Written by Devin Yoshimoto

Opportunities tend to shine the brightest during the worst times. But sometimes, the hard part isn’t identifying those opportunity’s, rather, it’s not letting the bad times keep you from pursuing them.

As a student with no job experience, it’s difficult for me to identify times where I have been tested with difficult circumstances. I haven’t had the chance to really face the fire and find a way to get through it. I have, however, been blessed with the opportunity to talk to people who have, and to get their advice on how they got through difficult times.

Bill Ogawa, or as he is better known, Battery Bill, is the owner of a battery selling operation in Mapunapuna (Oahu, Hawaii). He has been running his business for the better part of the last 30 years – pretty amazing, considering all he started out with was just $5,000 and an idea.

He has a battery for almost anything you could think of – cars, trucks, boats, camera’s, phones, camera phones, back up batteries … you get the picture. But he didn’t start out with all those types of batteries. His business grew from selling just a handful of different types of batteries to eventually filling the demand of customers throughout the entire state of Hawaii. So what were the keys to his successful career in entrepreneurship? I went to go see him in person to ask.

The day I came in to interview him,  was a busy one. It was 3 in the afternoon and he had customers coming in and out almost non-stop. He told me that we were going to do the interview on the fly, which meant that I would be asking him questions in between his time he spent helping his customers.

It was difficult at first. I started asking him about background information – how he got started, how long he had been in business for, etc. Our conversations would start, but then would have to be interrupted because of the endless stream of customers. After a while, Bill would come back and we would forget what we were talking about. I decided that if this was how we had to conduct the interview, I would not be able to get all the information I wanted, and decided to just get to the real questions that I wanted to ask. So I asked him:

“What is the best advice you would give someone who wanted to start their own business?”

Bill took a minute to think about the question and then gave me two very important pieces of advice that I know I will remember for a long time to come.

“Number one,” he said.

“Don’t say no too quickly,” double underlining each of those words.

The most important factor for his successful growth, he explained, was to listen to his customers. When they would come in and ask him if he had a certain type of battery, he would not say no too quickly and would do his best to find that type of battery to fill the demand.

His inventory diversification was purely market driven and it was the key to expanding his customer base.

The second piece of advice he gave me was a slightly more existential one.

“Number two, you gotta believe that nothing is impossible.” Immediately after, he wrote down the word “ATTITUDE” and underlined it with a passion.

“It’s all about attitude,” he said.

I was not quite sure what Bill meant by what he said so I asked him to elaborate.

Entrepreneurs, by nature, assume a lot more risk than people in other careers. When things go great, things really take off, but when things go bad, your ship will submarine faster than the Titanic. Just like everyone else who has had experience starting their own business, bad things can and do happen. Bill was no exception. But what helped him during those tough times more than anything else was his attitude.

When things would go wrong, Bill would make a conscious decision to not let the negative emotions consume him, and to instead direct that energy into concrete steps that moved him towards the future. It was his ability to turn his back on negative circumstances that were out of his control and to look forward to opportunities in the future that kept his business alive for 30 years.

It was this statement that I felt struck a chord with me. Everything I had seen and read about entrepreneurship talked about the importance of attitude — the bottomless well of optimism and hope that a person must have to deal with the risk and uncertainty of an entrepreneurial career.

We finished our discussion as customers continued to come through his door. Obviously, Bill was doing something right. I walked away hoping that, when I am no longer a student, and am hopefully running my own business, I’ll remember Bill’s advice and not let difficult times keep me from moving forward.

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