When Shizu Okusa decided to start a new business, she knew where to find the best guidance. “I wanted to reverse engineer everything I did wrong at my last company,” she says.
Raised on a farm in Vancouver by Japanese immigrants, she had founded a cold-pressed juice brand called JRINK after feeling burned out at Goldman Sachs. It had nine stores and was sold in two Whole Foods stores. But it was hard to make much money. So in 2020, Okusa took all the lessons he learned and created The apothecary — an herbal medicine business that is now profitable and brought in roughly $25 million in revenue last year. Here's what Okusa saw that went wrong and how he made it right.