We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dorothy Wade. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dorothy below.

Alright, Dorothy thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

When the idea of Herb Shack was first mentioned, it was merely just a joke. When asked about what my next endeavor would be after my father closed his business, I replied, “I’m going to put a shack out in the parking lot and sell herbs.” After making the joke, realization set in that the only thing keeping the idea a joke and not a dream come true was only myself. It hit me, “why not?”. I expressed the idea with my daughter, and co-owner of Herb Shack, and it soon came apparent that we were both just as excited to bring Herb Shack to Clarksville. Herbalism had entered our lives in a way that we could have never imagined, and we had a lot of information and knowledge through our own experiences that we were eager to share with our community.

Beginning in 2017, my daughter’s health took a drastic turn for the worst. She was misdiagnosed for years and had pills thrown at her that only worsened or put a temporary band aid on one of her many symptoms. She was seen in every emergency room across TN, only to be sent home in the same state she walked in. Always reporting that lab work looked normal. Her battle continued for 5 years before a correct diagnosis was made, Endometriosis. Unfortunately, a woman complaining of severe nausea and pain is horribly overlooked in the medical system, as I’m sure many women would agree with. While we hoped a correct diagnosis would be the end of our troubles, it was only the beginning of new sets of issues. The only solutions for relief she was offered were surgeries or medicines that only masked the pain but kept the disease alive. Even the glorious and traditional option of birth control was offered as a solution. Her quality of life was diminished, hoping and living for the few good days a month. It was during her worst, that a friend recommended some herbs. One sip was taken and she immediately experienced relief from the nonstop nausea and puking she was undergoing. She called me immediately and told me what she was given and from there our journey down the herbalism rabbit hole began. It was then that we learned some herbs have the ability to help women naturally balance their hormones.

It was mind blowing that a simple, natural solution was right here all along. An option never mentioned or discussed when talked with doctors about possible solutions for her battle with Endometriosis. Unfortunately, many women undergo hormone imbalances that lead to a variety of different issues. Endometriosis, PCOS, and infertility are just a few of the bigger issues that arise from hormone imbalances. Today we are faced with a medical system that treats our hormones with merely birth control as a solution. Which is not a real solution to the many women experiencing day to day pain and suffering. We had one goal in opening Herb Shack. We wanted to share what we gathered during our years of suffering to help as many people who would listen. We are happy to report that we have helped many women dealing with hormone imbalances since opening our doors, with issues ranging from PCOS to hot flashes during menopause. Being a woman doesn’t have to be miserable.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Herb Shack is a natural medicine store that provides herbs, herbal products, and information to help anyone taking on their healing journey. Minus the individual herbs, we handcraft all the products in our store. We take great pride in handcrafting our products ourselves. Since opening, we have created 13 tea blends and 19 tinctures that we have designed to help with certain ailments and issues the majority of people may be facing. When we make our tea blends, each herb is individually weighed out for each bag we put on the shelf. This ensures that every bag on our shelf has the same effect and healing benefits as the one behind it. If we don’t have a tea blend or tincture for an issue a customer is dealing with, then our selection of over a hundred herbs steps in.

With herbs being new in our lives not so long ago, we understood how intimidating it could be to walk into a store and not know what anything was. Therefore, we cracked open all our favorite herbalism books and began pulling information directly from the professionals and experts themselves. We took the information we pulled and added it to each herb’s label so that when you are in our store you can pick and choose based on what you need. We truly wanted to be as informative and helpful as possible, so we even set up our website in a way that it could be used as a research/help tool. You can go to our search bar and look up what you are trying to remedy, such as “cold and flu” or the activity you are looking for in the herb, such as “anti-inflammatory”, and all the herbs and products that can help will appear. From there, each herb’s page has the information from the label in store.

We may be a small shack, but we want our impact to be big on our community. That’s why we take the time to the do the research and why we take the time to individually blend every tea on our shelf, we wanted to take an approach that proves our dedication to helping others.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Deciding to open my own business for the first time in my life at 45 was the biggest leap I have ever taken. In my working career I had held multiple management positions in the past and helped alongside my father for 15 years while owning his own business, but nothing ever quit like this. Starting up a new business with limited start up funds is not for the weak. I was use to consistent pay my entire life and always lived within my means, so starting up a business in the first year was very financially challenging. I think I ate more ramen noodles in our first year of opening than I had in my entire adolescence.

However, when times were the toughest, a customer would somehow always wander in the store and personally thank us for doing what we do and opening Herb Shack. To the customer it was a simple “thank you”, but to us it was the biggest motivation to not give up and to keep moving forward. The entire process of opening up Herb Shack was a learning experience and involved many learning curves, but it also was and has been the most rewarding experience yet.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

I believe what helped us build our reputation the most was our honesty and openness with our customers and community. We have never tried to pass off as lifelong herbalists or even experts in the matter. Just a mother and daughter learning as we go. We even have our resources readily available in the store so customers can see where we get our information. We have also been extremely open about how herbalism came into our lives and it’s a story that many people can relate to unfortunately. Being ignored by the medical system and getting to the point of desperation is how many people finally agree to try that “crazy herbal tea”.

I think what has also helped with our reputation in the community is that we make our own products. We aren’t trying to push manufactured products that we can’t 100% stand by and know what’s in it. When we first opened, we only had individual herbs and one empty bookshelf. We now have 4 bookshelves filled with products we have handcrafted. There were a lot of different approaches we could have made when it came to adding tea blends and tinctures to the store. While handcrafting our own blends and individually weighing each herb for each bag on the shelf is definitely more work, it’s work that proves we care.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.herbshack100.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/herbshack.100
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/herbshack100
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@herbshack100