Sho Okumoto Interview Published on: 06, Oct 2020

a. A funny story from my childhood. When I was still living in Taiwan as a kid, I used to play soccer and I hated it. My father who is a Japanese, is a big soccer fan and loves soccer and made me join a soccer club in Taiwan. Our soccer team was cool, with a great bunch of kids in the team but our captain had a high nose and his mother was our soccer coach. Now, since our captain’s mother was our soccer coach, our captain always got the special treatment, which the other members on the soccer team didn’t get. We all didn’t like our captain plus he used to hog the ball all the time, who always thought he was the star in our team. One day during practice, it was a hot humid summer day in Taiwan and within our team, we made two teams, to play a friendly game against each other. I was one of the unlucky kids, being on our captain’s side and we started to play our little friendly game. As usual, our captain was hogging the ball, showing off to his mother who was our coach, and thought he could score a goal on his own. I guess he thought he was the next Pele’ or the next Diego Maradona. So our captain was feeling the excitement as he was getting closer to scoring a goal on his own, while us idiots were running along with him trying to give him support when the unexpected happens right in front of our eyes. Our captain slips on a banana peel right before he was about to score a goal. The next funny thing was, he slips and lands on a pile of dog manure. We all stopped running, looked over to our captain and we all tried not to laugh but just the funny scene we just witnessed, and with all of us not liking our captain, we laughed. Our captain’s mother, who is our coach comes running across the field and helped him get back up and you can smell the dog manure. The smell was awful and especially in the heat, it was very bad. Our captain and his mother, who is our coach, both walked off the field and the rest of us started to play our own fun little soccer match against each other. We all enjoyed our little footy game and a memory I have always remembered.

b. Another funny story. When we moved to New Zealand, I used to get bullied at school and the bully used to take my lunch and eat my lunch, having me not eat anything for the whole day. The bully was a big lad, played rugby and I was just this small Asian boy. After school, I would go home and I used to eat whatever I could find at home and my mother always thought it was weird how I would be eating a lot just before supper. So one day my mother asked me and she told me to tell the truth about my lunch and why I am still hungry even coming back from school. I told my mother a bully was taking my lunch every day and that is why I would go back home after school and just feast myself. The next day, my mother made two sandwiches. One sandwich was for me and it was just a normal sandwich. The second sandwich was for the bully and it was just coated with hot English mustard, enough to burn your nose hair off. I packed my lunch and went to school as usual. Lunchtime has arrived and I went out to my spot where I usually have my lunch and the bully met me at my spot. As usual, the bully was asking for my lunch and I grabbed and handed the hot English mustard sandwich over to the bully for him to enjoy eating. I was getting excited and I wanted to see what will happen. I watched the bully unwrapped the plastic wrap and I watched the bully take his first bite of this hot English mustard sandwich. The bully chewed away, eating his delightful hot English mustard sandwich and his eyes started to water and the bully started to get a runny nose. Then suddenly the bully spat the hot English mustard sandwich out of his mouth and looked straight towards me. The bully was stunned from the heat from the hot English mustard and asked me if I love eating these types of sandwiches. Of course, I answered saying yes and the bully hands me back my hot English mustard sandwich and the bully walked away. The bully never stole lunch off me ever again.

The first story I wrote was inspired by the events I have experienced in my life. I love films and through some of the inspirations and ideas I got from films, I was able to create my own story using my life experience and to create a world of my own. Things I have experienced in my life first hand, I was able to create what I have envisioned and to spread my story to the world. It helped me to write my first book and help me to write all my books.

I didn’t share my story with anyone except for my mother. My mother is my true supporter, who always believes in me in the path I choose to take.

I love cooking. I used to be a sous chef back in Japan. Cooking is one of my passions and I love and enjoy cooking.

My favorite dish from Instagram would have to be my mother’s fried chicken. It is a family recipe and since I was living overseas for a long time, coming back to a homemade family recipe fried chicken, was very special to me and very comforting.

I would choose Ian Fleming. A brilliant author who gave us James Bond. A true legend.

The advice I would give to a writer who wants to write motivational type books would be, be yourself, be real, and stay true. Use your life experiences and share it with everyone and share how you were able to overcome hardships in life. Be honest, be genuine, and help others to be able to overcome hardships in life and helping them in achieving their goals.

Hartrand is a brand that represents believing in yourself the journey you take in life. Believing in your passions with confidence. To enjoy life and live life filled with happiness. Being humble always and always have perseverance.

I did short trips to Taiwan, to New Zealand, and back to Japan in 2019. 2019 was an interesting year where I was going to learn a lot from my failures and was the year that was truly going to test me. I was starting two startup businesses in Japan. One startup business was an online self-defense program which I have partnered up with a Japanese person and we have already made a start. The second startup business was exporting trucks from Japan to New Zealand which I have partnered up with a New Zealander. The deal was, I sort out the Japan side and I would send the trucks to New Zealand and my business partner back in New Zeland will handle the New Zealand side. With both startup businesses not going as planned and with some problems, both startup businesses failed. I was still in Japan and my goal was to start something. I didn’t want to just hang my gloves up from two failed startup businesses. In life, you will fail and we will fail big. It is for us to get back on our saddle and keep riding forward and keep heading towards our goals. I learned from my mistakes and I realized if you want to do something, do it on your own. I was doing a lot of research, studying and the first thing that came to my mind was I wanted to start up an online Healthcare business, selling all 100% New Zealand products to the Asian market. That is when Hartrand name was created. I was meeting people, sending hundreds of emails and there were just too many complications with laws and regulations, it backfired in the end. With nothing left, running out of options, money being scarce, basically living day by day and I thought to myself, just write a book. I had all of my motivational materials handwritten in my notebook and I thought to myself I have nothing to lose at this point, so I wrote and published my first motivational book. That is when Hartrand ship started to sail forward.

What inspired my plot for, Time to Kill Billy the Kid. I am always fascinated with women superheroes. It is awesome and exciting to watch women, action heroes. So I wanted to create my woman action hero as my main character in one of my books. From there I was able to create a woman action hero, which I created and I was able to create a character which I envisioned and I was able to put my flavors into my woman action hero, who became Audrina. Having yakuza in all my books, Audrina was now going to fight against these ruthless yakuza.

Thank you. The best compliment I got for my tenth book, The Firm The Metroska Hooligans was, never give up, keep writing, and keep spreading my stories to the world.

The challenges I face while writing Clownrepler!! Rise of the New Villain!! I guess being that character. Every time I write my characters, I get myself into the character I am writing and creating a world that I have envisioned. All the books I have written were never easy, they were all challenging but an exciting journey to be able to sculpture a story, through your imaginations, into words, into a completed story, and finally getting produced into novels and ebooks for the world to read and get entertained.

I guess, every book you write and publish, do it to your best of your abilities and always check it over. Believe in your work with confidence. Structure your goals, make a clear path for you to be able to see the goals you have set for yourself, and go for it. We are always improving ourselves through our journey and I make sure every book I write, I go all in and give it all my best, so I can look back and say to myself, I have given all my best effort to produce my book and I have no regrets.

My ultimate driving force to achieving my goals, is people reading my stories and my goal is to spread my yakuza stories all over the world and having people read my yakuza stories. Hoping my books will become kickass yakuza films.

I think life coaching is great because it gives people that extra boost in their life, to help them make small achievements daily building up to achieving their ultimate goals. Seeing people happy, seeing people achieving their goals is great. To help people pursue their passions in life and having them do something they enjoy and love doing is awesome. You only live once in this lifetime and you only have one shot at life. So dream big, to achieve the greatest things in life.

Don’t just talk about it, do it. Don’t make excuses and take risks. High risks equal high rewards.

I am working on a woman action hero book. The story is about her rise and killing off other yakuza bosses. It is a stand-alone book.

I joined AllAuthor in July 2020. I love the website and I love all the options that the website has got to offer. I like how you can make your gifs, I love using the magic tool and I love the seasonal mockup banners. Lots of options and lots of great tools to boost your books. Love the website.