Let me take a step back and introduce myself to those who don’t know me. My name is Clare Nishikawa, the owner and CEO of Beyond Development Group (or BDG as we’ve affectionately started calling ourselves). As I started my career in real estate development with Pizza Hut, I recognized I really was quite unusual. Outside of the obvious difference in gender, my background was more unique. Most development experts I crossed paths with had built their career growing solely within the real estate world. While initially I found it incredibly intimidating to not know their language and techniques, I quickly realized I brought other strengths and I’d have the opportunity to learn the more technical aspects of the role over time. Having spent 14 years with Nielsen (the market research guru), in both global and local roles, my client management and analytical skills have set me apart in the development world.
As a Nielsen client management lead with organizations such as Kraft and BAT, my role was to understand their goals and challenges as quickly as possible. By understanding the data and services we had available, I was able to provide insights to drive my clients’ actions, whether that be new product launches, distribution expansions, pricing changes or media focuses. My role was to ensure the investments clients made with Nielsen truly provided a return on investment. A key element to achieving this was to guide the analytics of the data being purchased. Through this I gained an incredible appreciation for the power of data-based decisions. As a development lead, my passion has been to ensure I fully understand my franchisees’ goals, opportunities and limitations, provide data to guide, support or challenge their plans and to focus on their return on investment.
I’m not talking to the relationship aspects enough though. I have an insatiable curiosity and I love people. Some may say I have a tendency towards interrogation, but I truly just want to know more and more and more. I enjoy nothing greater than getting to know someone new on a one-on-one basis. This is where you’ll find me in my element. When I come across someone else that loves data or development or both as much as I do, I could spend many hours talking to them (much to their chagrin). If I can then help create something - a strategy, a plan, or a new restaurant - I’m a pig in mud.
Although I’m always happy to connect personally, now you know me a little better, over the next few weeks I’m going to share the observations I’ve made and my learnings specific to franchisee and franchisor relationships as a way to hopefully help those of you involved in franchise growth. I guess you could call this my Jerry McGuire moment, a white-paper I wrote last summer which I built my business upon.
