Alan Nagao, a self-made entrepreneur from Hawai’i. From owning a kite shop to striking marketing gold. Alan started selling yo-yos in his home state in 1995. He soon found out he wasn’t just good at selling, he was better than all the other 49 states combined! Alan then obtained exclusive selling rights from the manufacturers and headed to Japan with the intent to sell 1 million yo-yos (at $1 commission per unit sold.) From 1997 to 1998, Alan over-shot his goal and sold a staggering 10.5 million yo-yos! Today, out of his first retirement at age 39, Alan is marketing Nu Skin and finding even more success. Check out Alan’s story and find out how he became a selling-machine. You don’t even have to be in business to find inspiration in his story!
Transcript
>> Yeah, well, actually to sell kites, you better know how to market because nobody needs kites. They need clothes or property if you're real estate, but they don't need kites. So, I think that was probably the best education for me was -- well, I did do -- I completed high school. My mom was so happy, I barely made it. So, I wasn't a real -- on the educational side, but -- and I did do two years of college, but I opened my business at 19, so before I graduated. So -- but I think I have a PhD; I was poor, hungry and driven for success and I really think that is one of the keys. Actually, by the time I had traveled and done my business in Japan, I had learned by the school of hard knocks probably more than most PhDs and marketing, you know, most MBAs probably. By the time I did seven countries, I had more experience. I was dealing with Walmart, you know. I had more experience than most PhDs, so I think that's the key, you know. If you're going to be an entrepreneur, I would say my career has been as an entrepreneur, you have to kind of just say to yourself, this is what I want to do. I have no idea how to do it, but I'm going to take my first step into the market and then maybe three steps later figure out what the next step you need to take and it's not something you can actually map the whole thing out. "The man on the flying trapeze." The" roller coaster" goes like this [laughter]. >> When you're thinking about marketing and selling, what are you looking for in terms of, "Can I sell this? Can I market this? Is this going to make me a lot of money like it's made you?" What are sort of the things that you're looking for? >> Well, you want to look at marketing trends, so I could see that I was in the kite business and I could see a little boom of yoyos coming. And if you have that natural trend turning up, then you add marketing to it, you'll take off. You cannot -- if you're in real estate and your real estate is going like this, that's not a good time to try and market real estate. Okay? If you're going like this and then you put in marketing, you can really climb. So, for me, the natural transition to anti-aging was a natural one. There is about 10,000 people here getting 65 every day, so this is a market that's growing and expanding; and so, I could see immediately anyway the market was there. I had to study a little beauty and that was not my field, but I knew that from a marketing standpoint people spend a lot of money on beauty. So, then I said, "Okay. It has the potential to make some money, now we need a system to actually do it and maybe that's the part, you know." It's sort of like having a system to sell yoyos. We need a system. >> Yeah.
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