>> Hi, it's Billy from candidcareer.com.
We're here with Alan Nagao, entrepreneur, specializing in marketing over the course
of your career, you've done a lot of interesting things.
Alan, kind of talk a little bit about what you've done
in the past and what you're doing now.
>> Well, since I was like 19 years old, I opened my own kite shop,
so I owned a kite business and it was quite fun business.
I didn't get paid a lot of money.
I was retailing kites.
So basically, you know, we have a lot of sales, but you end up with
about 5% net, but it was really fun.
I actually became a professional kite flyer; and during that time, I was a professional,
I got to fly around the world, have a lot of fun.
But, my big business, actually, was in marketing, so, you know,
I actually came up with a very simple system to sell yoyos;
and the system was literally like karate.
Kids would practice 10 tricks with the yoyos and when they could perfect the 10,
they became white belt, level one; and then, we would give them the next card, the 10 tricks.
And every Saturday, we'd have an official testing day, they would line up on my shop
and that was -- caused a boom of yoyos.
So, I sold more yoyos in Hawaii than all 49 other United States put together,
and this is in 1995.
So, then I brought this idea to Japan in 1997.
I got the exclusive rights from American companies here in the East Coast and middle --
Duncan, maybe you guys remember Duncan YoYos?
>> Sure.
>> And so, I made a dollar per yoyo from the America as I exported it,
and I was hoping to sell a million yoyos using my karate yoyo system.
But, I missed my target in 1997 and '98; I actually sold 10.5 million yoyos in Japan.
>> Wow.
>> We started with really basic tricks like -- do you remember this one?
>> The "walk the dog."
>> "Walking the dog" and "Rocking the baby."
This was the white belt tricks, you know, the basic tricks like the elevator.
This is a little better.
>> I like the elevator.
Does the elevator go down, too?
>> Yeah, you could just go up and catch it.
And then we actually went to the next level of tricks.
>> Did you actually give them belts?
>> Yeah. We actually gave them award yoyos.
A lot of the awards were more like yoyos.
This is actually the -- this trick right here is the "UFO" and the "Brain Twister."
This is like yellow belt level.
I wasn't really thinking I could do that much.
I never estimated myself at that level, but suddenly I was making
over a million dollars a month in commission and I had expenses.
I was, you know, doing promotions, but, of course, you can't spend $1 million a month
in promotions, so I had quite a good profit and I ended up going around the world.
I launched Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong in six months, and then England, France, Spain.
One of the things I learned was that when you are on that wave,
that you have to ride the wave; it's now or never, maybe that kind of idea.
So, I really took the idea and ran with it all the way to the United States
and actually did the Walmart and Kmart, Toys R Us, Target, K B Toy stores,
and really had a wonderful career in yoyos.
Yep?
>> If I could stop you, I love how you just casually said that you'd sold 10.5 million yoyos
in -- I mean, that's unbelievable and not everybody could do that.
Talk about sort of what made you successful, what made you able?
I know you had the unique system which is -- which was very cool to implement over there.
Talk about some of the things that made you be able to be
as successful in marketing as you were.
>> So, I was very fortunate.
At 26 years old, I met a mentor and I think this is actually one of the keys
to success is you want to find somebody that you can mentor
under -- and my mentor was 88 years old.
So, he was born -- so, this is 1986, so that means he was born in 1897 and he was taught
by a man named Napoleon Hill, who wrote a book called Think and Grow Rich .
I would say if there's anything you want to learn about success, read that book.
That's a very famous book, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.
And I ended up actually having two years with my mentor.
He didn't do any work at the time; he was just teaching five of us -- well, six with me --
in a mastermind format and he actually taught us the 13 principles of success.
I learned it and how I know I learned it is, of course, the result.
The result was not accidental.
It wasn't an accidental chance that I made millions of dollars.
In three years, I actually retired for the first time in my life; 39 years old, I retired.
I had thought, maybe I think at 24 that if I had a chance to retire at 40, I would.
I was 39 and three-quarters and I had a chance to retire.
So, I went around with the world with yoyos in three years, 30 million yoyos,
and I retired back to Hawaii where I live.
>> Well. Good for you.