The Opening of all Shows.

HATTIE: Hi. I'm Hattie Bryant. If you want to grow the business you already have or simply get started working for yourself, we can help you. Every week, right here, small business owners tell their secrets about starting, running, and growing a business. We call small-business owners the new American heroes because we are the innovators and job generators.

Bob Sakata has been doing just that for decades. We take you now to Brighton, Colorado, to meet a new American hero.

(Voiceover) It's harvest time on one of Bob Sakata's fields in Colorado. The big machines do the work now, but Bob shows me the pleasure of picking and tasting his specially developed fresh ear of corn.

BOB SAKATA: Here it is. The machine goes like this picks it off. And you see how cool that ear is?

HATTIE: It's so gorgeous.

BOB: And I won't test it out. You just bite into it and pull.

HATTIE: And this is going to taste fabulous raw right like this?

BOB: Just like that. (Hattie takes a bite of corn that Bob has pulled from a huge cornstalk.)

HATTIE: Mmm. It is incredible. You want a taste?

BOB: I'm going to see if you're telling the truth.

HATTIE: You're the professional. Now why does it taste so good?

BOB: Put all the nutrients that this corn needs so it would have everything the corn needs.

HATTIE: ...to be perfect.

BOB: Yes, to be perfect.

HATTIE: (Voiceover) Bob Sakata was born in 1926, and grew up on a 10-acre farm in California. He helped his father in the field and started thinking about how to make work easier.

All right. So when you started farming, you didn't have any of this fancy equipment?

BOB: Oh, no. You probably took a picture of one of the pictures I've had. We just started with a team of horses and that John Deere tractor. And that leveler that you saw in the back of that picture, I built with railroad ties and timbers because we needed a piece of machinery that would be able to level the land. And in those days, there weren't hydraulics or that type of thing, so I had to innovate the hydraulic and adjust the blade manually to dig the dirt and cut the dirt and then unload it, and so forth.

HATTIE: So tell me about the first machine you thought of or the first piece of equipment.

BOB: I think I was about 10 years old at that time. Dad had us picking corn out in the field. I was the one that was carrying the baskets, and he would pick the corn. And when the basket got full, I had to walk and carry it all the way to the end, underneath the shade tree, and dump it. And he would come and pack it. I thought that was silly, so that night I just made a little narrow sled with sides on it, and we had a horse, and I had the horse pull it. And so we were able to pick the corn and throw it in the sled.

HATTIE: So when you were 10 years old, you were already figuring out ways to make farming easier for people.

BOB: Easier, right. It's just all common sense. But I did have a very curious mind. At the age of maybe eight or ten years old, I didn't go to bed reading a funny book. I would enjoy reading tractor magazines and equipment magazines. I'd look at it and I would say that would be a better way than the way they're making things.

HATTIE: Bob, this is a different looking tire to me. Tell me about this.

BOB: I'm first impressed that you noticed that it's different.

HATTIE: It's not flat. It has this bump in the middle of it.

BOB: That's right. It's what we designed, and it is common sense. You just develop a tire that is in the same configuration as the furrow. This tire falls in the furrow and just goes by itself. You don't have to steer it.

HATTIE: And what is this called? It has a name?

BOB: Single-rib tire.

HATTIE: And now you get them straight from the factory?

BOB: Yes.

HATTIE: How long ago was it that you invented this?

BOB: About six years ago.

HATTIE: So this is one of your new ones.

BOB: Oh, yes. This is one of the new ones.

HATTIE: They didn't send you any big old royalty check yet?

BOB: No, but they're kind to me.

HATTIE: (Voiceover) Steve Kniss is in charge of maintenance.

What do you do around here, Steve?

STEVE KNISS: You name it. If it's broke, I fix it.

HATTIE: The machines?

STEVE: Right.

HATTIE: And the machinery that goes into the fields?

STEVE: Right. All the machinery that goes in the field. Those harvesters you saw earlier are a little bit my specialty.

HATTIE: You've been here a long time?

STEVE: About 10 years.

HATTIE: Bob has been instrumental in bringing ideas into production such as the tires?

STEVE: Yes.

HATTIE: Have you ever seen anything like this?

STEVE: Yes. It's all common sense. This man has more common sense than anybody I've ever seen.

HATTIE: We were at the field earlier today and saw the machines harvesting.

BOB: Harvesting mechanically.

HATTIE: ...and dumping--so they come here.

BOB: Right.

HATTIE: Now what happens when they get here?

BOB: Well, you saw...

HATTIE: ...and did you invent all that?

BOB: I don't know whether you could say I invented all that, but I drew it out and had this shop build it. The semi backs up against and unloads into the apron conveyor, which I call the big conveyor. And the girl that's sitting on top controls it all, and it gets dumped. It's just an efficient distribution system. But the most common distribution system is just the belt that goes around and around and around, and the girls pick it out of there. That's what I had the first one I built. There were always maybe the front 10 girls, always had the best, and the last 10 girls got the picking out. But in this distribution system that I made, everything goes in equal and it dumps.

HATTIE: 'Cause it comes down the trough and down to each worker.

BOB: Comes onto the belt. Right. One of the biggest labor-saving items up there, as you saw, our saw line and the dehusker. That is really something.

HATTIE: Did you invent those?

BOB: It was a company in Portland, Oregon, that made dehusking equipment for canning corn. So I flew up there and saw it. But for canning corn, it could be too severe and it could bruise the kernels, and it would get by because they cut the kernel off the cob and put it in the can. But for what we're doing, we cannot have any bruising at all. So I told them to put 40 durometer rubber, just plain rubber, nothing that rolled.

HATTIE: Did that solve the problem?

BOB: No. We put it in through there and it wouldn't husk anything. So the engineer over there says, `See, Mr. Sakata, I told you it won't work.' So I said, `Wait. Wait just a minute.' I said, `Do you have an air hose somewhere in here?' And he said, `Yep.' So I stood up on the machine and I put this air hose and put air on the husks. And soon as I put air on the husks, it opened the husk up and the rollers grabbed the husk and just husked it right off.

HATTIE: Wow!

BOB: So all it took was air.

HATTIE: So you're proof that it's the small-business owners that are bringing the ideas to the forefront.

BOB: Yes. I grew up on a 10-acre farm and learned from the bottom up.

HATTIE: You listen to the people who are doing the work.

BOB: Yes, because I understand it because I started from there. All my employees here know that I'm the cheapest-paid man on the staff because I don't want to be owning yachts and airplanes and so forth. I have a greater pleasure of having a new John Deere tractor or having something that is more productive and more challenging.

HATTIE: So instead of buying a fancy car for yourself, you put the money into a tractor that's more comfortable, that's better for one of your employees to work with to make their life a little better?

BOB: That's right. I think the main thing is there are two things in this business that you have to be sensitive of. Number one, your employees, because they're the ones that make your company. And you have to try to make the workplace a pleasant workplace and try to make everything as easy as possible, and that is a ongoing challenge.

HATTIE: You have a lot of people who've been here a long time.

BOB: Yes. We're proud to tell you that we have third-generation people working here. That's rather unique on the farm because everybody wants to leave the farm, you know and get a city job. The second thing that we have to be cognizant of is the quality of our product. We are not satisfied by our product leaving here and backing up in the produce warehouse, whether it's Safeway or wherever it is. If they accept it there, we're not satisfied yet. We still scout inside the stores to make sure our product is the best of any.

HATTIE: (Voiceover) Bob's company, Sakata Farms, is one of the top 100 vegetable growers in the US. He has hundreds of customers, including Safeway and Albertsons.

Sir, we saw you picking up corn.

Unidentified Man: Yes.

HATTIE: Were you picking certain ones?

Man: I was picking the bigger ones, but you don't have to worry about the quality because it's all good in the Sakata corn.

HATTIE: You're used to it.

Man: Yes, I've had it before.

BOB: When I started the farm over 52 years ago, 26 percent of the population in the United States were farmers. It took 26 percent of us to grow the food for everybody. Today there is 1.8 percent, less than 2 percent.

HATTIE: One of the efficiency decisions that you came with was that there ought to be one ear of corn on one stalk.

BOB: Yes.

HATTIE: Talk to me about that.

BOB: About 30 years ago--35 years ago, I was asked to speak at a sweet corn breeders meeting and there were really outstanding, large operators there. I was just a young kid listening to their wisdom. And they wanted three ears per stalk that looked green and a higher yield per acre. And when it came to me, I certainly didn't want to argue with my successful colleagues, but I thought that I wanted a corn plant that only produced one ear per stalk mainly because I could see the day that we had to mechanically harvest our corn and it would be difficult to design a machine that would harvest three ears off of a stalk. But one ear off the stalk, I felt that I could help design a machine. Then you could increase your plant population, also.

HATTIE: So you started 35 years ago working on the product that you now have.

BOB: Correct. There was a genetic engineer that was willing to help, and it took 20 years to come up with this so-called supersweet variety that the whole industry has at this point now.

HATTIE: You invested your time, your energy, your money to test it and develop this and work with this genetic engineer, but you don't own the seed?

BOB: No, I think anything that would be an advantage to my colleagues in the business, why they can have it, too.

HATTIE: Bob Sakata's mantra for 50 years has been lighten the load for the farmworker. While doing the back-breaking work himself since childhood, Bob was always thinking, `How can a job be made easier for the worker?' With this one big question occupying his mind, he has invented dozens of labor-saving devices and worked with big companies, such as John Deere and Caterpillar, to automate tasks he once did himself by hand. The 20-year pursuit to develop his sweet corn seed started with the idea that automated harvesting would work if there were only one husk of corn per stalk. While others were trying to grow more vegetables per stalk, Bob was doing the opposite. He could see that labor, both the time it takes to hand harvest and the toll hard physical labor takes on workers, could be minimized in the long run if corn could be harvested by a machine.

What we can all learn from Bob is no matter what the business, think of long-term efficiencies. Invest now in engineering, machines, systems, procedures and technology, and just like Bob, you'll reap the rewards.

HATTIE: If you want to learn more about what you have seen on this broadcast, go to Small Business School.org

Bob's life hasn't been easy. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Bob was 15 and was placed in a relocation camp in Colorado.

BOB: On December the 7th, 1941, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt had the great description, `The Day of Infamy,' when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, that was an embarrassing time for all of us. Because of public pressure and, at that time, because of the safety of our welfare is what the government said, they put us all into what they called relocation camps. But it was not a relocation camp. It was a concentration camp, with four sentries standing on the corner. I was able to get a citizen's endorsement and I left early. But my family stayed in the camp till the camp closed in 1945. And I went to school here in Brighton and graduated from Brighton High School in 1943.

But looking at the history of what we went through, much could be said about it. But my father told us, that, `You behave and you do what the government tells you to do and you prove that you could be worthy of being an American citizen.' And I thought that was a great wisdom. So today I would describe that total experience as a blessing in disguise because from every hardship, you learn, from every challenge, you learn, you know?

HATTIE: You had a couple of other huge challenges, crises, that were defining moments.

BOB: Oh, yes.

HATTIE: What happened with your leg?

BOB: Right here in this big barn, that was my shop, and I worked in there till past midnight and I wanted to get the job done early. And I got in there about 5:30 in the morning and no sooner than I lit the acetylene torch, we had an explosion. There was an empty gas barrel close by that took all the explosive fumes when I was working the night before. And 66 percent of my body was burned third degree. They had covered me with a white sheet when I got to the hospital.

HATTIE: Because they thought you were dead?

BOB: Yes. Until my family doctor came there and he just chewed everybody out and said, `You don't know this guy and to take him to surgery quick.' I remember going to surgery and the doctors all said, `This guy can't feel a thing. We don't have to put him to sleep.' And they were tearing my coveralls off and pruning out all the burnt skin. And one of the nurses said, `He's feeling everything you're doing.' And the doctor asked her, `How do you know?' I was holding her hand and she said, `He's about ready to break my wrist.' But that's when I learned that there is an Almighty.

HATTIE: So you were in the hospital a year?

BOB: Yes. A little over a year. And they were sure that I would never walk again. And so I thanked them for that and I thanked them for their work, but I told the doctors, I said, `Why don't you let me and my God figure out whether I can walk again, but you do what you can.' And here I am.

HATTIE: Fifty years ago, you started out. How long did it take before you were making a living?

BOB: Fortunately, at that time, there was a banker that understood farming and was willing to stick his neck out and make a character loan. You know, that's very rare today. There was this one bank that loaned us money way beyond our net equity. Would you believe that 20 years after that, they appointed me to be a director of that bank?

HATTIE: So from the beginning, you had a banker.

BOB: Yes.

HATTIE: So what piece of advice might you give someone starting a business today about money, cash flow, finances?

BOB: First of all, you have to know your business; know your business inside out. I probably had the toughest challenge at that point because there were a lot of intangibles. It could flood, it could rain, and so forth, but I had a five-year cash flow program that I gave to the bank of what we would be doing in five years.

HATTIE: That was based on you were expecting...

BOB: Yes.

HATTIE: You put the numbers on paper.

BOB: Numbers on paper, on the spreadsheet, from January to December, and all the vendors that we would be buying things from. Then on the bottom was income--of what my potential income would be and how it would balance out cash flow-wise.

HATTIE: So you demonstrated to these persons that you thought it through.

BOB: Yes.

HATTIE: When did you get your first huge customer? 50 years ago, Albertsons didn't exist. Safeway didn't exist and they didn't have big grocery chains back then.

BOB: We found out many years ago that this business was becoming so competitive that whatever vendors we were using to help us would be better integrated and do it ourselves. So little by little, why we kept integrating our tool operations to this day. The only thing we don't have is a grocery store.

HATTIE: So you made a decision: This is what we do.

BOB: Yes.

HATTIE: And by having all the pieces, you have more management control and cost control.

BOB: Service. We got quality, continuity of supply and service. You've got to have service. You know what my father told me? My father told me that, `Bob,' he said, `I don't care whether you choose a business as a shoe shiner on the street corner, but,' he said, `I want to tell you this. If you decide to shine shoes on the street corner, just do it better than the other guy on that other corner.' Simple as that.

HATTIE: That's the secret-- be the best?

BOB: Yes, be the best. No matter what you do, be the best. And be creative.

HATTIE: Be willing to change, then, to try new things.

BOB: Yes, right. That's one thing I've been blessed with. Seventy-two years old, and I still think like that young man.

HATTIE: What is it that wakes you up in the morning? Why are you so happy you're doing what you're doing?

BOB: You bring a good point. The first thing I get up in the morning, I sit on the side of the bed and pound my fist and thank God for giving me another day and all the blessings that he's bestowed upon me. And the way you could really believe that truly is to just look out there, look out there and see that beauty. That's where it is.

HATTIE: John Wargo, our marketing advisor tells us about the award winning techniques of an award winning company.

JOHN WARGO: Pace, they're out of Michigan They sell equipment through dealers. When this shows up in a client's office or at their place of business from a very small business it makes them look like a big sophisticated operation.

HATTIE: So if I want to follow their pattern I need to be thinking

JOHN: You need to plan out of season. While everybody in store right now is thinking about their lawn you have to be thinking about what you're going to do when the snow falls. When the snow falls you have to think what you're going to do when the grass starts growing. So the marketing department has to be out of sync with the selling department.

HATTIE: How do they do it?

JOHN: One of the things that Pace does is put a bowl out and ask their customers to drop their business card in. What's important is the business card is always the right address. Pace is selling lawn equipment so they rent lists from the lawn care association from the other people who are performing similar functions.

This didn't happen overnight; it happened through a series of disciplined approaches to direct marketing. The bottom line is you can do this by concentrating on the data base and by concentrating on the right type of mailing to the right target audience. You can build your business by millions and millions of dollars. Not over night, over time. Get in there and stay with it.

HATTIE: To think more like Bob Sakata, think about your processes. How can you lighten the load and make your business and your workers more productive? See you next time.

The Closing of the Show.