Yesterday(02/09/2020), I shared the exciting news on some social networks that we had successfully implemented our Longtail UX solution into the recipe pages of Kewpie in order to optimize their landing pages for longtail keywords at the end of the previous month. Over 3 months to reach Kewpie, 7 months to close this deal after the proposal, and 3 months to launch the solution…Honestly, it was a very, very long journey for SOPHOLA/LUX/client team to walk through. At the same time, I could feel such a great accomplishment due to the fact that it was a ridiculously long and complicated challenge for us. Not many people believe that a small startup of the 3rd year in Nagano City could offer such an advanced and unique solution to Kewpie’s recipe pages which most Japanese people know about.

Through this experience, I also considered that “creating your own batting boxes and making a 100% full swing toward a ball coming to you every time while no one is watching you” might not be as easy as I had thought for my current/past teammates at SOPHOLA. At a large established company, each of us is surrounded by many people, which makes us unconsciously feel like “I must do it fully!” in the environment where the batting boxes are made by someone else and a ball automatically comes toward you as if you’re in a batting center. A sense of responsibility is probably not that heavy because you might be just one of the many with a smaller portion of the responsibility for a certain “task.”

On the other hand, at a small startup like us, it is like a “must” to practice swinging your bat in the darkness a few hundred times every day, ask for a practice game every day, and make a 100% full swing at every single time in your batter’s box you create by yourself. Your batting average is perhaps less than 0.100. with a mountain of strikeouts here, but you cannot make hits or home runs without the above habitual routine and mental strengths at a self-driving early-stage startup.

Considering this way, a person with the habitual routine and mental strengths can do things fully and get things done under any circumstances, but it is strangely difficult to hire someone who meets the criteria. In my high-school time, I was a student who went back home straight without doing any extracurricular activities and such a habitual routine, whereas many classmates were so engaged in such activities with the routine… Anyway, now that I know how to express the importance of doing things fully, I will make sure to tell this to my candidates in the hiring process.

Masaki “Mark” Iino
Founder & CEO
SOPHOLA, Inc
P.S. My son has given me lots of his energy every day:)