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Podcast Host Sarah Lynch
I'm Sarah lynch and you are listening to youo Next Move audio edition, produced by Inc. And Capital One Business. For this season, we gathered an array of conversations with entrepreneurs who made last year's Inc. 5000 list. They joined us in our your Next Move Booth at the Inc. 5000 to share lessons learned and anecdotes from building their businesses. In this episode, Inc. Editor at large Christine Ligorio Chafkin spoke to William Goneitz. He is the founder and CEO of hair growth company Advanced Trichology. This is their fifth time on the Inc. 5000 list and they're ranked 3,382. Christine started the conversation by asking William how the company got started and what inspired him.
William Goneitz
Yeah, well, we were an overnight success after 17 years. So I started out because of my own hair loss situation actually. So when I was 18, I started losing my hair. I kind of had a slow ramp up to the point where I was about 20, 21 and I was not having this whole hair loss thing. And so literally most of the mainstream things didn't work for me and I had to to literally study trichology to figure out how to grow my own hair back.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
So interesting.
William Goneitz
And it wasn't in the US at the time. None of the things that were that I used were in the US at the time. So I brought them here. I had success. So I was like, this is going to be a great business model. And I opened my first clinic when.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
I was was it like Propecia or.
William Goneitz
What was the Propecia didn't work for me. Minoxidil didn't work. A lot of the mainstream things because they act on a specific core reason and it's, you know, everybody's an individual and so if you, you know, you're not going to have a DHT problem like a male would have a DHT problem. So obviously that's not going to work for everybody. So long story short, I opened my clinics in 2002 and it went nuts for a while. And then, you know, recession, all the rest of the things I tried to expand within probably 14 years I had developed a product line along the way with like working with so many people and the clinics just wouldn't grow.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Interesting. Okay, so you started with physical storefront clinics.
William Goneitz
So I had a full blown 3,600 square foot medical facility where we had a physician. We had all. We had blazer rooms, we had scalp massages, we had all of these unique tinctures. And it did great. I mean, our results were incredible.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Yeah.
William Goneitz
But the business model was not sustainable through the recession, and so everything had to change.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
People cut their spending. They're cutting that. Yeah.
William Goneitz
I have.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Interesting.
William Goneitz
It was a money back guarantee.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Okay.
William Goneitz
And with the money back guarantee and when the recession hit, people were like, they were basically discontinuing their treatments and so on and so forth. Had to reinvent the whole thing anyway. The thing that through all of it kept growing was the product line. People stayed on the products. So I ended up, after expanding and contracting a couple times, I was like, I'm just throwing this stuff up on Amazon and let's see how it goes.
Capital One Advertiser
Yeah, sure.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
And was that the 17 years later or was that 17 years ago? Okay.
William Goneitz
Wow.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Wild. Wild. So what was the difference? Like, what had you designed that made you stick to it, that you said, like, this works for people, Just treating.
William Goneitz
People like an individual.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Okay. So you had a different line of different treatments. Yes, yes. Okay.
William Goneitz
And now, I mean, we're the only ones doing still what we do. And I have an app that's gonna finally be completed in 2025 where you'll be able to actually scan your own blood work, you'll be able to take your own photos. We're actually developing a portion of this where you can integrate a scalp microscope and kind of look at your own hair.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Wow.
William Goneitz
We're using AI to essentially enhance the entire process and keep people on track. Because the hair that's growing today, basically, if it's going to start falling out, it will take three months to fall out. And if the hair that's basically starting to grow today is going to be visible in three months, then you have to basically work on it now. So you'll see nothing for 90 days. So most people give up. They're like, oh, this isn't working. It didn't start working for, you know, the six weeks that I was on it. So it must not be happening. So it's a psychological aspect, but when you just keep going, maybe like losing weight or something.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Absolutely.
William Goneitz
You're gonna start getting more growth.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
And I could see how an app that is giving people kind of progress reports on their journ could be really helpful to keep them on track. Very cool. If you lose that connection with like an individual coach at an individual location or an individual physician. Right?
William Goneitz
Absolutely.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
So you have no Physical locations anymore or do you still have clinics?
William Goneitz
So I sold my clinics in 2017. We had a couple franchises. I disbanded those. They just went out on their own. And I have a private practice in Laguna where I see people. But it's very selective and everything else is done online, so. Which is fantastic.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Wow. Interesting. So for the record, because this is not a visual medium, I'm going to let our listeners know this man has a full head of hair.
William Goneitz
Well, thank you. If I didn't have hair, then that would be a bad testimony.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
I mean, but it would be a testimony to the fact that you said, okay, people are all medically diverse. Right. And have different causes and different reasons. Right. And true. But you yourself were treatable and that's.
Podcast Host Sarah Lynch
That's cool.
William Goneitz
Exactly. Whereas mainstream medicine didn't know what to do with me. They were like, go lose more hair and come back.
Podcast Host Sarah Lynch
Yeah.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
So interesting. So what did it take to stick by this idea for those 17 years?
William Goneitz
It's funny. The opening talk tomorrow or that five minutes is mine. And it's about perseverance.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Oh, cool. Great.
William Goneitz
So I didn't have a choice, you know, I mean, I kept going. I was in this with all of my clients. I was in this as an entrepreneur and I was dedicated to basically completing the idea. And even now, I mean, I have a vision of exiting for basically a very large multiple. Because it can be that. And it's not because for money purposes at this point, it is for this should be everywhere. It should change the paradigm of hair loss. And that's what we're trying to do. So essentially just grinding it out until something happened.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Yeah, yeah. And you did that, which is amazing. And it sounds like there were definitely ebbs and flows of the business. So tell me about that decision to just like put the product on Amazon. How did that work? And do you have like one hero product that is your main revenue driver?
William Goneitz
So basically, again, I had my multiple clinics. We expanded from a clinical standpoint under our own umbrella to about five locations. Then I started franchising. By again, 2010, like, some of them were failing. I had to close some of them. There wasn't any individual who could do what I do. And so since it was practitioner based, I'm like, this isn't working. So we had a first GoDaddy online store. I don't even think they have online stores, but that was like 2011. And we threw a couple products up on there. People were buying them. We're like, okay, well this is cool. We don't even have to think about this, we're fulfilling them through the clinic. And then Amazon started growing and then some of these other platforms started growing. So eventually I'm like, Evolution Hair Loss Institute Clinic has a product line, but it doesn't have a brand, it doesn't have an identity. So we made it advanced trichology. Since trichology is the science of hair and scalp.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Does anyone know that?
William Goneitz
Very few. I'm a trichologist.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Sure.
William Goneitz
And when people go, what is that? And they think it says you could.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Make up anything, I mean, I should.
William Goneitz
Really be like, I'm a superhero.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Mess with them.
William Goneitz
Absolutely. And then basically again, when trichology, we started showing off our results. And the one hero product was the DHT blocker, which was predominantly for male pattern loss. But the core of most people's hair loss is actually nutrition. And especially post Covid. People have no understanding of what Covid actually did to their bodies. And not that, you know, to go off on a lot of different tangents, but it screws up your microbiome, it screws up your digestion.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Doesn't necessarily. Even multiple illnesses can do that. Right. I mean, yeah, the.
William Goneitz
The amount of research that's coming out now about in certain scenarios, your risk of hair loss increases eight times post Covid.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Wow.
William Goneitz
Like, it just, I mean, it's all this new research. And so that was one of the reasons why in 2019, 2020, we just took off. And so Shape magazine listed one other product for Covid related hair loss, which was the Follicrowth vitamin. And that's our core hero product now. And that just took off.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Cool.
William Goneitz
So we've got about 12 SKUs and we're going to add three more just for different reasons. And. And that's about it. That's all you need.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Neat. Neat. Is that aside from the vitamin, the other product, is that like a medical product?
William Goneitz
None of the products are medical.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Interesting. They're all natural. That is cool. So do you need FDA certification for that? Do you need.
William Goneitz
Everything is manufactured in FDA compliant facilities and obviously we follow all guidelines associated with that. But it's not an OTC and it's not a pharmaceutical.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
It's not a pharmaceutical. So you don't need to employ doctors to prescribe this online. You're not following the kind of like hymns playbook of.
William Goneitz
No, just regurgitating Minoxidil.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Yeah. Okay.
William Goneitz
No, that's what everybody else does.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Right, right, right. Exactly. So interesting. Okay, so what happened after you put the product on Amazon then?
William Goneitz
So it's funny. Cause I have pictures of my Amazon seller account, and I'm like, oh, we did $5,000 in a month. You know, now we do, you know, 1.5 million in a month. But it was just a slow progression. People were buying the product, and then they were like, oh, this works. So I'm just gonna keep buying it and keep buying it. And now, you know, you can see some of these that are on Amazon. And I mean, I think one of our products has an average of 60,000 repeat purchases per month or whatever it is.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Wow. And are these, like, people are subscribing? They're really taking it daily? Yeah. Cool. And that's so fascinating. So then did you have to start thinking of the company differently? Like, you needed fulfillment, you needed a huge pipeline of supply. Like, you needed to make supply chains happen. Right? I mean.
William Goneitz
Oh, yeah. I mean, all of those things. I mean, we still have a relatively small team. It's expensive, Expanded remarkably in the last year, but, I mean, our core team is only about 10 people.
Podcast Host Sarah Lynch
Wow.
William Goneitz
And then everything else is outsourced. But fulfillment was a huge issue. We were fulfilling product in my clinic, and these girls at the front desk, they. They were looking at me like, we have 30 orders. What are we gonna do? Well, now we have, like 1200 orders a day, so at least you don't have to handle that.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, my gosh.
William Goneitz
But it just amazes.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
That wasn't in their original job description, doing the postage or whatever. Right, right, right. Oh, that's so funny. So interesting.
William Goneitz
But FBA, you know, back in 2016, 2017, 2018, we got in relatively early.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Okay.
William Goneitz
And now, I mean, it's, you know, we're up there with the really big guys who've got, you know, bought by Unilever and things like that. It's. It's cool.
Podcast Host Sarah Lynch
When we come back, Christine asked William about the transferable skills he found as a founder. But first, a quick break.
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Christine Ligorio Chafkin
I imagine that managing a online kind of sales company is different than managing a clinic, but there's probably some skills that carry over, like, what's been changed in terms of your running the company and your management?
William Goneitz
Well, luckily, I have a right hand who happened to sort of be a consultant in 2019. He was like, look, I have a lot of skill sets that will benefit you. And he basically came on as my coo, and he's handled much of the growth. And so I could focus on science, I can focus on content, product development. And so a lot of the fulfillment has been automated through his practices. And even some of the growth of just finding new manufacturers and excelling at things that. I mean, he's smarter than I am at these things. So finding the smarter people than you in those areas is key.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Absolutely. So in terms of the. Doing the continued research, science, and marketing, those things too, like, what's next for you? Like, what are you finding? What are you looking at?
William Goneitz
So that's my wheelhouse app.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Yeah. Cool.
William Goneitz
My YouTube channel's got 1.1 million subscribers at this point. The content, I mean, people love it because no one else is sane. And that I'm committing to really escalating in the next six to eight months so that we can deliver the message and then the science. I mean, I'm constantly tinkering and constantly doing research. Constantly. A little bit almost experimenting on myself in certain cases, because I'm like, I think this combination is going to work. And then I'm like, you know, then you slowly roll it out with other test cases, and then it grows, and you have to prove the concept. So some of it takes years to develop, but that's all happening. So I have been working on a new set of products for the last five years, and I'm just about there.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Yeah.
William Goneitz
And so that's.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
That's gonna be coming out next. That's great. I feel like that is such a tricky content kind of delivery area to be in. Right. In health medicine, this kind of stuff is, like, ripe for spam. Ripe for, like, trying to get people to get down your rabbit hole. And, like, you've been in this for two decades. Like, you know what you're doing. How do you make yourself stand out from, like, the junk out there?
William Goneitz
That's also a great question, people. I think I may come across authentic simply because I have this bizarre wealth of knowledge that you only get with experience. You. You cannot read a book to go, oh, well, all of that makes sense. And it was two decades of experience going well, no, that's not actually how it works. These are the things that actually make that work. And, you know, from a content, from a spam perspective, I've been deep faked multiple times already.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Oh, God. People take my likeness and then they're.
William Goneitz
Selling other products, which I'm kind of flattered, I guess.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Right.
William Goneitz
But, you know, I'm not actually pushing those other products.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Right, right.
William Goneitz
But, yeah, it's just going to commitment to authenticity and growth based on my own personal experience with clients. And I. I don't deviate ever from the integrity of what I've seen or what I've built. I will never suggest anything that I've never actually seen work.
Capital One Advertiser
Mm.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Great. And so is YouTube your primary marketing channel or what's your best online marketing channel?
William Goneitz
Marketing wise, it's probably meta, and it's basically snippets of me doing podcasts or snippets of my videos. And then we find something that goes viral and then we just basically repeat it and do it over and over and over again and drive them to the website.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Yeah, absolutely. So what's your plan for the future now that you've found this growth? You've found the thing that works, like, you're gonna launch new products. Maybe you've been doing some more research, but, like, how do you keep that growth up? Are you going to try to?
William Goneitz
Well, I have a lot of wall space for more inc 5,000 plaques. All right, so that's something we want to keep growing.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
At this rate, it is hard to sustain that fast growth. Right? Year after year.
William Goneitz
It is, yeah. So we've kind of peaked at around 35% annually. But next year with the app and so much of these innovations that we have coming out, quite frankly, I think we're probably going to hit 80, 90, 100% growth. So that should keep us on the list for the next couple of years.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Great. Wait, can you see on site what kind of hair loss they have?
William Goneitz
And whether I walk through, like, Target and stores and go, that person has low ferritin or that person has low vitamin D. Interesting. And most of it's nutritional.
Capital One Advertiser
Wow.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
This is stuff that their regular MD should be handling. Right. But everyone should be on vitamin D. Most people.
William Goneitz
But you have a sweet spot. So, I mean, you want to be between 60 and 80 nanograms per milliliter in your blood. You want your zinc to be around 90 to 100. You want your ferritin to be at least.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Is that iron or something different?
William Goneitz
It's your iron storage protein. Most people Think about iron. But it's not iron, it's ferritin. And I'm really looking at copper now because I think that, I mean, I even tested my copper recently and I'm like, oh, that's a little bit lower than it should be. So when you biohack, it should be optimal. Okay. And literally if everyone did that, there would be at least 60% less hair loss, so.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Interesting.
William Goneitz
I mean, no pharmaceutical can actually do that. So until the pharmaceutical works.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
What about like the hair loss four months after you have a baby?
William Goneitz
Postpartum?
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Yeah.
William Goneitz
That is due to nutritional levels, depending on whether they breastfed. And then usually, I mean, your estrogen level peaks to between 25 and 50 times higher than usual. So then as soon as you postpartum, I mean, you give birth and then that drops within a month. So that hormone can create a stress shed. Or if you are susceptible to female pattern loss, then it will actually cause more loss. Like in the temple region.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
This is. I've never had good hair here.
Capital One Advertiser
Like never.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
It's like these Irish baby hairs.
William Goneitz
Well, that.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
But like, this was what, like four months after giving birth? Three times four months after. It just like was really bad.
William Goneitz
Did you breastfeed?
Podcast Host Sarah Lynch
Yeah.
William Goneitz
Okay. And then did you ever go back on like prenatal?
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
No, I mean, like. And I was taking a lot of iron while I was pregnant as well.
William Goneitz
And was your hair great while you were pregnant?
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
It's fine. Yeah.
William Goneitz
Okay. Yeah. So I'm gonna assume. How much red meat do you eat?
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Not that much.
William Goneitz
Okay.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Are you probably need a little more iron.
William Goneitz
Well, and it's not even. It's cumulative. So even if you had iron for. Let's just say you were taking normal amount of iron, like 35 milligrams of iron for the next.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Just taking like a lot like the liquid shots.
William Goneitz
Okay. Like the Farro shell, what is it called?
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Floradix or something like that?
William Goneitz
Oh, yes.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
It's got like mountain herbs in it too.
William Goneitz
I know, Whatever.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
It just tastes a little better.
William Goneitz
So preferably heme iron would be better. So that's typically derived sort of like an animal based iron. But if that's not an option, you'll need like 100 milligrams a day. And you want to track your blood levels and that's what we do.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Yeah. Cool.
William Goneitz
And that's because we do all the blood work and that's where you're literally going to be able to scan your blood test and it's going to be able to tell you exactly what you need, which is super, super cool.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Do you sell kits to test your blood too, or.
Podcast Host Sarah Lynch
No.
William Goneitz
We have a contract with Quest, and so you can order it on our website. It goes to Quest, Quest draws the blood, sends it back to us, and then we use the panel to make recommendations.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Oh, cool.
William Goneitz
But, I mean, it's. It's pretty wild.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Yeah. That's really cool.
William Goneitz
So simple. I mean, I always thought when I would talk about this that I'd basically work myself out of a job because people are going to just pick up on it. They don't.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Well, it is fairly complicated, right, to, like, track on your own and, like.
William Goneitz
Well, that's why we're making it easy.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
And so what's your next move after that? What are you thinking for exit strategy?
William Goneitz
I'm assuming that one of these larger brands is going to go, wow, this is a really good idea, and they're going to want to, you know, take it over. So I'll just throw a number out there and let's see where it goes.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
William Goneitz
And then after that, I mean, I think I'll just do nothing for a year until I'm really bored and then.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
Figure out something new, you know? I hate to break it to you, but I hear from many people it's shorter than a year. It's like the next morning they wake up and they're like, well, what am I. What am I going to do next?
William Goneitz
I know, I know.
Christine Ligorio Chafkin
But it sounds like it's been a fascinating journey and congratulations.
William Goneitz
Well, thank you very much.
Podcast Host Sarah Lynch
That's all for this episode of youf Next Move. Our producers are Blake Odom and Avery Miles. Editing and sound design by Nick Torres. Executive producer is Josh Christensen. If you haven't already subscribe to youo Next Move on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, your Next Move is a production of Inc And Capital One Business.
Episode Title: Commitment to Authenticity and Growth
Podcast: Your Next Move (Inc. Magazine in partnership with Capital One Business)
Host: Christine Ligorio Chafkin (Inc. Editor at Large)
Guest: William Goneitz, Founder & CEO, Advanced Trichology
Date: December 2, 2025
This episode of Your Next Move features a candid and practical conversation between Christine Ligorio Chafkin and William Goneitz, the founder and CEO of Advanced Trichology, a hair growth solutions company. William shares the company’s winding, decades-long journey, evolving from brick-and-mortar clinics to a thriving e-commerce business anchored in authenticity, individual treatment, and science-backed innovation. The discussion explores perseverance, navigating business pivots, leveraging content and technology, and staying committed to values while scaling.
"Most of the mainstream things didn’t work for me... I had to literally study trichology to figure out how to grow my own hair back."
— William Goneitz [01:07]
"The core of most people's hair loss is actually nutrition. Especially post Covid...your risk of hair loss increases eight times."
— William Goneitz [08:11]
"Finding smarter people than you in those areas is key."
— William Goneitz [12:05]
"I don't deviate ever from the integrity of what I've seen or what I've built. I will never suggest anything that I've never actually seen work."
— William Goneitz [14:36]
On Perseverance:
"I didn't have a choice...I was in this with all my clients. I was dedicated to basically completing the idea. Even now...it is for this should be everywhere. It should change the paradigm of hair loss."
— William Goneitz [05:45]
On Authenticity Amidst Spam:
"People...I think I may come across authentic simply because I have this bizarre wealth of knowledge that you only get with experience. You cannot read a book to go, oh, well, all of that makes sense."
— William Goneitz [13:58]
On Scientific Approach:
"I'm constantly tinkering and constantly doing research. Constantly. A little bit almost experimenting on myself in certain cases..."
— William Goneitz [12:52]
On Sustainable Success:
"We’ve kind of peaked at around 35% annually. But next year with the app...I think we're probably going to hit 80, 90, 100% growth."
— William Goneitz [15:35]
This summary offers a clear guide to the episode’s core narrative and insights, equipping listeners (and non-listeners) with an understanding of William Goneitz’s journey, the strategic pivots behind Advanced Trichology’s growth, and the enduring value of authenticity and science in entrepreneurial success.