85-year-old sushi master, Jiro Ono, owns a renowned restaurant in Tokyo. It'd seem as though an aging Sushi master and I have nothing in common, but you'd be wrong.

As Jiro scours the fish markets for the perfect catch of the day, I search the marketplace for raw information, hell-bent on digging up the insight and big idea. While Jiro spends up to 10 days marinating his perfect fish, I slave over how to position, humanize, and execute the insight into a bona fide big idea. 

As Jiro massages his fish for an hour before serving time, I write a single sentence 50 ways, contemplating the implications of each and every word. When Jiro jumps from his bed in the middle of the night to record the sushi dishes of his dreams, I frantically scribble a fresh idea on a coffee shop’s napkin.

In a profession that had already been “mastered,” Jiro managed to innovate and push beyond the status quo with long hours, ingenuity, and a life-long refusal to accept his work as good enough. In fact, Jiro said something that has become a personal mantra: