My Interview in Joanna Byrne’s Meet the Mastermind Series
2013
A few months ago on a hot, sun-saturated Tokyo afternoon, I found myself being led through the dining room of a beautiful Italian restaurant and out the open doors to the balcony. Just as we emerged and the waiter gestured to the table of foreign women I’d come to meet, an unexpected wave of nervousness overcome me. Most of us had only ever met online before, and suddenly on seeing all their faces I felt overwhelmed with awkwardness and a faint twinge of worry.
The feeling quickly ebbed, though, because as they each stood up to greet me it became clear that these were indeed the very same warm and engaging women I’d gotten to know online. Two hours, lots of food and several bottles of wine later, it was even clearer that we all had insights and perspectives that were incredibly valuable to one another, and that we were all more than happy to share.
We’re all women in Tokyo who do business online, and we now meet monthly to eat, talk, go over business ideas and support one another. Each of us has a different sort of business in the works, but the support we’re able to give one another is the real reason we all show up each month.
Joanna Byrne, a coach from Ireland, has been running a series of interview with each of us, and just recently my turn was up. Head on over to take a look, and check out Joanna’s work while you’re there. She’s a fantastic coach with lots of practical ideas for moving forward with the project or work you’d most like to do.
Photo courtesy of Jo Ebisujima, of My Organized Chaos.