In truth, I have almost no experience working as a full-time employee. Since my university days I have started businesses of my own: used-car exports, recruitment, tile imports. Making the decisions myself and carrying the responsibility myself while pushing a business forward. I think I have experienced both how interesting and how difficult that is.

What made someone like me decide to join ABCD was realizing that you can run a business alone, but if you want to take on a truly large challenge, you need colleagues and the strength of an organization. When I heard ABCD's grand vision of taking on the global market, I felt a strong overlap with the import business I had been building myself.

I still remember the conversation I had with Shiono, our CEO, and Kawamura, our COO, while I was considering joining. I told them that what I really wanted was not to make a business big, but to build something large and meaningful that could be handed down to the next generation. Neither of them laughed at that idealistic vision for a second. Instead they said, let us do it together. In that moment I was certain this was the place for me to take on my challenge.

If I became partners with these people, we might be able to do something far bigger. I merged my own business into ABCD because I found the possibilities in its future so compelling.

As Head of Global Sales I am currently responsible for both the building-materials business and the FMCG business. Beyond bringing proposals to customers in Japan, I drive the business in coordination with manufacturers in India and partners in Korea and the Philippines.

The days are tough, and that is exactly what makes them interesting. You build a relationship of trust with a supplier on the ground, deliver that value to a customer, and it comes back to you as results. Being able to drive that whole sequence myself is deeply rewarding.

Global business is far harder work than it looks from the outside. An approach that worked in one market can fail completely in another. The same product carries a different meaning depending on the country you deliver it to, and the way you face a supplier in India is nothing like the way you face a partner in Korea or the Philippines. I learned that the hard way, more than once. That is precisely why I feel this work is worth doing.

The moment I felt I had built genuinely deep trust with a supplier in India for the first time. The moment I conveyed a Japanese customer's commitment to quality and the factory floor truly started to move. Those tangible experiences are, to me, the real value of this work.

Sometimes I stay in India for long stretches, working on factory audits and quality improvement. Once you are on site, new discoveries and lessons come one after another. Producing results as a team across countries and cultures, and watching the business move forward, is genuinely exciting.