S8 Ep 33: The Natural Pharmacy: How Holistic Wellness is Redefining Healing and Prevention with Shizu Okusa
“I traded my life in WallStreet for the world of WellStreet, and I became an entrepreneur.” —Shizu Okusa
The wellness industry has experienced a remarkable transformation in recent years, as consumers increasingly seek natural, holistic solutions to address their health and well-being. This shift reflects a broader societal trend towards a more integrative understanding of health, one that recognizes the interconnectedness of the mind, body, and environment. As this intersection continues to evolve, innovative companies are poised to capitalize on this growing market, offering consumers a new generation of wellness products and services that prioritize prevention, personalization, and overall well-being.
Founded by serial entrepreneur Shizu Okusa, Apothekary offers a range of herbal remedies, functional foods, and educational resources to empower people to take a more proactive approach to their health. As a respected voice in the wellness industry, Shizu continues to develop innovative products and experiences that help people live healthier, more balanced lives.
Listen in as Shizu shares her inspiring entrepreneurial journey, from her time on Wall Street to her passion for herbal medicine and holistic healing. Justine and Shizu also discuss the growing intersection of wellness, healthcare, and food as medicine, the importance of using your gifts to create solutions that benefit others, their personal morning routines for better skin and mental health, and the importance of knowing your numbers, having a clear business plan, and being strategic about fundraising.
Connect with Shizu:
Shizu Okusa, is a Wall Street alum-turned-wellness entrepreneur. After leaving an intense finance career, she became inspired to live a more balanced lifestyle and revisit her Japanese roots and passion for herbal medicine. Shizu set out to help others regain their holistic health using traditions she grew up with and ones she learned along the way. Now, she proudly leads Apothékary in our mission to deliver natural herbal remedies that get to the root cause of health issues rather than masking the symptoms.
Episode Highlights:
01:10 From WallStreet to WellStreet
08:27 Empowering Consumers with Natural Healing Solutions
12:42 Morning Routine for Skin and Mental Health
16:55 Managing Workload
21:28 Fundraising Challenges and Tips
26:42 The Founder’s Role
Tweets:
Stressed? Anxious? Tired of Popping Pills? Try These Holistic Wellness Hacks Instead with @jreichman and Apothekary Founder Shizu Okusa. #podcast #entrepreneurship #socialgood #inspiration #impactmatters #NextGenChef #EssentialIngredients #Season8 #ApothekaryCo #NaturalHealing #HolisticWellness #FoodAsMedicine #PlantPower #HerbalRemedies #StressManagement #AnxietyRelief #WellnessRevolution
Inspirational Quotes:
01:27 “I traded my life in WallStreet for the world of WellStreet; and I became an entrepreneur.” —Shizu Okusa
01:58 “When we have a problem, we solve that problem for ourselves. And then we create that solution in scale for other people.” —Shizu Okusa
06:46 “We're human beings by nature, but sometimes we're too caught up in being human doings. But at the core of it, I tend to think we are human healings, and we're all on this journey of healing and being a better version of ourselves every day.” —Shizu Okusa
07:15 “In the past, it wasn't a thing where people focus on their values and their beliefs to support what they do in their everyday life. At one point, I thought it was a luxury to be able to do that. But now, I feel like it's less of a luxury and more of a necessity.” —Justine Reichman
07:46 “Consumers are so smart today— if it's not natural, if it's not necessary, if it's not authentic, people will cancel you.” —Shizu Okusa
16:00 “If you have anxiety, it is not shameful. It's okay.” —Shizu Okusa
22:09 “Dilute yourself in ownership and raise equity for non equity uses of capital.” —Shizu Okusa
23:18 “If you want that investor, you have to find a mutual connection. It's a lot of EQ, I think when fundraising versus IQ.” —Shizu Okusa
25:09 “Get your blurb right. Nobody's going to even look at your conversational skills, or your numbers, or your deck until you have your blurb and your initial pieces of information correct because that's the information an investor is going to focus on.” —Shizu Okusa
26:24 “Think about it from an investor's point of view. They want to know they're going to get their money back too. So they have to know that there's some exit, or momentum, or liquidity event in the future instead of just giving you money because you're growing. Just because you're growing does not make it a good investment.” —Shizu Okusa
28:11 “It's important to recognize that nobody does this alone. It's important to surround yourself with really smart people… To understand that concept, and to be able to put that into practice, is much more compelling than a founder that does everything and anything.” —Justine Reichman
28:53 “If you want to make more money, you want to become irrelevant. An investor or acquirer will want to know that they don't need to rely on some key man risk or key woman risk.” —Shizu Okusa
Transcriptions:
Justine Reichman: Good morning, and welcome to Essential Ingredients. I'm your host, Justine Reichman. With me today is Shizu Okusa. She is the CEO and Founder of Apothekary.
Welcome. Shizu.
Shizu Okusa: Hi, Justine. Thank you so much for having me. I'm super, super, super excited and waiting weeks for this.
Justine Reichman: Oh, me too. I'm super excited not just to meet you, but to also learn about what you're doing because it sounds super interesting. And some of the best, most interesting people that we get are from word of mouth often, just because other people, there is a third party pitch. People don't understand how powerful a third party pitches.
Shizu Okusa: So fascinating. Our mutual connection was (inaudible), and she's been a dear friend of mine in the entrepreneur group, and she's in multiple group chats with me as we talk about business stuff all the time.
Justine Reichman: Awesome. For those not familiar with you or Apothekary, if you could just make a short intro, and we'll dig deeper into it afterwards. But for the moment, that 32nd pitch, if you would.
Shizu Okusa: Absolutely. So I was born and raised in a Japanese immigrant family in Vancouver, Canada. They told me to get a stable job so I moved to New York, where I then started my first job in Wall Street. I started at Goldman Sachs as a trader. And then after a few years of doing trading, I traded my life in Wall Street for the world of Wall Street, and I became an entrepreneur. I've been an entrepreneur ever since. I've started three companies to date, one of which was acquired. One of which I shut down. And one of which I am operating today is called Apothekary, which is a natural pharmacy. So here we are today, and it's been four and a half years. It's crazy. Time flies.
“I traded my life in WallStreet for the world of WellStreet; and I became an entrepreneur.” —Shizu Okusa
Justine Reichman: Yeah. So one might say you're a serial entrepreneur?
Shizu Okusa: I think so. I think I have a problem. Well, it's a good way to put it. When we have a problem and then we solve that problem for ourselves, and then we create that solution in scale for other people.
Justine Reichman: I agree. My partner always calls me the fixer which reminds me of that movie where they send people out to kill people. But between you, me and him, what it means is that I always want to solve the problems. So maybe that's sort of in our DNA as entrepreneurs.
Shizu Okusa: I think we have to be because, even today, there's always problems that are happening. If you focus just on the problems, you'll get nothing done. But I think there has to be a joy in fixing the problem and getting to that next stage of solution, and then making things better and better. In Japanese, we call that Kaizen, which is like a very simple term for, even how Toyota runs their business is continuous improvement every year, all the time.
Justine Reichman: I liked Kaizen. Now, if we were going to do that phonetically, how would you spell it?
Shizu Okusa: Z-E-N, kaizen.
Justine Reichman: Okay. I like that. Okay.
Shizu Okusa: It's a really popular term in Japan. There's a lot of words in Japanese that aren't totally translatable in English. And I think some of the very famous ones are kaizen, ikigai which is like life's purpose. And so I think a lot about life's purpose, even for me every day.
Justine Reichman: So I have a very small Japanese vocabulary consisting of moshi moshi. My friend when I was little, that's how they would answer the phone because they were Japanese. Another way to say hello when you're not on the phone. Konichiwa, exactly. I don't know what it means, but my mother always says it when we go to the Japanese restaurant.
Shizu Okusa: And then there's cable, which is like business and formal Japanese. So that's when you like to go to airports and airplanes, you'll get served in a totally different language in business in Japan.
Justine Reichman: So tell us what is Apothekary?
Shizu Okusa: Apothekary is really what we call a natural pharmacy. And so I had my original aha moment. A lot of people like to ask about that. When I was kind of walking through those aisles of Walgreens and CVS, and I quickly realized that everything was in like an opaque plastic bottle with ingredients we don't recognize, and pills and capsules. And I was like, I don't really want to take another pill or another capsule. I don't really know what's inside or how long it's been sitting on this shelf, and so I kind of tapped back into the history of at least the Japanese culture of healing and herbal medicine, and kind of really wanting to think about, how do we create a natural pharmacy? Because I've always been in the space of wellness. My first company was a cold pressed juice business. And so naturally, it was this evolution from physical health into more what I would call mental and emotional health. And so Apothekary really serves consumers today mostly around their stress and their stress responses. And instead of grabbing alcohol, or grabbing weed, or instead of grabbing another pill, we try to give them more natural herbal remedies that support their ailments in a more root cause way and not just treat the symptom.
Justine Reichman: What is your specific background that led you to join the World of Wellness? First starting cold pressed juicery, which I'm curious about. Which one was that?
Shizu Okusa: It was called Jrink. It was based in Washington, DC. So I traveled the world after I left my career in Wall Street. I kind of gave my notice that Goldman, this was March of 2012, let's say. I'm older now. And at that point, I actually lived in Africa. I lived in Mozambique for about a year. And then I spent about three months in Bali, actually, because I wanted to really learn about herbal medicine. So I got my herbal medicine training in Ayurveda, yoga, and teacher training. And I think that's where I got really exposed to food as medicine. And this was again, back in 2012. Food as medicine was not really a concept thing or thing people were talking about back then. And of course, people were talking about it all day everyday today. But really, back then, it was still a pretty novel idea. This evolution from fresh and clean food and juice. To them, clean medicine was my next journey. We just talked about it with my husband. I always joke and maybe it's not a joke. We're human beings by nature. But sometimes, we're too caught up in being human. But at the core of it, I tend to think we are human healings, and we're all on this sort of journey of healing and naturally being a better version of ourselves every day.
“We're human beings by nature, but sometimes we're too caught up in being human doings. But at the core of it, I tend to think we are human healings, and we're all on this journey of healing and being a better version of ourselves every day.” —Shizu Okusa
Justine Reichman: Wow, I love that. I mean, that really does. It shares both your mission, your values, and connects directly to what you're building. And I think more and more this is becoming a thing of today. People are doing that. But in the past, it really wasn't a thing where people focus on their values and their beliefs to support what they do in their everyday life. At one point, I thought it was kind of a luxury to be able to do that. But now, I look at it not necessarily as a luxury, but as a way of building a better future for the next generation. I feel like it's less of a luxury, and more of a necessity.
Shizu Okusa: I was just going to say it's a necessity. I think consumers are so smart today. If it's not natural, if it's not necessary, if it's not authentic, people will cancel you. It's the course of society where it has to really come from this deeper part of you and who you are, because there are so many challenges when you build a business. And I think truly, it's the ones that can be resilient, and focus on that core mission and value why that keeps you going. Otherwise, people will trickle out and tap out. It's just so hard. For me at least, it's still every day, you have to be always like, it's worth it. It has to be worth it. You have to be solving that problem for the bigger and greater cause.
Justine Reichman: I would agree. That's why I do what I do. Having all these founders, and people changing the future of food, and impacting the future of food, and driving for better food and our community, both regenerative and sustainable, really allows you to connect with people that have a similar vision for the future. And I think it's infectious because how can you listen to somebody share their story, talk about how it's going to improve our future, both for health and for the climate and not wanting to do better?
Shizu Okusa: It should be a motivator. And it also I think that it's a reminder of our every day and what we're putting in our bodies for God's sake. And yeah, I think it's actually something that I talk about probably all of the time.
Justine Reichman: So when you built this company, when you kicked it off when you founded it, what were you most hopeful for?
Shizu Okusa: We started in January of 2020, right before COVID. I had very little expectations of what I thought the business could do. I just exited my first company. I just finished the earnout and just finished the transition. I wasn't really looking to hit the pavement hard and go real hard again for another eight years because I did the first company for eight years. But the world tells you exactly what you need. And as soon as the pandemic happened, our business exploded. Everybody was focused on getting health and preventative health. I think you probably remember when people were hoarding food in their pantries at the time. And so both paper food, water, everything, herbs, who knew. So I think we really kind of had a real first year moment where we went from one and a half people, and one being me to over 13 by the end of the year. And today, we're about 60 people. So it really has been just a result of consumers wanting more preventative healthy solutions for their bodies. But also, I hate to say this, but we're a country that's pretty unwell. But we want to be well. And so I think about my hopes for this business is really just to give people the tools, education and support that they can be their own clinical pharmacist. Pharmacist with an F, so that people can really be empowered to make everyday healing second nature. That is our slogan, to make everyday healing second nature. And so that's kind of my hope regardless of Apothekary or not. We hope that we can empower someone to use a more natural way of healing.
Justine Reichman: That's so important. And to share that information. I'm curious, what are the best ways that you find to educate your consumer so they can make better choices, more informed choices?
Shizu Okusa: We do a number of different things on the education side today. For Apothekary, a lot of that is digital. But we also do a ton of in person events. Even if you don't attend the in person events, it's those events that whether we share the recap, or what they have missed, or photos of that, that's when we get the most engagement. So I think at least in the world of wellness and healing, I think offline is still just a really important place for building the community. And building that one on one, I feel the same way as you. Feeling is healing. I think that's something where education, but also experiences is something that we're really doubling down on. So we'll be doing that on our first journey, actually to Japan starting this October, and opening that up to our community. Because again, we're not just about herbs and ashwagandha, we're really focused on how we make healing, and that everyday sort of forest feeding, as an example, is really accessible for the consumer today in a really natural way.
Justine Reichman: Can you share maybe three things that you do to make it accessible for the layperson?
Shizu Okusa: I do it personally in my everyday life, you mean?
Justine Reichman: Either you do it personally or that you could recommend. I think what you do personally would be amazing.
Shizu Okusa: Absolutely. So when I wake up first thing in the morning when I used to be on Wall Street, I used to have coffee. Literally the first thing I'd wake up to, I hit the espresso button. That is actually really not great for you. You really shouldn't have caffeine as the first thing in your body because it stimulates cortisol. And cortisol is a hormone that stimulates a stress response. And so naturally, when I wake up, which is around 5:00 AM, I want to have that coffee. But I always keep water accessible by my bedside or where I brush my teeth, because you should always have water first to alkalize your stomach. And so that's the first thing that I do every single day, and I skip the coffee until about after 10:00 AM. So caffeine comes later. I usually have some of my herbs. I would usually go around maca, which is an adaptogenic herbal sort of route that's used mostly in Ayurvedic medicine in South America. It's a Peruvian route. It's really great for energy without caffeine, and also tastes great. So if you like that sort of creamy nutty flavor, I add that into matcha or add them into coffee. So that's one thing that I do. I also do face ice baths. So I don't have the luxury of having an ice bath at home. And this isn't really easy and accessible, in my opinion at least. We have a giant salad bowl that's literally a giant salad bowl that you would use for a group brunch. Just throw some ice in there, put water in it, let it sit for like two minutes, and it's ice cold. I just stick my head into the salad bowl, and I give myself a face ice bath. And the benefit of doing this is not only that it wakes you up. But it really helps with your skin. How you do gua sha or sort of like Jade rollers, it's similar to ice cubes. But it really helps to stimulate the blood cell growth and plumpness in your skin. So I do that as a second. The third one is I don't drink alcohol anymore. I've listened to a number of podcasts on your show around people providing non-alcohol alternatives or cocktails that are mocktails, but I really do focus and do more herbal mocktails at night that are functional that help me sleep at night and not wake up in the middle of the night. And we use mostly our tinctures.
Justine Reichman: I really appreciate that because I can see myself doing a face bath now. I could go try that. I will try that and see how it impacts my face or how I feel.
Shizu Okusa: We did a challenge in January around this, too.
Justine Reichman: Think we should do a challenge now.
Shizu Okusa: We definitely should. People took off too.
Justine Reichman: I think we should go on Instagram Live, do a little thing and give them two or three challenges. And then we'll ask them to share theirs.
Shizu Okusa: I love that. Let's do it. I love that.
Justine Reichman: We'll circle back after. But in the meantime, tell me how you feel differently? How has it impacted you by having the coffee after 10:00 by alkalizing your system with the water, and by adding those other things into it? What's the difference for you?
Shizu Okusa: I don't have as much anxiety. I see as much because I naturally say as much. I'm emphasizing that because I think it's important for people to know that if you have anxiety, it is not shameful. It's okay. I've learned to express my own feelings around this because I think it's validating and it's important. But I feel less supporting that anxiety by drinking coffee, or by having that short term quick fix. And then if the alkalinity is so important from my gut. Because if I don't have that water with a little bit of lemon, I feel like my stomach is just on fire. Especially if you add coffee to that. So it's more about this grounding routine first thing in the morning. And the last thing I should say is, I don't touch my phone for at least 15 minutes. I know that seems so small. But a lot of people just grab their phone as the first thing. Your body just wakes up for 15 minutes, your Instagram will wait, your emails will wait just 15 minutes for you. And I found that to be huge for my stress levels in the morning.
Justine Reichman: Wow. Okay, I think we'll have to try that. Recognize that you wake up at 5:00 o'clock, and it's a much larger window where there's not as much coming in to check anxiety around that in all fairness. I woke up early at 6:30. But some people are not morning people, and they wake up, and they're sort of running, running, running. So what do you recommend to those people that feel like, I have to check it because I'm always a step behind.
Shizu Okusa: It's a really important question. I think one thing is you can control your inbound. So the way that I do that is there's so many tools now. I scheduled it. I work at night too, but I go to bed by 10:00. So by being in bed by 10:00, I wake up naturally at 5:00. I don't even have an alarm clock for my 5:00 am wake, but my body is awake. But basically, I think when I go to bed at night, I pause my inbox because I know when I wake up, I will have anxiety knowing that I have 72 emails or whatever. So then when I feel ready, I can go to my computer and be like, okay, I am now ready for the inbound to come. Come at me, I am ready. And then I unpause my inbox. How do we make out, especially if you're a business owner, instead of working on your business, or working in your business, how are you working on your business and not letting your business run you? And I think of that as sort of your inbox recalibration to be one of the most important tools.
Justine Reichman: I think that's great advice. Because I think I know myself, I always like to respond immediately when I get it. Because if I don't respond immediately, there's a chance that I might forget it. I have that sense of urgency around it. But if I could take that away, if I could find a way, you're saying to integrate that into my day to day. It might take a few weeks to get into it, to have it become a routine. But then once it's a routine, if I could lower my anxiety levels, because I'm from New York, and I think right off the bat. We're used to things going a million miles an hour. So when I'm not doing things, a million miles an hour, I'm not as effective. I don't know why that is.
Shizu Okusa: Multitasker. You prefer to multitask.
Justine Reichman: If there's not a lot on my plate, I'm like, okay, I don't have anything to do. I can find things.
Shizu Okusa: It's also during the quiet hours that things seem to trickle up. We're like, oh, we should do this. Now, let's create a problem.
Justine Reichman: So I want to go back, I love your passion behind your company, and I love what you're building. And for the listeners that we have, for the viewers that we have. I know many people want to understand how to get a business funded. There's so many different ways that came out of your first company which gave you probably more resources, but it may not have impacted. It may have impacted at one way or another on how you were then going to do your next project, and I'd love to just hear from you.
Shizu Okusa: Oh, my god.
Justine Reichman: Tell me a little bit about it. Are you like, okay, I don't want investors. What was the thought process behind that?
Shizu Okusa: I think I have learned so much with the first company, and that I'm even lucky to have sold that business, to be honest. I don't know the exact stats, but most companies fail, or it's a lifestyle business. I hate using that term because it feels so small in many ways. But there is absolutely nothing wrong with not taking any venture funding, and bootstrapping, and running the company so that it works for your life. For me at least, I think I realized that I didn't want to spend eight years growing the same business in the way that I did the first time. For me, it was because it is cold pressed juice. The shelf life was three days. And because it was cold pressed juice, we had so much labor in terms of stores. We had 15 stores at one point. You have three, four people working at any given time. And then you have 10 people on schedule at each store, you have like 75 people working for you and your production staff. I didn't want any of that. I didn't want the weight of having so many people reporting to me, and then also having the inability to scale in a really efficient way. And so when I built Apothekary, it kind of really thought about reverse engineering. Some of those are unit economics, in particular gross margin, shelf life, and the ability to go to market in different markets because we wanted to make sure that our playbook was scalable across different playbooks or in different countries, I should say. So from a funding standpoint, because our gross margins are a lot higher in this business than they were in safe food and perishable food, we were able to be a lot more particular about how we funded. And so we had a line of credit from day one. And having a line of credit from day one can be really, really important because most people raise money to fund inventory, which is like one of my biggest pet peeves is to dilute yourself and raise equity for non equity uses of capital.
So I think the first advice that I always give to people is, what are you spending the money on? If it's something like inventory, are there more non diluted options like debt, or shareholder loans even you could look at. We did raise some money for Apothekary. We raised about $12 million to date. So we've done a few rounds of funding over the last four and a half years. And there's many support from existing investors from my first company as well that wanted to come invest again in my second venture. And I feel really fortunate for that. But for people that may not have that network or may not had any experience fundraising, it really starts by knocking on the door. By no means, it has been easy for me either raising 12 million, especially in the last 12 years. And of course, with all the stats that we know around minorities and females, you gotta just keep hitting the ground running it. It takes intros. It takes soft finesses of not getting a cold email out. You got to get that warm intro. And so if you really want that investor, you have to find a mutual connection. It's a lot of EQ when fundraising versus IQ, in my opinion. And then you got to know your numbers. So I think it's really important, what's your CAC? What's your lifetime value? What's your CL time value relative to your ratios? All those different things. You just need to know your business inside out. So that's my advice for whatever it's worth. Don't take every check that comes your way. I think that's probably one thing that I've learned the most since my first company. We took on investment from investors. Didn't understand the business and gave extra pressure in a really unnecessary way. I will never take that kind of money ever again.
Justine Reichman: I think that's really sage advice. I think it's really challenging, and it's really hard to go out and raise money. And like you said, some people are looking to create a lifestyle business. Some people are looking to create a larger business with greater impact, greater reach. And there's people that have done it privately. Obviously, that's happened too, but I think that there's a variety of different options, and there's no wrong answer. It depends on the goals, the mission and the opportunity, and market size as well. I think that that's really great advice, and it's something that you're saying that it's really hard. It's nothing that's comforting, but you know that somebody that's done it recognizes the challenges behind it.
Shizu Okusa: Yeah.
Justine Reichman: My next question is for those people that do raise money and they are putting their decks together. They're putting all their information together. Is there anything one or two things that you did that were maybe revolutionary or game changers for you that you might be able to share?
Shizu Okusa: I think the first thing I would advise is get your blurb right. I know that sounds so simple. It's not even about the deck, that's like the second and third state. Think of it as dating. Getting your photos right. Get your profile right because nobody's going to even look at your conversational skills, or your numbers, or your deck until you have your blurb and your initial pieces of information correct. Because that's the information someone you're going to ask, then forward it to an investor is going to focus on. Especially in this market where, again, like dating, you have a ton of competition. Quote unquote, you have a lot of women or men, and you want to differentiate so you have to focus on that blurb and those KPIs that you want to mention in your blurb that will make you stand out. So I would say to double down on that email blurb that you want to have someone forwarded over, make it really succinct, make it exactly what the investor wants to hear about whether it's sales growth year over year. How much capital you're raising when you're looking to close. Some of the key partnerships and traction that you've had over the last year or two years. What you're going to use the money for, and what that's going to be in terms of ROI or sales growth. Think about it from an investor's point of view. They want to know they're gonna get their money back too. So they have to know that there's some sort of exit, or some sort of momentum or liquidity event in the future instead of just giving you money because you're growing.. Just because you're growing does not make it a good investment.
“Get your blurb right. Nobody's going to even look at your conversational skills, or your numbers, or your deck until you have your blurb and your initial pieces of information correct because that's the information an investor is going to focus on.” —Shizu Okusa
Justine Reichman: Right. It's true. It's true. So what do you say to the comment that often, I've heard people say, it's less about what you're doing, and more about the founder. We invest in founders.
Shizu Okusa: I probably have a little bit of a contrarian view on that in the very beginning. Absolutely, it's all about the founder. I think it depends on the stage. And the reason I say that is because by nature, a lot of consumer brands or just marketing companies, consumer brands just need to be really good at that marketing playbook, whether it's owned, earned, paid. You got to nail that sort of marketing funnel. And then I assume that if you put in different widgets into that funnel, that same playbook would apply. So I think later down the road, I think from a brand story perspective, I think the founder becomes less relevant as it should be. I don't think the founder is something that you want to have super reliant as an investment thesis. Because what happens if she dies or he dies? Or she gets tired and doesn't want to do it any more, then what happens to the entire investment? I think it's an active effort to be honest. Even for myself, this transition from founder to CEO, and then to make the founder kind of irrelevant over time. I think that's actually really important. Something I'm working on myself. It's not easy.
“It's important to recognize that nobody does this alone. It's important to surround yourself with really smart people… To understand that concept, and to be able to put that into practice, is much more compelling than a founder that does everything and anything.” —Justine Reichman
Justine Reichman: I can see both sides of it. I can see the importance in the beginning of the founder and the vision, the concept. But I also think that it's really important to recognize that nobody does this alone. It's really important to surround yourself with really smart people that know how to do certain things that you don't necessarily do, or I don't necessarily know how to do or want to do. Or there's just somebody that's better at doing those other things. And I think to understand that concept and to be able to put that into practice is much more compelling than a founder that does everything in anything. It's important to recognize that as a founder, as an investor, and as a team member.
Shizu Okusa: It's something honestly that I got advice on all the time. If you're looking to make money, if you want to make more money, you actually want to become irrelevant. An investor or acquirer will want to know that they don't need to rely on some key man risk or key woman risk.
Justine Reichman: Agree. So can you share maybe some hard hitting statistics around food as medicine or plant medicine as it supports what you're doing?
Shizu Okusa: For us in particular, we've doubled down on this intersection between wellness, healthcare and food as medicine. I think it's become very, very blurry. The wellness market now, I think, is around $7 trillion. Even just a few years ago, five years ago, multiple trillions of dollars less than that. And one of the sectors, and I think that's driving that is going to be mental health. And I think it's this connection between stress, mental health, how much we're connected and pushed by our phones, and our demands, and our daily living that causes us to then want more preventative wellness solutions. What we're seeing either from the investment side or the consumer side is more dollars shifting away from Beauty and topical sort of skincare over to wellness. So people can consume more supplementation, or sort of preventative health options. So that's one real stat. And then I would say from a sober curiosity and alcohol side, I think this dry January in particular, we had one in three people opt into dry January from our customer base. So what that basically means is out of every three people that we email to say, hey, do you want to join our dry January challenge? One person out of every three people participated. That is huge. But in the four and a half years that we've been operating this business, non alcohol and people that don't want to drink has become our number one solution, and product, and kind of problem area for Apothekary. But again, it's less to do with not drinking and more to do with the fact that people are very stressed out and want sort of a better for you solution that's not alcohol or chemicals.
Justine Reichman: Thank you so much for joining us today.
Shizu Okusa: Absolutely.
Justine Reichman: Anyone want to learn more about Apothekary, what's the best way to do that?
Shizu Okusa: They can find Apothekary at apothekary.co. It's Apothekary with a K. And then at Instagram, same thing at Apothecary Co. My handle is Shizu Okusa, first and last name. You can always find me on Instagram, LinkedIn. Smoke signal me anytime. I'm available. Thank you for having me, Justine.
Justine Reichman: It's my pleasure. It was so great to learn about you, your journey, your products. I can't wait.
Shizu Okusa: We'll have to send you some, for sure. Appreciate your time.
Justine Reichman: Thank you.
