Private Practice Plus with Janet Zand

Jack: My guest today is Janet Zand. She has over 30 years of private practice experience in natural medicine, including acupuncture, herbal medicine, functional medicine, and nutrition. Janet is the author of Smart Medicine for a Healthier Child: A Parent’s Guide to Medical Emergencies, Smart Medicine for Healthy Living, and The Nitric Oxide Solution. She currently writes a popular weekly women’s health alert. In 2015, she was also acknowledged by the National Nutritional Food Association and New Hope as a thought leader and innovator in the natural products industry, and we all agree with that recognition. Janet co-founded Zand Herbal Formulas and was its chairman of the board for more than 20 years. So, Janet, thanks for joining us today, it’s really nice to see you and to hear you.

Janet: Thanks for having me, Jack, thanks.

Jack: Can I jump right in with the Zand Herbal Formulas? I thought I’d heard you sold your interest in that company quite some time ago. Is that true?

Janet: It was around 2002.

Jack: These days, anything in the 2000s doesn’t seem like that long ago. So, could you tell our audience a little bit about your career? You know, kind of how you got started and then what led to starting a company. And, that was in the very early days. I mean, it seems like everybody has an herbal line these days. But you were one of the first and I think that’ll provide some insight for our audience who might want to do the same thing.

Janet: Sure. Well, for me, herbs, natural medicine, acupuncture have always been magic. And I think at the root of my love for this magic was, I mean, I remember the day that I walked in to acupuncture class, although my company started before I went to acupuncture school because I was trained as a naturopath, you know.

Jack: That came first?

Janet: Yeah but I remember the day that I was taught yin and yang and my whole head blew up, you know. But anyway, I’ll get to that. So back to my love for natural medicine and Chinese medicine. I got so excited – I was young, I was passionate, and I wanted to share it with everybody I knew. And finally, I realized, I don’t know all that many people. Maybe I want to share this with a lot more people. But with that glorious aspiration came reality. I was broke. I had no money, I had mounds of bills from naturopathic school and I needed a job because I wound up in California where I couldn’t work out as now. So one day, I walked in to my local health food store which was in Venice, California and it was owned by a commune. Most people listening to this, you know, they’re going to google that. A long, long time ago, a commune was a place where a bunch of people lived and they shared everything, right? They shared their work, their food, their lovers – I mean, it was a commune. Anyway, there were a few of us in the store that weren’t part of the commune and we’re very grateful we had a job. So, I walk in and a woman named Destiny is breastfeeding her kid – she’s at the register. My groceries, she’s breastfeeding her kid, and her kid’s Cedar who, gosh, he’s probably 40 years old right now. I said, “Hey, I need a job. Is there anything here I can do?” And she said, “Well, what do you do?” I said, “Well, I’m sort of, like, a natural doctor.” She said, “Well, you see that second floor up there? We’re going to turn it into, like, an herb room with supplements. How’d you like to do that?” “Oh great,” I said, “sign me up!” And I had a job. So it was Venice. And people in Venice at the time, you know, it was sort of like an epicenter of drug addiction and alcohol use and most people didn’t wake up until two o’clock in the afternoon. So I had the entire morning to make herbal compounds and I made them in these huge vats with liquor that I bought across the street at the liquor store and they would wander in and say, “Hey, I have a cold, and a flu, I had a headache.” And I would just, you know, siphon off out of my crock pot some herbs in a two-ounce bottle and give it to them. And then, one day, a customer walked in and he said, “You know, I keep coming here for these bottles and, no offense, it doesn’t seem that hygienic.” And surely, that was the other thing we used to do – encapsulate herbs for those who didn’t want the tincture. We would encapsulate them in the same salad bowls that we would have lunch on.

Jack and Janet: [Laughter]

Janet: Those capsules were very popular. Anyway, so he said to me, “I really think you should turn this into a business.” And I thought, oh, that’s a good idea! And then I thought some more. I sobered up and I went, whoa, I went to school for medicine – I don’t know anything about business. And then I looked downstairs and there was Michael McGuffin. For those of you who don’t know Michael McGuffin, he’s been the OPPA president of American Herb Product Association for the past 20 years and, at the time, he had just graduated from Johns Hopkins in engineering. And we were all a little over-qualified and he was, like, moving zucchinis, you know? Anyway, so we were pretty much unseasoned business people. But we were hard-working, we were passionate, and we had some great products. So, did I have business training? No. I was lucky enough to have a few amazing mentors and I really encourage young people starting in the profession to find somebody or a couple of people who can really help you and these days, I mean, it doesn’t even have to really be a person you can touch. There’s so much inspiration right to be had – podcasts. I mean, there’s just so much. Yeah, so that’s sort of how I started.

Jack: Yeah, I actually appreciate the observation that you were able to be successful without having some of those fundamental business skills because, really, the most important thing is the right product, right? And the energy to work at it, right? Get up in the morning or cart all day long, right? And find out what you need to know. You know, you don’t need an MBA to do that. You need an MBA if you want to go work on Wall Street. But if you want to be an entrepreneur, what you really need is, you know, good work ethic, right? And persistence.

Janet: Right, yes, persistence. I think that’s so true.

Jack: Yeah, I mean, our students, when they get into practice, you don’t want to expect that your practice is going to be there overnight and it really grows one patient at a time, right? And that one person tells 10 people, and they tell 10 people, and it will grow. But it takes a certain patience. But even more, persistence, right? And being there at the office.

Janet: You just said so much of, I mean, that really speaks to me when I look back at my career because what we do, it works. And people want to use what works. I mean, I was lucky enough, you know, now there’s the viral thing with social media – I was lucky enough to have the viral thing when I was practicing, but mostly, I wasn’t doing anything heroic. I was just practicing, and I just kept practicing. And I think, you know, one note to young acupuncturists that I learned early on is, I mean, my father used to say this thing to me, “You gotta listen to everybody because you don’t know who’s gonna tell you what.” And I was like, “Oh God, Dad.” But now, I look back, I go, wow! You know, I think he was right because I’m smart, I write. When I look back at my own practice, there were two people who totally handed me my practice. One was this very tall, elegant, red-headed woman, beautiful woman. And I learned after I treated her for digestive disorder that she was the representative for quite a few professional football players and basketball players and other elite athletes. Well, I just treated her digestive problem and she referred, I mean, she totally transformed not only my practice but my life from who she sent me. Yeah, and then the other person who came in, this is actually a funny story, this actress I was treating at the time was married to a producer and he got torticollis – he had this horrible stiff neck. He was like that, he couldn’t move. And he was mad, he was angry. She brought him into my office and he said, “Why am I here? Why did you bring” and he was like, “expletive, bad language, horrible language.” It was so bad that my assistant came in and she said, “Yo, I think we gotta get rid of this guy.” I had a male intern at the time who was also a naturopath and acupuncturist, Marcus, and he sort of looked like a brunette Dr. Kildare – he had so much suave, you know. And I said, “Marcus, just go in there and, like, calm him down.” And he said, “Uh, no.” I said, “Well, go in there and take his blood pressure.” So he goes, he takes the blood pressure, he goes, “Duh, it was high.” So I got my courage, off I went in, and I really liked his wife so I did want to help him. So I said, “I am going to put some points in parts of your body that are just going to relax you, they’re not going to affect your neck. And then, after a tiny bit, when you’re a little bit relaxed, I’m going to treat your neck.” And I said, “You just have to get with me here and just calm down because you’re going to clear out my home office.” So, you know, I did the most obvious, you know, Liver 3, Stomach 36, Shenmen. And I left the room because I just couldn’t be in there with him and he’s still growling at his wife. And when the growling sort of lowered, I walked back in, I said, “Now, I’m going to put a needle in your hand. You are not going to like this needle, it’s a little uncomfortable but it’s going to help your neck.” Oh, put the heavy meat on it. So I do Small Intestine 3 and he looks down. Oh, that’s the other thing, he wouldn’t lay down. He said, “No, I’m sitting there in the chair. I am not laying down.” So anyway, I’m putting in SI3 and he’s, you know, growling, “That hurts!” And then I left it in. Literally, like three minutes later, he started. I said, “Okay, now turn your head,” and he turns his head and he goes, “Oh my God, oh my God. Yeah, I’m fine, I have no pain.” Well, when I look back on my career, I always say every one and small intestine because three referred me. If you look at the tree, hundreds of patients, you know. Yeah, so you just never know. You just have to keep at it. And I think a very important thing for young people is to treat what you enjoy treating. Get really good at it and know you can ace it no matter who walks in with “x,” you got it.

Jack: Yeah, it’s good advice. I mean, we’ve said that to our alum – that by specializing, it’s kind of a win-win because, one, you’re involved in the area that you’re most passionate about, yes, you’re also going to be the best at and the people that are coming into your office are going to be playing to your strengths, right? So, that can really be a winning formula, right? The other thing that we try to get across is that your reputation starts today, right? And so, you never – and as in your case, right – you never know who the person you’re going to be talking to that’s going to be so influential to your career. So yeah, what’s the proportion of your practice now? How do you balance the naturopathy and the Chinese medicine?

Janet: I look at a patient, I assess what I think is at the root. But I don’t start, I never start by treating the root. What I do is I look at a patient and I say, “Okay, what of everything you’re here for, what bothers you the most? Like, what is it that bothers you the most?” And they’ll go, “You know, my headache.” So I treat their headache and then after they’re better which is usually in short order because I use everything. I use acupuncture, I use Chinese herbs, I use homeopathy, even though I think we’re not supposed to even say that word. And I use a lot of blood testing, a lot of blood testing. Look, today, I think if someone looked at my practice they would say I’m a functional physician with all of these auxiliary tools but I’ll use anything to get where I want to go. And you know, early on in my career, I had a reputation of always having a really full office. Well, it wasn’t like I was real busy when I first started. I just would never let anybody leave until they felt them, sometimes, and people in my office at once.

Jack: Yeah, do you know Richard Nemtsow? You know the name. I’ll get his title wrong but he was like the director of the VA and he’s the, I believe, he’s like the executive editor of the Medical Acupuncture Journal. And so, he was in San Diego for quite some time and we had him over to the clinic to talk about his approach. He said the same thing – would not let the patient leave unless they got some effect, some positive effect. So he would do, you know, big points you know LI4 or something. He’d say, “Oh, that didn’t work. Now I’m gonna do ear points, and then I’m gonna do hand points.” Until probably the patient just said, “Okay, whatever you say. I’m better, I’m out of here.” But I mean, it is again, you know, kind of back to persistence but also not being afraid to try different things with the patient as long as you’re sensitive to their time and everything, obviously. I mean, it’s one great thing about Chinese medicine and particularly in this country, we can embrace so many of the tools from outside of Traditional Chinese Medicine, right? So if you want to do blood work, if you want to use nutraceuticals, you know, obviously any of the manual therapies, you know, that would cross from chewing onto sort of physical therapy. I mean, like you said, homeopathy. I mean, I would use it all unless I was certain that it was, you know, grossly outside my scope of practice. Yeah, for sure. One of the things when you mention, blood work, I was intrigued by. I’ve certainly aware of it from a diagnostic perspective but I wonder how much you might use it for actually indicating progress? So, where you would see, oh you know, I’m treating liver disorder and I’m seeing that those tests are getting better.

Janet: Totally. What I mean, I can’t tell you how many times I feel a patient’s pulse and the liver pulse is not good – it’s too full, there’s too much heat, there’s dampness, there’s stagnation. I send them and their liver enzymes are elevated, their lipids are upside down, and I treat them typically with Chinese herbs and some acupuncture and I retest in three months and things are beautiful, you know? That’s great. So, I really use it. I mean, we can tell when someone comes in and their pulse is infinitely better, you know the blood work’s going to be better. But I always run the test because I want to show the patient, “Look, you know yourself. You altered your diet, you took the herbs, you came in for treatment. And guess what? You are patently better.”

Jack: Yeah, I think having those objective signs really helps the patient affirm what they’ve been doing. And I don’t know if you experienced this much but it was common for me to see that someone came in for something that would get better but then that was behind them. Now, they’ve got something else. It’s like, “Well, remember you really came in for your back, right?” “That’s better, oh yeah. But not my digestion or not my fatigue,” right? So it’s nice to remind them that, oh, here’s the main original complaint and here, it’s better. Right? So yeah, interesting. So, you’re not only the founder of a business, an herbal company, but you’re also an author. And how do you balance the practice with the time to write? And, you know, obviously, you teach. You’re always very generous to come to Pacific Symposium. You know, there’s only so many hours in the day! How do you manage?

Janet: I, well, like all of us, I love it, you know? And I get a lot of joy from it. I’m a little better at time management than I was. Am I stretched? Yeah. Am I sometimes tired? Yeah. But I remember when I was younger, I had a good friend and he used to say, “You sand greatness. It doesn’t come from comfort.” And I remember in the back of my mind I’d go, “Steve, I can assure you, I am not comfortable.” So I’m not nearly as strung out as I was when I was younger because I hardly slept when I was younger. Now, I sleep like a normal person. But I think things are still exciting for me so I don’t see it as a burden.

Jack: Yeah, well that’s right here. Yeah, it’s really great to hear. I was so pleasantly surprised to see – I forget where I saw it, it was like AM PM Mini Mart or something – on the magazine rack and there’s this journal magazine, whatever you would want to call it, and it was Janet Zand. So, basically, you put together a magazine where every article was by you, if I remember correctly. And how did that come about? I’m curious, I mean, did a publisher reach out to you? Is it your idea?

Janet: No, it was certainly not my idea. You know, in my life, I feel like I’ve been touched. I’ve been really lucky and I think all of us who are led Traditional Chinese Medicine, I think. That is so much luck, you know? Sure. Anyway, I was approached by a publisher and he said, “Look, my wife really likes you and she likes this and she likes that.” I’ve never met the wife but she had read my some of the books and tried some products and she had been using the products since the 80s and he said, “So, how about this?” And he put the whole thing together. Oh, fantastic! Yeah, interesting, he shepherded the whole thing and he did really well with it.

Jack: Oh, that’s good. I’m glad to hear that. I wondered, kind of, you know? Yeah.

Janet: And that’s if you’re a young practitioner. I always tell young people start writing, you know? Go online, you can have it.

Jack: Yeah.

Janet: And start. I always tell the students who write me, you know, think big and act small. Yeah, so in other words, get to know your neighborhood. You know, figure out what troubles the people in your neighborhood and figure out how you can solve those health problems and address them and have little seminars. I never did this but I did teach a lot locally. Yeah and I always notice whenever I talk, people would come see me and I think that it’s a great outlet. And if you don’t like public speaking, which I don’t – I mean, I still do it, it still causes me huge anxiety.

Jack: Yeah, I understand that, yeah.

Janet: But if you don’t like it, you don’t want to do that these days, just write a blog.

Jack: Yeah.

Janet: Have a podcast, you know? There’s so many ways to reach out, sure.

Jack: Yeah. You know, your advice really confirms, kind of, brain research – that, you know, start with steps that don’t freak yourself out, right? So, it’s like, “I want to get in shape. Oh, I’m going to work out an hour a day.” And you’re not going to do that, you know, because your nervous system will just go, “No, no, no. That’s not going to work.” But if you go, “Oh, I’m going to work out for one minute a day,” right, you create this virtuous cycle and we’re going, “Oh, that felt good. So, I’ll just do five minutes, then ten.” So, it’s the same thing. So, I don’t want to do public speaking so I’ll write a blog. But then, someone will come along and see that and say, “Hey, can you speak at my business luncheon?” or whatever – you’re going to want to go, “I don’t want to do that,” but just say yes.

Janet: That’s what I did. I was like, “Are you kidding me? He’s going to make me speak in front of all those people?” Jack, I hate that. When I had my company, I would have to do that but I always would say, “Please, just put me on the radio.” Somehow, the radio didn’t intimidate me. Front and center with real people – I was a mess. And yeah, I remember saying “yes” to you.

Jack: 1989. And, I mean, it is one of the things that practitioners or any public speaker in our field has as an advantage, is that it’s so visually appealing. Yes, right. And so, you could put together Powerpoints with little videos of what we do. Especially when you’re speaking to a lay audience, they’re fascinated by it, right? And then after you show them that, you say, “Are there any questions?” Right? And then, they don’t expect that to be a very polished presentation and it kind of reduces that anxiety that we all have. I think about public speaking, right, and it is generally unavoidable at some point if you want to build your practice, yeah. But again, with the Meetups that you can find now – find one that doesn’t freak you out, right? It’s a group that shares either a real need for what you have to provide or share some other common interests that you have, you know? Maybe it’s a group of artists or whatever, dancers or athletes, so you just go to that and then you start telling people, “I’m an acupuncturist.” And then everybody’s going to tell you about their back and neck problems so then just hand out your cards, right? But you do have to leave the house in the morning to make that happen, right? Yeah, well let’s see, what else… You know, a couple of things that you mentioned – and we kind of keep referring to new or younger practitioners – but I think all these things apply even to, in fact, maybe in some sense, what you’ve done with the writing and publishing, to more seasoned practitioners maybe getting to the point in their career where, like, maybe they’re doing great for 10 or 15 or more years, they’re going to like to dial it back a little bit and maybe create another kind of income stream. Something that keeps me involved in what I’m passionate about but I’m not on my feet as long, right? And so these ideas about blogs and then, you know, newsletters and then a book, right? And there are so many things that we still need in this profession, yeah. I mean, you can name a hundred different topics where it doesn’t have to be. I’m gonna talk to Matt Callison tomorrow, where he spent 25 years writing, you know, this book that weighs like 50 pounds – which is a great book by the way – and everybody, every acupuncturist should have it. But you don’t have to do that, right?

Janet: You know, I really agree with that because there’s no such thing as a perfect plan, you know? I think the most important thing for young and seasoned acupuncturists and all health practitioners is you just have to start, you know? Like that Nike slogan, “Just do it.” You really just have to start and find your sweet spot.

Jack: Right, yeah. And then, like, we were saying in a way that you know the long journey starts with one little step, right? And make the step that you can make,

Janet: Yes.

Jack: But when you’re going in the right direction, it feels so much better than being either stagnant or going backwards. All right, so Janet, I want to thank you again for the time that you spent here with me. I think that any of our listeners who think about the things that you’ve said and just apply one aspect of your wisdom is going to, you know, really see the rewards and, again, just thanks a lot. It was really great to see you and, yeah, I guess one of the ways you stay in such great shape is by playing baseball. I just found out recently, keep the glove in front of your face.

Janet: I know, that was such a surprise moment.

Jack: Well, it lets us know that you’re human amongst all your achievements. So thanks so much and thanks to everybody that’s been listening. We’ll post some links to Janet’s company and her books in the show notes. And, as always, if you have any comments or questions for me, you can reach me at [email protected]. Always love to hear from practitioners that are in the field, your ideas about Chinese medicine, and how you’re growing your career. So thanks for joining us today.

Show Notes

Zand Herbals

Books by Janet

Any products mentioned