#15,Shizu Okusa on scaling Apothékary to $40M, TikTok’s 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.