She built one of Japan's leading organic food brands from a $2,000 investment at a Tokyo farmers market. Fourteen years later, she moved to New York with her daughter to start over — alone, in a language she taught herself, in a market she thought she understood.
She didn't.
To enter the U.S. market and position for an IPO, she hired three C-suite executives and built the structure she believed the next chapter required. Within a year, the overhead nearly bankrupted the company. The executives weren't the whole problem. The assumptions underneath the decision were — and she didn't see it until it had cost her a year.
This conversation is about building in a market you don't fully understand yet, the cost of trusting a playbook past its expiration date, and the moment that actually kept her going.
Better Than Butter:
betterthanbutterusa.com
Midori on Instagram:
@midori_betterthan_butter
Midori on LinkedIn:
linkedin.com/in/midori-sato
If you recognized something in this conversation — joesteele.com.
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CHAPTERS
0:00 — She almost went bankrupt the next day
0:30 — From $2,000 to 3,000 stores
4:27 — The Silicon Valley trip that changed everything
5:50 — Moving to New York: what she thought vs. what she found
9:30 — Building the executive structure
11:44 — When she realized the hires were wrong
16:13 — Four bankruptcies
20:22 — The daughter decision
23:33 — Taylor and the shift
26:52 — Building the U.S. chapter differently
28:44 — Better Than Butter: where to find it