Japanese government was preparing for war. This led to the invention of a new concrete-making process that enabled him to build the factory.
Just when he had finished building the factory, it got bombed twice and steel became unavailable. Honda didn’t give up, rather he rebuilt the factory with “gifts from President Truman,” the surplus gasoline cans discarded by US fighters. But then an earthquake destroyed the factory again.
Was that the end of the road for Honda? No!
After the war, gasoline scarcity forced people to walk or use bicycle. Honda attached a tiny engine to his own bicycle and people wanted it, but he could not supply the demand. Instead of giving up, Honda wrote 18,000 letters to bicycle shop owners in Japan and got 5000 responses through whom he was able to raise funds.
Unfortunately, the first design was too bulky but he continued to develop and adapt until he eventually camp up with ‘The Super Cub’ which became an “overnight” success. With success in Japan, Honda began exporting his bicycle engines to Europe and America.
Was that the end of the story? No! In the 1970s, there was another gas shortage. This time in America, automotive fashion turned to small cars. Honda was quick to pick up on the trend. The company started making tiny cars, smaller than anyone had seen before, and rode another wave of success.
Today, Honda Corporation employs over 100,000 people in the USA and Japan, and is one of the world’s largest automobile companies. Honda succeeded because one man made a truly committed decision, acted upon it, and made adjustments on a continuous basis. Failure was simply not considered a possibility.
What do you do when the year ends and your goals are not achieved? What do you do when you perform below expectation? What do you do when the prophecies fail and God’s word for the year never materialized? What do you do when the dreams for the year become night mare?
The December edition of the Working Word tells you what to do. It is a simple but powerful message that will help you develop a positive disposition towards the new year. The experiences of the past need not deprive you of your posterity.
Gain momentum! Download REDREAM here.
You’ll be inspired!
REDREAM - THE WORKING WORD (DECEMBER, 2017) (476 downloads)