How I work.
A few principles, learned the hard way, that shape every engagement.
Operators, not slideware.
I've sat on the client side of the table watching a consultant present a strategy that had clearly never survived contact with a real budget. It's an expensive way to feel productive. Everything I recommend has been run in-market, under a real P&L, with real money on the line. If I haven't seen it work, I'll tell you that too.
Small bets before big ones.
Japan rewards patience and punishes the grand gesture. Rather than a costly relaunch built on assumptions, we test — a channel, a price point, a creative angle — read the signal, and scale what earns its place.
It's how you protect cash while you learn what the market is actually telling you.
守破離 — follow the model, adapt it, then run it yourself.
There's a Japanese framework called shuhari that comes out of the tea ceremony and the martial arts, and it's now common shorthand in Japanese business for how people actually learn. It describes three stages.
Shu (守) — you follow a proven model closely.
Ha (破) — once it's working, you adapt it to your own brand and category.
Ri (離) — you've internalized it, and you run it on your own.
That arc is how I structure an engagement. Early on, we install a playbook that works. Then we adapt it together as the market teaches you things. The aim is that by the end, you could run Japan without me — that the capability lives inside your team, not just in our meetings.
Incrementality, not vanity.
The hardest question in any growth program is the honest one: would this revenue have come anyway? A lot of marketing spend buys demand that was already on its way to you. What I care about is the lift you wouldn't have gotten otherwise — the growth that's genuinely additive, measured honestly enough that you can build on it.
Built to hand off.
The best outcome is a Japan operation your own team can run with confidence. From day one I'm documenting what we learn, training the people who'll own it, and building the muscle inside your organization rather than keeping it in my head. A good engagement leaves something behind that works whether or not I'm still in the room.