From Science to Startup: GLOBIS Graduate Toshi Iwata on Launching a Business with a Personal Mission

In a recent student-led event, Toshi Iwata, a 2022 graduate of the GLOBIS University Part-time & Online MBA cohort, shared his inspiring entrepreneurial journey. The session centered on his kokorozashi, or personal mission, detailing his transition from a thirty-year career as a scientist to launching an education startup while completing his MBA.

Through a personal narrative, Iwata recounted the challenges and triumphs of mastering new skills, the motivation behind shifting his career focus from science to education, and the conviction required to build a business from the ground up.

Starting Ventures Late in Life

Hello, I’m Toshi Iwata. I graduated from the Part-time & Online MBA program in November 2024, and I am now the CEO of LeadGL Inc.

What do Colonel Sanders and Masako Wakamiya have in common? They built their businesses and started something very different from their previous careers at a very late stage of their lives.

Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken started a global business at the age of 65. Masako Wakamiya launched an iPhone app at age 82. She worked in a bank for a long time, as a white-collar banker who had never been in IT.

I bring them up because I started my business at the age of 56 after a thirty-year career as an R&D scientist.

My first job after graduating from university in 1991 was as an engineer at Sumitomo, a Japanese chemical company. Six months later, Dow Chemical, an American company, started a 50:50 joint venture with Sumitomo, which led me to study English. I then moved to P&G’s Singapore office to continue my scientific work.

In 2021, I moved back to Japan during COVID for family reasons. The only job I could find was a marketing job in the German chemical company, BASF. I told the hiring manager that I had no marketing experience, but they said that my knowledge of chemistry and cosmetics would be sufficient, so I decided to try.

As soon as I started, I realized I didn’t know enough about business. I was the head of marketing and didn’t know what I was doing. I found an advertisement on Facebook for a free trial class for an MBA at GLOBIS. From there, I earned my MBA, and in January 2024, my team and I launched our education company, LeadGL Inc.

Today, I’m going to share my journey through three stories: mastering new skills, turning a love of science into a career that touches people’s lives, and developing the conviction to start and the humility to stay.

Toshi Iwata speaks to current MBA students about mastering skills.

The Power of Mastering a Skill

The first story is about mastering skills. I have mastered two things as a professional: one is a particular science, and the other is the English language.

To some, becoming a world-class scientist means earning a PhD or publishing a paper in a world-renowned journal. I personally started feeling like I had become world-class after writing a chapter of a book that led to me receiving invitations to give lectures at universities and international conferences.

It was my eleventh year at P&G and my fifth year in hair care R&D, developing shampoos and conditioners. I became very interested in molecular assemblies. The science itself was not well understood, so making improvements was more trial-and-error than systematic. Because I was working with it every day, I became interested in the science itself and started reading a lot of published papers.

I would read papers on the train, at home, or even on vacation. I was very involved in this science and spent a lot of time studying it. I decided to write a review paper. Since I was in corporate R&D, publishing secrets was difficult, so a review paper was a good option. I started by summarizing twenty to thirty years of internal P&G reports, combining them with externally published papers. I did that on weekends because I thought my boss wouldn’t approve, but the report became a big hit internally.

After that success, I started working on an external review paper. At a conference, I met Dr. Sakamoto, a research fellow of the Chemical Society of Japan. He told me he was organizing a book and was looking for contributors. I showed him what I was writing, and a few days later, he asked if he could use it for a chapter in his book. Of course, I said yes.

It took about two years of weekend work to write the chapter. For two summers, I stayed behind in Singapore on a staycation to read and write while my family was in Japan. After the book was published, I started receiving all the invitations.

The second thing I mastered was English; I hated studying English in school. In my first year of high school, our Japanese-born English teacher brought in a native English speaker, and she couldn’t communicate with him at all. I was shocked and completely lost my motivation. My scores became very bad.

After I got my first job at Sumitomo, Dow Chemical bought a 50% stake in the company, which became 50% American. Suddenly, everyone had to take a TOEIC test. My score was somewhere around 300; it was like I was randomly guessing. I didn’t even understand basic words in my biochemistry textbook.

One day, my boss’s boss casually mentioned they were thinking about sending someone to the US for a year for research. He told me I would be considered for the position if my English improved. I decided to spend a lot of money on a private English school, taking lessons two or three times a week. I gave up a lot, including going on dates with my girlfriend (who is now my wife) and my role as an orchestra conductor. Eventually, I got the US assignment for one year in Freeport, Texas.

When I got to Texas, I couldn’t follow the discussions in group meetings. I realized I needed courage, so I started asking people to repeat themselves when I couldn’t understand. People seemed to appreciate my honesty and helped me out.

I also realized that R&D work is very solitary; I wouldn’t improve my English much through work alone. I intentionally spent more time talking to people outside of work. I would talk to anyone I could, including store clerks. Eventually, I found a sports bar where I could spend time talking to local people. I basically created my own English immersion program. Being in the US itself wasn’t enough; I had to immerse myself in the language.

Later, I found an article in Scientific American about the expert mind, based on research by Anders Ericsson. It says that you need 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to get to a world-class level, plus ten more years of practice. Deliberate practice isn’t just doing something; it’s focused practice to improve a particular skill. Looking back, I calculated that by the time I got the job at P&G, I had passed 10,000 hours of English practice. By the time my book was published, I had probably exceeded 20,000 hours of studying that particular science.

How much time is 10,000 hours? If a good student studies a language for two hours a day, five days a week, with no breaks, it would take them nineteen years. An adult practicing two hours a day, four days a week, with vacations, that’s twenty-seven years. This is why it’s so hard for adults to learn new skills; it’s not about the brain, it’s about the time you put in. A baby, on the other hand, studies a language for about eight hours a day, seven days a week. It takes them about three-and-a-half years to reach 10,000 hours. By three years old, kids speak pretty well. The key difference is the hours per day, which comes down to motivation and determination.

From Loving Science to Touching People’s Lives

The second story is about moving from loving science to touching people’s lives. I initially had a difficult time getting into university and failed my entrance exams. After I failed those exams, I found a book called “Genetic Toxins,” which talked about environmental mutagens. This became my motivation. I studied biotechnology and became interested in science and chemistry. I worked on feminine care products and adult diapers. Working on adult diapers was a big change for me. It wasn’t just product development; it felt like humanitarian work related to human dignity. It was a more meaningful job.

After that, my company sold the business, and I moved to working on hair care, which was more on the beauty side. The science was interesting, which is why I devoted so much time to it. But after I came to Japan and became a marketing manager, I started to look at the cosmetics industry differently. Most products are functionally good enough, yet some brands charge much higher prices. Knowing this and comparing it to my experience with adult diapers, which met a basic human need, I asked myself, “Is this what I want to do for the rest of my life?” The answer was clearly no.

At that time, I was taking pre-MBA courses and had to write the kokorozashi essay. I recalled that back in 2017 or 2018, while I was in Singapore, I wanted to improve Japanese education. My younger daughter was in an international school, which was very different and much better than standard Japanese education. I had tried to start a small business then, but had no business knowledge. When I was writing the essay, I recalled that motivation and wrote about starting an education business upon graduation.

The Conviction to Start, The Humility to Stay

The third story is the conviction to start and the humility to stay. In my first term in the GLOBIS MBA program, I applied for the G-CHALLENGE, a business idea contest. In my venture management class, the lecturer, Timothy Connor, encouraged me to make a pitch. After the pitch, a few people were interested, and one of them introduced me to Makoto, a finance expert, who continues to work with me.

Later, in an entrepreneurial leadership course, I gave a presentation on my kokorozashi, and six people approached me for more information. That’s when I thought we could start LeadGL Inc..

We launched LeadGL in January 2024 and published the website in March, while I was still a marketing manager at BASF. I discovered that according to company rules, if you are a board member of another company, you must quit. The next day, I informed my manager, who asked me to wait, as they were trying to change that rule. I continued working, which was lucky because we had no sales.

Three months later, they asked for my plan. I knew it was time to decide. I decided to leave at the end of December. After that, I became mentally sick. I couldn’t sleep because I was constantly thinking about work. It took a couple of months to feel better. I started practicing self-compassion, which helped me realize who I was and what my kokorozashi was. The day after my graduation in November was my last day at BASF. Since then, I have been 100% fully committed to LeadGL Inc.

At LeadGL Inc., we are fully committed to developing authentic leadership, an entrepreneurial mindset, and English communication skills for both youth and, more recently, adults. We don’t just teach English; we use English as a platform for growth.

For young people, we offer an immersive, English-based program that fosters an entrepreneurial mind, encouraging open-mindedness and critical thinking. For adults, we have recently launched programs to help corporations develop their employees for global readiness. We also have a special focus on pre-MBA students. We created a four-day course specifically designed for non-native English speakers to help them perform better in an MBA class. This course goes beyond language skills to cover cultural differences and build the confidence needed to speak up and participate effectively.

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