Sun Frontier Fudousan Co., Ltd.
Chairman, Tomoaki Horiguchi
“Is the motive good, or does it involve the selfish mind?” is my motto. It is the criterion for judging whether it is the right thing to do under different situations. I hope to make this life of mine wonderful. Therefore, I believe that it is very important to continuously contribute to the world by putting the benefit of others before ours. When we make judgements, we should constantly ask ourselves if our decisions are as righteous as human being, rather than biased by our own profit and fame. Genuine success cannot be achieved if there is any self-centered motives.
After we finished our school education as base-building period, our life is improved through the way we live and do business. It is the meaning that we get to live in this world and also related to one’s happiness and success as if it is pushed forward by the invisible wave around us. What is the key point of a happy life and family? I truly think, it should be the living way which is based on the belief of “contributing to the world”. In expectation of precious encounter with people, we treasure the encounter and turn it into profound human bond. “Management is only as extraordinary as its people”, we are particular over how much we ourselves care about people.
When I was building up my business at 31 years old, I didn’t have any money or any personal connection, also lacked knowledge and intelligence. The only belief I got came from the words of two people. One was the blandishment from my former boss who said to me, “You are one talented person in a million” when I was just an ordinary salary man. Another was from my beloved middle school teacher who said to incapable me, “Effort won't betray you”. I truly believe in these words and thus I keep my way of doing things all these years by what they said. To follow my dream, I independently started a business but the bubble economy collapsed shortly and the following 6 years after my business started was marked by numerous vicissitudes.
“What is the purpose of living?” I kept on thinking about this question and felt distressed during those 6 years. Frantically searching for the answer, I participated in 13 kinds of study sessions, volunteer groups and inter-industry exchange meetings with the thought of clutching at straws. When I was 37 years old, an acquaintance in the same speaking skills classroom afforded me the chance of encountering Mr. Inamori, the chairperson emeritus of Kyocera (founder of KDDI). This encounter become the turning point of my life. As the proverb goes, to succeed in business, “getting a great teacher is much more important than reading 1,000 books.”
I got to know the “Altruism” attitude full of consideration to others and became awake by the thought of “management equals ‘protecting employees’”. “It is purity of heart which can help one to achieve great success.” I got to learn this very important thing which I had never thought about. Comparing to pursuing profit, enterprise should contribute to human society with heart of pureness through corporate activities. This kind of effort would result in “contribution that we could make to others” which is the real profit worth to be treasured. “A company cannot be more extraordinary than its president.” The viewpoints of Mr. Inamori, the entrepreneur who ranks with Matsushita Konosuke, really moved my heart. Because “to live with integrity and righteously” is the strong will deep in my heart. I thirstily absorbed his thoughts like the sandy beach meeting the water.
Thereafter, I kept on making effort wholeheartedly on “how to elevate my mind” in the area I chose. In the direction of “consideration to others and the right things to do as human being”, I set “care about and devote to the happiness of others” as my value. Through constant practice, I kept on elevating my mind for 10 years. It may be a bit late to become aware of all these points at 37 years old, but during the process of devoting myself completely to every day’s work, I built a philosophy as practical learning. I kept on researching and studying the barriers and difficult problems with work. I realized my immaturity through this process and therefore became more earnest in researching and learning. Through the effort of elevating mind and soul spontaneously and achievement of real estate knowledge through practical learning, I became connected with many customers and received happiness through this process. I feel very grateful for customers who rely on the real me. My genuine business building started after I got to know Mr. Inamori at 37 years old. As karma goes, having righteous aspiration is very important, we can’t make things happen if we don’t think from our heart. When recalling the past, I sincerely think that it is customers whom we contribute to single-mindedly make us able to grow and achieve success.
As each encounter perhaps only happens for once in life, we cherish encounters with people very much. Therefore we recruit advocates of our belief regardless of one’s age, educational background and experiences, etc. We recruit employees in this way because we want to share the universal view of life and live most of our life with people who connect to us by heart. I think, the purpose of life lies in the answer to the question “how much one could contribute to people around during lifetime?” It means the wish to live a life which is needed by others. Work is what we spend most of our time on in our life. Therefore, we want to work in our core business inventively to “contribute to others” as it is our purpose in life. If one could live a life with very clear purpose, there won’t be so much worry and much more effort can be exerted in life. Don’t you feel work could help us to feel the fulfilment of living, doing things and working? Material happiness such as money is important. However, what is more important is the richness of spirit, sense of accomplishment, fulfilment and dream. What I want to emphasize more is the importance of “aspiration”. As shown by 70 % of our repeat customer rate, we aim to be a high satisfaction company. There can be no replacement for feeling proud of being supported by others and doing good things. When running a business, we appeal to all employees to take the time spent in work as training ground for achieving self-fulfilment, to increase the value of the time and contribute to the world through work as well. Sun Frontier Fudosan is a company where one can realize his/her self‐fulfilling dreams.
As the president of this company, I would like to say, my company is a new type of real estate company focused on “product making and professional service” and we put a high value on philosophy. “A company is only as extraordinary as its people”. Hoping for the limitless possibilities of each employee who play the leading role in work, we willingly invest time and money in nurturing human resources. We value team work above individual work and our company is a big family based on each employee’s heart of being considerate to others. We treasure the decorum very much, meanwhile we also leave the work up to young employees. Creativity and practice full of freedom and vigour is highly respected. There is open and active communication up, down and across our company as well. Also, it is a field full of challenging spirits, you can experience the process of making something from scratch to existence when doing difficult things or things other people don’t want to do. In our company, there are broad and various opportunities for you experience.
Let me briefly explain about the principles and philosophy which we treasure very much.
Our corporate motto，the tenet of our management, is“Altruism”. It means, before consider ones’ own happiness, put the happiness of customers and colleagues in priority with beautiful heart, and wish to live the life with this beautiful heart. Our management philosophy is “Protect all employees，pursue the material and intellectual happiness, with the heart of coexistence we contribute to the prosperity of society and humankind.” At the turning point previously mentioned, we only had 3 employees at that time, we cared about our employees very much and would like to protect them at any cost. Our management philosophy came from these experiences. We cared about our colleagues very much and contributed to colleagues and customers 10 times of ourselves by sheer persistence. We believe this kind of effort will surely make our employees happy. What we are in pursuit of is not just material richness such as remuneration or treatment, but also the intellectual richness, the thought of “in the happiness of others lies our own”. Furthermore, we make more effort by transforming the happiness of our own to gratitude. Aiming at the coexistence, evolution and development with the plants and animals on earth, we keep contributing to the prosperity of humankind and society through work.
In our company, there are three policies. “Altruism rather than egoism”, “Live up to right things as human being” and “absolutely positive”. In order to clarify our direction which we are heading toward to as a group, we put a high value on these policies: altruism is above egoism, do things righteously rather than successfully, be positive instead of negative. Look at the direction which more than 200 employees are heading for, without much attention to 30 degrees’ deviation to left or right, align the vectors and conduct activities freely and vigorously. When recalling the past, I feel all these efforts enabled our company to become strong in business. “Do right things as human being”, do “beautiful” work which is trusty and moving with strong sense of responsibility. Genuine freedom does not mean a self-indulgent manner, it means a freedom you could get flexibly when considering and seeing around with the perspective of “public interests”. We are building a company wherein every employee can creatively bringing abilities into full play.
Our corporate philosophy is “Contribute to the waste reduce of resource on earth and evolution and development of human society as well.” We treasure the universality and epochality very much. To perform the role given to us, not development-oriented, but focus on the revitalization, utilization and distribution. We contribute to society through the harmonious coexistence with the environment as a future-oriented company.
In conclusion, we put a high value on personalities such as integrity, artless sincerity and desire to advance rather than intelligence in personnel employment in the belief of “Human Resources Nurturing is the very management”. Instead of employing people who are good at work, have a wealth of experiences, intelligent and selfish, we prefer to employ people who agree with our philosophy and have a heart that would like to exert effort more than others and do right things with integrity. We employ amateurs most of whom are new graduates, take time to cultivate their personalities and also elevate the consciousness and intelligence through education and “shop floor”. We are exerting effort to nurture high level personnel in this way. Maybe it is our company’s feature that many employees have various interests in psychology, philosophy, human sciences and Japan history regardless of whether in humanities or sciences. We put emphasis on “shop floor” with clear policy, transfer the authority to young employees with boldness, therefore human resources could be nurtured by accumulating experience. In our human resource system, we draw out the autonomy by the spirit of “spontaneity, independence and self-awareness”. And we also respect one’s desire and let them accomplish work with responsibility. Of course, there are experienced supervisors and professionals around to give them support and follow up as needed.
“Don’t live a same day as yesterday, find out things that is not visible, challenge new things creatively!” In this kind of corporate culture, one would stretch out hands to business around ambitiously and quickly, and develop new business vigorously. Leaders who spontaneously fire themselves up will grow up with profit margin management consciousness, professional knowledge and management ability in the business expansion and diversification. For a company, it is important to nurture personnel who pursue the added value of a team instead of individuals, and have a profound heart full of discernment and consideration to others.
Above are things I usually think of. Maybe it is impudent, but I want to say that the thing which I most want to do is “to nurture people who could contribute to the world”. I will keep on exerting all my efforts to make improvements and I appreciate your guidance and support very much.