#15, Shizu Okusa on scaling wellness brand Apothékary to $40M, gaining TikTok halo effect and avoiding founder blind spots

Apothékary sells one tincture every 90 seconds on TikTok. That's not luck — it's nine months of disciplined investment before a single dollar came back.Shizu Okusa is the founder of Apothékary, a nature-based wellness brand she built from zero to $40 million in revenue and into 1,800 retail doors in six years. But her origin story is not what you'd expect. She walked away from a Wall Street trading desk to work on a banana farm in Mozambique for $30 a day.Dan and Shizu dig into why, how Shizu stays immune to praise and criticism, the cost of blind spots and what second-time founders still get wrong.This is a conversation about believing in yourself before anyone else does — and what it looks like to build a company rooted in both numbers and humanity.If you're a founder, entrepreneur or business leader looking for lessons on leadership, resilience, scaling and building something that matters, this is the conversation for you. Subscribe and listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.