 Welcome to Mother Nature's Pharmacy, that's pharmacy with an F. Today's guest is Shuzu Okuzu, the founder of Apothecary. Backed by 5,000 years of science, Apothecary provides a natural alternative to synthetic skincare and drugs. Apothecary is on the forefront of the rising adaptogen market. And what's interesting is it's really trailing behind the CBD market and so if you're into CBD but it's a little too taboo for you then adaptogens become the perfect fit. Not sure what adaptogens means or what you're supposed to do or how to consume them. Make sure to watch the full episode because we're going to pose the questions we know everyone's thinking and are too afraid to ask. Alright welcome to the podcast on today's show we're talking to Shuzu, founder of Apothecary. People who don't know, what does your company do? Apothecary is Mother Nature's Pharmacy. We provide pharmacy with an F. Exactly. I love that tagline by the way. Sorry to cut you off. No all good. We provide clean alternatives to over the counter supplements and kind of like melatonins, laxatives, really anything that like if you walk into CVS and Walgreens and you see those pills and pills of capsules and just opaque bottles. We wanted to provide plant versions of all of that and provide clean alternatives so that you live a better and healthier and longer life. And people don't know so we're talking about the adaptogen market. I'm going to go 50-50 on the audience here. 50% probably know exactly what that is. I would say the other half is still learning or has heard of it. How do you explain it to the novice? Yeah, so Apothecary offers herbs is like one of the primary like ingredients of everything that we do. And so herbs can also be adaptogens but they can also be so many other things. But adaptogens is a subset of the categories that we offer and adaptogens would be like mushrooms. So you've probably heard of like Ashwagandha, Jinseng, even Makka, Astragalus, Cordyceps, a bunch of these wheat sounding names that have recently become much more popular. But adaptogens help to actually regulate and adapt your hormones and cortisol levels to your external factors. And that's why it's called adaptogens but it helps to again like regulate your cortisol to your environment. So stress is a little bit more less at base. If you just think about like a chart like this like a wavy, tipsy, topsy-turvy chart, this it more regulates it after you take the adaptogen. And what made you want to start the company in this space? Like what was the thing you were like, you know what? First of all I'm a fan and then second of all, how do I, let's go ahead and start a company. Yeah. Well, it was a long journey. So my first company, so taking a back step, I graduated from college. I was born and raised in Vancouver. My parents were Japanese. And I say that is like an important kind of history because a lot of what we do today is tying 5,000 years of Eastern tradition and Japanese traditions, Chinese medicine, herbal traditions from the East and coupling that with the world that is today in the West. And so Western prescription drugs coupled with Eastern tradition herbal medicine. And so anyway, I graduated from college in Vancouver. I moved to New York. I worked in Wall Street for about three years. So I was at Goldman doing distressed investment and bond trading for like a weird two, three years of my life. But like really kind of kickstarted my journey into wellness because I was so unwell. Like I was, you know, working trader hours. So that's basically like, you know, wake up 4am slash like your brain is never really turned off because the markets are always on like in Asia to Europe and everywhere. And then I'd be at my desk by like five or six a.m. I go home at like eight o'clock or nine o'clock if I didn't have like a sales event or something after. And so having done that, I think like there was a point where I hit just rock bottom. I mean, I think we all have kind of hit rock bottom. Maybe the last two or three years has also just been like a world reset on that. But anyway, so I realized like, I didn't want to live my resume virtues any longer, like just my resume virtues. And so investing in my eulogy virtues as if like, at least with my parents, they are Buddhist. And so in Buddhism culture, you're very close to like identifying with death. Like that is a real thing. And therefore you want to live and maximize your life as long as possible and live your fullest. And so I moved to Mozambique for about a year and a half. And then from there, I moved to DC. I started my first company, which was a cold press juice brand. Because in Mozambique, we had such like fresh and adulterated ingredients and fruits and vegetables that you can just like make smoothies and juices. And I was like, I missed that. And I didn't know why it didn't exist in DC. So in 2012, I created the first sort of cold press juice brand in DC, we had 13 stores, and then ultimately, it took a lot longer than I imagined as it always does. In 2019, we sold the company and then Apothecary started kind of like on the side of that journey, like late or early 2019. As a sort of, you know, as I was getting older, fruits and vegetables alone aren't going to solve like your sleep and stress problems, your hormone problems. And so naturally, you'd go to like a pharmacy to see if you can get some supplements for that. I was like, this, this is nasty. I was just like, this is this is not like, I'm not buying it. And so that's when I started to really tap into and kind of go back into my roots, literally. Why Mozambique though, out of all the places you could have gone to in the world? Yeah. Um, well, so during Goldman, because I was marking the books. And so what that means is like an analyst, like you're marking the books for her P&L every single day. So a Goldman rule in the in the SEC is like, you have to take off 10 days consecutively without having any tie to your blackberry at the time. And I that was amazing, right? Like you fully got 10 days off. You didn't have to work. So I was like, I'm going to go climb Kilimanjaro. So I moved to, I went to Tanzania, climb Kilimanjaro. And I loved just the experience of Africa. Like it was just so new and like nothing was there. There's no infrastructure. And so I came back to New York and then Dodd Frank changes were happening with like the rules of Wall Street where you couldn't invest like proprietary trading anymore. My boss left and I was like, okay, well, time to reset. This is the opportunity. I was interested and started to like me, people in the world at techno serve, which is a nonprofit that connects business people to help job creation in emerging markets. And so an opportunity came up in Mozambique as an investment advisory consultant. So I didn't get paid for a year and a half, but they cover your food and your hotel and like you're lodging. And so I think I actually saved money with that even because like the cost of living there is also drastically lower. So cheap. It's very cheap. Yeah. And it's the best food and like seafood is like literally right there. It's in Mozambique. And like, it was just an amazing experience. I definitely got like malaria once. But yeah, you had this pressed juice company company. Why did you sell it? It was time. And I was doing it for 2012 to 2019. So like 78 years and I hadn't earned out through COVID. I was just like, I'm done. And like, I think it was a combination of like, I just stopped learning because with in the cold pressed juice space when you have stores and locations, it's a formula. It's like you kind of know the four wall unit economics and like, you're not really learning as much. And I am a learner. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs, I think there's three types of entrepreneurs, right? There's a creator, there's a builder, and then there's the ender. And I am kind of a builder, but I'm definitely more at the creative heart, like I am a zero to $20 million kind of like growth rate within the next the first three, five years of the business. And so that was kind of where I was at. And I was like, okay, well, like, I'm approaching the building and ending stage now. And I'm like, I think it's time to kind of like hand this off to the next person. My eye was already at apothecary, like I wanted to, I don't want to be a big fish in a small, small pond, like I'd rather be fighting for like the big pond, even as a small fish. And I'd rather be around people like that and like learn. So you're opening, you had a little location, a little pop up at the line hotel. Yeah. Pretty dope. What did you learn? What are you learning in real time? So we open officially this weekend. So the landing page on our website's officially up today. And so we officially open this weekend. But we've learned, let's see, I think herbs are still really new to people. You know, we're slowly and knowingly kind of going in opening this location as like an educational museum. Like I think it was a conscious effort to say, what would apothecary look like outside of its website? Like if you actually ask the question to many brands, I think like visualizing what a brand looks like like this even like what does their store look like? It helps to actually like, provide a brand ethos and halo around the company that I think we never really invested in until this point. And so an opportunity came up where we could partner with the line, have our like a co branded jetset pharmacy product in all of the hotel rooms across DC, LA, Texas and then soon to come SF. And so we just jumped on the opportunity. It's one of those things that like you just don't say no until you try, right? You know, you're learning. So what we've learned is herbs are still like a very new thing for a lot of the Western kind of world. We're also learning that like we want to drive in more educational events and like intimate hours around like certain topics like adaptogens or herbs for stress, bringing in an expert around like making an herbal tincture like bringing in and that people are really craving IRL right now, I think like especially for thinking of a recession, like you're not you're going to spend money while getting an experience at the same time. And so I think that's where we're going to double down for the rest of the summer as well. And in terms of what we're like the dumb quite what are the things you have to debunk every time just like the top three. So I can imagine one of them being do I feel it? Do I get it? Am I smarter tomorrow? Like I can imagine someone asking you, yeah, like, oh, how do I know? Yeah, it worked. Do you get that a lot? What are the things you get a lot that annoy you? I, it's less like, does it work so much as how do I use it? Okay, I think that's a big one. What do you mean? Like, do you snort it? Like, yeah, look at this. It's like, how do I, how do I use it? Yeah. So it's not it's not so into like it's on the packaging. It literally says add liquid into it. But it's not so intuitive where you just open the can and drink it. And so it's not like a squeeze bottle. It's more of how do I ingest it? How do I ingest it? What is the best way to consume it? And so I think from that perspective, we're also realizing like we need to be a content machine. And so at the store level, also creating engaging content every day on like a daily dose recipe for this day, a daily recipe for this, like showcasing how to use it, but also like a new format is needed. So we're we're going to come out with our first sort of like new format in Q4 outside of powders. That's more of a ready to consume product versus something like this we have to activate it. It's liquid, but it's not a drink. Okay. Yeah. So you're just pouring something. Yeah, I got it. It's more potent. Yeah. So with powders, what's interesting is like it's food is medicine, right? So you combine it with foods and that is how you consume it. But in the in the east, you actually boil herbs like whole herbs, usually for like 2448 hours and drink it. Yeah, exactly. People aren't going to do that here though. So we want to make we're going to do that for them. And then they'll have that sort of tincture and or potent extract at their fingertips. And all they need to do is like take it under their tongue. So it's actually much easier and consumable. And we think of it more as like, how do we get into your daily dosing routine and like velocity as well. So when I think about, okay, so let's talk about like the content and what that looks like. So in my head, I can go, okay, this meet Diego, Diego has coffee every day, blah, blah, Diego adds a little bit of to the coffee. What are some of the other moments, like even people listening or just like, when do I use it? I don't drink coffee. Maybe I just drink cheap. Maybe I don't like it in my morning routine. And so when would you like, what are all the opportunities for the content besides coffee? Yeah. So we have a great, our number one skew is called stop your whining, right? So it's stop your wine ink. And it's literally a blend for alternative wine. And so it's red. And you just add it in your wine. Well, no, it's, it's too, it's an alternative to it. So you get the same wine glass. The moment you're like, I'm going to like, open that glass at five o'clock. Can you put it in your wine though? I mean, you could defeat the purpose. It's also like, it's like chaga to wine. I mean, you could, I haven't done it, but let me know. Diego, I would love to see that. You could add a tiny liquid, right? I'm just saying. It's like, when are you getting the maximum benefit out of it? Until we, until we've destroyed the opportunity. I mean, like, actually, like this, this, this drink, yeah, drink. I would add this with stop your whining, because it's not alcoholic. Okay. It has a little bit of sweetness to it. It's sparkling. And so the sparkling nature is what we're, you know, is like a great alternative for alcohol. It's like you get that fun kind of component. So I can put some of this maca in this Aurebora. You could. I'm going to do it. You don't really could. But there's also like the dosing spoon. And that's part of the ritual. And so anyway, the stop your whining, essentially, you would add that to like sparkling water or a little bit of juice. And then use a hand frother and mix it up. And then you take a drink. Yeah. What else? What other opportunities are there? We have a blend called blew me away, which is like literally blue. You actually. I ingested it. So delicious. It's amazing. People add that to milk. And you can have that as like a like a blue latte. And so that is also like a content thing. People love taking photos of it because like who knew you could drink blue milk like smurf milk. Like straight out of Star Wars. Literally straight out of Star Wars. But a lot of our blends again are like alternatives to X. And so we have that wine blend. That's an alternative to wine. We have slay all day, which is an alternative to coffee. We have things that like are to not create new routines in your life because you have enough of that already. It's to kind of make your incurrent ones better. We'll be right back to the episode after this quick break. Warby Parker offers everything you need for happier eyes. And you can shop with them online or in stores. Check out Warby Parker's home try on program for yourself. Order five pairs of glasses to try at home for free. It ships free to you and includes a prepaid return shipping label. Try five pairs of glasses at home for free at warbyparker.com slash ship it. This episode is also brought to you by Fight Camp. They offer thousands of classes with new workouts added each week. So you'll always find something new. You can get a killer workout done in as little as 20 minutes. And don't worry if you don't have any boxing experience because Fight Camp has your back. They've created programs specifically designed to teach you the basics of boxing and kickboxing so you can build a strong foundation. Fight Camp even comes with all the gear you need to start boxing from home including a freestanding punching bag boxing gloves quick hand wraps and smart punch trackers that provide real time data during your workout. So head on over to join Fight Camp dot com slash start up to storefront and get free shipping with your first order. Now back to the episode. People after covid can't sleep and it's like also very sad. Why is that why is that the case. I mean we're on our phones so much more than we were before. Like we didn't we don't go out as much you know as we used to. And so like that routine has now been replaced by like staying at home and working and then maybe opening a bottle of wine and then watching some TV being on your phone and then going to bed versus before you live in LA and you go out and you'd have that freedom. And I'm sure it's coming back now. But covid is still a thing. And so but mental health I think I think covid also made people a lot more woke quote unquote or aware of the problems that they never really acknowledged in the past. And it kind of like came to a head during covid and kind of recovering through that. And so I should try the sleep one. I can't sleep though. I don't know. It's weird. It's like this is the problem right. So I'm like all right I'm going to bed and I could have played three hours of tennis. So like my body should be tired. Like I'm you know I'm tired. I had a good meal. I had my one glass of wine. I'm like all right it's been done. I think. And then I go into bed and I'm like man I can't wait for tomorrow. I can't wait for that all day in the morning. And I'm just like oh man like if I go to bed now. Do I wake up. Do I do I know I was sleeping. How soon does a lot. And I play this in my head until it's like one or two a.m. Oh my God. And then I just go to bed and I wake up at like six thirty six forty five no alarm every day five or six hours of sleep every day. And I'm like I'm almost to the point now where I'm like maybe I just don't need to sleep. Maybe my body is like you really don't need it. I think we're both looking at you like. No it's weird. It's weird like I'll have days where I play three hours of tennis. I have exhausted my mind. So I know that's also just doing its thing. And I wake up and I'm fine. And I'm like I'm ready to do that. I need to solve 14 hours of night. It really. No makes a good one for seven eight ish. That wouldn't surprise me. I'd say I'd say eight. Solve eight at night. That's too much. Yeah. Anyway. Everyone is different. I need for sure. Yeah for sure. But I needed I needed it. I don't know because before I was so disciplined like eleven bedtime. Six forty five like it just happened. I had a nice rhythm going and now it's all broken. I love waking up at five a.m. I wake up at five every day. And like that happened during COVID because our team is mostly on the East Coast. And so yeah. I love waking up at five. It's like you get everything done before everyone kind of wakes up in some ways and then you go to yoga and then like the life wait everyone else kind of wakes up. And it's like it's like you just you've already done half your day. It feels like which is amazing. Like what's the thing that keeps you up at night. And I don't mean like a literal competitor. I mean yeah like what's the culture. Right. What is the societal thing in America that you're competing with. Pharmaceutical. Yeah. For sure. Like everyone just used to go on to like a Walgreens getting the drug. Yeah. The it's the drug I think part where the behavior of that. Yeah. The quicker fix. OK. And I think of one actually this I thought this was really important feedback for us is like when we were doing the diligence and investor process like we met one investor that was like like for our later rounds of like growth rounds. And so she was like don't look at like like stop your whining. Look at that as an entire market in itself of like all sober curious alternative alcohol. Like that is a massive market. Approach that with its own unique go to market strategy coffee say all day approach that with a different one. Melatonin. Right. That's a totally different approach with sleep laxatives the over abuse of that in the world of like over the counter supplements and our follow your gut blend. So there's just so like our time is so big. So it's almost kind of confusing sometimes. And that's what probably keeps me up is like how to approach a product. Totally have so many products. Yeah. It's like 40. I just think about Chaga and like what they did with Chaga Chino. Right. And it's just like one. But someone's doing a whole business on just coffee and they called it the Chaga Chino. And it's like that's interesting. And so do you feel like you could. So an entrepreneurship like Paul Graham plant one flag at a time. Right. This person tells you you have four flags that you could plant at one time and probably successfully. Yeah. That's hard. Right. Very hard. It's also a long game. Like I think like that's also the thing that we've learned is like despite the growth that we've achieved. We're a long game. Like we're creating a totally never done disruptive industry of preventative health care. Do you think it's faster if you pick maybe not coffee but maybe like the sleep one and just go look we're going to attack this for this quarter. It's going to bring in people from that world. And we're already seeing the signals working. Do you ever. We do do that. So like January was Stop Your Wining. It was all about sober curiosity 30 days. Dry January. And so we do January is that and then February is all about like libido and mood boosting in Valentine's Day and baby bloomers like new moms. I like that. And then spring is all about skin and renewal and then April was all about detoxification and going into summer. So we do focus on like an herb or blend of the month and our content rotates with that. Do you ever think about just creating separate brands? We do. We do own its own gram. We do own thing. Yeah. I mean that requires just money. I think. Yeah. Like doubling down on like an apothecary like so our advisory business. Right. The education. That's another right. It's a subsidiary of apothecary Inc. So it's we've completely created a separate subsidiary. And so I think of that as like one leg of the stool and then our stores will be a second leg of the stool. You get last mile one you know really quick delivery. So we'll partner with Uber Eats to do that with like like you forgot to order online and you want to get it right away. So using our stores as mini distro hubs and using the stores as custom blends. So we can actually make custom blends for you. Yeah. With all the different herbs and we make a Diego blend. Yeah. I need a Diego blend. Exactly. You want some of my hair. That'll come. I'm in by the way. And we're going to launch that probably in the next month or so. But we're launching a bunch of educational stuff first like text based herbalist consultations next week. So it's text based. It's not you guys don't have like an app you're on. Do you want to do that? Is that something you'll pursue? I mean, maybe you could even partner. I mean, there's so many meant there's so many apps. Yeah. I think at larger scale for sure. I mean, I think we need to do a new website first and our rebrand. So like our rebrand is going to open up and unlock a lot of the like inefficiencies. No, it's changing the packaging like our mouth at the mouth of this bottle is way too small. Like we want an opening of like a spoon to just like fit in, right? This is like a mini juice bottle. I got this for my first business. And so we've come this far with this thing, but we want to make it just more accessible for the customer. And frankly, like I think no one's done this before because the education piece is so expensive. It takes time. That is our barrier to entry, but it's also the hardest part of the business. So that's what I like about the if you. So I like the separate brand concept because you meet the customer with an already self diagnosed problem, right? So for me, it's like I have coffee every day. So adding something to that is simple. I can't sleep solving that problem in a different way is simple. You know, it just feels more efficient. It's interesting. Yeah, that's an interesting I could be totally off point. But like I just think about so what as you were saying, and I was like, how did I discover Chaga? Literally the coffee shop and they're like, oh, this guy came in, he's got, you know, people put some chaga in their coffee and I just Google Chaga. And I was like, yep, and we had him on our podcast and I love it. I've heard of the brand. It's great. It's like, but it's also it's weird. It's like that's an interesting customer journey that when you think about it, it is not scalable and it's hard and it requires a whole team to be boots on the ground going to every coffee shop in L.A. Doing sales, convincing this people that probably don't know anything about adaptogens to trust you, test you, whatever it's in your coffee and then and then tell their customers about you. And so it's like, what on earth is that? It's hard. But yeah, I don't I just think about it's interesting. I don't know. I could be a rare it's a good point. And you see that a lot in the DTC space right now, right? It's like a ton of roll ups, like people like rolling up companies with like Thrascio is like a great example. But I will say is like, we use our hero products as a gateway drug, like a quote unquote gateway drug, right? We're like they enter in through one of our top three SKUs and then they expand the pharmacy. They're like, OK, this works. What else can I get? And then that's when they book the consultation too, because it's like, OK, I like this, but I don't know now for my hormones or my sleep or this. How are they judging it works? That they're just feeling better and they're giving that feedback? Or is it? Yeah, it's mostly free or skeptical skeptical box. What is the thing that they go? Oh, it's most so right now to exactly to the point of like it's mostly been just like it's been two years since we've launched the company. It's only mostly have hit the curious and informed customers where they already kind of know. So for the skeptical ones, that's why we're doing that at home diagnostic test and we're investing into some more before and after studies and like consumer studies of like holding a sample study of 300 people for do not disturb wearing a wearable and then after one month measuring like how better how much more did you sleep? How much faster did you sleep? Did you wake up during the night and like publishing that into a piece of content that is within the customer journey post purchase? Well, listen, thanks for coming on the podcast. Tell everyone where they can find you and where they can send you a hair sample. That's awesome. You're going to get so much mail. I know, right? But like, let's hold up on the hair until September when I have the test ready to go. Because otherwise the USPS is going to look at you very differently. Yeah, I know. And I'm like, I can't really actually kind of cringe you with hair. It's like, and feet and feet. But anyway, you can find me at shizokusa on Instagram if you'd like that or apothecaryco, which is my company, APOTHEKRYCO on our handle or apothecary.co as our website. Hey, it's Owen and Oscar here. We just want to say thank you so much for making it to the end of the episode. If you want to see the full uncut, unhinged, unedited episode, go check out our paid model on Apple Podcasts. We can't wait to see you again next week and maybe Oscar will stay in my arms.