How I started a business through yakuzen: what I would tell you

Meeting yakuzen was a great turning point in my life.

I had been working in digital marketing and in-person marketing for a department store, running hard at launching a D2C apparel business. Before I knew it I had reached my limit in mind and body, and a doctor ordered me to stop. Overwork and psychological strain had come together and my body was crying out. Out of a sense that things could not go on, I started making time to face my own body.

The doctor I saw prescribed kampo and I recovered dramatically. From there I grew interested in Chinese-medicine yakuzen, the source of kampo. I was struck to the core by the idea of settling the body by putting what ingredients do to work. The thought that if I had known sooner I need not have suffered so much gradually turned into a sense of mission: that I wanted to pass on what makes yakuzen worth having to as many people as possible.

In my case, meeting yakuzen opened a door not only to a way of staying well but to a new career. I earned the Kokusai Yakuzenshi (international yakuzen practitioner) qualification in 2020 and, while facing my own constitution, decided to build an online check-based subscription service that makes yakuzen easy to bring in.

The first steps in a yakuzen business, and the walls I ran into

The road after deciding to start a business was anything but smooth.

The first thing I ran into was how little the word yakuzen was known. Many people came with preconceptions: that it was bitter like kampo medicine, or that it needed special materials and looked hard. Getting the value of the service across was a struggle. My marketing background helped, but holding both specialist yakuzen knowledge and practical skill together was hard too.

What was particularly hard was defining the audience. Without being clear about who you are delivering what value to, the business loses its axis. After a good deal of trial and error, I narrowed it to busy people today who still want to look after their health.

In the early days I was full of anxiety. Would this business actually stand up? Would I be recognised as a specialist? Those thoughts crossed my mind. But precisely because yakuzen had saved me, I could believe in its value. That belief has held me up whenever things got hard.

To anyone who has just started down the road of building a business: do share what you want to try with the people around you. Opportunities turn up in unexpected places.

Standing out, and how to win customers

Making a yakuzen business work also depends on standing out from other services.

I have just launched an online service for learning yakuzen called Yasai Yakuzen, so let me set out what I made sure of.

I felt that many people pictured special ingredients and complicated cooking when they heard yakuzen, so I built the concept of vegetable yakuzen around vegetables you can buy at the supermarket. That gave us something new to offer: yakuzen anyone can bring into daily life.

Next came the online course. We made more than 40 videos and built a programme covering everything from the basics of yakuzen to practical use. It came to be adopted not only by individuals but by companies as part of their workplace wellness, which widened the business.

Restaurants, cafés and food manufacturers also increasingly asked us to develop menus and products with yakuzen elements, and the B2B side grew considerably.

What I learned from failing in a yakuzen business

Making a business last depends on building a steady revenue model. Funds, resources and strengths differ from person to person, so working out where yours lie is what gets you closer to making it work.

I learned a great deal from failing, too. I started with a yakuzen soup subscription, but logistics costs and the difficulty of managing stock made it hard to earn from, and I pulled out. That taught me that offering knowledge and services suits my business model better than offering physical goods.

My advice to anyone about to start a yakuzen business is not to chase perfection from the outset, but to start small and widen gradually. I will admit that I brought in a large system at the start and failed badly. So I would suggest starting with small workshops, improving the service as you watch the response, and widening the business in stages.

Not depending on a single source of income, but having several pillars, is worth doing too. Spreading the risk against changes in the market and the unexpected makes the business steadier.

Daily practice as a yakuzen entrepreneur

If you are going into business as a yakuzen specialist, nothing matters more than practising it yourself.

I start each day with a yakuzen tea matched to how I feel and to the season. Chrysanthemum and rosemary to support the Liver in spring, hibiscus and lemongrass to care for the Heart and Small Intestine in summer: I make a point of daily care in step with the turn of the seasons.

To keep the content of my courses and consulting current and practical, I regularly develop new recipes and test how they work. For a complaint such as tiring easily, for instance, I develop a recipe using ingredients that replenish qi, then actually try it.

That daily practice and study is what wins customers' trust.

What I value as a founder is telling my own experience plainly. Sharing openly what it was like to collapse from overwork and how I recovered through yakuzen won me the sympathy of people struggling in the same way.

What I work at in keeping the business going is listening to customers and evolving the service. Course students asked for more advice by constitution, and in response we added the constitution check and individual advice.

Making it as a yakuzen entrepreneur takes not only specialist knowledge but marketing and business skill. While drawing on my previous marketing career, I make a point of learning what I lack, and sometimes of borrowing a specialist's help.

If you are thinking of starting a business too, drawing on your strengths while keeping the humility to learn what you lack is the short route to making it work.

Two things that make a yakuzen business work

From my own experience, here are two important points for making a yakuzen business work.

The first is building expertise and credibility. Yakuzen bears directly on health, so a firm base of knowledge is essential. Beyond earning the Kokusai Yakuzenshi qualification, I never stop learning. I follow the latest research and cases and keep what I know up to date. That is what wins customers' trust.

The second is being easy to follow and easy to act on. However fine the knowledge, it creates no value if it does not reach the person. I make a point of translating the complicated concepts of Chinese medicine into terms people today can follow. I describe qi deficiency, for instance, as being like a phone with a flat battery, using everyday images to help it land.

Making a yakuzen business work also takes passion and patience.

When I started, the word yakuzen itself was little known, and getting its value across was a struggle. But by publishing steadily, without giving up, and widening the circle of people who understood, I built the foundation I have now.

If you are starting a yakuzen business, do not chase results immediately; value the season of sowing. The day when steady effort bears fruit will come.

Where the yakuzen business goes from here

There is a great deal of possibility ahead for yakuzen as a business. As people grow more health-conscious and more interested in preventive care, attention to yakuzen has risen steadily. Since the coronavirus in particular, awareness of resilience and of managing one's health has grown, and interest in building health through food has strengthened further.

What I am watching for next is joining it with technology. Using AI for individual constitution checks, or building an app that proposes the yakuzen recipes that best suit a person: bringing technology in would let us deliver what yakuzen offers to far more people.

Yakuzen programmes as part of corporate workplace wellness should also see demand rise further. Better staff health feeds straight into productivity, so I want to put effort into widening what we offer companies.

If a yakuzen business interests you, do have a look at the Yasai Yakuzen website as well. The world of everyday yakuzen built on vegetables opens up there.