Back to the Beginning: A Global Bridge Origin Story

By Anthony Griffin

The Global Bridge origin story comes full circle in the fifth and final article in this interview series with Founder and President Garry Pearson. In this article, Garry reflects on his entrepreneurial journey, sharing valuable advice and lessons learned. He also gives us a sneak peek into the future of Global Bridge. Read on for a story of entrepreneurship filled with concrete advice that you can apply to your life, business, or career.

Building a Career and a Company in Japan

What brought you to Japan and why did you establish Global Bridge?

Back in the UK, I was a university teacher at a business school. I was lecturing undergrads, focusing on marketing, when I decided to come to Japan. I was pursuing a career in academia, and my area of interest was Japanese business. I was always curious about why Japanese companies in the manufacturing sector had been so successful, especially since I was from the UK, where industry was essentially invented. I wanted to know why Japanese companies were doing so well while the UK manufacturing industry was essentially dying. So, I came to Japan to do some research. The easiest way to do so was to come here as a teacher. I spent some time as a university teacher when I arrived and then branched out into coaching and teaching business and communication. That was a lot more fun. There was a lot more interaction and personal communication. It was a win-win situation where I was learning about Japanese business from my clients, and I was teaching them communication at the same time. It worked out well.

I was planning on only staying here for one year, but I lost my passport, so I couldn’t leave—at least that’s what I like to tell everybody [laughs]. The simple truth is that I loved Japan so much, and I decided to stay. I worked for about five or six years for a corporate training company. In 2011 I quit that company and decided that I wanted to start Global Bridge. Long story short: I wasn’t very happy with the quality that was being provided in this industry, and I thought that I could do better. However, just as I was about to register my new company, the big earthquake happened. The clients that I had made agreements with said they wouldn’t be able to go through with their training because budgets had been cut. So, I delayed the establishment of my company, and I started working for Mitsui & Co. HRD Institute as an external advisor. I was helping them design their company-wide English training program and managing all their global training. In February 2012, I was finally able to establish Global Bridge.

Reflecting on the Past

Looking back at your entrepreneurial journey, what are some of your favourite moments?

My favourite moments are whenever I realise we’ve done something that makes a difference. For example, when we complete a complex program, and the client contacts us to let us know that it went well. This doesn’t refer to the training itself, but it’s about the impact of the training afterward. We train a lot of people who go overseas for a specific purpose—a four-year assignment as a manager in another country, for example. This situation naturally causes anxiety, and it’s nice when those clients contact us to say that everything is going well with their new role, thanks to our training. It’s just good to know that we’re doing something right. That’s always positive and it happens a lot.

Another example—and another sign that we’re doing something right—happened a couple of weeks ago. We suddenly got a phone call from one of the largest electronics manufacturers in Japan, and they asked us if we could do some training for them. This company was introduced to us by one of our existing clients. We’re a small company, and when a big company contacts you in this way, that’s an endorsement that we’ve been doing good work. It’s a nice feeling, and this has happened on a few different occasions. We’re coming up on our 10^th anniversary, and one thing I should say is that for our first five years, we didn’t have a salesperson. We grew organically by word of mouth. We started the business with five clients, just from my own connections, and that grew to 30 clients in five years. This growth all came from recommendations. So, when these large corporations contact us, it’s a very pleasant feeling.

Finally, I’m also proud of how our staff handled the pandemic. We talked about this in a different article, but when the pandemic started, we were forced to completely change our business style. We shifted from doing 99% of our training in person to doing 99% of our training online. The Global Bridge team managed that very well and changed quickly. If we hadn’t been able to change our program, training materials, and our approach, Global Bridge probably wouldn’t exist today.

What is the best advice you’ve ever received about starting a business in Japan?

Someone I really respect—a former board member of one of Japan’s largest companies—once asked me, “How do you evaluate the success of your business?”

He then said, “Don’t look at sales and don’t look at profit.” He told me to only look at two metrics. The first metric is customer retention—the percentage of customers that keep coming back to you for business. The second metric is how many customers I earn through recommendations. He went on to say, “If you’re doing well by those metrics, then the quality of your service is good. If your quality is good, then everything else will fall in line.”

Of course, money and systems are important. But if quality is good, everything else should work out. So those are always the two metrics that I use when I look back at our performance each year.

This is why we always try to over-deliver on our promises and invest in customer relationships. In Japan, you’ll always see a return on that.

Is there anything you wish you had done differently?

The things that I would have done differently have to do with myself. When you start a company, it’s very difficult to let things go. When I started Global Bridge, I wanted to do everything myself. Even for things I wasn’t responsible for, I wanted to check everything. I wanted to give feedback and input on everything. This is how we worked for about four years. This is how long it took me to learn how to step back.

During the first two or three years, I don’t think I took one day off. I was literally working twelve hours a day, seven days a week. That was partly because I wanted to be involved in everything. And partly because I didn’t give people enough trust.

Now, 10 years in, I have a talented, capable team. I can trust them to get things done and make decisions. I always trusted them, but I always wanted to be involved. But as the company grew, it just wasn’t possible. So, I had to take a step back, and I brought in people who are capable and trustworthy.

I should have taken a step back earlier. Now I’m intentionally trying to be hands-off, and I’m trying to give people the time and space they need to do their work while supporting them as much as I can. That’s the lesson that I learned, perhaps at the cost of my own health. I don’t have any regrets because you learn from everything. But if I were to start a company, this is what I would do differently.

Looking to the future

What are you most looking forward to in the near future?

Everybody knows that the world is changing. People are using the phrase “new normal,” but I don’t think anyone has a concrete idea of what this is going to be. What I do know is that the world five years from now is going to be very different from the world five years ago. As I mentioned before, Global Bridge has already started changing due to the pandemic. But we need to keep changing. We need to transform our business. The business model we operated with for the first 10 years won’t work for the next 10 years. I’m looking forward to creating something new. However, our mission is not going to change.

We were established because we want to help people fulfill their potential and allow them to flourish in any global business environment. We want to be the bridge for businesspeople to communicate with the real world. That mission is not going to change.

Ten years ago, that bridge was all about traditional training and coaching. We dispatched trainers and we ran workshops. I don’t think that’s how things will continue. Technology is going to become a bigger part of our business. However, I don’t look at technology as a replacement for our core business. Our core business is training and coaching, and I think it always will be. But we need to find a way to leverage technology to supplement our training. So, I’m looking at technology more as a supplement than as a replacement.

I do not believe that technology can completely replace what we do. Our value is with our trainers—the value they provide and the work they do. So, the exciting part about the future is thinking about how to supplement and improve our offerings through technology—how we can change our business model to make it more accessible to more people.

In nearly 10 years, Global Bridge has coached or trained more than 20,000 people. I believe that with technology we can reach an even greater audience. We’re based in Japan, but with technology, we can reach new markets, we can support our clients all over the world.

Our future is a blank canvas. Depending on what happens, we could go in one direction or another. Again, the mission is clear, the goal is clear, but there are probably a thousand ways to reach our destination. The fun is going to be choosing which route to take.

To learn more about Global Bridge, read the previous parts of this interview series:

If you would like to get in touch with Garry or learn more about Global Bridge, please contact support@globalbridge.co.jp or call 03-3518-2620.