Ryota Tanozaki didn’t pivot because of burnout—he pivoted to avoid a trap. While managing a turnaround project in rural Japan, he saw the writing on the wall: stay too long, and his world would shrink. Instead, he chose to bet on himself. He went global, earned an MBA from Chicago Booth, built a career across Facebook and Tabist (backed by Softbank Japan), and led a hospitality startup through one of the toughest periods in travel history. But his secret wasn’t speed—it was clarity. In this episode, Ryota shares how to spot when your career path is narrowing, why perseverance matters more than perfection, and how real reinvention often starts with one question: what if I don’t want this to be it?The Moment He Almost Settled“I started thinking—what if my career ends in this rural city?”While leading a department store turnaround in a quiet town, Ryota realized he might be stuck in a shrinking path. That moment of clarity sparked his move to go global—and never look back.Escape the Trap, Rebuild the Map“Challenge more. Risk more. Grow more.”Ryota didn’t just dream of a bigger life—he designed it. Earning an MBA at Chicago Booth gave him global exposure and the networks to shift from domestic roles to international leadership.Reinvention Isn’t Always Loud“Sometimes the biggest moves start with a quiet discomfort.”Ryota shares how he shifted from consulting to corporate roles—not in panic, but through steady recalibration and awareness of his evolving goals.Leading Through Crisis Without Losing Yourself“Three months in, COVID hit. We had to rebuild everything.”As CEO of Tabist, Ryota didn’t just navigate crisis—he rewrote the company’s mission, strategy, and structure. All while staying grounded in purpose.Mission Over Compensation“When they visit those hotels, they see the mission in action.”Ryota explains how he keeps his team motivated without big paychecks—by giving them something bigger than money: a mission they believe in._________________________Connect with us:Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Ryota Tanozaki --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.EdTech Leadership Awards 2025 Finalist.15 Million+ All-Time Downloads.80+ Countries Reached Daily.Global Top 3% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>150,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<
Chapter 1: Who is Ryota Tanozaki and what is his career background?
Without further ado, let's welcome Ryota Tanasaki.
I want to share my career. And after that, maybe you'll ask some of the details for transition timing. Yeah, first, after college, I joined Tantori, a beer and whiskey manufacturer, sales and marketing, especially. After a five-year journey at Tantori, I decided to move toward Malagren Consulting Farm because I wanted to cultivate not just
sales and marketing capability, but also strategy building capability and also executing it. After that, I joined several management consulting firms and spent around 12 years. After that, I decided to pursue executive MBA in Singapore at the Chicago Booth. After coming back from Singapore to Japan, I got an opportunity to manage e-commerce business under a BTO company called Transcosmos.
After working for Transcosmos for 10 months, At that moment, Facebook reached out to me, why don't you become a head of the client solution manager at Facebook Japan? So that position is like playing a role of the CEO at Facebook Japan. So collaborating with a country manager to develop strategy and then execute strategy. So that kind of role. And then I spent four years at Japan.
Chapter 2: What challenges did Ryota face leading a department store turnaround in rural Japan?
I transitioned from Facebook to Oyo Hotels. And then I changed the name from Oyo Japan to Tavist. So I have been here for four years at Tavist. So that's my career.
When I was starting out, I loved my friends heading off to business school with big dreams of becoming CEO one day. The plan always seemed pretty straightforward. Get an MBA first, then join one of the biggest consulting firms, McKinsey, BZG, to tackle a bunch of business challenges across different industries.
Then maybe at some point, they launch their own business or start climbing corporate ladder somewhere big, become the CEO, CFO, CEO somewhere. For them, MBA first, consulting next. But you kind of flipped the script a bit. You spent five years in one of the biggest corporations in Japan in a functional role in sales and marketing.
then went into management consulting and stayed there for over a decade. Later, pursued MBA to get, I would say, some kind of extra edge. Now, before we jump into your experiences at Tapest, I'm really curious about your consulting days. Could you tell us about one of those projects? Maybe one that stands out as particularly memorable? Or that gave you some deep insights?
One of the memorable projects that I experienced was at Frontier Management Inc, a Tamnara consulting firm. That project, I played a role of COO, department store, located in the very rural area in Japan. Because of declining population in the rural city, They were struggling to increase revenue because they wanted to turn around their business.
They invested a lot of money and then lent a lot of money from banks to build new shopping malls. next to their existing department store. Frontier management was hired by biggest bank, biggest lender to the company to turn around the company. That project was quite challenging. However, it was quite fulfilling because it was the first moment
where I not just build a strategy, but also execute a strategy with employees of that company. So at some moment I learned, so building strategy is totally different. executing strategy. So in order for us to execute strategy as a manager, as a leader, you have to always consider people because unless people are engaged with strategy and motivated to execute strategy, company cannot move forward.
I spent two years with you at Chicago Booth as classmate, yet I've never asked you the next question. I'm going to ask you now, and you give me your honest answer. What actually triggered you to get an MBA at Chicago Booth at that point in time?
Frankly speaking, exactly at the moment when I was engaged with that project at the frontier management and at the department store, I felt concerned that, oh, my career could last in a rural city and my entire career ends. So that was my concern at the moment. I started thinking, why don't I leverage what I experienced so far globally. Gradually thinking, I want to challenge more.
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Chapter 3: Why did Ryota pursue an MBA at Chicago Booth?
Yes. At Frontier Management, I realized that I was quite excited about building teams and building business. Not just building the great strategy and letting clients execute it. So that was my transition moment. It was quite natural for me to transit from consulting world to a consulting world.
At that moment, social digital marketing was quite important for corporations to accelerate their growth. And also e-commerce platform was prevalent like Shopify and others. I just considered, okay, I have to embed more technical skills and digital experiences. through my career. So I chose Brand Cosmos and then Facebook. So that's my intention at the moment.
You talk a lot about business strategy that has been a major theme in your career life. Would you say you are equally strategic about every career move you've made so far?
But at France Cosmox, so it was not strategic, right? Because it was only for 10 months. And unfortunately, I decided to tour the face of the big horse. In reality, before joining France Cosmox, I thought my role could be to build a new e-commerce company in Japan. But the reality was that I wanted to manage a pot of companies or e-commerce companies located in Southeast Asia.
Because Transcosmos bought a variety of e-commerce companies located in Southeast Asia. So they were struggling and then decide to divest some of them. So that was totally different from my expectation. So I just started looking for another opportunity. So that was not my intention, but maybe it was strategy, but it was unfortunate for both of me as well as PressCosmos.
How do you handle both setbacks and successes? People looking at your career might say, wow, you're incredibly successful. But we all know that behind every success, there are tons of challenges you've overcome. In fact, a lot, a lot of challenges. a lot of setbacks to support one instance of success. What is your philosophy for managing both the ups and the downs?
Yeah, that's a great question. Perseverance is quite important. At Transcosmos, what I expected was totally different. I pursued a different journey just after 10 months of work at Transcosmos. But I always think if you want to build something great, or if you want to make a great thing, perseverance is quite important.
So what you're suggesting is managing both the highs and the lows, the setbacks and successes really comes down to perseverance, right? I remember when you moved from Facebook or Meta to TapList. which was called OYO. OYO, originally from India, a travel tech company. That was a fairly tough period of time. It was no joke.
Tell me, how did you tap into your perseverance to navigate the company through the early days of COVID, then the Tokyo Olympics postponement, and then now back to what we might call normal?
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Chapter 4: How does Ryota view career changes and insecurity as opportunities?
So I didn't expect I continued to work for Tavist for such a long time because COVID lasted for three years, right? So it was quite tough, but I always believed. So perseverance is quite important. For leaders to build a great company or make a significant impact, make a significant positive impact on a society, I'm here right now.
You used the word perseverance, and often leaders like to use another buzzword, resilience. I totally get the concept as I've had to practice resilience myself over many years. But as a company leader, how do you impart this mindset, this resilience to your team? I'm not talking about operations or technology resilience. I'm talking about people, the human beings around you.
You might be incredibly resilient yourself. But if your team doesn't share that sense of resilience, it won't be reflected in the team, in the culture as a whole. Then the word resilience would just be a buzzword. So what's your approach to fostering resilience when it comes to building and managing your team?
Yeah, with this quite challenging situation, what I did was mainly three things. The first one is I always feared Our mission and the vision was team members in terms of compensation. So we are not that great in comparison to Facebook, Google, Amazon, you name it, the global company. At the same time, we have to, so as a leader, continue to motivate them to work for a startup, so like Tavist.
So in order for us to do that, we have to give them another reason about why they continue to work for a tapestry or continue to work for a startup. So one of the reasons is mission and vision. So our mission is to provide technology for small and medium-sized hotels and ryokan. to like that mission is quite fulfilling and it quite engaged with our people.
When our team members visit rural cities and then visit some of the local small hotels, they cannot integrate technology with their location. They see that kind of situation in reality. If we can provide technology with them, they can thrive with less people. They also have a difficulty of hiring people because that in Japan is facing the declining population, right?
It's there is a huge issue of labor resources. So you paint the situation in a real life. They embrace that kind of mission into their heart and blood. They are motivated to work for Tavist.
So that's about the intrinsic motivation, the sense of mission, the sense of action. What else?
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Chapter 5: What motivated Ryota’s transition from consulting to corporate roles?
Secondly, the important thing is to provide a strategy, clear strategy.
they also are quite smart so we have to let them understand why we can win why we can realize our mission so what kind of things are quite different against competitors so we have to find out true problems our clients face and we have to be focused on that kind of problem and then we have to provide a strategy share strategy with stakeholders of course including employees
What you call astrology, I would say is a pathway. You or the investors have the vision, you execute it. But the people around you, they follow you. So in order to follow you, yes, they have a reason, that intrinsic motivation you've mentioned, but then you tell them, well, that's how we're going to do it. You call the strategy, you call the pathway, then you engage stakeholders.
The employees, of course, one of them, investors, partners, customers. It's a multi-stakeholder development and management process. What's your third thing?
And the third thing is to lead by example. One of the strategies is to acquire, of course, acquire many partners, partner hotels and ryokans. I quite often visit local cities to meet some of the potential clients, and then I myself grabbed several facilities through pitching to them why we are here and how we can help them thrive in a rural city. So then they gradually think, okay, Ryota did that.
Why don't we do the same thing with this strategy? They could be convinced more. So mission, vision, and strategy and execution by leader are quite important for a startup to get their employees to be motivated.
Yes, that is leadership by example. I would also like to see this as you getting closer to your customer. You really want to learn about the situation, the problems. And then you show to your staff how you win accounts, how you solve problems. If they're smart enough, they observe how you do it. And then they follow you. They take some of your best insights, the best lessons, and then execute.
It's also a kind of quality management so that you can train up your staff to deliver. Let's extend on this topic of leadership by example. Leader, one kind of leader, which I admire, is called servant leader. You lead by serving. Another kind is you lead by coaching.
So some of the best leaders I've worked for in my career life, they coach me on the side, make me become a better person, better leader. Now, I know that outside of office work, you teach marketing, social media strategy at one of the business schools in Japan. Share with me about your teaching experience as a faculty member.
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Chapter 6: How did Ryota handle setbacks and successes throughout his career?
Yeah, yeah, two books that I want to encourage people to read, especially business people to read. So first book is from classic book, so Innovate, Innovate Limer written by Clay Lee Stanton. The reason why I chose this book is because it is quite transformative for me because even
The products focused on small and medium-sized customers can win over the great products or great companies with large corporations. So that is quite counterintuitive, but that's happening. So that kind of concept still is distilled in the Tavist strategy. I believe we are now focused on providing our technology to small and medium-sized hotels and ryokans.
But eventually, our products will permeate not just a small and medium-sized company, but also large corporations. So that kind of paradigm shift has already started. The other book is the recent book, but I learned a lot because it is first time for me to build a company and run a startup at Carbist. But I learned a lot of things from this book. So Hike was Handbook, written by Elad Gil.
He is quite a famous investor in Silicon Valley. And he discussed with several entrepreneurs and executives about how to how to run a startup, how to operate a startup, how to build a corporation. So I learned a lot from this book. So especially one of the things that I exactly did based on this book was to write down the note about how to read Realtor.
So I just write down everything about me and share that kind of note with my employees at Tadist. So they can learn, okay, who is Ryota? What kind of strengths he has? What kind of weakness he has?
I haven't actually read the book High Growth Handbook myself. But what you just said reminds me of something I do fairly often. I'm not big on texting or using social media because I prefer writing things down by hand. There's something about the process of writing. It involves a lot of thinking, reflecting, and analyzing.
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Chapter 7: How did Ryota navigate Tapest through COVID-19 and the Tokyo Olympics postponement?
By the time I've written something out, I've already worked through a lot of the information in my head. And I also find that Even if I haven't figured out the problem, this process of writing, as I'm doing it, the answer comes through more naturally.
Speaking of which, remember in our Leadership Capital class taught by Linda Ginzel, the social psychologist at Chicago Booth, she talked about how our brains can trick us into rationalizing or justifying our thoughts too quickly. She said, suggested that to think clearly we should write things down, not just to type it out, actually write it down by hand in its rawest form.
That way, you can come back to it later, maybe a day or even a week later, and see exactly what you were thinking at that time. It really helps you work through your ideas and find solutions. Clayton Christensen. Yes, he's been my favorite author for the longest time. Sadly, he passed away around the start of COVID. That book you mentioned, The Innovator's Dilemma, is absolutely incredible.
But there's another one of his that I love, which is how will you measure your life? I highly recommend it to all my listeners, no matter what role you're in or what job you're doing. Anyways, thank you so much for your time today, Ryota. I'm really looking forward to our next conversation. I hope it won't be over a virtual setup next time.
Instead, let's aim to be sitting next to each other, enjoying some beer and good food in Tokyo. Thanks again.
Thank you, Liz. I quite enjoyed it. Thank you for having me.
Until next time, take care.
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