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Dialogue "Tarzan Yamamoto ×Toudoukan Director" 7.
Return > 6. Ticket acquisition agency business
7. Book Off Waseda
Director: That sex magazine was the start of my job hunting. Wow, that's a learning experience. This reminds me that it's interesting to meet all kinds of people.
So, when it comes to job hunting, you can go anywhere, go into a company you like, meet the people who work there, and get a peek into their lives.
So I visited about 120 different companies.
Not so much to get a job offer, but to see various companies and learn about real society.
From major media outlets, trading companies, banks and securities financial institutions, and large corporations that are proud that we are supporting Japan, to venture companies aiming to go public, to long-established startups that have been around for a long time, and to those who have just started with two or three people. I keep a diary or record every day.
Tarzan Yamamoto: Well, that's very good. The experience. It's like a continuous interview experience.
Director: I have a packed schedule. I kept taking the briefing. I continued to see many alumni in one day.
Tarzan Yamamoto: It's easy because I don't want to go through it
Director: Oh yes, before taking the entrance exam, I listen to the briefing session, meet and talk with the alumni, and I'm satisfied.
Oh, this is how it works, this is how life is.
The National Space Development Agency, JASRAC for music copyrights, consumer finance, which was becoming a social problem at the time, and Napoleon Hill's self-development company, were just out of curiosity. From the hard to the suspicious, I would like to scan the life of working at various companies and incorporate it into my own filter.
I've always liked used bookstores and was interested in them, but with the rise of book-offs.
Tarzan Yamamoto: Book Off. Yes.
Director: Takashi Sakamoto, president of Bookoff.
Until then, the world of used books had been a world where it was possible to purchase or price books only after about 10 years of training, and book-off was judged only by the beauty of the book's condition, and bought it at 10% of the list price and sold it at 50%. Then, there was a president with a soft idea who started to develop the chain in a way that even a part-time job that had just joined could be priced.
We are expanding our franchises all over the country at once. It was not yet listed, but he was one of the hottest venture entrepreneurs at the time.
Tarzan Yamamoto: yes. I know.
▲ Book Off Founder and President Takashi Sakamoto
Director: I've known about President Sakamoto since I read a book like a biography, so if I take the book-off, I might be able to meet President Sakamoto as well. I thought I might meet someone, so I applied for a company information session at Bookoff and went to Kobuchi in Kanagawa to take it.
Then, in the midst of hundreds of students, President Sakamoto gave a lecture explaining the company.
Finally, he said, "Someone who has a question." At the time, I was so cool that I raised my hand and said, "Haai!"
I'm embarrassed to think about it now, but I asked a slightly cheeky question.
"There were some very good things written in the book, but when I came here today, I saw these and these problems, and I thought that the president's ideals were not being embodied."
Tarzan Yamamoto: Crackling. That's fine. It's important to stand out.
Director: Then the president laughed and replied, "You're asking a painful question."
And when I asked any other questions, no one raised their hand as a scene.
Tarzan Yamamoto: It's a bad cousin of Japan people
Director: Then if no one is there, don't hesitate, so I raised my hand again.
It seems that I got a lot of input from them.
So, I wanted to continue that exchange, so I thought I'd take it because if I made it to the final interview, I would be able to talk to President Sakamoto. I was selected.
Then, at the final interview, President Sakamoto was sitting there smiling and saying, "Hey, I've been waiting for you."
He asked me, "What's your favorite song?"
I replied, "It's a song called Tsuyoshi Nagabuchi's Captain of the Ship!"
He said, "Well, why don't you see that song here?" (wry smile), and it's not a song that you can easily show off to people, so gee! I was like,
♪ Live, live, live, live, live, live! I sang in a cold sweat,
The president said, "Thank you for your hard work!"
From there, I clumsily but passionately told the president about my background and my desire to start my own business in the future, and he gave me a job offer.
However, I had no intention of getting a job at Bookoff in the first place, so I immediately turned down the job offer.
But there was some kind of connection.
It's strange, but I didn't wait that long after I turned down the job offer.
I happened to have the opportunity to meet President Sakamoto again.
Tarzan Yamamoto: That's what happens
Director: I brazenly called out to him there and greeted him.
Then, President Sakamoto was silent for a moment, but then he suddenly switched on.
I said, "Let's do something with you!"
And
"I've always wanted to try running a book-off shop with only current university students.
I want to show the world that even students can run a store.
The model case, the first store,
It is called "Book Off Waseda" and is a separate corporation from Book Off itself.
You're going to be the president!"
Boom! He pointed at me like a laughing salesman (laughs).
Tarzan Yamamoto: Are you suddenly the president? Wow, you figured out what the director had. That's because such a president can see through people with a single shot.
Director: But I think it's a betrayal from the book-off side, because I kicked him even though I made a job offer.
At that point, I got a job offer from Teikoku Databank and was ready to go there, so even if I told them everything,
I said, "That's fine, so it's okay for a limited time until graduation."
He even said, "Anyway, if someone like you gets a job at a large company, it will be boring and won't last three years, so you can come back at that time, so don't worry about anything around you and do what you want now."
"I'll give you all the money here, I'll find the property here, and you'll gather your friends and form a team to manage it." If President Sakamoto told me that, I wouldn't have had such a dreamy and exciting story.
I was like, "I'm going to spend all of my time as a student and I'm going to make sure I'm happy to do it!"
Tarzan Yamamoto: Hahaha, that's a great story.
Director: President Sakamoto immediately set up a project to have a reporter from the Nikkei Shimbun interview him, and it became a nationwide newspaper article in the morning newspaper saying, "The president and employees are going to establish a student book-off for university students, and the first president is Takashi Izumi, a fifth-year student at Waseda University" (laughs)
▲ Article published in the Nikkei newspaper (morning edition of August 17, 98)
Tarzan Yamamoto: Nikkei's morning edition!?
Director: On the day the newspaper came out, I received a call from the human resources department of Teikoku Databank asking me to explain what was going on, and I received a phone call from a parent in Osaka saying, "I saw the newspaper and I was embarrassed to see that it said that I was in the fifth grade" (laughs).
Tarzan Yamamoto: That's a big deal (laughs).
Director: We immediately gathered the members and held regular meetings to discuss how to proceed.
So, in order for me personally to lead the students, I had to learn the whole book off first before the property was decided, and it was just before the opening of the Ogikubo Station store of the book off, so I didn't need a part-time job there, so I told them to work for free, and I was assigned to the store manager to make the store from before the opening, the staff rally the day before the opening, the open sale, I learned a lot about business trip purchases by car.
Tarzan Yamamoto: That's great.