Company Director Enjoys her Dream Job

SUCCEED, Inc.

“I’m enjoying my life doing a job I want to do,” announcer and director of SUCCEED Inc, ONO Keiko, says with a smile. You may not know ONO, but you have possibly heard her voice at places like vending machines and your bank’s automated telephone message
system.

Ono had long wanted to be a TV director. While studying at Aoyama Gakuin University, she belonged to Aoyama’s broadcasting club. Encouraged by the people around her, she successfully auditioned for the position of female student DJ for Nippon Cultural Broadcasting Inc. “How happy I was to hear my voice from a radio! That’s how I found out this is what I want to do. After graduating from university, she was busy as a program hostess and caster on the radio and TV.

In 1992 she went independent and set up SUCCEED. The company produces radio programs, as well as creating and selling audio media and holding narration seminars. “It was hard for a woman over 30 to continue to be a freelance announcer,” Ono says. “I have longed to be involved in a work related to sound and words all my life, and I have also dreamed of being a president since my childhood.”

Her company was doing well and she was enjoying a happy life both privately and publicly, but everything changed when her husband was diagnosed with cancer. He was also a recording engineer at the company. Ono was swamped with taking care of him, bringing up their child and working at the company. After battling against the disease for two years, her husband passed away, and at nearly the same time her father died of cancer, too. Furthermore, Ono was diagnosed to be suffering from an early-stage of cancer. “I can’t leave my daughter to be an orphan,” she thought, and her strong wish to live helped her to beat the cancer.

“I really had the hardest time for two years after my husband died. Although I was 38 years old at the time, I thought my life was over,” recalls Ono. Thereafter, she was supported by her family and friends, and she made up her mind to live strongly again. “I was lucky to have excellent staff. Of course it is hard to continue to run a company, however, I am happy doing a job I like to do.”

SUCCEED doesn’t have any sales staff. “It is not that we have a policy of excluding such staff,” Ono says. “Our work consists of a relationship of mutual trust, not like selling ready-made products. In other words all of our staff are engaged in sales. Our staff enjoy a good reputation for taking good care of clients. Some long-time clients request to deal with certain staff,” explains Ono. In fact Hiragana Times audio version is recorded at SUCCEED, too.

“I think lots of foreigners struggle with nuance, no matter how fluently they can speak Japanese. They mean no harm, and those who speak poor Japanese sometimes even make a good impression. I wish I could teach such foreigners not to make themselves misunderstood,” says Ono.

In the future she hopes to create audio learning materials as enjoyable as listening to the radio both for Japanese and foreign languages. To begin with, she created an audio blog. In it there are lectures on voice training and speaking, and also conversations in a mix of English and Japanese. “The contents are high quality. I not only enjoy creating them, but also want people to enjoy making good use of them,” says Ono with a smile.

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