Chief Change Officer
#231 From Hitchhiker to Head-Hunter: Gary Bremermann’s Wild Career Ride — Part One
Fri, 14 Mar 2025
Gary Bremermann’s journey isn’t what you’d call traditional. He didn’t just study, graduate, and land a predictable career—he hitchhiked across North America, dropped out of college (twice!), built a global business, and burned out before finally finding his calling in his mid-30s. Now, as a career coach and recruiter in Japan, he’s helping others navigate their own career paths without the detours and burnout.In Part 1 of this two-part series, Gary takes us through his unconventional journey—from being an 18-year-old hitchhiker learning life lessons on the road to running a multi-office export business, only to realize financial success wasn’t the key to happiness. Key Highlights of Our Interview:The National Geographic Effect – “I grew up with every issue ever published. That’s how I started dreaming beyond my small town.” How a childhood surrounded by travel magazines planted the seed for a global career.Dropping Out, Twice – “I quit university, hitchhiked across the U.S. and Canada, and learned more about people than I ever could in a classroom.” Gary’s early lessons on resilience, adaptability, and making unexpected connections.Building (and Surviving) a Business – “I chased financial success, built an international company, and ended up completely burned out. My business was crushing me.” Why success without purpose isn’t sustainable.Finding His True Calling – “I hired a coach, and it changed everything. I finally saw a way out.” How coaching saved Gary from burnout—and led him to his real passion: helping others find fulfilling careers._____________________Connect with us:Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Gary Bremermann______________________--Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.10 Million+ All-Time Downloads.Reaching 80+ Countries Daily.Global Top 3% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.130,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today. --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.12 Million+ All-Time Downloads.Reaching 80+ Countries Daily.Global Top 3% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>140,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<
Chapter 1: Who is Gary Bremermann and what is his career journey?
Gary is a recruiter, career coach, and Japan talent market expert who has spent 25 years helping professionals navigate change. But his own journey wasn't a straight line. Gary hitchhiked across North America, dropped out of college two times, built a global business, and burned out before finally finding his true calling.
In this two-part series, we'll explore how he discovered his passion for coaching, the seven rules of career clarity, and the harsh realities of Japan's talent market, including ageism and the fear of change. Whether you're rethinking your career, hiring talent, or just wondering what's next, this series will change the way you see work. Let's get started. Gary, good afternoon to you.
Welcome to the show. Welcome to Chief Change Officer.
Thanks for having me, Vance. It's a pleasure to be here.
Gary and I have a mutual friend, also happens to be a podcast guest. And now, it's like a snowball effect. More and more people reaching out to be on the show. But I'm still very mindful about finding the right fit. And anyone listening to this episode will see that Gary is exactly that. I'll let him share his story, his ideas, his high sights, insights, and foresights.
But first, Gary, tell us a bit about yourself. What's your journey been like? Give us all the juice and then we'll dive into different elements and unpack some of your wisdom and intelligence.
All right. Thank you. I guess we'll start with where I'm at now. So I'm currently residing in Tokyo. I've been here for 25 years and I'm a recruiter and a career coach. And I've been recruiting for 23 years and I've been career coaching for a decade. And I didn't find my calling in life until my mid-30s. So I've been, this is my calling.
I'm very fortunate to have found my dream job and my dream life. But it took me a long time to get there. So I wanted to share with you part of my story today. And so I recruit advertising and marketing professionals. I career coach for bilingual professionals in Japan. from all different industries, all ages, different people with different stories.
And I find a lot of similarities and a lot of commonalities. And one thing I did is I've written an e-book called Seven Steps to Career Clarity. And it's a seven step process that helps people think about who they are, what they're good at and what they want to do with their life. So I've written that ebook and I'm here to help people find work they love.
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Chapter 2: How did childhood influences shape Gary's global aspirations?
You are in Tokyo now, one of the dream destinations for so many people, whether for travel, work, or even living. What brought you there? It might seem like a simple question, but I feel like there's a bigger story behind it. Let's trace back. Where are you originally from? And how did your journey lead you from one place to another, eventually landing you in Tokyo?
So it goes way back. And I was born and raised in San Diego. And I was very fortunate to grow up in a house that had a copy of every single National Geographic magazine ever published. And it started in 1888. So in my house, we had a wall that had every National Geographic from... And I would, on a rainy day, as a young boy, I would pull issues off the shelf and...
read through them and get super excited about what's out there, what's out there in the world. And that's really what started to lead me to Tokyo, was wanting to explore the world. So that was the start of my wanting to go places and see things and do things. I first came to Tokyo in 1985, but I've lived here now a total of about 30 years. So I've been back and forth between California and Tokyo.
Before social media, before Instagram made picture-perfect moments so accessible, you were already living with the whole world in front of you. Even as a kid, you were constantly on the move. So can I say you were a world traveler from the start?
In my mind, for sure, yeah. And it was definitely very analog. I grew up with black and white TV, no internet, and now all those national geographics are on the internet, or for a time there it was on a CD-ROM. But back then it was analog, and it was fantastic.
Before moving to Asia, you had quite a journey, especially in North America. Tell us about that. What was your experience like?
So, yeah, I was talking about how it took me a long time to find my calling in life in my mid-30s. And as I started working on my career coaching practice and working with other people to help them find their own callings, I realized that you can find clues from your early life that inform or give you ideas about what you can do to find your calling.
And so when I started doing the work on myself, I looked back and I realized there were some life experiences in my early days that really informed what I'm doing now and why I enjoy what I'm doing now so much. So the first one was that National Geographic story. But another one was when I was 18 years old, I was in university for my first year in university.
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Chapter 3: Why did Gary hitchhike across North America and what did he learn?
And I struggled a lot to get to the point where I found my calling. And I was in my first year in college and I was struggling and I quit. I dropped out. And I had that wonderlust or that wanting to visit new places because National Geographic also covered places within the U.S. or within North America.
So I dropped out of university at I was 18 years old at the time, and I hitchhiked from Santa Barbara, California, to Newfoundland. And it wasn't in a straight line. So I hitchhiked all over the United States and Newfoundland's an island. And I was I caught a ride with someone who put their car on a ferry. So I technically hitchhiked to an island.
And then I took the train across Canada, the Canadian rail train, and then hitchhiked back from Vancouver back to Santa Barbara. And one thing I learned along the way, everyone along the way said, Gary, don't be stupid. Go back to school. Get an education and then you can do whatever you want, because I had really determined to quit school.
But the other thing, looking back in terms of how it informed my career choices is or the thing that I got from it was I learned how to talk to people from all walks of life. young, old, men, women, all over the country, people would pick me up, very kind people, had some few rough experiences. But at a very early age, I learned how to communicate with people who were very different from me.
So that was one of my life forming experiences.
Even within North America, you've experienced life across different states, different time zones, and completely different cultures. East goes West goes Midwest. You've seen it all. And then there's Canada. A mutual friend once mentioned that some of his friends wanted to move from the US to Canada, thinking it would be the same. And he said, no, Canada is not just another version of the US.
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Chapter 4: What unique experiences did Gary have during his travels?
There are a lot of differences, a lot of nuances. You've learned that firsthand, didn't you? And not just from books, but from real life experience. You mentioned struggling in school at one point, but you did go back, right?
Yes, I eventually did. And that was a good decision. And you know what's funny, Vince, is that a lot of people in my world don't know about my hitchhiking experience. It's not something that I share with everyone. So if anyone's listening to this that's known me for quite a while, they might not know that I had that grand hitchhiking adventure. But it was a really life-forming experience.
How did you support yourself financially along the way? What kind of work did you do to keep things moving while navigating your journey?
Yeah, in terms of making the trip happen, I had very little money. I did have some cash on me, but I carried a tent and a backpack and I would sleep wherever I could. But also a lot of kind people took me in. And they invited me to stay at their house.
Some of them had me do part time jobs, cleaning the yard or something to make some extra cash before I moved to the next town or went down the road. And one of the great experiences I had is I was picked up by a gentleman north of Washington, D.C., and his family lived in the Amish country. in Southern Pennsylvania, Southwest Pennsylvania.
And he had left the Amish community, but he still lived within the Amish community. And I ended up staying with that family for three weeks. And it was, talk about another world. You've seen the movie Witness, perhaps, or seen a documentary on the Amish country. I went to an island in the Chesapeake Bay where they speak a very unusual dialect of English.
So you're right, North America or the US is so diverse. There's so many diverse cultures and so many diverse places. And as you mentioned, I was learning about myself, but I was learning so much from other people. They were sharing their stories with me and I could see how people were living.
A very nice couple picked me up in Tennessee and they invited me to stay with them and they worked in a pig slaughterhouse. They would share with me about the work that they did. I had a couple who were clearly very financially challenged, and they picked me up and they offered me cash so that I could buy food for myself. So people that didn't have a lot of money who were very generous.
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Chapter 5: How did Gary's early life experiences influence his career?
So at 18, I was exposed to a lot of different type of people and a different type of experience, experiences. But now as a recruiter and career coach, I'm also talking to different people all the time, every day. And I think having had that experience at an early stage of my life helped me to become the person that I am now.
You really put yourself out there, fully immersed. No safety net. Would it be fair to say you were baptized by fire?
Yeah, yeah. And I feel grateful that I didn't have any terrible experiences. I ended up in some rough spots, but I was able to get myself out of them. I actually dropped out of university twice. Oh, wow. And this is another thing not a lot of people know about me, but I went back to school and I lasted a couple years and I dropped out again.
You went back to school, finished, and in your twenties, you were still young, figuring things out. But as you mentioned, you didn't find your calling until your thirties, maybe even mid thirties. So what happened in those 10 years? Were you still searching for your real self? Were you trying different things proactively or just going with the flow?
Looking back, what was that phase of your life really about?
Thinking I would never go back. Frustrated with the system and going through my own personal challenges. And I dropped out in that time. I was 20 and I traveled around the world. So I traveled around the world and that's when I first visited Japan. And again, that was similar to my hitchhiking stories.
And not only was it different types of people within North America, it was different types of people all over the place. So I just wanted to throw that in there because I dropped out twice, but I did graduate. And then I came and lived in Japan for a while.
And I was a young man living in Japan and at the time the Japanese economy was really booming and growing fast and it was the bubble years and it was a very dynamic time to be here. And then I went back to the United States and got a graduate degree. So after dropping out twice from university, I ended up going to grad school and getting a graduate degree.
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Chapter 6: What was Gary's life like before finding his true calling?
And then the biggest thing that happened to me in that decade before I found my calling was I graduated from university from the grad school and started my own business. And that was 10 years of heaven and hell. Great things happened. It was a great challenge, but it was also the business was crushing me. I had gotten into business because of a very strong desire to be financially successful.
and make a lot of money. Richard Branson was one of my childhood heroes. I read books about him and I thought he was so cool. And I thought, I want to be Richard Branson. I want to be, at the time it was multimillionaire. Now he's a billionaire and do diverse fun businesses. So I started a company in the United States and I operated that company for nine and a half, 10 years. Mm-hmm.
And in my last year, I realized that the business was crushing me. I had expanded the business. We had an office in London. I was based in California, moved the office from San Diego to Los Angeles and an office in Tokyo. And I worked around the clock. I never took vacations and I experienced burnout. And that was a huge turning point in my life.
You had a business back then, didn't you?
I had a business where I was exporting consumer goods, American style, American culture goods. It started out in exporting it to Japan because we had connections and an interest in Japan, expanded into Korea and then expanded into Europe. And it was things like apparel, sporting goods, health and beauty products. And so I was an intermediary between manufacturers and customers.
in Asia and Europe. And it was exciting, but it was it was so hard in some ways. And the reality was, I wasn't that interested in consumer goods. I wasn't that interested in fashion. I love sports, but it was just I was doing it for the money. Also for the freedom. I've been an entrepreneur all my life. Also the freedom aspect of it. But when you're a slave to your business, you're not free.
And so I was very fortunate. My company was acquired. Yeah. right before it crushed me was it burnout stage and at that time i engaged a coach so i had a coach and i tell my coach at that time that he saved my life and i mean it he was he really helped me to get clarity
on what I was doing, why I was doing it, showed me that there were alternatives, and then helped guide me through the sale of my business. So it was a real, talk about change, it was a real turning point for me. So I sold my business and decided to move back to Japan.
So this is it. You wanted change. You wanted a different lifestyle. So you took a step back. You exited financially from that business. Also brought in someone to help you figure out your next chapter. Before we get into your life in Japan and your calling now, I want to go back to something you mentioned financial success. You had it before, and you still have a strong drive for it.
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