Overview
Dr. Brandy Zachary, DC, IFMCP, FMACP — known as “Dr. Z” — is a chiropractic physician, functional medicine practitioner, educator, and entrepreneur. She is the founder and CEO of TDZ Functional Medicine Academy (TDZ-FMA) and Core DT Solutions LLC, parent company of DiagnoseThis.
She built her business from a 450-square-foot converted garage on Social Security disability, as a single mother, while managing an incurable primary immunodeficiency that required weekly immunoglobulin infusions. Zero outside investment. Ever.
Today TDZ-FMA operates with 59 staff across 10 countries, CPA-verified 2,095% three-year growth, and 96% practitioner retention. The company is on track for $10M+ in 2026.
In 2026, Dr. Z became the first person in the American Business Awards’ 24-year history to win the Gold Stevie® for Best Female Entrepreneur — an inaugural category created that year. TDZ-FMA also received three Silver Stevie® Awards in the same competition.
She is a 5th-generation female entrepreneur, the author of eight books (six of which are Amazon #1 bestsellers), and a 2024 ClickFunnels Two Comma Club Award recipient. She is a verified 2026 Inc. 5000 candidate.
Early Life
Childhood & Family
Dr. Z grew up in the suburbs of the San Francisco Bay Area, raised by a family of women who built businesses for a living. Her grandmother booked talent for Disney, Mardi Gras, and country and state fairs across the country. Her mother started small in entertainment booking and built up to representing A-list performers across the United States and Mexico winning a Pollstar award.
Watching the women in her family build their own businesses meant Dr. Z grew up assuming building was something women could do. She would have to learn the actual work of entrepreneurship the hard way — through every business she built, every wall she hit, and every model she had to invent from scratch. But the belief that it was possible was modeled at home from the beginning. She is a 5th-generation female entrepreneur on her maternal line.
Education
Dr. Z graduated Cum Laude from the Honors College at Loyola Marymount University with a degree in Communications.
She earned her Doctor of Chiropractic degree in California in 2001, graduating Magna Cum Laude and Salutatorian of her class.
She later trained at the Institute for Functional Medicine, earning her IFMCP certification — the highest credential offered by IFM at the time — and went on to develop the FMACP certification through her own academy.
Early Career
After earning her DC, Dr. Z practiced as a chiropractic physician until an injury forced her out of clinical work. She assumed that chapter was closed.
It wasn't.
She built a separate seven-figure consulting business advising health entrepreneurs & business owners on branding, marketing, sales, & speaking — the business side of healthcare, not the clinical side. She expected to do that work for the rest of her career.
In 2012, she published her first book, How to Read a Client from Across the Room, with McGraw-Hill New York. The book introduced The Character Code System — the world's first visual personality profiling system (created in 2008) — and hit #1 in nine Amazon categories. It won the Bronze Axiom Business Book Award in sales. The Character Code System remains a working component of TDZ-FMA's daily operations today, informing the branding, marketing, sales, and client fulfillment strategies behind the company's growth.
Health Crisis
In 2013, Dr. Z woke up sick and couldn't get well.
Seven specialists. Eight prescriptions. Nearly a million dollars a year in medical care. Her brain was electrocuted 20 times for what eventually turned out to be an infection. None of the specialists could find the answer. The medical gaslighting, as she has described it publicly, was profound.
She found her own diagnosis. She read PubMed at midnight. She had traveled to Princeton, Stanford, Harvard, and UCSF as a patient, not a practitioner. She had a diagnosis of an incurable primary immunodeficiency — a condition affecting fewer than 12,000 Americans.
She was placed on Social Security disability, $927 a month. She was a single mother who raised her daughter alone for 15 years with no child support, no alimony, and no co-parent, while surviving a decade-long predatory divorce against 11 attorneys and two traumatic brain injuries.
She did not stop.
Rebuilding
Dr. Z reactivated her chiropractic license in 2014–2015 so she could order her own labs in her quest to solve her own health crisis. In the fall of 2016, she opened a new functional medicine practice in California. With $927/mo in disability payments and a clinic lease of $700/mo, she had to make it work. There was no backup plan. She made $3,000 her first month, and by the end of year one had generated $240,000 in cash revenue. No loans. No investors.
The clinic — which Dr. Z later sold — was recognized multiple years during her ownership as Best of the East Bay in Diablo Magazine's annual readers' awards, holding a top-one or top-two position in its category for several consecutive years.
Patients started referring practitioners. Practitioners started asking how she'd built what she'd built. She began teaching what she'd figured out — first informally to MDs, DOs, PAs, and NPs, then as a structured program.
That teaching program became TDZ Functional Medicine Academy.
TDZ Functional Medicine Academy
The Move and the Scale
On October 1, 2022, at 49 years old, Dr. Z moved to Playa del Carmen, Mexico. She turned 50 in a new country at the end of November.
In February 2023, she was still managing her primary immunodeficiency — flying immunoglobulins in on ice for her weekly infusions — and working from a laptop. TDZ-FMA generated $7,000 that month.
By August 2023, the company was at $700,000 a month — a 100x increase in seven months. By January 2024, $1.2 million a month — 170x in under a year. No investors. No venture capital. No co-founders. From a foreign country, on a body that was still failing.
Today, TDZ-FMA is on track for $10M+ in 2026, with CPA-verified 2,095% three-year growth and 96% practitioner retention — the highest in the functional medicine education industry.
The Mission
TDZ-FMA exists so that no one has to do what Dr. Z did alone…and she’s no longer alone. TDZ-FMA has 59 staff members across 10 countries.
The Academy is jointly accredited through ACCME, ANCC, ACPE, AAPA, ADA CERP, APA, NUHS, CDRA and additional bodies — offering CME and CE credit to MDs, DOs, PAs, NPs, RNs, PharmDs, dentists, chiropractors, psychologists, registered dietitians, athletic trainers, and social workers. Over 1,000 practitioners have been trained through The Mentorship across the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Latin America, Europe, Singapore, Japan, Korea, Australia, and South Africa.
The Ecosystem
What the judges of the 2026 American Business Awards described as "functional medicine's first complete clinical ecosystem" was built problem by problem. Every time a practitioner hit a wall, TDZ-FMA built the solution.
The Dr. Z Functional Medicine LabDX — Clinical software integrating 65+ lab panels including blood chemistry, GI stool tests, organic acids, urine hormone metabolites, toxicology, mycotoxins, SIBO breath tests, genomics, saliva, and hair analysis into one unified clinical report. No other platform covers this range.
Care Plan Builder — Launched January 2026. Converts lab data plus full patient intake into a phased care plan, visit-by-visit implementation plan, and meal plan in approximately three minutes — replacing three or more hours of manual work per case. Explicitly non-AI; the system uses a proprietary clinical reasoning architecture that off-the-shelf AI could not deliver. Approximately 700 practitioners use it daily.
The Dr. Z Way — 45 proprietary practitioner tools across five categories: Lead Generation, Offer and Sales, Backend and Admin, Clinical Care, and Leadership and Management. Public price $998/month; free to all active TDZ-FMA mentorship clients.
TDZ Health Coach Staffing — White-label clinical staff, structured so patients fund the model, reducing practitioner fulfillment workload by 60–70%.
SearchFunctionalMedicine.com — The field's most advanced practitioner directory, with SEO-optimized practitioner profiles, live Google review integration, and filtering by certifications, geography, languages, and populations served.
The Dr. Z Ads — Professional media buying for functional medicine practitioners at $500 — typically a $5,000+ service elsewhere.
Patients Right Now — A complete CRM, email marketing, phone dialer, texting (all HIPAA compliant), social media, website, groups, landing/sales pages, funnel builder all in one using the Character Code System and build specifically for practitioners.
Functional Medicine 2.0 Podcast — Live, built around the premise that functional medicine must evolve from memorization to decision-making, from data collection to patient transformation, and from lone-wolf practitioners to CEO clinicians.
What the Judges Said
The 2026 American Business Awards are judged by more than 230 independent professionals worldwide. Two of their comments, published verbatim:
Most 'Mavericks' in these awards are just CEOs who launched a cool app. This woman is different. She was living in a garage on $900 a month, couldn't even read because of a brain injury, and had every reason to stay on disability. Instead, she built a $12M business out of pure spite for a medical system that failed her. With a 98% retention rate and 2,000% growth with zero outside investors, that's not luck — that's a founder who knows exactly what her customers need because she lived their pain. She's the real deal.
— 2026 American Business Awards Judge, Maverick of the Year Category
A standout submission. What really separates it is that it's not just education or a single product — it's a full ecosystem built with clear intention and strong execution. The growth, retention, and adoption of the tools speak for themselves, and doing this without outside funding makes it even more impressive. This feels like something that's genuinely reshaping its space, not just participating in it.
— 2026 American Business Awards Judge, Health Products & Services Category
DiagnoseThis.com
In February 2026, Dr. Z founded Core DT Solutions LLC in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands — the parent company of DiagnoseThis.
DiagnoseThis.com is a patient-facing platform built to do for everyday people what the rest of the ecosystem does for practitioners: turn chaotic symptom searches into clinician-trained reports that explain what's happening in the body, flag red flags, suggest labs, provide doctor-ready summaries, and connect users directly to vetted functional medicine practitioners.
The company signed a 15-year contract through the University of the Virgin Islands Research & Technology Park which will benefit from the functional Medicine education and support their effort for increased tech and research in the community. Dr. Z relocated to St. Croix with her family. DiagnoseThis.com is self-funded and launching in June 2026 alongside the DiagnoseThis podcast — designed to educate the public, end medical gaslighting, and direct patients toward better healthcare experiences.
Dr. Z has described DiagnoseThis as the product she desperately needed when no one was coming for her.
Books & Publications
Dr. Z is the author of eight books. Six are Amazon #1 bestsellers available to the public; two are proprietary titles distributed exclusively inside the TDZ-FMA ecosystem.
Public titles (Amazon #1 bestsellers)
How to Read a Client from Across the Room (McGraw-Hill, 2012) — Bronze Axiom Business Book Award winner. Introduced The Character Code System.
The Character Code System
Buy on AmazonMiddle-Aged Mama in a Muumuu — A marketing and business playbook for practitioners.
Middle-Aged Mama in a Muumuu
Buy on AmazonA Practitioner's Guide to Mastering Functional Medicine Lab Values — A four-volume clinical lab textbook series, each volume over 500 pages. The series is used as required reading in other functional medicine practitioner training programs outside TDZ-FMA.
Foundations of Health Testing
Buy on Amazon
Gut & Digestion Insights
Buy on Amazon
Hormonal Health & Balance
Buy on Amazon
Metabolic Health & Toxin Testing
Buy on AmazonProprietary titles
Dr. Z's 120-Day Strategy — Distributed exclusively to practitioners enrolled in The Mentorship.
Body Love Challenge — Distributed exclusively to clinical patients.
Awards & Recognition
2026 American Business Awards (Stevie® Awards)
Gold: Best Female Entrepreneur — inaugural winner; first person in the competition's 24-year history to hold the title
Silver: Pioneer of Functional Medicine's First Complete Clinical Ecosystem (Health Products & Services)
Silver: Maverick of the Year (Business Service Industries)
Silver: Company of the Year (Health Products & Services)
2024 ClickFunnels Two Comma Club Award
Recognizing businesses that generate over $1M through a single digital sales funnel; reached by fewer than 1% of online businesses.
2026 Inc. 5000
Verified candidate; results expected late June 2026.
Bronze Axiom Business Book Award
Sales category, for How to Read a Client from Across the Room (McGraw-Hill).
Diablo Magazine Best of the East Bay
Multiple-year recognition for her former functional medicine clinic during her ownership.
Media Appearances
Dr. Z is the author of eight books. Six are Amazon #1 bestsellers available to the public; two are proprietary titles distributed exclusively inside the TDZ-FMA ecosystem.
Television
Dr. Z has appeared on NBC and Fox News in San Francisco, discussing How to Read a Client from Across the Room and The Character Code System.
Press & Editorial Coverage
Major outlets
- Forbes Health — featured twice as an expert source (2024)
- Entrepreneur — bylined article, "How I Taught Myself Financial Literacy — and How You Can, Too" (2024)
- Yahoo Lifestyle / AOL — health and nutrition coverage syndicated internationally (Yahoo Style CA, SG, Autos; AOL UK)
- Woman's World and First For Women — featured as a health expert across multiple stories
- Verywell Mind — quoted as a wellness authority
- Authority Magazine (Medium) — full feature interview, "Female Disruptors"
Industry trade press
- NutraIngredients-USA — "NutraWomen Wednesday" feature
- Nutrisense, What's Good by V (Vitamin Shoppe), The FxMed Alliance
Business press features
- Grit Daily News, ValiantCEO, CEO Weekly, NY Weekly, US Reporter, citybiz, FounderReports
Regional syndication
Health features have appeared across the McClatchy newspaper network including the Charlotte Observer, Raleigh News & Observer, Fresno Bee, Lexington Herald Leader, Macon Telegraph, Hilton Head Island Packet, Biloxi Sun Herald, Merced Sun-Star, and others.
Podcast Appearances
Dr. Z has been a guest on numerous health and business podcasts including The Functional Nurse Practitioner and The Ultimate Journey of Self-Care. She hosts the Functional Medicine 2.0 Podcast and is launching the DiagnoseThis podcast in 2026.
Press Distribution
The April 2026 announcement of Dr. Z's four Stevie Award wins was distributed via PRNewswire with pickup across hundreds of outlets including Yahoo Finance, generating significant journalist engagement.
Personal
Dr. Z is 53 years old. She splits her personal time between Playa del Carmen, Mexico and St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. TDZ-FMA's business headquarters is in Sheridan, Wyoming, with the entire team operating remotely across 10 countries.
She raised her daughter alone for 15 years before meeting her now-husband. They are approaching their ninth anniversary together.