Angus Miyaji

Entrepreneur, Dreamer

After growing up and going to university in Japan, I moved to the London 13 years ago to fulfill my desire to live abroad.

Just after I arrived here, I came across an unloved textbook on the subject of Marketing, in the recycling box, at one of the The London School of Economics’ buildings. As soon as I started reading it, I was hooked on Marketing, and so began working for a Japanese Magazine in London. After 2 years there selling advertisement space and working on improving distribution I decided to start my own business, as I had a strong desire to make the clients I worked with happier.

The first business I started was Access Student Pack back in 2004. This was a service my brother and I created together, which helped connect schools that wanted more students for their courses, with students who were looking for affordable schools in central London. However, when UK immigration laws changed in 2006 my niche started to vanish quickly and I realised it was time to take my business in a different direction. Therefore, at the end of 2006, I tested out a print service and started supplying clients with customised stationary and leaflets.

This turned out to be very popular. So, in 2007 I re-named my business Access Ideas and used my previous experience working at the Japanese Magazine to help Japanese companies in the UK with print and design projects, ranging from business cards, to websites and newspaper advertisements.

Since learning about the concept of Virtual Staff from people like Tim Ferriss, Chris Ducker & Cliff Ravenscraft, I have experimented with this idea and have hired 20-25 virtual staff for my business Access Ideas (some short-term and some long-term). Not only did this help my business grow but I discovered that hiring Virtual Staff was a fantastic idea for Japanese Companies, as it would solve many of the unique problems they face when trying to expand into foreign markets.

After looking into the crowdsourcing market in Japan, and speaking to people who work for Japanese companies, I am confident that I can help bring Japan closer to the rest of the world by educating companies on how to utilise Virtual Staff when trying to market their products to a foreign market. I’m hoping to launch an online business (Virtual Staff JP) in summer 2015 alongside a podcast in Japanese.