YFP 307: Pharmacy Innovators with Dr. Izabella Wentz (The Thyroid Pharmacist)

Best-selling author and entrepreneur Dr. Izabella Wentz (the Thyroid Pharmacist) joins Dr. Corrie Sanders on this segment of The Pharmacy Innovators sponsored by First Horizon.

About Today’s Guest

Izabella Wentz, PharmD, FASCP, is an internationally acclaimed thyroid specialist and a licensed pharmacist who has dedicated her career to addressing the root causes of autoimmune thyroid disease after being diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis in 2009. She is the author of three books on Hashimoto’s: Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis Lifestyle Interventions for Finding and Treating the Root Cause, Hashimoto’s Food Pharmacology, and Hashimoto’s Protocol, which became a #1 New York Times bestseller.

Episode Summary

On this episode of The Pharmacy Innovators segment of the YFP podcast, sponsored by First Horizon, Dr. Izabella Wentz (The Thyroid Pharmacist) joins Dr. Corrie Sanders. Izabella is a pharmacist turned business owner and best-selling author. After being diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease, Izabella took steps to turn her own questions into an answer for others, founding two companies, and writing three books!

Key Points From the Episode

• Izabella shares her path to working in pharmacy.
• Life after graduation; Izabella’s first jobs, and how managing her own Hashimoto’s disease influenced her path. 
• Izabella talks about the process and decisions she made entering into her current business.  
• How Izabella approached writing and promoting her book. 
• Reflections on the writing process and the lessons that Izabella has learned along the way.  
• The practical and financial steps that Izabella took when setting up the business.  
• Important moments of growth for Izabella’s business with regard to products and personnel.   
• Izabella lays out her product suite, the different books she has written, and her supplement company.
• Understanding the momentum and media coverage that Izabella has generated. 
• Considering how Izabella’s new book can help pharmacists right now.
• The impact that Izabella’s book has had and some of the amazing interactions she has had with readers!  
• Izabella talks about entrepreneurship as a way to shape her own destiny. 
• Advice from Izabella for following a passion and a unique path in the world of pharmacy. 
• How and where to find Izabella online.

Episode Highlights

“I do this full time. I help people with Hashimoto’s take charge of their own health, and help with all kinds of health issues and manage their lifestyle to get them into remission.” — Izabella Wentz [0:09:54]

“I knew that there was a community of people like me who had been struggling with symptoms.” — Izabella Wentz [0:15:37]

“Hashimoto’s is one of the most common autoimmune conditions in the world, and one in five women might get diagnosed at some point in their lifetime.” — Izabella Wentz [0:16:09]

“I always wanted to write a book. Ever since I was little girl, I would make up books in my head.” — Izabella Wentz [0:19:58]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

• 5 Easy Steps to Get a Home Loan
• Thyroid Pharamcist
• Izabella Wentz on Instagram
• Adrenal Transformation Protocol
• The Thyroid Secret
• Hashimoto’s Protocol
• Rootcology
• Dr. Mark Hyman
• GSK
• Morningstar
• IFM 
• A4M
• Dr. Alan Christianson
• JJ Virgin
• Mindshare Collaborative
• HarperOne
• YFP Planning: Fee-Only Financial Planning for Pharmacists
• YFP Real Estate Investing Facebook Group
• YFP Disclaimer

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] CS: Hi, guys. Corrie Sanders here, host of the Pharmacy Innovators segment of the YFP Podcast. Pharmacy Innovators is designed for pharmacists navigating the entrepreneurial journey. In this series, we will feature individual founder stories and strategies that will help guide current and aspiring pharmacy entrepreneurs.

Today, we featured Dr. Izabella Wentz, who successfully developed her national brand as the thyroid pharmacist. Dr. Wentz is author of three New York Times or Wall Street Journal best-selling books, and has been featured in places like USA Today, and Men’s Health, and on the Fox News Channel and 700 Club. Our discussion highlights the importance of intentional growth, networking outside of pharmacy, and leveraging experience to find a career that aligns with personal passions. Dr. Wentz recently released her latest book, the Adrenal Transformation Protocol that will be linked in the show notes. Without any further ado, and as our first guest on the Pharmacy Innovators segment, Dr. Izabella Wentz.

[ADVERTISEMENT]

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First Horizon offers a professional home loan option aka doctor or pharmacist home loan that requires a 3% downpayment for a single-family home or townhome for first time homebuyers has no PMI and offers a 30-year fixed rate mortgage on home loans up to $726,200. The pharmacist home loan is available in all states except Alaska and Hawaii, and can be used to purchase condos as well. However, rates may be higher, and a condo review has to be completed. To check out the requirements for First Horizon’s pharmacist home loan and to start the pre-approval process, visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/home-loan. Again, that’s yourfinancialpharmacist.com/home-loan.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:02:10] CS: Izabella, why don’t we start with a really easy question. Let’s just start with your journey into the profession. Where did you go to pharmacy school and how did you get led into pharmacy in the first place?

[0:02:20] IW: Well, I grew up in Poland and I grew up in a medical clinic. Our residence was actually attached to the medical clinic because my mom was a town doctor. I would go everywhere with my mom. I don’t know, I don’t think they had babysitters back in the day in Poland. I remember I would go to pharmacy runs with her. I stepped into the pharmacy, and the pharmacists were just lovely, and loved looking at all of the medicines on the shelf. My mom told me that pharmacists help people, and they give them medicine to heal them. I thought, I must have been maybe five or six years old, and I thought to myself, “I’d like to be a pharmacist one day, right?” 

As I was going through high school, as I was going through trying to figure out what I wanted to do in life, I was really interested in chemistry, and I was really interested in helping people, and I was hoping to maybe find a cure for disorder. I had this amazing teacher in high school, Mr. Airy, it was called public service curriculum class that I joined, and he would give us all kinds of exposures to – if we were interested as a junior in high school to, you know, in like social work, then he would give us an internship at like a clinic, where we’d be cleaning up the kids’ toys. But we thought it was important as high school students. We got to experience some of these amazing, credible professions. 

I told him that I was interested in pharmacy, and so he’s like, “Oh, okay. Interesting.” Then a week later, he comes back to me with this fax of some sort, and he’s like, “You have to call this pharmacist and they’re a few towns over from where you are, but they’re looking to hire pharmacy technicians. I had just turned 16, and so I went to this job interview, and I got hired as a pharmacy technician. I don’t know if this still holds true, but I was the youngest person that became a certified pharmacy technician in Illinois at age 17. And I started working in the pharmacy at Walgreens, and loved being a pharmacy technician, and really enjoyed it, and really loved learning about medications. I really loved learning about physiology, and biochemistry, and medications. I went to University of Illinois for undergrad, and majored in pre pharmacy, and then — go [inaudible0:04:36].

Then, after that, I applied to Midwestern University College of Pharmacy in Downers Grove, Illinois, and was fortunate enough to be accepted and was in a beautiful class for four years and got my PharmD in 2006.

[0:04:53] CS: Amazing. Amazing. I love that you had such a great read on the profession so early on in your life. That’s really, really an amazing opportunity that just led you to step right into the path of full force, it sounds like.

[0:05:06] IW: Absolutely, I definitely knew what I was getting myself into, and I was excited, and I really enjoyed it. I was super excited to learn more about medications, and all of the things, right?

[0:05:19] CS: That’s right. The never-ending list of things that have to do with pharmacy practice. So you graduated from the University of Illinois. Then, where did you transition from there? What was your first job in pharmacy? Did you stay in the community setting? Or did you ultimately transition out of that space pretty quickly? What that looked like for you?

[0:05:36] IW: When I graduated, my fiancée at the time, who’s now my husband was accepted into graduate school in Arizona. I ended up working for a company that was doing phone consulting. It was like a hospice, Excel RX, an East Coast-based company where I did that for some time, where I was in a clinical position working with hospice patients, and the nurses, and taking phone orders, making some adjustments, and recommendations based on that. Then I ended up wanting to stay a little bit closer to home. I ended up working at a pharmacy at Target Pharmacy in Scottsdale, Arizona.

After that, my husband ended up getting his MBA. It was a master’s program and we moved. At that point, we moved to Los Angeles, California, and I had had a little bit of trouble getting my license over in California. It’s like such a long process. Oh my goodness, right?

[0:06:37] CS: Right. Notoriously difficult.

[0:06:41] IW: So I worked as an intern at Lorena Pharmacy in East Los Angeles, which was a fabulous experience. They filled just a super, super busy neighborhood pharmacy, where people would walk in and everybody spoke Spanish, and got some really great experience with some prescriptive authority, and kind of collaborative practice agreements with physicians in the community. That was a super fun experience. 

Then after that, I, I really wanted to use my clinical skills. We ended up moving again. I wanted to focus on helping people with developmental disabilities because that had been my prior work in my rotations. A big interest of mine in high school, in pharmacy school. I ended up working at a case management company in California in the South Bay Area. I was the clinical consultant pharmacist on staff. I helped social workers to help their patients have the best potential medication outcomes. What that meant is, I was going into group homes a lot of times, and looking at people’s medications, and making sure they weren’t having any adverse drug reactions. I was oftentimes making a lot of recommendations to get people off of drugs or perhaps recommending medications that they should have been on, perhaps recommending some lifestyle changes, looking for alternatives for them. That was a nontraditional route. 

Then, I moved back to Chicago for my husband’s job. At that point, I worked for GlaxoSmithKline in pharmaceutical sales, which was a really fantastic experience as well. I got to see a little bit of how the inner workings of that went. Kind of throughout that process, I was actually diagnosed with Hashimoto’s when I was at the consulting pharmacist job. I was going into different pharmacies as part of my sales rep position, and I remember talking to these brilliant pharmacists. Some of them had their own pharmacies, and they were giving me all this information that I hadn’t really learned about at this point. And they were talking about lifestyle medicine and integrative medicine.

I would come and talk to them about asthma and our asthma drugs. They were like, “Did you know that fish oil can be really helpful for inflammatory conditions?” This was really fascinating. They would talk to me about probiotics, and they would talk to me about adrenal dysfunction and adrenal fatigue. I was like, this is really, really cool. My job was to actually call on pharmacies as a pharmaceutical sales rep, and I got to meet so many brilliant pharmacists in the Chicago land area.

Throughout that process, I really got into like the integrative lifestyle functional medicine. I used to drive a lot in pharmaceutical sales. So I started reading Dr. Mark Hyman’s audiobooks, started listening to them while I was driving. I just started utilizing a lot of these functional medicine things, started doing my own research, and I was able to get my Hashimoto’s into remission while working in pharmaceutical sales, and then later in public health. Ended up writing a book about Hashimoto’s and it’s been 10 years since it’s been released. Right now, I do this full time is I help people with Hashimoto’s take charge of their own health, and help all kinds of health issues manage their lifestyle to get them into remission. I talk about using the right medications. I also talk about all the other preventative measures and lifestyle things. The root causes. 

Kind of a long resume. We moved a lot because of my husband’s job. I felt like I always had to learn a lot of new things and I had to get really good at networking, and kind of finding the right opportunities in every city that I lived in. We lived in Los Angeles, we lived in the South Bay, we lived in Chicago, we lived in Scottsdale. We now live in Austin, Texas. We’ve lived in Colorado. It was always – you really have to as a pharmacist, if you are looking for these opportunities outside of the traditional route, you really I feel like have to get good at connecting with others, and being able to figure out what your own possibilities might be.

[0:10:55] CS: I think you summed that up so, beautifully about being able to thrive in different environments, and being able to work with different groups of people, or being able to find a situation that you can contribute to, even though it might be different than the practice setting that you were in before. I mean, just based off how many times you moved, and what your career path looks like, before you even got diagnosed with Hashimoto’s, and ultimately got put on a little bit of a different trajectory just goes to show the great utility of a pharmacist. If you’re aware of tuning into your environment and the services that you can provide, how you can be successful as you move through different avenues of pharmacy and different areas of practice. Kudos to you, that’s really, really amazing.

That alone, even if we don’t talk about the rest of your career, I feel like it’s pretty inspiring in and of itself. Let’s talk about – and you’ve done a great job of really talking about this on different platforms, different podcasts, and different interviews in all over your website. Your diagnosis with Hashimoto’s, and what that ultimately looked like and where you were in your career during that time. 

I know you mentioned you are working for GSK. At what point did you start really diving into that disease state and thinking about, “Wow, okay. This is something that I want to pick up full time and this is how I’m going to do it”? Can you talk a little bit about kind of that transition, and getting all that information, and really taking control of the market, or doing a market analysis, and in finding where you can provide value?

[0:12:25] IW: Sure. I got diagnosed living in California working in the consultant role. My job was to help people who were not able to advocate for themselves to advocate for their health. A lot of times, I was working with people with developmental disabilities, and people with really complicated health conditions, multiple medications. Some of them had mental health diagnoses as well. Some of them had rare genetic disorders. There wasn’t really a standard of care for them.

A lot of times, I was looking for answers for my clients that weren’t necessarily readily available. I would look for answers on PubMed, I would look at patient forums. I would talk to parents who had children with maybe the same condition or try to get information from the genetic conferences for all of these different conditions to try to figure out like, what can I do for this person that has this rare condition. Can we utilize a different kind of therapy maybe that’s off label use or maybe something, right? Why is this beautiful little girl with cerebral palsy, why is she hitting herself all of a sudden? She’s nonverbal, what can that mean? What could that mean? 

A lot of times, I would learn that people who weren’t able to speak up and advocate for themselves were in pain, and that caused them to be aggressive against themselves, aggressive against others. Just throughout that position, I really had to study and learn a lot, and learn how to be a researcher to help advocate for my patients, and clients. Then when I got diagnosed myself, I was like, by that time I had learned, I had seen that not all doctors are created equally, right? Sometimes the answers are there if you dig deeper enough. One client that we had worked with had all these psychiatric issues that somehow vanished when she went on a gluten free diet. She had celiac disease, right? I was just like, “That’s really interesting.” Of course, there’s a lot of research to support that people with celiac disease, can have other manifestations outside of their gut health. These things can be helped by going gluten free. 

Then, I just got in this rabbit hole searching for answers for Hashimoto’s. First, I was kind of like paralysis by analysis. I was like, “What can I do better?” I ended up finally being able to kind of take charge when I was working at the GlaxoSmithKline, is when I had – just changed my diet around, and started adding some more things into my routine, learning so much from people that I was meeting along my journey. Then, I kind of ended up working in public health where we were looking at like a root cause analysis to healthcare quality improvement. I was like, “Ah, the root cause. What is the root cause?” I kind of took that approach that we utilized with people for health care, like adverse drug events, and things of that nature. I was like, “How can I do that in my own health?” 

I ended up dialing in and figuring out how to get myself really, really well. I didn’t necessarily like do a market analysis, right? So I didn’t do a business plan for Hashimoto’s. But I knew that there was a community of people like me who had been struggling with symptoms. They were Facebook groups that I was a part of, that people had Hashimoto; and they were searching for answers, just like I was. I thought to myself, once I kind of recovered my health, I need to write this down, and I need to get this out into the world so I could help more people.

That’s how I ended up getting started is, really just – I had a huge passion to get the message out to help people, knowing that Hashimoto’s is one of the most common autoimmune conditions in the world, and one in five women might get diagnosed at some point in their lifetime. This is very relevant. Synthroid has been the top prescribed drug like every other year, unless you count opioids. I mean, I wasn’t necessarily worried about people not having it. I know, somebody in my family said, it’s like, “Well, what if you reached everybody in Hashimoto’s?” I’m like, “Well, there’s a lot of people. I’m pretty sure they need my help, right?” “What if you reach every single person with Hashimoto’s?” “Well, that would be amazing if I did, but there’s so many of them.

I’m sure there’s at least a few of them that could benefit from the information. Honestly, it was just passion, and trying to get the message out there that got me started and got me excited about it. But I didn’t quit my job, right? So I wasn’t like, “Okay, I’m going to quit my job, write a book, and just be a full time Hashimoto’s expert.” I use the time after work to work on the book, once I [inaudible 0:17:09]. Then, I had flex time at work. I would do, you know, like a day off every two weeks if I worked an hour extra, right? I utilize that time very wisely to really work on my book. Then, once my book became more popular, and I used a lot of social media to get the word out about it, then I was like, “Okay. How do I replace my salary as a pharmacist?” Then, it was about 33 books a day. I had to sell that many books to replace my salary.

I got to that point, and when I was comfortable that the books were selling, I was able to replace my salary. That’s when I transitioned over to working full time as the thyroid pharmacist, which also coincided with my husband having a new opportunity in Amsterdam, Netherlands. I was not licensed in the Netherlands, nor did I want to become licensed. I was like, “Okay. It’s either this or nothing, right?

[0:18:09] CS: Here we go. Yes. It’s one thing to get licensed in another state, but it’s a whole another thing to try to look at licensure in another country, I’m sure.

[0:18:17] IW: Yes, in a foreign language and I was like – I just – I really need to focus on, this is my passion. I really, really want to help people, I feel like people could really benefit from kind of the dots that I’ve connected along my own journey. So 2014 is when we moved to the Netherlands, and I was doing this full time from that point forward.

[0:18:37] CS: Wow. That is amazing. I just want to highlight. I feel like you’ve said so many important things, just in that journey alone. One about learning that not all doctors are created equal. But you know, not all pharmacy school curriculums are created either and not every curriculum can fit in all the nuances, and intricacies, and off label uses of every single disease. From your own personal experience, really dove into finding that niche, and not even having to do market analysis, because you knew that niche already existed, you understood the need, and you really skipped – I mean, what would be a large amount of business plan steps or steps to create a business just based off your experience alone, which is – I mean, that’s so amazing that you knew that the work you were doing was going to be impactful just right off the bat because you were you were already in that space. Let’s talk a little bit too about when you’re writing your book, and I know you said you were, you were doing it after work and outside of your nine to five.

But what were some of the biggest lessons from that journey, and have you always had a passion for writing. How did you decide that, you know, a book is the best way I’m going to go about. Really creating this resource for my patients, and for people with Hashimoto’s. Why a book, why not a Facebook community, or a different means to engage with an audience? How did that come about?

[0:19:58] IW: I always wanted to write book. Ever since I was little girl, I would like make up books in my head. Fun fact is, my mom is an identical twin, and her daughter, Olivia, who looks like me lives in Poland, and she’s a novelist. She’s published four novels.

[0:20:15] CS: So it’s in your blood?

[0:20:17] IW: You know, they’re like fantasy fiction. The target audience is 17-year-old girls, and we used to be pen pals, right? I’ve always had a passion for writing. I used to write terrible poetry in my teens, and even enjoyed writing projects in undergrad, and in pharmacy school, right? That was always interesting and fun to me. I decided to write a book, because I also had another cousin in Poland that was diagnosed with a condition. I was like, “Okay. If I can write a book, and my mom can translate it, then at least, somebody will have a guide.” Then my husband who started running ultra-marathons, he had written a book about ultra-marathons, and he wrote this book and self-published it. He kind of paved the trail for me, right? Because he figured out how to do the self-publishing, and all of that.

Then I took a course called – what is it called? The Author Within. When I was living in Scottsdale, there’s this lovely gentleman from Sedona, who has crystals, and talks about how you can bird your book. He had a talk at a community college that I went to on my day off of pharmacy school. His method is basically, you just sit down, and you just keep writing, and you can take a little bit of time every day. So you spend an hour a day. If you have writer’s block, then you do editing. If you don’t try editing, then you do researching. But just like, spend an hour a day on this and just work on it.

I started it may be like in 2011. Then, the research, I got diagnosed in 2009. Research took a lot of time, but the book was published in 2013, in May. I was a very cathartic process. It’s like, by the time you’re almost done with your book, you can’t stamp it. It [inaudible 0:22:05] with every four of my books. It’s kind of like – I feel like tort. You know you’re almost done with it, where you just want to be done with and kind of feels like pregnancy when you’re like nine months pregnant, and you’re just like, I just don’t want that baby out, right?

[0:22:21] CS: Yes. Or like musicians, you hear about by the time the final edit is done, and they have to go to a concert, they hate their own music, because they’ve been working on it for so long. I’m sure it’s very, very similar. Izabella, you kind of answered my question. I was going to say, who were mentors in the writing space? How did you kind of navigate your way down that path? It sounds like, you know, it’s in your blood. You had an aunt who was going to help you, and then your husband, of course, had already written a book. But what about business – oh, he hadn’t written a book.

[0:22:50] IW: He had written a book, but my cousin, she actually wrote a book. She wrote books after I wrote my books. I feel like it’s amazing when somebody in your network does something. Because then, it makes it possible for everybody around you, right? I remember telling my friends in the pharmacy space that I was going to write a book about – that I was going to heal my Hashimoto’s, and I was going to write a book about how to heal Hashimoto’s to help other people with Hashimoto’s heal their Hashimoto’s. And I was going to do that full time and not work, and that was going to be my full-time job. They’re like, “Yes, great.”

[0:23:27] CS: Did you have any mentors in business? That’s a whole another thing, right? You’ve got the mentors in the publishing and the writing space. But where did you turn to for guidance, just with business in general, and running your business, what payroll looks like, and how you’re paying yourself, and getting an LLC started, all those business-oriented details. Did you turn to anybody or any resource for guidance in that respect? Or did you just kind of trial by fire, push forward, and see what happens?

[0:23:56] IW: I set up an LLC, like in our local towns. I just went in and I was like, “Okay. I need to have an LLC. My dad has his own business, so I got to ask him a lot of questions. I know in pharmacy school, we had a management class, so that was also very helpful. My husband has a degree in finance, and so that was super helpful, basic budgeting things. A lot of people within the business space, I know a lot of entrepreneurs, like they don’t count their money. I think in pharmacists, like counting is in our blood, right? 

It’s like you set up a spreadsheet and you say like, these are your expenses when you have a business and you count everything. We have a line item for like your pharmacy license renewal, you have a subscription for your website, how much does this professional education course you take? You go through, and you make a list of every single thing that you’re spending money on, and then you also have a list of all of your, you know, where’s the money coming from? Is it coming from consulting? Is it coming from books? Is it coming from so on and so forth?

You want to make sure those numbers are balanced every month. Because if not, if you’re spending more money than you’re making, then you have an expensive hobby, not a business, right? You have to manage that. I’m very fortunate enough. My husband has that degree in finance, and he was working for Morningstar at the time. He was busy with work, and he was so helpful to advise me, but I did go through a lot of working with accountants, and setting things up, and the bookkeepers, and so on and so forth. Then, as far as like setting that up, that’s kind of one part of it, right? As far as the marketing and the business end, I do have an amazing mentor for that.

[0:25:41] CS: Yes, that’s amazing. I so respect your story because it sounds like you were really building this business. Then it just happened where you and your husband needed to move, and it was the right time to jump, and all the stars aligned. And you were like, “Okay, here we go.” There’s a component of do or die at that point in your life, but you had spent so much time really building out your niche, and your product, and it just ended up ultimately working for you to be like, “Okay. I’m going to pull the trigger, and here we go, full steam ahead. We’re moving to Amsterdam.” 

But yes, all those other components can really bog someone down. I think having an idea, and having either that product, or that service in line is one great thing. But it’s so easy to get caught in the details, or analysis paralysis of really getting that business up and running. Thank you for sharing your resources, and just the importance of having people you can tap on within your own network, and the importance of mentors to help kind of fuzz through all the mess that can get caught in your head during a transition like that.

How has your business scaled over time. Let’s first talk about your books, and then I’ll let you elaborate because I know you’ve got a line of products that are actually in the shelf behind you right now, for those of you that are watching. Her books and her supplements are behind us. Let’s talk about how your business evolved in the products, and then also how it evolved with your team, and what that looks like, and what that timeline looked and felt like for you.

[0:27:03] IW: Sure. In 2013, I was working full time. Then, I launched my book in May of 2013. Then right around October is when I left my job, and started working on my business full time. Part of that was focusing on consulting. I would see clients with Hashimoto’s and help guide them on their own health journey. That is part of that. Then, also the book sales, right? Then, in 2014, I transitioned more to work focusing on the business full time. At that point, I had the book sales, and then I had consultations. I also set up an online dispensary where people could buy supplements for me that I was recommending, rather than having them go on like Amazon or try to – initially, I was like mailing them all out from home to people. That was like, “Okay. That’s just not happening, right?”

I set up an online dispensary that allowed people to buy really high-quality supplements from the online dispensary. Then, I collaborated with two amazing people, Andrea Nakayama and Dr. Alan Christianson. We created an educational summit for people with Hashimoto’s called The Hashimoto’s Institute, where we interviewed a whole bunch of experts. So, that was one other part of the business that I focused on in 2014. At that point, I was a solopreneur with my husband coming to help me after work, because that was a lot of work. I was working really, really long days, and having a lot of success, but a lot of things to manage. I was like, “Ugh.” I was writing my website articles, I was consulting, I was building out this platform, I was answering people’s questions through email, I was answering people on Facebook. It was a lot.

We were fortunate enough that our income was able to replace my husband’s salary at that point. So then in 2015, my husband and I moved to Boulder, Colorado, and he came to work for our business full-time. He was like our first employee and that was really fabulous. It was super fun that we both got to work from home and we got to go hiking with our dog. Then we brought on an online business manager to help us manage a lot of the moving pieces of having an online business. With that, she was able to hire a copywriter to take some of the load off of me to write things, and she was able to hire a designer, so these are all contractors. I made like the worst like art. Not my thing. I’m good at a lot of things. Drawing, and art, and web design, not my thing. 

[0:29:49] CS: It’s a different beast. It’s okay.

[0:29:52] IW: We hired somebody to make things look a little bit more pretty at that point. But prior to that, I had screenshots of things, and my drawings and word for our images. We brought on a wonderful team and then some customer service, because I was just getting so many emails with questions, that there was just – I couldn’t keep up, I could answer emails all day long and do nothing else, and I couldn’t get through them all. We ended up creating like a question database, because I realized that a lot of the questions were the same, right? We took some of our top questions, and then created answers, and then we hired people to go and provide those answers. 

Then, for whatever people were asking about, I would start writing articles about that. I hadn’t talked about what happens when you lose hair with Hashimoto’s. I ended up writing an article about that, so that my customer service team would have a resource to send to people asking questions. I think the business was just really built on helping people. People are like, what’s the secret? How did you grow so fast? How did you get to have over 400,000 followers on Facebook? How did you grow so quickly? You came out of nowhere. I was like, “I really just focused on every single person that reached out to me. I would try to help them and give them a little bit of an answer. I can’t provide medical advice over email, but you’re asking me these questions. I’ve written an article that will hopefully help you advocate for yourself, that will give you some tools, or here’s a copy of my book, it has pretty much all the information you need if you have Hashimoto’s.”

That was kind of the process in focusing on that. In 2017, we kind of had a big year, where we created a documentary series that reached over 500,000 people, called The Thyroid Secret. We brought in a lot of awareness about thyroid conditions that way, and then we also released my second book, The Hashimoto’s Protocol, and then a supplement line called Rootcology. In addition to that, I have a cookbook, and then I just am releasing my fourth book called The Adrenal Transformation Protocol in April. Then I have supplements, I have books, and then also online programs where I teach people how to take charge of their own health.

The program that I was trained in when I was working in public health was diabetes self-management program. My job was to go into various clinics, and teach practitioners, teach dietitians, or nurses, or pharmacists to run and try to set up these self-management programs, where it would be essentially like an educational group for patients. These empowered patients usually had better outcomes with diabetes, so I’m like, “I want to do the same thing for Hashimoto’s.” So I have Hashimoto’s self-management program that I created where people can take this online, and it’s 12 modules.

They can go through, learn about what lab tests do they need from a functional medicine perspective, how to make sure your thyroid hormones are optimal, how to reduce your thyroid antibodies, what are some potential triggers. It goes over like pretty much everything you need to know to take charge of your own health with Hashimoto’s. The online program is part of our product suite, as well as supplements.

[0:33:15] CS: Which is amazing. I want to highlight two things you said there, and one is about not really having to recreate the wheel, right? You looked at this diabetes model, and you were like, “Wow, this is something that I can apply to my specialty area, and be able to use that kind of structure and really take it, and run with it in a really meaningful way.” Even though it wasn’t necessarily market analysis specifically for Hashimoto’s, it’s great that you were able to take those lessons, and then apply them to your own business to help kind of streamline and guide where you were going. I think that’s really meaningful and that’s a great takeaway.

Then something else you said is, really staying true to your model of helping people. I think that probably opened a lot of doors for you, and dictated where your business was going, because you were like, “I have to answer all these emails. All these people need my help.” Then, having that constant revolving door of feedback of okay, this is what people need, here’s the articles that they’re looking for. These are the questions that they don’t have answered. I think that’s a really great meaningful way to connect with your audience, and then ultimately be able to provide them with something substantial that they can walk away with, after having an interaction with you. That’s so great.

The next question I want to ask is, you’ve gotten so much attention, and you alluded to this, in 2017, having a really big year, but you’ve been very modest throughout this entire conversation with some of the traction that you’ve had. I mean, you’ve been interviewed on the Wall Street Journal, and New York Times, The 700 Club. How did you ultimately tap in to really those big national conglomerations and really tap into this big national momentum? Where did that start, and then how did that evolve over the last few years?

[0:34:50] IW: I would say I’m a super friendly person, and I love meeting new people. So I would go to different conferences, where I would go to the IFM or A4M, and just try to meet different people. Eventually, one of the people that I met, Dr. Alan Christianson introduced me to a mastermind group that was hosted by, and it still is by JJ Virgin called the Mindshare Collaborative. I ended up meeting a lot of amazing, like- minded individuals there. It was a great kind of networking opportunity where I got to meet my agent, Celeste Fine. She’s my book agent. 

Then, my first book was self-published, but I was able to get a few book deals. HarperOne was a wonderful partner to work with. Then, of course, the publishers have amazing connections. So then, they were able to get me some media exposure. I think it’s just taking advantage of every opportunity too. Whenever I meet people, I’m always offering to help people. I will tell you that like nine out of 10 times, people don’t follow up. When people are always wanting to help others, and especially people that are maybe, you know, they see somebody that is just getting started. They have experience in that, and they’re happy to share, because sometimes it’s like, you go through the process of discovery, and you’re just like, “Oh, wow. I figured this out, and I’m just happy to share with another person how to do, maybe make it a little less, less of a steep of a learning curve.

Whenever people would offer to help me with something, I would always follow up. I would say like, “Hey, we met here, and you said something about this. You gave me your business card.” Hello, it’s me. Let’s follow up. I think a lot of people don’t do that. But at least in my experience, and I think those are some of the things my business coaches have said, as well, as like, most people don’t follow up on the opportunities that are presented to them.

[0:36:44] CS: Mm-hmm. That’s amazing. Amazing. It goes both ways, right? Especially in such a virtual world, I feel like everything can be connected through LinkedIn, or Facebook. But if you’re reaching out one on one in email, with a specific instance in mind, I feel like that connection just holds so much more weight and carries you even further to be able to advocate for your business. That’s really meaningful. Thank you. Thanks for sharing.

The last thing I want to talk about is the book that you have coming up, so you’re talking primarily to an audience of pharmacists, instead of maybe patients or physicians. Hopefully, this is a group that you really connect with? What do you want to talk about with this book? How can this book help pharmacists and patients? And how can pharmacists use this just in their career? Or how can they share this information with those that they help?

[0:37:31] IW: Sure. My new book, adrenal transformation protocol is focused on the stress response, and burnout, and how to get somebody out of that burnout state. When I was going through pharmacy school, I kind of started learning about all these health conditions, and there was always a lifestyle component. I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be great if I was able to reach a person, and really coach them through having a healthy lifestyle, so I could prevent them having illness, and having to prevent taking medications, right? Or really feeling their best, and thriving with medications. 

The book is really focused on a syndrome or condition. It’s not a disease. It’s kind of like what happens when our body gets stuck in survival mode, and people will have really nonspecific symptoms. They’ll be anxious, they’ll be fatigued, they might have brain fog. They’ll feel wired or tired, so they might be – people that are having a hard time falling asleep at night, or they have on a refreshed sleep. These are your people taking Ambien. These are your people taking thyroid meds. These are your people taking antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications, where they don’t have a disease, they don’t have a disorder, they just feel off. Part of that is like, their lifestyle. Their lifestyle is stressful. My protocol focuses on getting them out of that stress response. We utilize this five sending targeted safety signals.

We do things like making sure that they’re connected with a circadian rhythm. Sometimes, taking an Epsom salt bath, and sleeping in a dark room can work better for people, and like they may not need to take Ambien, right? Or people with anxiety issues, sometimes eating more protein and fat throughout their day, that can be really stabilizing for their anxiety. A lot of times people will have these cortisol swings that can make them very, very anxious. That’s kind of the big focus of getting people out of that survival state. If you’re working 12-hour shifts, you’re not sleeping well at night, you’re eating like fast food on the go, and you’re kind of in that work state. There’s a chance that you’re in that survival mode too. And getting something like this worked into your routine, and trying it for your own self is where I would recommend. Then if it works well for you, then consider recommending it your patients. 

[0:39:54] CS: I was going to say, you’re probably actually speaking to a lot of pharmacists right now after COVID, or healthcare professionals in general that are living in this constant state of burnout that we hear about. So, you know, I originally asked the question for the patients, but pharmacists too at any other health care professional. This is going to be something that’s so meaningful to them, that they can hopefully take away a lesson or two. 

But I will kind of wrap things up now. I’ve just got a couple of quick questions just to ask about entrepreneurship in general, and some fun ways for you to reflect on your career journey so far. What has been the most memorable part or thing that has happened to you as a business owner and why?

[0:40:31] IW: I would say the most amazing things has been, when I meet people that have read my books. It’s usually at target when I have no makeup, and –

[0:40:41] CS: Of course.

[0:40:44] IW: And my son’s screaming for more toys. They will say, “Your book really changed my life. I used to be exhausted and overwhelmed. I had a lot of health issues, and your book changed my life.” That to me is so meaningful, to be able to help somebody from a distance, and meet beautiful people that have been helped by my work. That’s the most meaningful for me.

[0:41:12] CS: Yes. That, I mean, just speaks to who you are as a person too, right? It’s not some accolade. It’s not some interview. It’s not a big publication. It’s like at the root core of your business and what you’re looking for, it’s helping people. That’s so beautiful that you share that. That’s what really inspires you to keep going too. What is your favorite part about being an entrepreneur in general?

[0:41:31] IW: I think it’s kind of creating my own destiny and having the opportunity to be creative, and utilizing my talents to help others. Where I feel like I really love researching, and I love connecting the dots. That wasn’t always appreciated and more like, you know, you work at a corporate chain, and I’m like, “I think it would be really great if we restructured the business, and we offer this kind of service, and we did that.” They’re like, “Yes. I don’t think corporate is going to go for that, right?” That’s the thing. So just having that opportunity to be like, you know what, I really think my community needs to have access to something like this and being able to create it. Like being really customer-focused versus being like, I’m so focused on the corporate –

[0:42:19] CS: A metric whatever it is that the business needs. Yes. Yes. Definitely having that control is – you can change that at the drop of a hat when you’re in charge of your own company. It’s nice to be able to have that kind of power so quickly. 

Then the last question I’ve got, one piece of advice for anyone that’s contemplating a non-traditional pharmacy path.

[0:42:38] IW: Huh. I think it’s a great idea to find something that you’re very passionate about, and something that you really, really enjoy. Going in that direction, so perhaps, if you’re like writing, there’s like medical writing opportunities, very traditional ones. But then also like bloggers, so you can become a professional blogger. Some of them make more money than pharmacists, or you can be hired as a writer for professional blog. I know there are blogs that have pharmacist on staff that do their writing for them. Following your passions, and following what kind of sparks for you, I feel like that would be a great direction to go. Because, I mean, if you want it to create your own business, and if you want it to go that direction – people say like, with the pharmacy, you can kind of clock in and clock out. It’s not like that. When you have your own business, you really have to care for it in every aspect of it.

It better be something that you really, truly believe in, and that you’re passionate about. Otherwise, it’s like, if you just kind of focus on like, “Oh, I’m going to do this thing, and it’s going to make me lots of money.” Then you’re like, “Wow, I thought carpet cleaning was going to be the thing. but it turns out that carpet cleaning is just not my thing, or whatever it is.” I feel like pharmacists were very analytical. I think that’s such a huge plus. At the same time, we want to focus on connecting with that other part of our brains too, that helps us realize like, what are we passionate about? Where can we make a difference? And kind of doing the things that maybe other people aren’t willing to do and creating opportunities. 

I think one piece of advice I would give is, when I was first approaching agents with my book, a lot of them were like, “Oh, you’re a pharmacist, you’re not a doctor.” I don’t know if we could publish this. And I was like, “Okay, I’m going to self-publish it.” It’s sold over 100,000 copies. It was the first self-published book to make the New York Times, something to that. I was just like, I just need to get this message out, and I need to get people – I already knew the target audience because it was me. So other people might want to do a better analysis than I did. But definitely, if you’re a part of your target audience, that makes things a lot easier. And if you’re passionate about functional medicine, if you have your own transformational story of how it changed your life, or something that changed your life, that you’re willing to get behind, I think that could be a great opportunity, right?

[0:45:13] CS: Yes. That ultimately is what’s going to carry you throughout the tough times in your business. Because, like you said, it’s not a traditional clocking-in and out anymore. You’re in control of your own destiny, which is so great, but you’re also in control of your own destiny when things are bad. So being able to really go back to the core of why you started what you did will have a really meaningful return in the long run. I’m so happy that you took the time to be with us today. You are so well-rounded, and so well-spoken, and have such an amazing amount of experience to speak from. Where can the audience find you if they want to get in touch with you? What’s the best way to do so?

[0:45:47] IW: Sure. My website is thyroidpharmacist.com. My Instagram is @izabellawentzpharmd. Then, my books are available on Amazon, and Barnes & Noble, wherever fine books are sold.

[0:46:00] CS: Amazing. You can be a household face to anyone who’s in the audience today. You could have Dr. Izabella Wentz’s book in your home at any point in time. So we’re excited for your next book to come out. I just want to say thank you again, for taking the time to speak with us. I think this is really going to resonate with a lot of listeners, not only about the unique opportunities, and niches that are available for you to step into as a pharmacist. But you are just a perfect example of how far you can take your success, and how you can span into different areas of business, and still remain successful, and mentally sane, and still be a normal, great human being. 

That’s really just excelling, I feel like in every aspect of your career. So thank you again for taking the time to be here. We will leave a lot of those connections to Dr. Wentz’s website and her products in the show notes.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:46:48] TU: Before we wrap up today’s show, I want to again thank this week’s sponsor of the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast, First Horizon. We’re glad to have found a solution for pharmacists that are unable to save 20% for a down payment on a home. A lot of pharmacists in the YFP community have taken advantage of First Horizon’s pharmacist home loan, which requires a 3% downpayment for a single-family home or townhome for first-time homebuyers and has no PMI on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage.

To learn more about the requirements for First Horizon’s pharmacist home loan, and to get started with the pre-approval process, you can visit yourfinancialpharmacists.com/home-loan. Again, that’s yourfinancialpharmacists.com/-loan. As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide, and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. 

Furthermore, the information contained in our archive, newsletters, blog post, and podcast is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analyses expressed herein are solely those of your financial pharmacist unless otherwise noted and constitute judgments as of the dates publish. Such information may contain forward-looking statements, which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements.

For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/disclaimer. Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

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