Who I Am

“Common Thriving” should be the experience of good people running small and growing businesses. Common Thriving, the coaching practice, is meant for those of us who know how far short of our ideals (or of business sustainability!) we’re falling, and who keep on getting up. It’s meant to help you build a business that helps you move toward your ideals, in a world where the two often feel like opposites.

If this is you—or if you feel like your business is supporting your ideals—I’d personally love to learn about your world, regardless of any future coaching/consulting work. Let’s talk!

Amish-Japanese and other paradoxes

I’m Joel Iwashige. I grew up at the intersection of worlds, born into both Japanese and Amish heritage in rural Hutchinson, Kansas. I’m a disillusioned capitalist who believes in building strong businesses.

As a teen, I meant to become independently wealthy. I read Peter Drucker on management. Warren Buffett on investing and analysis. Charlie Munger on thinking well and practically.

But it’s hard to do good business in a broken society. You can’t be truly wealthy while jealously guarding your wealth.

In the decades since my first dreams of wealth, I’ve gained a deep conviction that for all our good, it’s important to build businesses that succeed as part of their broader communities. I passionately want “good businesses” to succeed. I want them to sustain owners and their families well. I want them to be points of “belonging” for employees, along with income and a way to invest meaningfully in the world. And I want them to make their communities better-off.

If this is your vision too, I know it’s hard. It feels like “doing good” in the real world often demands tradeoffs, and it can feel as though your ideals are competing with keeping the business alive. And I want you to have every chance at building a business that is good for you and good for the world, with enough margin to sleep well every night. To explore what might be possible, book a call with me!

Freeing for ideals

My biggest tools in helping small-business owners who aren’t able to pursue their ideals are respect, curiosity, breaking things down, making connections, and exploring real-world implications. I read—a lot. If you’re working in a world I don’t know, I love learning about your world. Several decades in software has given me a bit of practice in breaking down problems and processes to solve the whole. And I love the magic that happens when a scenario I read seven years ago offers the perfect insight for the problem you’re working with now!

A few brags

Neither Amish-Mennonite nor Japanese culture has given me a high ability to “brag”. And I know the limitations of credentials and technical skills.

But nevertheless, I’m doing my best to “sell” my technical skills here, because if you’re still with me you’re probably “my people” even if you don’t know me, and I want to convince you that we should connect regardless of whether we do business now.

  • Respect, empathy, and curiosity are go-to tools I’ve never regretted centering.

  • Professional problem solving for over 25 years. Software is all about breaking down problems to solve the whole, in a way that serves business needs.

  • Addicted to learning. My “love language” is to point you to the 10 resources I’ve encountered that might relate to your interest or need.

  • Experience in co-leading a company (and living) in both rural Kansas and in Dhaka, the mega-city capital of Bangladesh.

  • Earned the Chartered Financial Analyst designation, a post-graduate professional designation in finance.

  • Master of Business Administration from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2022. I’m always skeptical of credentials, but the learning and community in the program were terrific fuel, and offered various frameworks and seeds of growth. (Ask me about Lean sometime…if you dare!)

  • Completed the Kansas Leadership Center’s “path” of learning to exercise and develop adaptive leadership, around the kinds of big problems that get groups and individuals “stuck”.

  • Certified as a Business Made Simple coach and able to help in applying that set of practical, actionable frameworks throughout your business.

If business chaos is feeling overwhelming, or your business feels like it’s holding you back from the life you want to live, I’d love to explore ways to help your business run smoothly and profitably, and create space for your other priorities. Schedule a Zoom call with me, and we can figure out the first steps on a path toward the life that you’ve been craving from afar.

You intrigue me.

I enjoy solving problems. But what I really love is partnering with people I respect, who I want to see succeed. Learning through them about their worlds, and what actually works on the ground--and about what's not working for them. Working with their insights and expertise, and adding my own. And seeing our combined insights produce elegant simplicity, profitability, and things that make life better for more people in the world we all share.

If I sound like the kind of person you’d like to get to know, it's probably mutual, and I'll enjoy talking with you whether we end up doing business or not. If we should connect personally, then—business opportunities aside—please book a call with me!

Toward common thriving!

-Joel Iwashige