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Month: March 2020

YFP 145: How Samm Built DocStation to Increase Value-Based Care

Posted on by yfpadmin


How Samm Built DocStation to Increase Value-Based Care

Samm Anderegg is on a mission to fix healthcare through his company DocStation. DocStation a software platform for healthcare teams, enabling pharmacists to provide value-based care to patients. Samm talks about his shift from a traditional career path to starting his own company and how his work with DocStation aligns with his vision for the future of pharmacy practice.

About Today’s Guest

Samm Anderegg is Chief Executive Officer at DocStation, a software platform for healthcare teams, enabling pharmacists to provide value-based care to patients. After graduating with distinction from the University of Iowa College of Pharmacy, he completed post-graduate residency training and a combined Master’s degree program specializing in Health-System Pharmacy Administration at the University of Kansas. Anderegg spent two years working in oncology and ambulatory care management at Augusta University Health System in Georgia before founding DocStation.

Summary

Samm Anderegg is the CEO of DocStation, a software platform for healthcare teams that enables pharmacists to provide value-based care to patients. After graduating with distinction from the University of Iowa College of Pharmacy, he completed post-graduate residency training and a combined Master’s degree program specializing in Health-System Pharmacy Administration at the University of Kansas. Samm spent two years working in oncology and ambulatory care management at Augusta University Health System in Georgia before founding DocStation.

While he was working at Augusta University Health System, Samm saw that there were a lot of barriers to do things and that it was hard to justify the value of pharmacists and their services. He saw this as an opportunity to build a tool for pharmacists from the ground up and decided to leave his secure job to focus on his passion.

Before quitting, Samm had to assess his financial risk as he’d be leaving a six-figure salary behind and suddenly not have an income. He knew that he could eliminate some of his expenses, make minimum payments on his student loans and use his savings if needed. Luckily, he was able to get paid hourly for an IT job he’d been doing project work for which gave him the income he needed to live.

Samm found Josh, a software engineer, who became the other half of DocStation. Together they created a care management platform and electronic record system built for pharmacists. As the profession of pharmacy is changing, Samm knew that a single record system was needed to bring pharmacists into this new age. Now, it’s a tool for value-based care connecting health plans to pharmacists so they can be paid for their services.

DocStation is currently used in the Midwest across 7 states with 300 pharmacies, 700 pharmacy users, 1 major health plan and has 32,000 patients.

Mentioned on the Show

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich: Hey, what’s up, everybody? Welcome to this week’s episode of the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast. It’s a pleasure to welcome onto the show Samm Anderegg, CEO of DocStation. Samm, excited to have you on the show. Welcome.

Samm Anderegg: Tim, thanks so much for allowing me to be here.

Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely. So let’s start off and talk a little bit about your career path into pharmacy, why you went into pharmacy, and ultimately why you decided to go on and complete what is known as a fairly intensive training path of a PGY1-PGY2 combined MS in healthcare administration.

Samm Anderegg: Yeah, it started really simple. Grew up in small town Iowa and had friends and family that worked in my small hometown and had a cousin that flew the coop and went to university and got into pharmacy. And so I was a younger cousin, I looked up to all my older cousins, and you know, I was very interested in math and science. And I wanted to put that to use, so I think the big thing is, you know, knowing that you want to be interacting and helping people in the most simple sense and how do you make a career or profession out of that? And went to the University of Iowa, kind of debated between medicine and pharmacy but ultimately chose pharmacy and I’m sure glad I did it.

Tim Ulbrich: So then you make the decision and a program that’s near and dear to my heart, I direct this program at Ohio State, the combined PGY1-PGY2 MS degree, obviously a very niched, focused pathway, very intensive. You know, you’re full-time resident, full-time student. So there certainly is some strategic decisions that go into making that move. So what was it that drew you into that focus of administrative pharmacy training?

Samm Anderegg: Yeah, I think as you journey down this path that is your career, you’re constantly checking in with yourself and asking yourself, you know, what do you want to be when you grow up? And after I made that hurdle into pharmacy, it was then, you know, how can I blend my interest in what I believe that my skill set is to be fulfilled in my career? And you know, originally I thought being like in a primary care clinic and taking care of patients and building those relationships would be the way to go, but I realized that you can make a larger impact on a greater scale, be a little bit more creative, which I felt like — or what I held important — you could do that in an administrative role or a management role as the leader. And you know, I had some really great mentors at the University of Iowa that directed me to these administrative residencies, and I knew it was going to be a rough two years, but I’m a glutton for punishment, so I was a little bit excited about that as well. So that led me down the path and again, it’s just one of those decisions that you make along the way and wanted to keep myself versatile, so that’s the route I took.

Tim Ulbrich: So talk us through the work that you did after completing the combined residency and MS but before DocStation. So we’ll get there in a little bit about how you started that, what the work is you’re doing there. But what happened in between after you finished up the administrative training?

Samm Anderegg: Yeah, I think, you know, again, I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to be when I grew up, even after residency, right? And so I was looking for full-time positions in which I could, you know, lead a team, but the responsibilities were broad, meaning they weren’t specialized in necessarily operations or clinical management. And so I took a service line job. It was at the Medical College of Georgia. I was one manager on a team of five others with a director. And so a large amount of responsibilities, had about 18 FTEs. And you know, I was curious, I wanted to build things, create things, and really make an impact in that first job. And it was a great fit for me.

Tim Ulbrich: Awesome. So eight years of training, so your pre-pharmacy, your pharmacy work, your administrative residency two years plus the MS degree, several years of experience, and then you make the decision that you’re going to walk away from that and start your own, start your own company. And that, of course, would be the work that you’re doing with DocStation. So tell us a little bit about that decision and how you’re able to reconcile walking away from I guess what you could say is somewhat something known and secure to then starting your own company.

Samm Anderegg: Yeah, it’s a great question. I think, you know, when I made the decision on the first job, again, going back to that creativity piece and the ability to really build things, so the job was great for the first like two and a half years is how long I lasted there. Learned a lot, implemented a lot, but I didn’t realize how much that creativity was important to me. And so after you get quite a few things done, you start getting — you start pulling back the layers of the onion and realizing that there are a lot of barriers, you know? You cross quite a few in those first two and a half years and build a lot of great relationships, but there’s some just political, structural, operational barriers to be able to do new things like if you want to implement a new software or if you want to hire more FTEs, you know the ROI is there, but it’s not just a matter of convincing someone or showing them value, it’s things that are out of your scope of influence. So I was a little frustrated by that and I think what it came down to is we were trying to implement clinical services in the ambulatory care. And you know, built proposals, submitted them one year after the next, but what I realized is it’s really hard to justify that value. And looking around for all the like different clinical tools, pharmacy documentation tools that were able to do that, there just weren’t any. And so going back to that creative piece, I was like, you know, I’ve learned a little bit, enough, throughout my career to know that there’s an opportunity here to build a tool for pharmacists from the ground up. It sounds crazy when you say that if you’re in a position to be a manager, but the more you keep thinking about it, right, and I’m sitting here burned out in my job a little bit, working hard, still enjoying it but knowing that I don’t want to do it for the next 20 years of my life. So I spent a lot of time thinking and debating, but ultimately it just becomes more and more real the more you think about it. And when you look at the other people that have started companies, you know, they’re just like you and I. They’re just regular people. They were just willing to take that risk. And so then it became analyzing the risk and the financial piece, how do I actually do this? So you know, I kind of went from there and jumped off the ledge.

Tim Ulbrich: So let’s talk about that for a moment before I jump into exactly what is DocStation, what’s the problem you’re trying to solve with that, but talk us through, talk our listeners through how you did analyze that risk. I think that’s something that often, people are thinking about as oh, maybe I’ve got a great idea or I see people like Samm doing some cool stuff, but I can’t imagine walking away from my known six-figure job or I’ve got lots of student loan debt, got all these issues to deal with. So how did you walk through that risk and really try to objectively evaluate what the risk and the opportunity was?

Samm Anderegg: Yeah, so I think even before I got to that point, it was making sure I found something that I was extremely passionate about, right? It hit all of my boxes like the technology piece, the creativity piece, the leadership piece and really building something, creating something out of nothing. I was extremely motivated to try this out at the beginning, right? And it’s, you know, the risk at that point is really just time risks. So I was working a full-time job, and I would go home in the evenings — you know, eat dinner, throw something in the microwave really quick, and then spend the next five or six hours just reading and listening to podcasts and trying to absorb as much information as possible, building out financial models, like whatever I could do to validate whether this was going to be a viable business or not. And you know, as that progressed, that got into a couple months’ worth of time where I was like running on no sleep basically to the point where I knew there was an opportunity there, it was just a matter of whether I wanted to take that next step of risk and ultimately decided that if I wanted to, what would I need to change? And I just needed to create more time. I needed to create more time for myself and really, the only way to do that was to eliminate those 40-60 hours a week that was my full-time job as a pharmacy manager. So you know, analyzed how I would do that and happy to kind of walk through those steps as well. I know a lot of people have ideas. It’s like, how do I actually put this into action? But the first thing is the risk of time. And that’s a good test to make sure that you are passionate about it if you’re willing to stay up until 2, 3 in the morning doing those things because you love it so much.

Tim Ulbrich: I’m so glad you said that too because I think that’s a common theme. I know I felt it when I was starting the work with YFP, but you hear it so often among business owners that are working full-time and then they start their own company simultaneously is that they will talk about it as if you hear the hours and you’re like, oh my gosh, it’s exhausting. But that person is so passionate about the idea that they don’t see that same level of exhaustion. You know, they’re so eager to learn and so eager to jump in and really see is this viable and how do I learn more about the industry and what’s happening? Talk me through more of the financial risk. You mentioned the time piece. I hear you there. But I’m guessing many are listening saying, you know, “How do I go from $120,000 to nothing?” You know, we know many business owners as you start, obviously you’re investing a lot back in the business. How did you assess the actual financial risks and what you might need to change, you know, if anything, to make that a reality?

Samm Anderegg: Yep. So I think I was about two and a half years into my job, so I was two and a half years into being used to that type of salary, right?

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah.

Samm Anderegg: And you know, I definitely like spent money to travel and do things like that, but I didn’t build everything into my day-to-day life where it would be really hard to untangle all of that stuff. It’s still hard, don’t get me wrong. It’s hard for anyone to do that, but what I — I looked at my savings account, how much of an emergency fund did I really have left and how much did I think, how long did I think that that would last? I looked at basically my primary income going to $0, so how do I make up — like what is it that I need to cover the bare minimum, right? What costs can I cut? It was really like a full-on slash of everything. I discontinued all my subscriptions, I eliminated my rent and figured, OK, I could stay with some friends for a little while while I figure this out. I put my student loans down to minimum payments. I was paying more than double what I owed. So did that exercise and then came up with a number, a monthly number that I needed to make up. And what I didn’t mention in my background is, you know, since like about 2010, I was involved in health IT, specifically on the pharmacy side. And so it started off as a project and eventually grew into through residency, I worked on this project. And then when I took that first job, they started paying me a little bit hourly for my expertise I had developed over the last three years, so there was work there. So an opportunity to do more hours and again, I was working on my own thing and full-time job, so I didn’t really have any time to dedicate to that. But that was an opportunity. I just basically said, “Hey, if you need me to do this, here’s how much I need per month,” and was able to negotiate that. So and you know, that was kind of like an opportunity and timing type thing. But I think, you know, whatever you’re doing, you’re trying to figure out any way you can make up that income, whether it’s passive income, whether it’s if you’re partner is willing to help you out in the meantime, if you want to start building up that savings account, that emergency fund early on, you know, lots of different options. It just depends on your situation. And that was mine.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and I think if I could add there too, Samm — I don’t know if you felt much of this — I know for me and a conversation my wife and I often have and really finding value in talking to other people because when you’re in it, it’s hard to see it. But I think often, I project the risk to be greater than it really is. And when you take a step back and you think about, OK, your training, if things were to fall flat in 6 or 12 months, it’s not like you’re not going to have options. You’ve got a network, you’ve got lots of training, right? So really taking a step back to say, not only for your individual financial plan what is true risk, but also career-wise, you know, play out the worst case scenario. And then if that’s the worst thing that could happen, which is likely to be unimaginable, OK, anything else, what’s really the risk that’s associated with that? One question I have for you, when you talked about coming home in the evenings and spending 5-6 hours, you know, really learning more about the business side, doing some modeling, how much of that learning was industry-specific to the area that you wanted to do with DocStation, and how much of it was more in kind of the business side of it and starting up a business and all that was entailed in doing that?

Samm Anderegg: Yeah, none of it was industry-specific or pharmacy-specific, even healthcare-specific. And you know, you kind of start searching to see if there’s anyone out there talking about that in our particular field, but there’s just really not. And I thought, you know, when I first — a little bit disappointed at first, but then you realize that if you’re going to make this work for healthcare, for pharmacy or whatever, it’s industry-agnostic. Building a business, building a startup, there are different rules that you have to play by. And I think it’s better to learn from people that have done it in different industries and then figure out how that applies to healthcare and to pharmacy. And there are some nuances in the healthcare space that don’t apply to social media marketing, e-commerce and things like that. But those are the little things that you pick up along the way and fit into your puzzle as you go forward.

Tim Ulbrich: So let’s talk about and transition to DocStation. What is it? Why is it important? And what’s the problem that you’re trying to solve with DocStation?

Samm Anderegg: Yeah, so DocStation is a care management platform or an Electronic Health Record built for pharmacists. The big thing that we’re trying to do is in the community pharmacy space, you know, the business model for the last dozens of years, decades, right, has been built on dispensing prescriptions and the administrative fees that come along with that and the margin that we make on the actual product. And just within the last two or three years, extreme pressure that is putting that at risk, putting pharmacies at risk. And so, I don’t know, I just kind of saw that, you know, you see every other product that has the ability to be shipped, delivered to people’s door in two days, so what’s going to happen to our profession? And so you know, I looked at community pharmacy, there’s really no one, clinical record or EHR system that folks use that’s built specifically to bring pharmacy to the new age and the clinical age, and that was the gap that I was trying to fill. And so I experimented with a lot of different ways to get started. Like the main thing is like, how are you going to bring in money for this business, right? Where’s your revenue going to come from? And thought pharmacies at first, but you know, the more you look at the market, the more you look at healthcare outside of pharmacy. Everything is moving to value-based care.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

Samm Anderegg: And the folks that are going to make the most money in that type of equation are the health plans. They’re going to have the most value from that, right? And so we began to talk to health plans about that. And so the idea, the product itself, has evolved over time. You know, it started as like an EHR you sell to pharmacists as like a subscription fee. And now, it’s really a tool for value-based care or value-based pharmacy, connecting health plans directly with pharmacies to facilitate value-based care models.

Tim Ulbrich: So help our listeners understand how that differentiates from others that have been in the space for awhile. So I remember wrapping up residency in 2008. Here in Ohio, we had a big Medicaid MTM contract that came to be, lots of excitement around community pharmacists, community pharmacies getting involved in Medication Therapy Management services, lots of frustrations that were also happening because the caseload really wasn’t significant enough at the time — obviously, a lot has changed — significant enough at the time to be able to efficiently operationalize it in a store. So you saw these models evolving to where you’d have one clinical pharmacist going around to multiple stores trying to do these cases. Is it really viable? Is it something you can justify continuing? So the MTM delivery and a care platform at the community pharmacy has been around for awhile. It certainly has its challenges. So what is the work that you’re doing at DocStation? How does it differ from those existing platforms?

Samm Anderegg: Yeah, I think going back to how is pharmacy unique, right? You mentioned MTM. Because we have this burden, and now I’m seeing it as an opportunity that we haven’t been classified as providers under the Social Security Act, you know, we didn’t fall down the typical path that physicians at hospitals did, meaning billing fee for service CPT codes.

Tim Ulbrich: Right.

Samm Anderegg: So we have been fighting tooth and nail for any sort of reimbursement for clinical services. And we’ve been very resourceful, so part of Medicare Part D passing was MTM was mandated, right? But MTM is a specific segment or specific way that pharmacists can get paid for services, and it’s wildly different than billing a CPT code for chronic care management. And that’s also wildly different from contracting directly with an outpatient physician’s office to help them improve quality measures. So you mentioned the big thing was how do we get our caseload up to make this actually a viable business for me to open a practice, right?

Tim Ulbrich: Yep, yep.

Samm Anderegg: And so our belief is that if you build a tool that’s robust enough to incorporate all these different clinical revenue opportunities, and you take all of the administrative burden away, you leave the pharmacist with the simple message of take care of the patient and you’ll get paid. You’ll get paid enough to have a stable income, provide for your family, and if you’re ambitious, you know, build a large clinical practice out of it. And so that’s what we’re aiming to do and that’s why I believe that we’re different.

Tim Ulbrich: So what is holding this back from scaling? You know, I feel like one of the things that I’ve always struggled with thinking through the evolution of the community pharmacist’s role beyond the dispensing prescriptions is we seem to have pockets and pilots and areas of success, but we have yet to really see something scale. So in your world, what is preventing that from happening? And you know, is this a solution that can help that scaling happen?

Samm Anderegg: Great question. Well, getting into it, people told me this a million times. Software takes a heck of a lot longer to build than you think it’s going to, right? And that’s true. But regardless, healthcare and pharmacy and all of the different segments or ways to get reimbursed are incredibly complex, like way more complex than really any other industry. And that’s one of those unique things about healthcare. It would take two or three years to build out a clinical billing tool that works really well, designed well, and people are going to use it over and over again. And that’s just one segment, right? Then you’ve got to look at MTM, and then you’ve got to look at direct contracting and all these different things. And all the while, the market’s emerging and requirements are changing. And so you know, I think the first thing is just picking a specialty to start in. Where do you want to start that you think you’re going to generate enough interest and engagement from users and it’s going to fund your business so that you can grow and add new tooling to it? And so you know, I think that’s — the biggest barrier is just, you know, building a HIPPA-compliant, cloud-based platform that’s usable and applicable to a large group of pharmacies and pharmacists that find it useful. And then I think the next thing is really, you know, the marketing and adoption piece. And so how do you — again, this is not anything that I was taught in pharmacy school or residency — but how do you market a software product to a buyer who is really a health plan? Like enterprise sales is, again, not in our textbooks. So figuring out how to do that, what type of people you need on the team, what the strategy is, it’s incredibly complex. And sales cycles, again, thinking about healthcare, sales cycles are 18-24 months. That just means that’s how long it takes from the first conversation you have with a potential customer to actually closing a contract. You know, probably one of the worst industries to try to do that in. And a lot of people are doing it and figuring it out, and we are too. It just takes time.

Tim Ulbrich: It takes time. I want to think through this a little bit more from the user standpoint as well as from your standpoint from the business end. Obviously those are connected, but if we have somebody listening who’s at the frontlines in a community pharmacy and they’re hearing this and they’re like, “Yes. This is what I’ve been looking for, what I want to do,” how do they get this off the ground? I mean, are you working with the payer and then you reach out to the pharmacies that the payer is working with? Or can the pharmacy drive that up through you guys to then initiate the payer contracts? How would somebody listening, thinking about this, begin to put in place how they might operationalize it?

Samm Anderegg: This is awesome. I love talking about this stuff. I’m glad you’re asking these questions because there’s things that we’ve been asking ourselves for a really long time. And what I would say — and again, at this point in time, if we were to do this interview 12 months from now, the answer would probably be different.

Tim Ulbrich: Sure.

Samm Anderegg: But at this point in time, we know that if we have a health plan that’s a partner, and they want to pay pharmacists for services, they just don’t know how to roll out that program, and sign up the pharmacies and make sure they’re credentialed and facilitate the payment. We know that we can walk into a health plan and provide a turnkey solution in the next 30 days. And we know that pharmacists will sign up for our platform and use our platform to get paid with that type of model because we’re doing it in the Midwest, we’re doing it across seven states, 300 pharmacies, 700 pharmacy users, one major health plan. And we’re eager to repeat that. We just need a pharmacy partner, someone at a payer that’s like, yeah, I like what these guys are doing and I believe in it. And on the other end, if you’re a pharmacist, right, you’re like, OK, I don’t know how I can help you with that if you don’t have a contact on the payer side. But on the pharmacy end, what we’re thinking is hey, if we build a tool that provides enough value like it creates more efficiency or it brings you new types of data, it helps you do things easier than other software that you’re using today or maybe you’re paying for software that does something that we can replace at no cost, right? We want to give you our tool for free. Like you can go to the website right now, sign up, we can get you basically turned in less than 24 hours. And you have access to the software. The main barrier right now is OK, now I’ve got to enter my patients in manually, hand type them in just as if you were starting with a brand new EHR. And we’re working to automate that to transfer your patients over automatically. But the key is if our tool is good enough, use it to be efficient, get data to show your value, and that makes the conversations a heck of a lot easier when you do approach your payer or whoever in your region, say, “Hey, you know, I’d really like to provide care for your members, your patients, and you’re going to get value when I do that. And let me show you why.” It helps you fuel your pitch to continue to grow your business. So that’s the second side of the coin.

Tim Ulbrich: So the website, just so you mentioned that, DocStation.co, DocStation.co if you want to go there and check it out, learn more. And I think just to build off of what you said, I mean, to me, the way we — as I hear and understand this, obviously you know much better than I do — but as we think about scaling this, it really needs uptake. I mean, it needs uptake from the payer side, it needs uptake from the pharmacy side. So part of my hope in sharing your story — not only sharing your entrepreneurial journey but also we know that we have a lot of listeners all across the country that might have some of these relationships or their pharmacies may be interested. And I’m hopeful we can see some momentum there. So you mentioned seven states, 300+ pharmacies. How many — you mentioned the payer — how many patients thus far have you served or you’re working with?

Samm Anderegg: So it’s roughly 32,000 patients.

Tim Ulbrich: OK, awesome. And then on the other side — I mentioned I wanted to talk about it from the pharmacist’s side — from the business side of it, as you’re willing to share, talk to use a little bit more about — obviously not specific numbers — but how you think about this from a, OK, at the end of the day, we’ve got to generate revenue. There’s a business model here. So what does that look like in terms of the payer relationships and how you build out a viable business model.

Samm Anderegg: Right. So when you’re in startup land, two ways to bring in money. And by bring in money, it means you’re on a fast track to grow your company, right? So you need to — really the biggest expense is hiring people. So hiring software engineers to build the product, expand the product, new features, maybe build it a little bit faster, but speed is usually not correlated with FTEs in that sense. And so you know, you could sell or you could fundraise. And I think what most people see on Twitter and in the news and on the show Silicon Valley is like you go out there and you raise multiple millions of dollars at these sky-high valuations that just seem fake. And that still goes on to a certain sense today, but it’s really hard for someone who’s coming out of healthcare with no previous experience starting a traditional technology company to say, “I’m a subject matter expert and I’ve got this really great idea that is really complicated to explain, but you should write us a check for $2 million.” That’s tough. It was really tough, and I wasn’t able to do it to get started. And so you know, you start looking at on the customer side and you look at health plans. And so what we’ve done is at first, it was bootstrapping. I drained down my savings account to basically $0, my cofounder did the same. I was able to convince my cofounder to take that risk as well. That was the first step. And then when you close your first customer, you’re saying, “OK. We’re bringing in x amount of money. How many people can we afford to hire?” And it’s really about understanding what — and these are different financial terms from the everyday life or everyday business — it’s about your runway and your burn rate. How much are you spending? How quick? And when are you going to die? And how do you make sure that you’ve got enough cash on hand to continue to extend that timeline? And you’re up — all the while, you’re weighing a lot of different factors. OK, if I fundraise from this group, do I trust them? Do I want to work with them for the next 10 years? Because you’re basically getting married to them. And they’re going to take a significant portion of equity in your company, and they’re going to have a board seat. And so there’s lots of things to calculate and understand and weigh. But you’re doing this pretty much daily, right?

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

Samm Anderegg: And so yeah, you know, we’re going hard on the sales and the customer thing. We believe that our product’s at a place right now where it’s going to generate immediate value for a health plan. And we’re working on that on the pharmacy side too. I believe the tool is really great. We need pharmacists to tell us, hey, this is what’s missing. I would use this if. And all the while, you’re looking at that bank account every day and you’re saying, OK, how much time have we got? How much time we got? How much time we got? Until you’re ready to pull the trigger and find an alternative source of funding. So that’s the current situation, man.

Tim Ulbrich: And I think just hearing you talk, you know, kind of bringing this full circle, it goes back to you better be doing something that you love here and you’re passionate about, you believe in, because when you’re talking about things like drain your bank account, going into partnerships, cofounders, challenges that come — I mean, don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t change any of it for the world and if you have that itch and desire and passion about something, you just can’t ignore it. You know as well as I do, you’re going down this path regardless. You can’t stop it. But it better be down something you love because it’s going to have a lot of implications. And I even think on the money side, I’ve been listening to a lot of The Pitch podcast on Gimlet Media, and great stuff. But you know, kind of that fundraising side, and I think often we think of this glorious side of raising money, but there’s also this other side of you have lots of opinions now, you’ve got baggage that comes with that, you’re obviously giving up equity, so you know, there’s pros and cons to that. And obviously you guys decided to try to cash flow as much as you can up front and obviously there’s challenges with that as well. Talk to me for a moment about a cofounder as well as the first hires. I think that’s a lot we don’t hear about in the business trajectory and growth. We hear a lot of the glorious parts of you start something, you got a cool idea, you’re doing your own business, and that’s like cool. What we don’t talk about is some of that next phase challenges I would say like bringing on partners or even hiring your first employee at the expense of paying yourself because you really feel like that’s what you need. So what was that decision like? You know, was it a cofounder from the beginning? Was it somebody you brought on later? And how did you make that decision of what would be additional benefit obviously that they would bring perhaps and a different expertise?

Samm Anderegg: Yeah, I think my administrative training in management, you did some hiring with that. You know, in my first job, I hired quite a few people. But when it comes to starting something from the ground up and your cofounder is really like a first hire but so much more than that, right?

Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely.

Samm Anderegg: There’s so much more risk in choosing the wrong person, especially with that cofounder situation. So you know, when you’re looking at startups and the most successful ones and how they got started, it’s like, you know, these people have been friends since childhood and one ran off to be a software engineer and the other got her MBA and they circled back and found this great idea and they built a $1 billion company. I didn’t have any of those types of friends. And you know, you just — what I’ve learned is you just talk about to everyone that you know. And you know, I had some friends in pharmacy that were interested and ultimately, I needed the skillset that I needed to complement my own was on the software engineering side. Right? You need someone to actually build the product. And so what I did is I knew that this is a person that I wanted to — really, I needed a friend, a friend that seemed like a childhood friend that I knew that was willing to — we could go through tough times together and come out on top and someone that was really empathetic and caring and like understood, you know, the risk and really be in it together. So what you have to do is when you’re meeting somebody blind, which I did — I met like four or five different people that I did some projects with, right? You start with a project, see how that project goes, how you really work together, and then spend time with them personally too to talk through things to see if you’re a match. And so yeah, I found Josh in Austin. I looked everywhere. But met him, met his wife Rachel and you know, I feel like I’m a member of their family now and vice versa. And so you’ve just got to be careful and do as much testing as you can. And I think the people that I met before Josh, it didn’t feel right, but I kind of wanted to continue to try to make it work. But you know, when we did meet up and start working together, you could feel it, you know? It felt right. It felt like it fit.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and I think you often hear about the negative side of partnerships. I know I did. I grew up in a small business family where a partnership went bad, you know, in a family business, so I felt like I heard very much of that side. But I think you don’t hear as much of the positives that can come — and I know speaking from personal experience, sounds like for you as well, I could not imagine going at it alone. And I think if you find that right relationship or fit, what you can get in terms of not only different expertise, perspective, but I think it’s a classic example of two are better than one alone. And I think you get a duplicate effect when you have really the right fit and the different expertise that two people can bring. When I think about a CEO role, I think about things like obviously strategic direction of the business, you’re thinking about the leading the team, and I know you’ve got a team that works with you and that presents its own set of opportunities and challenges. You think about business development, strategic relationships, really being the face of the company, which one, is very different than anything we’ve ever trained for in school or even in the residency you went through but also is very different than likely the role you started out with in the company where you’re really in the weeds on the product side. So talk to me about that transition to that role, maybe struggles you’ve had or how you’ve effectively made that transition where you can kind of take more of that global perspective and when you have other people on board, really serving in that CEO role of driving the strategic direction of the company, allowing the other people to be in the weeds on the other parts.

Samm Anderegg: Yeah. It’s — you learn as you go is the big thing. I know that’s general, it’s not really great advice by any means. But you do. And I think intuitively, you know it’s all about focus. What is the most important thing that you need to do? What is the biggest thing that’s blocking you from taking the next step? That’s what it is at the very early stage. And so the first one was OK, finding a cofounder because I knew I couldn’t fundraise and I knew it would take too long to code. So once I found Josh, it was like OK, what’s the next thing? Well, we need to build something that people will buy. And so you know, we built a prototype and helped work on that. And at the very beginning stage, I was like helping out with the back end architecture and used my whatever I borrowed from Microsoft Access skills that I learned in residency. Like you know, trying to build the database. It didn’t go well. I’m not in that position anymore. I’m not — but you know, you just, priorities change and new things come up and they shift. And at the early stage, it’s really on a monthly basis, maybe. But as your business grows and you bring on new people and you start delegating some responsibilities, things get more complex. I hate to say it. They get more complex, and you’re trying to figure out where can I make the most impact this week?

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

Samm Anderegg: Or this quarter. And a lot of it — and every company is a little bit different, depending on who you have on the team, what your roles are and what your biggest, what you’re trying to accomplish. But where I fit in now is really sales and leadership and building a team. We went through this accelerator program called TechStars. It’s like a three-month residency program, if you want to put it in pharmacy terms, for young startup companies to try to give you the skills on the tech side. Yeah, it was exactly what we needed at that point in time. But the biggest lesson I took away about the CEO role is when things get so complex and hazy, it’s like you have three responsibilities: vision, people, and funding.

Tim Ulbrich: Oh, so good. Yep.

Samm Anderegg: So that, you know, I can sigh and relax a little bit when I remind myself that.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep. I love that. And that’s a good reminder, reminder for me. It’s just such a shift from the roles that we’re used to, either in our day job or the way we’ve been trained. And I’ve been following along your newsletter. And I think I can see that you’re doing an awesome job of that with your team and really focusing on the team aspect of it. So one question I have for you is about the future — kind of combines the future of the business and the future of the profession. You know, as I understand your product is really focusing on leveraging the community pharmacist to be able to interact with patients and provide the service that they’re trained to do and connecting the payers to pharmacies to do this. Two ways of looking at this: One is that this is an area that’s being disrupted. Will community pharmacy — obviously I’m being dramatic here — will community pharmacy exist in terms of the brick-and-mortar? There’s disruptors like Amazon, PillPack, others that are gaining in the space. Margins are being cut, we’ve got PBM issues, DIR fees, all these things. Will that model exist? And therefore, what’s the threat potentially depending on that model? The other way of looking at that is that you’ve got in this brick-and-mortar pharmacy world, we’re the most successful healthcare professional in the country. So we are theoretically placed and ready to be in the prime position to do exactly what you’re trying to do and grow. So I’m guessing this dichotomy is something you think about often in terms of the disruptions happening in the industry but also simultaneously the opportunity that exists with your business model. So talk us through how you envision that and how you think through that.

Samm Anderegg: Yeah, man, I think you hit the nail on the head. And you’re not being dramatic at all. You know, I’ve been talking about this for years and more critically in the past couple years. We’ve got a lot of industry pressure going on, specifically in the community pharmacy setting. And so you know, we’ve got this coronavirus thing happening right now, and it’s like, man, you know, we could have got out ahead of this, in front of this, and people were downplaying it. I think we’re in the same situation in pharmacy. Right? Like if you realize that there are pressures, if you don’t feel them, if you’re not a business owner or community pharmacy owner and you’re not writing the tens of thousands of dollars in checks back to the PBM for these DIR fees, and you see your volume decreasing as people are shifting to mail-order or PBMs are requiring mail-order, man, it’s rough out there. And it’s going to happen quick. But you know, what I — going back to your second point is it is an opportunity. But we have to be ready, right? And the biggest missing piece that I saw and really, another huge reason to start the company, is that let’s say this happened in a more positive light. Let’s say either federal government gave us provider status tomorrow. And all of a sudden, pharmacists could be reimbursed in the same rate as physicians for the services that were within their scope of practice determined by their state. OK, what next? Right? And I don’t think most people who are advocating for this have a good answer for that.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s exactly right. Yep.

Samm Anderegg: And so you know, we — these negative pressures are — they’re being applied. It’s a little bit longer term, just not kind of an instantaneous need. But we still have that gap, and so that’s what we’re trying to build in this tool. And DocStation is we want to be able to hand this piece of software over to a pharmacist and say, “Alright, provider status gets passed tomorrow or your business starts taking a hit and you need a new clinical revenue stream, here you go. Sign up, start providing care, and money will get deposited in your bank account.” So you know, it’s inevitable. Like our profession is going to change.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

Samm Anderegg: And we need to do everything that we can to start preparing for that. I think a lot of entities are, they’re preaching that word, but we’ve got to be in this together you guys.

Tim Ulbrich: I agree, and I think your point is so spot-on that we’ve been spending so much time talking about things like the acquisition of provider status. And we talk a lot here in Ohio and I think nationwide as well that without payment, without contracts, that’s really a symbolic move. And I think the question is how do you operationalize it and not only how do you operationalize it, but are we ready and are we willing and wanting to operationalize it as a profession? And I think the research, a lot of the research and work that hasn’t been done is I know living in the academic circles, living in the association circles, it’s all talked about in a positive tone. But I don’t think that’s representative of how everyone feels about it for good reasons of the challenges they’re facing on the frontlines. And I really want to give a shoutout here, I think some of the work that we’re doing in Ohio, the Ohio Pharmacists Association, my colleagues at Ohio State, Jen Rhodes, Stu Badey, Michael Murphy, Christine Mason, they are asking these questions and really having some of this conversation and doing the work talking about how do we actually operationalize provider status, Bridget Groves at OPA, and really get past just that symbolic passing of the legislation. And I think the work that you’re doing at DocStation so nicely aligns with that as well. Last question I have for you, kind of a fun, light-hearted one, you know, here you are, obviously in this CEO role of DocStation, thinking about the future of the profession, the vision. What are you drawing from? What are you reading, what are you listening to where you draw some of your inspiration and get some of the knowledge that inspires the work that you do?

Samm Anderegg: That’s a great question. Depends on the time and what current issue or stage or what’s most important when I try to find a book that is loosely related to that. And even if I pick up a random book, a lot of times, the timing is right. But you know, at the beginning, there’s a couple books that I took from, Y Combinator Startup School has founders come in and lecture, like successful ones and they mention they’re reading this. And so “Crossing the Chasm” was probably one of the most influential books that I read. It’s about marketing, it’s about introducing a new product to a market and who you need to target. That was huge. Another one, I thought I knew tech, but I didn’t understand what tech really was on a large scale, on a global scale. And so “Behind the Cloud,” which was written by the founder of SalesForce in San Francisco. That was a really influential book. And recently, you know, now that we’ve progressed a little bit as a company and we’re trying to build a sustainable business that is durable for years, I went back to the basics and picked up Jim Collin’s “Good to Great,” and man, what a great read that is about research-based and gives you the right tools and things to focus on and helps you simplify it. That has been the most impactful one lately. And I’ll throw in one more if that’s OK.

Tim Ulbrich: Sure. Absolutely.

Samm Anderegg: Yeah. If you’re starting a business, “The Hard Thing About Hard Things” by Ben Horowitz of Andresen-Horowitz is like my pacifier. Like if something’s going wrong, or it’s just a slog, you’re in that rut, which you do, you go in ruts and then you have peaks. But man, that is — he just does a great job of not telling you here’s 10 steps to building a successful company but here’s what it’s really like and here’s how messy it is and here’s what happened to us, here’s what we did in those scenarios. So you know, when you think times are tough, you know you’re not alone reading that book. So yeah, I highly recommend that.

Tim Ulbrich: We’ll link to all three of those in the show notes. I’ve got two new ones to add to my reading list, “Crossing the Chasm” and “The Hard Things about Hard Things” and then rereading “Good to Great.” So good reminder on those. Two part question to wrap up here, Samm. Where can our listeners go to learn more about DocStation, the work that you’re doing? And then how can they get involved as well if they’ve heard something today and they say, I want to be a part of this.

Samm Anderegg: Yep. Easiest way to get in touch is go to the website, DocStation.co. There’s a “Get Started” button in the top right. Click that, fill out the form. And I know that seems like rudimentary or like not very personal, but it notifies us directly and notifies me directly. And so we’ve got a great couple people that watch that, monitor that 24/7. Response rate is in like three minutes. And so we’ll reach out to you directly. And then we’ll become personal, I promise you. That’s the easiest way to do it.

Tim Ulbrich: Awesome. Samm, thank you so much for taking the time, for sharing your journey. I know you’ve inspired me and I have a feeling will do the same for many of our listeners. So thank you very much.
Samm Anderegg: Thanks, Tim. It was a pleasure.

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YFP 144: How Two Pharmacists Paid Off $214k of Student Loans in 17 Months

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How Two Pharmacists Paid Off $214k of Student Loans in 17 Months

Levi Ellison, PharmD, shares how he and his wife paid off $214,594.55 of student loans over 17 months. Levi talks about the motivations behind such an aggressive repayment strategy, how they were able to do it and what they hope to accomplish now that they are debt free.

About Today’s Guest

Levi Ellison has been married to his loving wife, Jessica Ellison, since the summer of 2018 following their May graduation from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences College of Pharmacy in Little Rock. While in pharmacy school Levi was a winning team member of the 2017 Good Neighbor Pharmacy National Community Pharmacy Association Pruitt-Schutte Student Business Plan. Immediately following graduation he received a $20,000 sign on bonus for a 2-year commitment to work in his hometown of Mena, Arkansas as a staff pharmacist at Walgreens. He serves as a Sunday school teacher for young adults at Salem Baptist Church, Treasurer of the Polk County Republican Committee, and served as a Financial Peace University Coordinator. He enjoys running, traveling with his wife, spending time with his family, and being debt free!

Summary

Levi Ellison shares his remarkable story of how he and Jessica, his wife who is also a pharmacist, paid off $214,594.55 of student loan debt over 17 months. While in school, Levi and Jessica were pretty aware of how much money they were taking out and knew that they didn’t feel good about taking out more than they needed. That mentally paired with some scholarships allowed them to both graduate under the average debt load that most pharmacists carry.

They were motivated by Joe Baker’s personal finance class in pharmacy school and by Dave Ramsey’s book Total Money Makeover. Following the Dave Ramsey approach, they knew that they wanted to attack their debt in a gazelle-like fashion so that they could move on to other financial goals that are important to them. By following a strict budget and using a budgeting app called EveryDollar along with a homemade allocated spending budget, they were able to pay off $214,594.55 in 17 months while tithing 10% of their gross income to their church. This payoff breaks down to:

$151,478.51/year

$12,623.21/month

$2,899.93/week

$414.28/day

Levi discusses how they worked together as a team to accomplish this goal and what their plans are now that they aren’t spending over $12,000 a month on student loans.

Mentioned on the Show

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich: Hey, what’s up, everybody? Welcome to this week’s episode of the Your Financial Pharmacist. Excited to welcome Levi Ellison onto the show to share his debt-free story. Levi, welcome and thank you for taking the time.

Levi Ellison: Thank you, Tim. It’s great to be with you.

Tim Ulbrich: So grateful that you reached out to share your incredible story of paying off a lot of debt, a lot of debt, in a really, really short period of time. When I first heard about your story, you and your wife Jessica tackling over $214,000 of debt over 17 months, I thought to myself, wow, what an amazing accomplishment. And I can’t wait to hear exactly more of the details about how you accomplished this and why you were so aggressive in your repayment. And I’m excited to share this with the YFP community as well. So let’s start. Can you share a little bit of background about you and your wife Jessica, where you went to school and then ultimately the work that you’re doing now?

Levi Ellison: Yes. So my wife and I, Jessica, we went to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. And that’s in Little Rock, Arkansas. We met in school there, pretty much simultaneously there and our church and in Sunday school. So we were in the same classes, we were in the same church, so we’re doing everything together and ended up getting married the summer following pharmacy school. And on our honeymoon, we got a — I received a sign-on bonus from Walgreens and that was a substantial figure and if you don’t mind me sharing, I’ll just tell the YFP community, it was $20,000. And that sounds awesome and it sounds great. It’s like, wow, you could put $20,000 straight towards loans. But once it hits your bank account, it suspiciously looked like $13,000.

Tim Ulbrich: The tax.

Levi Ellison: Yeah, yeah. It was terrible. But that day it hit our account on our honeymoon. As soon as we got home, we put that all towards loans. And that really got the ball rolling. And we were, you know, obviously very intense with the way we paid off loans just from the get-go and never looking back I think really set up a strong foundation for us.

Tim Ulbrich: So and I want to make sure our audience understands, so two pharmacists, obviously.

Levi Ellison: Yes. Right.

Tim Ulbrich: But nonetheless, as people start to translate this to their personal situation, something I mentioned to you before the show, is I did that for me, two pharmacists’ income, there’s only so much take-home pay. So when we talk about, you know, figures like $12,600 roughly per month over that 17-month period on average, that means there was a lot of sacrifice, a lot of cutting of expenses and obviously now you’re on the back end of that, and we’ll talk about the journey between, but nonetheless, two pharmacists’ income does not necessarily just mean that this was an easy path. And so I want to re-emphasize that. Now, one of the things, Levi, I often wonder is we don’t talk much about the accrual phase of the debt. You know, we talk about the debt paydown part of it, but for someone who clearly had very strong motivations right after school to get this paid off, I’m wondering, I’m guessing many of our listeners are wondering, well, what did you think about this while you were in school? Did it really dawn on you? Did it bother you? And as you look back, what strategies did you take or could you have taken to mitigate some of that damage rather than obviously what we’re going to talk a lot about as the payoff part?

Levi Ellison: Tim, that’s a fantastic question, no kidding. I love to answer that. So for me, during school, you know, the first time I signed up for a student loan was my first year of pharmacy school. I took out $20,000. And I thought, phew, this hurts, as I’m sure most of us experienced. I don’t think I like this. And I didn’t. And it started to wear on me. You know, your first year, you’re thinking, I’m just excited to be here.

Tim Ulbrich: Sure.

Levi Ellison: But as you — if you log in maybe once every couple years during pharmacy school and you look, you’re kind of shocked. And I was. And so they did a few small scholarships while I was in school, and I applied for those. Got $1,000 here, $1,000 there. But when you’re talking about the kind of numbers that pharmacy school costs, that’s just not a huge percentage. Every bit helps, but my fourth year of school, they have like a — I don’t know what you would call it — but an ultimate scholarship. It was $15,000 from UAMS that they give away to one student. And I applied for that, had to write an essay, and I got it. And that was really helpful, you know? I could have been more in debt than I was. And so I got that, and then I also applied for a rural scholarship where our Arkansas State Board of Pharmacy, if you’ll go and work in an area of I think it’s 15,000 or less people — I forget all the details. But I know my hometown qualified, and so I was like, I’m going to go back home anyway if they’re going to pay me to do it. I’ll take $15,000 for that and go. And so — it was $15,000 for the scholarship. I got $7,500 from the state board. And so that was over the course of a couple years of pharmacy school, so that helped mitigate some of my own student loans.

Tim Ulbrich: Sure.

Levi Ellison: And then my wife, I think she was fiscally conservative too. And I know she’s going to be listening to this. But I was able to get some of those things, and so that helped on my side. So it wasn’t like I just came out of school and suddenly noticed that I had debt. I mean, I was realizing this and had I known it while I was in undergrad — because we both came out of undergrad debt-free completely. And so that was helpful. But if I’d have really thought this through, I would have started earlier.

Tim Ulbrich: Sure.

Levi Ellison: So if there’s aspiring pharmacists out there that are listening to this show and wonder how they can get through school debt-free, be smart is going to be some of the things I’m sure we’re going to talk about as far as budgeting and saving and I wish I’d have done more of that earlier.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and you and I both know from personal experience just how interest accrues on those loans, especially when you’re in graduate school, unsubsidized loans. And I think what you said is really profound — I felt the same way. You’re in school the first year, you’re excited about the opportunity, you’re not really thinking much about it or what this will be at the end. And what it sounds like, though, what I heard there, Levi, is that you guys really did some things in terms of scholarships and you mentioned the rural piece that allowed you to be in less debt than you could have been.

Levi Ellison: Yes.

Tim Ulbrich: I mean, if we look at the averages now, graduates today roughly $170,000. So if we’re going to multiply that by two, obviously you guys worked with a lot of debt, but you were for two pharmacist graduates, you were below the average when you combine the two of those together. So but I think wisdom there, you know, students that are listening, you know, that’s what we kind of always preach is hey, anything that you can be doing to minimize the amount that’s borrowed, even if it seems insignificant, you know, if it’s $18,000 a semester instead of $20,000 a semester, that compounds because of interest and multiple semesters over time.

Levi Ellison: Right. Yeah, if I could add one other tidbit to that, Tim —

Tim Ulbrich: Sure.

Levi Ellison: We both worked while we were in school. I think that’s important not only just financially but just learning. If you want to be a good pharmacist, I don’t think your first day behind the counter ought to be the day you get your license. And so that was helpful as well, clearly, for both of us.

Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely. Yeah, and I think that’s another good reminder, even if that hourly wage doesn’t seem super significant in the scheme of things, it adds up. I want to talk for a moment about the education piece — and a shoutout here to Joe Baker, who we’ve had on the show, has been long in the financial education space at UAMS I think teaching that personal finance elective course since 1999 and has had what I interpret to be a very profound impact on many students coming out of that program and his teachings. And I sense the same here. So tell me a little bit about that class, the personal finance elective that he taught. And what were some of the big takeaways and ultimately what impact that had on your own personal journey?

Levi Ellison: Yeah, so Joe Baker is a tremendous teacher. He gets in there and really makes the class engage. And that was a big reason I guess why I learned so much in there. And I do owe a lot of influence and credit to him for our story. That’s where we picked up the book “The Total Money Makeover” by Dave Ramsey and I’m sure we’ll get into kind of the steps of how we got out of debt, and that was very influential and we followed that to a T. But Joe, he — I tell you what, Tim, I mean, he cares about students and he cared about me and he still checks in with me from time to time. You know how you can sort emails on your phone or on your computer?

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah.

Levi Ellison: And I’ve got a separate little inbox for him and so I can read through all his financial stuff that he sends out, updates and things to do and not to do and just staying engaged with money. And it’s not like something that you read 24/7, but as long as you’re staying up-to-date on stuff, you can really make big differences. And we did, anyway. Yeah, love Joe.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah. I sense he’s a great teacher and he’s actually working on a book right now and as I’m reading through it, I feel like it’s just spewing with wisdom of multiple years of experience and his teachings to many students along the way. One of the things you said in the email that you and I had connected prior to the interview was the impact of learning things like Time Value of Money and other things. And so I think this is again just a great reminder for students listening, if you have that opportunity like an elective if you’re in college, taking advantage of that. I think it just brings the topic front and center and develops that passion hopefully towards learning. But if not, going out there and finding it. You know, podcasts, blogs, sites that are out there, courses that are out there that can help you learn more about this. So let’s get into the x’s and the o’s. So I’m going to break down the numbers again of what you guys were working with. Total debt load — or excuse me — a total payoff of $214,594.55, but who’s counting, right, with the $.55?

Levi Ellison: Right.

Tim Ulbrich: And if we average that out a little bit more about $151,000 per year, a little over $12,600 per month, $2,900 per week, over $400 per day. That per day is the one that my gosh, when you see that number, you’re like, holy cow.

Levi Ellison: Yeah, that floored both of us because we didn’t realize because you don’t write that check every day.

Tim Ulbrich: Yes.

Levi Ellison: We wrote it every two weeks when we got paid.

Tim Ulbrich: So as I alluded to already, I see that number, $12,600 per month. Even on two pharmacists’ salary, that is incredible. There is only so much take-home pay to work with. So talk us through how you did it. It sounds like the baby steps were a big part of this. But even more details about the budget and kind of how you and Jessica worked together, really each and every month, and I’m sure it was even more often than that.

Levi Ellison: Sure. So I think budget is the key as far as how we were able to do it. More importantly when you get into kind of the nitty-gritty of how we budgeted, is we learned something called an allocated spending plan. And so every two weeks, I have a little Excel chart. I’m a big nerd, so I love looking at this thing. We, you know, just put the money in our checking account in the top line and then we subtracted everything else that was essential, you know, from electric bill, water bill, all your normal stuff, wherever your money’s going to go for the next two weeks. And then whatever money was left over, we immediately, as soon as that hit our checking account, we would put it towards the loan because we knew every day that was passing was about $30 in interest being added. And so if you do it one day sooner, you save $30. I mean, it’s not a full $30 because you’re not getting it all, but that mindset. And so that was how we did it is we just, we said these things are what we have to have. And I can tell you, Tim, over the course of those 17 months, we can count on one hand how many times we ate out on our dime. Our parents took us from time to time, her family would take us, mine would, you know, that sort of thing. But as far as just going even fast food, no. We planned very carefully. I can remember — and we bought a few things that we had to have or at least we thought we did like Jessica’s phone broke, so we went to the AT&T store and I can remember it’s about an 80-mile drive from where we are out in rural Arkansas. And we get there to the AT&T store and we’re like, should we eat lunch before we go in or after? We’re like, well, the food will probably get hot because it’s in the car in our lunch boxes. And so we’re sitting there, eating a sandwich in the AT&T store. We’re like, this is going to be worth it.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah.

Levi Ellison: And I can tell you, it is so worth it now. We look back on that, we laugh, like that was so funny. And now when we go there for traveling, we can go out to eat and have all the chips and salsa we want, you know.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s right.

Levi Ellison: It’s fun.

Tim Ulbrich: And I think there’s something fun about the journey, right? I’m sure for you and Jessica, that brought you guys together in a different way and obviously I can tell just as I hear you talking, you’re reflecting on that together. It was something you accomplished together, and I think that’s a piece we don’t talk enough about is you know, from a marriage standpoint, two people working on something like that and making some sacrifices and working together, that has long, long-term effects, you know, obviously for the good. So I think that’s worth noting as well. Talk to me more about the budget. I’m guessing — I’m wondering, I’m guessing our listeners are wondering as well, it sounds like more of a zero-based budget kind of model.

Levi Ellison: Yes.

Tim Ulbrich: Accounting for every single dollar that you’re earning each and every month. You talked about an Excel spreadsheet.

Levi Ellison: Yes.

Tim Ulbrich: So was this something that you were leading the charge on? You guys were working together? Was it just staying in Excel? Were you utilizing any apps or tools to help you along that process?

Levi Ellison: Oh, those are all good questions. So we used EveryDollar, Dave Ramsey’s budgeting app. And we had the Premium version, and so it would sync with our phones as far as our — of course, we don’t have any credit cards. But it syncs with our debit cards and we could keep track of every single dollar that came out and came in. And that was kind of the goal for the month. And it gets a little confusing. Anybody that’s ever done a budget, you’re like, well, I still have money left over at the end of the month and I haven’t gotten paid yet for the next month. And so like if you’re sitting here, we’re recording this in March and I’m not going to get paid until April such-and-such date or whatever, you’re like, well, how do I budget for that? Because I’ve already got the money in my account, and so that’s where the allocated spending plan really came into play. And so we were on a two-week budget, even if we have goals for the monthly budget and we can throw that into that allocated spending plan, we can just say, OK, let’s spend a couple hundred dollars on clothes this month because we can now or whatever it is. And you take that and say, we’re going to spend it on this check here or you can do it over the course of a couple ones. And so that’s how we managed to keep track of everything. And as far as us doing it together, it was me doing the math and doing all the charts and stuff for the most part. But what I never did was make that finalized. We would come in together for sure every two weeks, and she would look at it and say, OK, I like this, don’t like this, and she would change a few things. But I’d have it ready for her to look at — at least I would try to. It doesn’t always work out perfectly.

Tim Ulbrich: So to that point, I mean, obviously to be able to pay off more than $200,000 in a very short period of time, two people have to be on the same page.

Levi Ellison: Yes.

Tim Ulbrich: But you know, I’m guessing that that doesn’t necessarily mean it was always perfect. Maybe it was.

Levi Ellison: No.

Tim Ulbrich: What was — yeah, what were some of those challenges? And for those that are listening that, you know, may be of a more extreme situation where instead of just a challenge here or there, it’s two people that philosophically — you know, maybe they don’t agree on the goals or the intensity of it. Any words of wisdom there you can share about either challenges you all had or words of advice for others?

Levi Ellison: I don’t think you could have asked a better question. So for two people to be married, you have to be on the same page about money. I don’t know how you couldn’t be. And so this is not something that I just sprung on our honeymoon. We had talked about this beforehand as part of our premarital counseling. And so we were on the same page. And so one thing about us as far as motivation and why would you be so intense about this is we want to be good stewards of what we’ve been given. And so to understand our worldview or our framework that we work in, we’re Christians, and so we’re very involved in our local church. And so along the way, I think this is important for your listeners — we weren’t misers, we gave 10% of our gross income. And so if you factor that in to —

Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely.

Levi Ellison: — how much money we paid back on loans, we could have been out of debt a lot sooner. But we also lived a lot cheaper than some of your listeners are probably thinking, now realizing that we factor in that we make average pharmacist salaries, $120,000-130,000 a year and there’s two of us. And we tithe 10% of that. We gave a lot of money to the church, and that’s not a bragging issue, but it’s something we believed in. And so that’s one of the reasons why we did this so quickly and aggressively and we were on the same page is because we both had the same faith and we both are on the same page about money, and we knew that we wanted to do this. And you’re right about strengthening marriage to go back to the previous question is it surely did. When we look at stuff now, we say, “Yeah, we could do that. That won’t be a problem.” Like we know we can. We’ve done a lot harder stuff together.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and I think it goes back to you guys had that common thread, you had that common viewpoint, which even if there were moments of maybe month-to-month, you didn’t see eye-to-eye on everything, obviously in a short period of time, you did see eye-to-eye on a lot. But nonetheless, you still had that common lens in which you’re working from. And we always talk about I think the importance of starting with the goal, starting with the why, and then getting into the nitty gritty of the budget because if you can agree on the philosophy, if you can agree on the direction, it’s much easier to agree on OK, in light of the philosophy, let’s talk about this one expense or this one issue.

Levi Ellison: If there’s no why, you’re never going to get to the what of driving a beater.

Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely.

Levi Ellison: And I don’t really consider our cars beaters, but they’re probably worth about $3,000 apiece. And they run just fine. They don’t break down. They’re just little cars, and they do great.

Tim Ulbrich: So speaking of cars, a famous Joe Baker quote, there is not a parade watching you on the way to work.

Levi Ellison: Yes, I love that.

Tim Ulbrich: Which takes me to, you know, this concept of what decisions you guys made in terms of things to forego as you’re talking about making massive student loan payments or $12,600 a month, you’re talking about tithing, giving 10% of gross income throughout this, obviously you had to give up on some things, car being one I’m assuming. But home, other things, talk us through what were the areas that you decided not to spend money on that, you know, might have been difficult as you think about some of the challenges with kind of the peer comparison and keeping up with the Joneses.

Levi Ellison: Yeah. So I guess you could say we gave up on the car, you’re right about that. I’d love to be driving a brand new GMC Sierra. I would love it. But I’m not, and that’s OK. We’re going to pay cash for something like that one day or a slightly used one. And that’s fine because Joe Baker is 100% right. If you can get in the mindset of there’s not a parade watching you go to work, it doesn’t matter. And it’s kind of funny, people notice. One of my coworkers, one of the techs, her daughter asked her, said, “Why is Levi still driving that?” And she was sharing that with me, and it just made me laugh. Like they don’t get it. But you can share with them, say, “There’s a whole goal behind this. We want to be debt-free.” So that was one of the things that we gave up was car. As far as our housing situation, we haven’t bought a home yet. We’re renting, but we’re in a very good, quiet neighborhood. I love running, and so the streets are great for that, very little traffic. So I don’t really feel like we gave up much there. We’re living in a lot better place than the apartments that we both lived in Little Rock over the course of pharmacy school. You know, we have a backyard, a place for our dog, stuff like that. So we gave up a little. We don’t have a tremendous mountain view, we’re kind of in the mountains over here in Western Arkansas, and we look forward to that very soon. That’s one of the things that we’re saving for now. But I don’t feel like we gave up just a whole lot. We just didn’t have extensive dates.

Tim Ulbrich: Sure.

Levi Ellison: I was talking to my wife and said, “Do you want to share anything about that from your perspective on the show tomorrow morning?” And she said, “Well, we didn’t spend any money on dates.” I said, “That’s not true. I went to Redbox multiple times. I remember that $1.75.”

Tim Ulbrich: I was going to say, it started as a dollar, now it’s $1.75, right? So yeah. But there’s creativity there, right? I mean, again, those are moments that are created together. And I think I want to reiterate some of what you said. I mean, you know, used cars, renting, I think those are probably — if I had to pick two areas, no judgement here, but two areas that I would say often get in the way of being able to achieve other goals, here whether it is student loan repayment, but it could be any other goal, saving for retirement, saving for kids’ college, being able to give whatever, I would say it’s often the home and the car. And I think it’s shifting perspective that renting is not a bad thing. Renting is not evil, you know. You’re not necessarily just throwing money down the drain, and we talked about that on a previous episode with Nate Hedrick and really running the numbers objectively. And used cars, I mean, I think really changing your perspective on Point A to Point B, and one of the best things I heard on this was Ramit Sethi, who wrote a book, “I Will Teach You to Be Rich.” He talks about this concept of money dials. And identifying the things that mean most to you and align with your why and dialing those up. So let’s say for you and your wife Jessica, maybe it’s shared experiences together now that you guys have obviously a little bit more margin, spending money on that, not being afraid to spend money on that if that’s what means most to you. But if a car doesn’t mean a whole lot to you, then dial it down. Like you know what I mean? And find those things that really aren’t that important at the end of the day to you and really challenging yourself to think through those, each of those individually. So what do you say in response to, you know, some of the typical objections to the Dave Ramsey baby steps, right? So things like, you know, often only having $1,000 in emergency fund until you’re fully out of debt, and is that realistic, is that prudent. is that wise, you know, not to have a full 3-6 months? Or not establishing credit or building credit? Delaying retirement savings, perhaps? So what do you say? And I know your journey’s a little bit different because it was a shorter time period of 17 months, and I think where some of those challenges come in, especially on delayed retirement and emergency savings, is when you’re stretching it out say 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 15 years. But talk to us through how you all reconciled that that was the method, the steps, the path that was best for you and your plan.

Levi Ellison: I would say first off, if you’re going to follow the Dave Ramsey plan, you can’t be Dave-ish. You have to either do it or don’t. And so we decided we were going to do it, and we were going to be gazelle-intense, as he likes to say. We’re running away on the plain from the cheetah, and we’re going to make it. And so we did. And as far as like the emergency fund, that’s a temporary emergency fund of $1,000. We now have 6 months of expenses and with a very real coronavirus running around right now, that makes us feel better. I mean, it truly does. And so to have to owe no debt to anybody and to be as prepared as you can be for a crisis like this or a pandemic to not want to be fear-mongering, but we feel good about that piece of our plan. And pausing retirement for 17 months, I mean, the stock market just lost the biggest loss in 30 years. I guess I think we’re OK for now. You know, it’s not like we’re not going to buy a house. It’s not like we’re not going to ever fully fund our emergency fund, those types of things. It’s quick. I mean, if you’re going to do it, you need to do it. And so for us, we knew each other well enough, we were in the same study group, we were very good friends before we got married or even started dating. And so I knew her, she knew me, we both knew if we said we were going to do something, we were going to do it. And so we just had that resolve. That’s kind of the way it went for us. But as far as like credit goes, we have a goal of having no credit. And that may sound crazy to a lot of people, but you actually don’t need it. I went down to my local bank, said, “Hey, is this going to be a problem if we have no credit?” And they said, “No.” And so it’s almost laughable how the way people think that you have to have a credit score. You don’t. I’ve rented plenty of cars without a credit card. I’ve done all the things that you need to do. I’ve booked a $12,000 cruise celebrating getting out of debt, and it got canceled because it was the Grand Princess that was quarantined off the coast of California.

Tim Ulbrich: Oh my gosh.

Levi Ellison: Right. Yeah.

Tim Ulbrich: Oh my gosh.

Levi Ellison: So there’s that. And that’s not a laughing matter, it’s a very serious thing.

Tim Ulbrich: Sure.

Levi Ellison: They’re going to reimburse us. We’re still waiting to hear back from flights, and so one thing I would change about my financial plan is buying insurance on flights.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah.

Levi Ellison: I’ve never done that before, but I will be in the future because you never know what’s happening.

Tim Ulbrich: Although what are the chances of something like COVID-19, right?

Levi Ellison: Right, right, yeah. That’s what I said.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah. So one of the things too that I heard there and I think often doesn’t get talked about, whether it’s the Ramsey framework or something like the Compass Money Map framework or another framework, I think a framework is very helpful, especially when you have multiple competing priorities that you’re trying to work through, debt repayment, retirement savings, emergency funds, and you’re looking at a way for two people to get on the same page. I think sometimes it’s a little bit more difficult if it’s one person’s idea and I want this other person to implement it, but I think sometimes a framework is a nice third party that gives you both an idea of something you can work towards together and hopefully have those shared goals. Last question I have for you is here you are now on the backside of this, and I think we often don’t talk about life after paying off debt. And what was $12,600 a month going towards student loans is no longer is no longer going towards student loans.

Levi Ellison: Right.

Tim Ulbrich: So what is the game plan now? What are the goals? And how have you adjusted to loosen up some of those things like hey, it’s OK to go out to eat, you know, every once in awhile, and it’s OK to enjoy those things. So talk to us a little bit about life after having the debt paid off.

Levi Ellison: Right, so this is a whole goal, right?

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah.

Levi Ellison: You don’t want to live below the federal poverty limit for 17 months and continue that until I retire. It’s not — that wasn’t the plan, so it’s exciting to be here and to like the cruise thing, we were spending $12,000 a month on loans and repaying that. We can book a $12,000 cruise, and it was going to be a really nice one, 11 days.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, yep.

Levi Ellison: And those things will work out in the future, and so we plan to take some trips. We want to go to Washington, D.C., want to tour the Capitol, do all the things that we wanted to do while we were in debt. And things, as far as having a framework, you are nailing it there. It is so important to have a plan. And so what we decided to do was to come up with like an annual budget. I know that sounds a little crazy for a household, but we have a year’s worth of plans and just kind of rough estimates, this isn’t as intense as our allocated spending plan as far as I know where every single penny is going. But we have plans in place to get us both vehicles, to have a certain amount of money in place to put a down payment on a home if we don’t end up paying cash for a home, which we might do. It depends on some different circumstances here at home, but having that annual plan in place I think is really going to help us, it’s already informing our decisions as far as when we get this money back from the cruise, what are we going to do with that, are we just going to go blow it anyway because it’s like it’s already gone or are we going to put and speed up the plan as far as well, if we go ahead and do this, we can get me a truck before summer, we can get her an SUV or whatever we want to do, which is a much more fun conversation than, ‘OK, it’s Friday again. Man, was that only two weeks ago that we paid $6,000? OK, here we go again.’

Tim Ulbrich: Another Redbox.

Levi Ellison: Push submit. Yeah, again at Redbox this week, that sort of thing. So it’s exciting to be able to talk about what we’re going to do with it versus we know exactly what we’re going to do with it.

Tim Ulbrich: And you know what I love, Levi, I know my wife Jess and I felt this, I sense the same for you and also a Jess is that when you are so used to grinding it out, I mean, $12,600 a month, for a 17-month period, it’s hard to measure, but there is such a long-term benefit of that beyond the 17 months. You know, yes, you’re going to loosen up the reins, yes, that’s OK, you guys should do that, you should enjoy it. And there’s balance and all that. But you’ve shifted that perspective on what really is important and where happiness does and does not come from. And I think that has such a long-term benefit beyond that 17-month period of how you’re utilizing your money. And I love that for you guys, I know you guys are teaching some of this now with Financial Peace, obviously giving is still a priority and really giving back and sharing some of that as you are doing here on the podcast as well. So really excited to see where this goes for you all and the impact you’re able to have on others because of obviously the margin that you have now to work with and the ability to share that. So thank you for coming on the show, thank you for taking time to share your journey. Congratulations. It’s really, really an incredible journey. And excited that you were willing to come on and share it with our community.

Levi Ellison: You’re very welcome. I enjoyed it.

Tim Ulbrich: Thank you.

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YFP 143: How Using Your Creativity Can Spark a Six-Figure Business

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How Using Your Creativity Can Spark a Six-Figure Business: Art by Stephanie Roberts

Stephanie Roberts, PharmD joins Tim Church to share how she went from full-time pharmacist to full-time mixed media artist after an Instagram influencer shared her pill petri art and made it go viral.

About Today’s Guest

Stephanie grew up in the hills of Eastern Kentucky, a small rural town named Prestonsburg with less than 5,000 people. From as early as she can remember, her go-to response to “What do you want to be when you grow up?” was to be an artist. Growing up as a straight A, high achieving student, there wasn’t a terrible amount of encouragement to follow your dreams if our dreams were outside the tidy box of medical field/law/etc. Stephanie learned to think like most adults surrounding her that being an artist wasn’t a “real job” or career and never thought much of it past elementary school. Art has never left her though and even as she studied and made her way through undergrad (Georgetown College) and then into pharmacy school (University of Appalachia), she was always making and painting as a creative outlet.

After graduation, Stephanie managed a couple different retail chains for a few years (PIC at CVS and Meijer), and finally landed an amazing opportunity as staff pharmacist at the University of Kentucky, opening a new retail location for them in their newest pavilion on the medical campus. At this point she had been out of school for 4 years, married with a one-year old and art was mostly a distant memory. A few years into her new position, she leaped at the opportunity when a 30 hour / 3 days a week (still considered “full-time” for benefits purposes) was offered to her, within the same pharmacy. The extra days off gave her more time with my children (up to 2 boys at this point!) and time to take up a small amount of creativity again.

The work was enough to take up every minute of her spare time but still, she was only dreaming of making art her full-time job. Until July 2019 when her resin coasters with medications suspended inside — what she has named “pill petri” — went viral. This whacky combo she created on a whim combining her love of epoxy resin and her career in medicine, became the tipping point that truly began a whole new life for her. The business was more than she could handle and she worked literally all day and night. Stephanie hired help, all either technicians or interns from her pharmacy, and together they fulfilled orders. She started an online shop that she would stock with hundreds of coasters just for it to sell out within 2 minutes with each release. After the most exhausting 2 months of her life working 2 full-time jobs, she finally took the leap and became a full-time artist still working 1 day each week in the same pharmacy. While the income from art has far surpassed her pharmacy salary, she continues to work to retain her pharmacy knowledge and stay fresh in the profession.

Summary

Stephanie Roberts joins Tim Church on this week’s podcast episode to talk about her amazing transition from full-time pharmacist to full-time artist. Stephanie always loved art growing up and kept creating during college as a hobby. After graduation Stephanie started working with CVS, became manager and then got her own store. After that, she worked at a Meijer in her town and then decided to work at a new pharmacy at University of Kentucky hospital which she absolutely loves.

Three years ago, Stephanie started taking interest in different artists she likes and felt inspired to create more, so she did. Working with epoxy resin was really popular and she was interested in it, so she dove in, researched different techniques and started to create art pieces. She posted pictures of the pieces she made on Instagram but never put a price on them and finally decided to one day. When she did, it sold within 10 minutes. At the end of 2018, she started to make pill petri dish coasters and sell them on Instagram. In July 2019, a very popular Instagram account (@things.i.bought.and.liked) shared the pill petri coasters Stephanie makes and it made her go viral and ultimately changed her life. She had hundreds of orders come in and she couldn’t take all of them. A month after, she spoke with her pharmacy manager about going down to one day a week so she could focus on her art business.

Now, Stepanie earns more money with her art business than she would with a full-time pharmacist salary. She makes different art pieces like wall panel geodes, ocean pieces, pill petri coasters and has a commission list several months out. Every Sunday at 9 pm she opens her shop. No matter how much she lists, Stephanie sells out in two minutes.

Stephanie has brought in help from people in her pharmacy circle to aid her in making the pill petri coasters, her most popular piece. She hopes to hire a full-time employee in the future and loves that she’s able to spend more time with her three children, have a flexible schedule and do something she truly loves.

Mentioned on the Show

Episode Transcript

Tim Church: Stephanie, thanks so much for stopping by and being part of this side hustle edition.

Stephanie Roberts: I am super excited to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

Tim Church: Well, shoutout to my wife for kind of getting this episode started because she reached out to me probably about a month or so ago from the time of recording this and said, “Hey, do you know who this Stephanie person is? She’s got some really cool art, and she’s a pharmacist. And I actually have one of her pieces of artwork as my cell phone background. And I think you should reach out.”

Stephanie Roberts: That is crazy. It doesn’t surprise me, but you didn’t tell me that ahead of time because, I mean, I think most of my audience is women. And I have men messaging me saying, “My wife really wants your art. Can I get it for a surprise for her?” So I feel like it comes from the females. So that’s really funny you said that.

Tim Church: That’s so cool. Well, I can’t wait to dig into the art and all the things that you’re doing in addition to pharmacy. But I want to start out with a couple icebreakers because I think it would be fun. So Stephanie, you have to sing karaoke. What song are you picking?

Stephanie Roberts: Probably anything Reba McIntyre. I think you can hear the southern accent in there, but I love me some Reba.

Tim Church: OK. And what’s — any specific one?

Stephanie Roberts: Probably “Fancy.”

Tim Church: OK.

Stephanie Roberts: I don’t know if you even know Reba, but —

Tim Church: Oh, I know Reba.

Stephanie Roberts: Right. I mean, and I’m not a big country listener. But I mean, I’ve loved Reba from the time I was little. And I have the red hair and everything, so it works.

Tim Church: Now, I did pick up the southern accent a little bit. Where are you from?

Stephanie Roberts: Kentucky. From eastern Kentucky, from the mountains. And I’m central Kentucky now. But the accent is still with me.

Tim Church: Oh, cool. Alright, I’ve got one more for you. You have to delete all but three apps from your phone. Which ones are you keeping?

Stephanie Roberts: Well, I have to keep Instagram because that’s my bread and butter. Let’s see, what else do I really use? Don’t care much for Facebook, but I guess I do still use it. And then a photo editing, again, that’s a big — I have so many photo apps, I don’t know if I could choose one. But that’s big for me and the business.

Tim Church: Cool. Well I like that. And I knew Instagram was going to be one of them, but I was curious what the others are going to be. Maybe your email, right, so you can still communicate with people that want to order?

Stephanie Roberts: Oh, I don’t know. It’s good and bad. The email folders are full, the DMs are full on Instagram. I can’t say I’m doing great at the communication. But I’m grateful for it. But yeah, I’m not too great at it.

Tim Church: Well, I want to start out with you talking about your career path as a pharmacist because obviously this show is about side hustles and how you’ve been able to grow a business. But obviously, that was not where you started. You started out as a pharmacist. So I want to hear about that.

Stephanie Roberts: Oh, OK. Well, so not the most interesting career path, but I always knew I would be in retail pharmacy. So before I had even graduated pharmacy school, I had done an interview with CVS. And they hired me on the spot. And that just seemed like a great, you know, right-out-of-school job for me. I don’t think I had planned too much into where I wanted to be, which is great if you don’t have big expectations, then you won’t get let down. So I started with CVS and quickly became manager with CVS. I floated around and then I got my own store. And from there, that was still — it was a big commute for me. I was commuting about one and a half hours, so that was pretty exhausting when you drive an hour and a half and you have a 14-hour day and you drive an hour and a half back and then you do it again the next day. So another grocery store pharmacy that was in my actual town in Lexington, Kentucky, called me because they were looking for a manager that already had experience. And so I snapped up working at Myer because that was in town where I actually lived. And so I was with Myer for a period of time and then I had a customer that would come in all the time, and he was kind of a retired pharmacist. He had worked with Eli Lilly in Indianapolis, and he was getting his license in Kentucky. He didn’t really love it; he didn’t want to, but his wife was urging him to just so he could work part-time with the University of Kentucky. And that’s where his wife was a pharmacist too. Hey Jeff, if you’re listening. And he told me they were opening a new pharmacy. And I mean, he was just — he was so nice. I wasn’t even looking for another job, but he was like, “You really, really should look into it.” So I did, and I’ve been at UK ever since. It’s retail pharmacy, but it is completely different than what most people think of retail pharmacy. And it’s been awesome. I mean, I’ve said many times, if we ever moved out, I could never do old-school retail pharmacy ever again. It’s, you know, it sometimes can be the worst of the worst. But at UK, we do a lot for the employees and stuff but mostly with the inpatient, we have a program called Meds to Beds that delivers all the medications to the patients before they’re leaving, we service a lot of our transplant patients, we continue to do their medications through mail order, we have a specialty pharmacy. It’s just — and importantly, no drive through, which is a big win for retail pharmacy. But it’s so interesting. No day is ever the same as the last. It’s just — it’s really cool. It’s been eye-opening. I’ve learned a lot. I mean, I’ve learned about medications that are probably learned about in pharmacy school, I don’t even remember, but I’ve had to relearn them because they are fast movers whereas you wouldn’t have even seen them in your normal or average retail pharmacy. So that’s where I still am today one day a week. And I really love it there. I love the people and I love the way they run their pharmacy. And they give you plenty of help. We have so many pharmacists and so many technicians working together. And it’s so great to be able to bounce off any questions, bounce them off another pharmacist or anything when you’re just unsure of something where I wasn’t used to having that before. So yeah, that’s where I am today.

Tim Church: Wow. It sounds like you’re in a much better environment and that you really have a positive working atmosphere with your colleagues and just the things that you’re able to do. What are some of the other things that you like about it compared to other traditional pharmacy models?

Stephanie Roberts: Kind of like what I said about we’re not traditional in the way that we don’t have the drive-through. We don’t have a lot of people coming — not a lot coming outside into our pharmacy as in like outside of the hospital because we’re doing a lot of discharges, a lot of the prescriptions for the patients inside plus the employees and their families. So we really get to know our patients. We don’t see a lot of drug-seeking behavior, which I saw a lot in retail pharmacy. You know, that was kind of a fear, sometimes a safety concern when you’re working until 10 at night and, you know, other pharmacies have been robbed or things just look suspicious in the store. And I don’t really have that fear at UK, kind of in the heart of the hospital and if you wanted to take something from the pharmacy, you’re going to kind of have a long run to get out and pass security into a waiting car. You know what I mean? So it’s — I love that for even safety concerns. We’ve become a 24/7 pharmacy now. That just started about a year ago. So if you even have to work overnight, it’s a great place to be. So in those terms, everything’s interesting, everything’s different. Interesting also means you have new sets of problems and things when it comes to mail order and maybe people didn’t ask for their medications in time, so you’re calling a courier to drive it to them across the state because you don’t want any of your organ transplants to lose their well-earned organ. But it’s always interesting. I just can’t even compare it to any retail pharmacy I had experience with before. It’s pretty cool.

Tim Church: Yeah, I mean, it sounds like a great place to be if you’re a pharmacist. And like you said, it’s not only — it’s challenging, but it’s interesting. And you’ve got a great support team to help you along the way. So I think that’s really cool. Now, people listening may have just picked that up and said, “Stephanie, how are you only working one day a week?” And obviously some people choose to work part-time and they choose to work as-needed, but you know, you’re working one a day a week. And obviously as we were talking about before the podcast started that that’s not how it always was. So let’s jump into how Art by Stephanie got started because obviously that’s part of the story and how you’re working one day a week.

Stephanie Roberts: Right. And it seems kind of counterintuitive when I say I’ve got this wonderful job and now it’s, you know, down to one day a week by choice because I’ve decided to do something else. But I really loved it if I was going to do pharmacy full-time forever. And who knows? One day I might go back to full-time. But that’s where I would want to be. But the art kind of fell into my lap. So I’ve always loved art since I was a little girl, that was always my go-to when somebody asked me what I wanted to be, it was going to be an artist. But you know, as you grow up, not usually — people don’t usually encourage that as a career because let’s get real, there’s not a lot of artists we know that are doing it as a full-time career and paying all the bills. I’m not trying to say I’m special in any way, but you know, it’s not something parents usually encourage their kids to do. I have awesome parents, wonderful parents. So I’ve always done it as a hobby on the side, kind of always did it through undergraduate. As I became a pharmacist, it was something that was probably let go of for a few years. I got married, graduated from pharmacy school the next year, a few years later we had our first of three kids, and so you know, life was pretty busy. And probably about three years ago, I think through Instagram and YouTube and things like that, I started really taking interest in some artists that I love. I think Justin Gaffrey is one of my first artists I ever just like fell in love with his paintings. They’re really textured, and I’m just a texture lover. I love when paintings or art just like jump off the canvas. So I really loved Justin Gaffrey. A few others that I just watched and realized they were — they had a career. I mean, they were doing great. And a lot of their interest was through Instagram. And not that even in my head at that point was I saying, oh, I could become an artist one day. It’s just like I felt inspired to create. So I did. And I would share pictures. And still, I wasn’t trying to go after anything. I was just enjoying it and it was a great creative outlet. So I did that for a few years. It really started with paintings at first. And then I think epoxy resin kind of just like hit the art scene and everybody just started getting resin and I was really interested in that. So I started resin work and kind of 50-50 between painting and resin work. And one day, I just decided after a few years of this and just posting pictures, never trying to get sales, not pushing anything, I just wanted to create and share what I was doing, I decided to put a price in the text of the picture on Instagram, just wondering, you know, I feel awkward asking somebody how much something is. So maybe other people feel awkward too. You know? You’re afraid to get that answer, “Oh, it’s $10,000,” and you’re like, oh, that’s not in my price range. I mean, I just don’t even think I could ask another artist. It’s crazy sometimes. So that’s why I thought I’ll put a price on this and see if anybody’s interested. And it sold within five or 10 minutes. And I was like, well, that was really cool. So I just continued to do that. And I think that was one of my — it was a resin piece and I called it geode, and it’s like an art panel, and it’s stained glass and it’s resin and it’s different pigments and metallics and things like that. And so it was a geode.

Tim Church: And how much was your first piece that you sold on Instagram? How much did you sell it for?

Stephanie Roberts: It was $150.

Tim Church: $150. And how much did that first piece, like in terms of the materials, how much did it cost you to build that particular piece? And then how long did it take you to make it?

Stephanie Roberts: I would say in material cost, probably under $40. I’m thinking as for time, it probably took me five or six hours because it was one of my first ones I had ever made, so everything was troubleshooting and figuring out how to do this and that, which is something I can do a lot quicker after, you know, 100 of those at this point. But yeah. So I really wasn’t doing a cost analysis on my hourly wage or anything like that. I just thought there’s nobody that’s going to want to spend more than $150 probably. Nobody is even going to want to spend $150. That’s what I’m going to price it at because I was happy to keep it. And if nobody wanted it, I was happy to keep it. So yeah, that probably wasn’t my best cost analysis. But it was still great. It was still a profit, and it kind of went on from there.

Tim Church: I mean, that’s really exciting. So what’s going through your head, though, either in the moments before you put it up to say you’re putting it up for sale or even the week or the month before you decided to do that. What’s going through your mind?

Stephanie Roberts: You could probably ask my husband because I talk a lot, but he’s probably not listening. But I mean, at that point, I was like this is really cool. I could make more of these and I could do this and if I had so many a week, it would equal this. You know, it’s probably like, OK sure, but how many people are going to buy these? But you know, in my head I was just like, I’m going to make more and I’m going to put more price on them. I’m going to see if people want to commission these. Still not in the frame of mind like oh, this is going to be a full-time career. But a side hustle, yes. Did I need a side hustle? No. But I was, you know, I loved what I was doing. And if people were going to pay me to do it, that’s all the better reason why I would do it and, you know, not be helping with cooking or cleaning in the house or something. You know, it gives you more reason to do this hobby when you’re getting paid for it. You feel a little bit better about spending your time on it. So yeah, it wasn’t much later — I think that was about like October of that year. And this was 2018. And by November or December, I had made what I went viral for is the pill petri, which is on coasters, resin coasters, with over-the-counter medications in them. And I had put those — I just shared a picture of them on a pharmacy moms group, and I got more orders than I could handle. You know?

Tim Church: Wow.

Stephanie Roberts: It was kind of near Christmastime and everybody wanted them either for themselves or for a friend. And I mean, I’m not saying it was a million orders by any means, but I wasn’t prepared to even make 50 at a time at that point. And you know, maybe I had an order for 100. So that was pretty cool.

Tim Church: That had to been awesome to really validate that what you were doing was something that was very desirable that people wanted.

Stephanie Roberts: Yeah. It was really exciting. I mean, I still, still didn’t — I was not in the frame of mind that this was going to go anywhere, that I would keep creating and I would probably still sell on the side always, maybe people would ask me to do commissions and different work, and I was happy to do it. But it was a dream. Sure, you could ask me, “Would you want to do this full-time?” Yes. But I mean, that was a big dream. It didn’t feel like reality that that could happen.

Tim Church: Do you think that because you just focused on the art and using it as a creative outlet, something that you enjoy doing without the initial intention of monetizing, do you think that that mindset has eventually helped you along the way as to where you are now in terms of making, actually earning income from it?

Stephanie Roberts: Oh yeah. 100%. I don’t think I could have started out saying, “I want to do this for money,” and went anywhere with it. It was because I loved it, it was a passion, I was learning from other artists on the Internet and wanting to do what they did. You know, different techniques and stuff. And I mean, I worked on a lot of things that just went straight into the garbage. You know? It was just for fun. Yeah, I don’t — if I had started out this was all about money and this was all, you know, I don’t think I would have went anywhere with it.

Tim Church: So talk a little bit about what the actual products that you’re selling, you went into it a little bit with the petri dishes, but obviously we’re on a podcast so need to be as descriptive as possible. We’ll definitely share some pictures once this gets posted. But can you talk a little bit about what you’re actually creating? What’s selling the most? What’s the most popular?

Stephanie Roberts: Yeah, sure. So probably earlier — this timeframe that we’re talking about, it was earlier that summer I was working with the epoxy resin, which is a liquid that you mix and then you pour and then it cures to a hard clear kind of glass-like or acrylic end result. And being the dork that I am, I had some pills around, over-the-counter medicines, and I was like, wouldn’t this be so funny? So I put the medications into — it’s a silicone mold that you put your resin into if you’re using a mold. And I made a coaster out of them. It’s like a 4-inch diameter coaster, and it just looks like the pills are suspended in the resin. It takes a few layers to do this. So I had made that that summer, I posted pictures of it. Again, I wasn’t doing any prices back then, so it’s not like anybody even asked about, “Hey, can I buy this?” And it was later that year that — I don’t even remember, I don’t know what the genesis of it was, why I decided hey, I should make a bunch of these. But for some reason, maybe it was just being in that pharmacist moms group, I thought, this could be something that other dorks like me — and I’m just kidding — but you know, other pharmacy nerds might like too. So you know, I put it out there, this is what I’m doing if anybody would like it. And it was very well received. So those are kind of like coasters, like I said, and then I make a little bigger 6-inch diameter. It came about several months later, and I put letters and words and funny quotes in those. And I put funny quotes in the coasters now too. So a lot of customers will — especially in the beginning when I had more time to take requests, they would request, “Hey, could you do this with pink? Can you do this with black? Can you do it with glitter?” And I was happy to do anything anybody asked for. And then every time I would post a picture, there would be 300 other people that agreed with that person, man, we really want them in that color too. And it always led to a new variation of what we call the pill petri. And so now there’s maybe four or five different colors or glitters or clear, whatever, pill petris that I do. And somebody’s always asking for something different. But besides just the pill petri, I still do what I call the geodes, which are wall panels that you put on the wall and those are the resin and the stained glass and the crystals. I do these ocean pieces. Some people send me shells that they’ve collected on family vacations, things like that, and I’ve included the shells in their ocean art. And again, that’s with resin. And then it looks really realistic and pretty cool, I think. But I’ve also done pill art that hangs on the wall as well. So I kind of jump all around, which is exactly what my ADD loves is doing a little bit of everything. And honestly, what I went viral for, the pill petri, can start to feel like a manufacturing process after a while. It doesn’t really get my creative juices flowing all the time, and while it’s my bread and butter, I really try to do some other things in between to really feel like I’m using my full potential, whatever that is. But yeah. A little bit of everything. I still paint, I still have requests for paintings. I have a commission list that’s into March at the moment for a wall art that’s not just the pill coasters that I get recognized the most for. But there’s still a lot of people requesting wall art of different kinds, whatever that may be, the geodes, the oceans, paintings, pill art. Yeah. It’s kind of wild.

Tim Church: Yeah. I was going to ask you, because I feel like every time I check out your Instagram profile — which is awesome, by the way — I mean, even if you’re not going to purchase anything, I think you need to just go and visit it because you’re going to have a lot of fun. And there’s so many cool designs that are on there, some of which appear to be edible. But they are not, correct?

Stephanie Roberts: Thank you, yes. Yeah, those would be the textured paintings that I love to do. And I use piping bags like you would if you were decorating a cake to make a lot of the ones that you’re talking about that edible with the flowers and things like that and pellet knives and things. But yeah, I just, I love art that looks like it’s just jumping off the wall.

Tim Church: But some of the petri dishes, they actually have real candy in there as part of the design, right?

Stephanie Roberts: Oh, yeah. Right. Yeah, no, I have the candy coasters and things too. And I’m even collaborating soon with a big sprinkle company because the sprinkles I think have been my favorite, which is kind of full circle in my life just because I’m addicted to sweets and sugar. I wish I wasn’t, but I am. And I grew up loving ice cream just covered with sprinkles, almost as many sprinkles as you had ice cream. And I would get gallons — I mean, just huge containers of it in my stocking for Christmas. That was like a gift my parents — I remember my grandmother giving me sprinkles as a gift. I mean, that was a gift that people would give me. I mean, that says you have an addiction, right there. But so it’s kind of cool that’s full circle that I’m doing the coasters with the sprinkles and other candy in them and things like that because truly, that’s just who I am, addicted to sugar. So that’s kind of fun for me too, just another side of my personality to be using in art as well.

Tim Church: So one of the things I noticed, I feel like every time I go to your profile and I go on your shopify, everything is sold out. So I was going to ask you, what’s going on with that?

Stephanie Roberts: Well, it’s really funny you say that. But I usually have a shop opening and I’ve kind of — it’s kind of become a Sunday tradition and I’ve kind of stuck with that Sunday, it kind of worked for me, at 9 p.m., I don’t know, it just worked out to be a good time. And no matter how much I put in the shop, it sells out in two minutes or less. And it’s crazy. But people still ask me like, can’t you just have your shop open all the time and just take orders all the time? Or somebody will say, “Can’t you get a real website?” And I’m just like, I don’t know what a real website is versus my shopify account, but it’s not going to increase how much product I have to sell, which I don’t think always registers with people. But if I just had it open to take, you know, requests too, I don’t know how to humbly say this, but I mean, it would be a year’s worth of orders because I can see how many people are on there at shop time when it opens versus how many people get an order through. And you know, they want to take preorders and things like that, and I don’t want for their safety and for mine, I don’t want to take preorders that are six months in advance, which some people say they’re willing to wait when you don’t know what could happen in life, happen to me, happen to my family, my house. I don’t want to hold your money in preorder status. So I like to just sell either what I have or what I can make within the week. And it seems to be working out really, really well. Right before Christmastime, about a month before Christmas, was my biggest preorder I ever did just so people would know whether they got an order in or if they should be shopping for something else if it was a gift for somebody. And that’s why I did it at that time. So it was in November, and I took how many orders I guesstimated I could do in the month before Christmas, and I was exhausted. And even then with to me, the huge amount that I put in the shop, it was still sold out in two minutes.

Tim Church: Wow.

Stephanie Roberts: So that’s just — it’s just — I mean, it’s crazy.

Tim Church: I mean, that’s incredible. That’s incredible. I was wondering if this was like a marketing tactic you were using. But it actually is the fact that you would be too overwhelmed with the amount of orders that’s coming through, which is — I think it’s a good problem to have, right?

Stephanie Roberts: Yeah. I never in 1 million years would I ever dream I had this problem. I mean, in my most earnest hopes and desires, I was like, oh, I think I could push out this many a week and that equates to this much money and that’s almost equal to pharmacy. And oh, we could cut back on things and I could become a full-time artist. I mean, never, ever, ever, ever, did I think this would be “a problem” that I would have that things would sell out. So and that — just to back up, I know I’m jumping everywhere. But last July, things changed when somebody on Instagram shared the art she had purchased. And her Instagram name is @thingsIboughtandliked. And when she bought it from me, I didn’t know who she was. But apparently she was the Oprah of Instagram. And when she shared — I mean, she only shares things that she purchased with her own money and she likes it. That’s the title of her Instagram, that’s exactly what she does. When she shared it, my life completely changed. That night, I had probably — oh gosh, I don’t know because I never did get through all the messages — like 400 or 500 messages. She shared about 9 p.m. my time. She’s in Texas. At 4 a.m., I decided to go to bed after answering as many messages as I could because I thought, well, this is the only rush I’ll ever get in my life. Like I better take every message and every order I could. But even by 4 a.m., I hadn’t got through even half of the orders. And so from her sharing that, I mean, thank God for her. That’s when life changed. So that was in July, and by maybe a month — not even a month later — I had talked to my manager about going down to one day a week and becoming a full-time artist. It was that life-changing. It was crazy.

Tim Church: Wow. So at that point when she shared that, how many hours were you working?

Stephanie Roberts: I was a 30-hour pharmacist at that point. So I was working three 10-hour days a week, which is amazing. And back when I took that — so when I started at UK, I was your regular 5 day a week, 40-hour person, kind of banker’s hours. And then a few years into it, they knew I was interested in going to 30 hours, which is still full-time benefits, and that’s what I took on. And at that point, I was doing some more art on the side, and it was like oh, this is great. I’ll have more time for art and just feeling like the human that I want to be, a little bit of everything. And if I’m going to be a good mom, obviously that was more time for kids too. So you know, it was — everything was great. But so I was 30 hours when she changed my life. And yeah. I realized burning the candle at both ends, I wasn’t sleeping, I was working around the clock to fulfill these orders, you know, it was — self-care didn’t happen for like four months. It was crazy. So I knew something had to end. Either I had to just give it up and I can’t be the person that can fulfill all these orders or I can, and I’ve got to let go of pharmacy, which was very scary when the whole family is on my insurance because the hospital has amazing insurance and benefits and things like that. And my husband has benefits, but you just can’t compare to how awesome the hospital benefits are. So it was scary, and it was something we had to weigh as a family and what we’re losing, what we’re gaining, pretty cool to be at home whenever the kids do need me because definitely the mom guilt has added up over the years. Every time they’re sick, my husband’s job is he has the best job ever and he’s flexible and he can be there for them. But man, it really hurts when you can’t be there when they’re sick. So now I can. I can be there for the kids and just so many other benefits. So that’s where we are. And I have the most supportive husband — this would never happen without the husband I have. Like I can imagine there’s a good percentage out there that would kind of be like, let it go, Stephanie. You know, you’ve got a great job — which I did. Pharmacy was great. Let’s count our blessings, let’s move on with what we have. But he’s been really supportive, and I’ve had some really pie in the sky dreams, and he’s just kind of like, go for it. I think you can do it. And without him, again, I just — without support, I don’t know how you could do it. So I’m thankful for that too. And he’s had to — when I was saying that I was burning the candle on both ends, I mean, he’s a wonderful father. But he really had to step up his game even more and really do a lot of the home things with the kids and everything it takes to run a family and a home. And he enabled me to be able to just devote everything I could to both jobs and stuff. So pretty awesome.

Tim Church: Yeah, I mean, that’s just wild how one post, and a bazillion orders come through and everything changes and no longer is pharmacy your full-time gig but now it becomes the other way around. And I think for a lot of people, that maybe they want to make that transition or do that change, but there’s obviously a lot of fear that goes behind that. Like you mentioned, obviously the healthcare benefits, that’s one, and being able to afford healthcare when that’s something that’s part of your employer benefit package. But then also, are you going to continue to get orders like that? Is it going to continue to have a demand? Or is it a one-time spurt like that? I think that probably had to be going through your mind at that time as you’re making that decision with your husband with how you’re going to proceed.

Stephanie Roberts: Oh yeah. I mean, looking back at it, I don’t really know how we made that decision. Why did we really think it would continue? I don’t know. I mean, there was kind of markers where you’d say, yeah, it looks like people will continue. But we didn’t know. This was only a few months later, but I still look back and think, why did we really think it was safe to make that jump? I don’t know, but thank God it was. And it’s continued to be — it probably took me 10 shop openings to be like, you know, every time before it opens, are people still going to be there? Are they still going to shop? Are they still going to buy things? And now I feel confident they’re going to be there because they’re in my DMs, they’re in my messages, they’re saying, “When is the next shop opening?” And I feel confident. And I might even feel confident like that it will continue for a year, but I don’t know what the future holds. I’m hopeful. But like I said before, and maybe this was while we weren’t recording, but you know, I hate to let go of pharmacy in case I need to get back into it. It’s an amazing safety net. I can’t think of a lot of people, you know, that I’ve learned about over the years, amazing authors and artists of every variation that have held onto their side job for as long as they could while they were still trying to make it. I don’t know of any side job that was as great as pharmacy is, so it was — I mean, I’m so happy that’s my safety net, even if I had to go back to the trenches of some retail pharmacy that I would prefer not to work in. It’s still a blessing, it’s still there, it’s still wonderful. So yeah. I just kind of pinch myself every day that this is happening.

Tim Church: I mean, it’s incredible. I mean, I just, I’m sitting here behind the mic like, I’m just so fascinated and intrigued with your story and how you made that jump but also how you continue to make it happen and just the demand being there. I mean, it’s just wild. So I think a lot of people are probably thinking, alright, Stephanie, you basically said you’re crushing it right now. You can’t even hold your shop open for more than a couple minutes before you sell out of your business. Can you give us just an estimate — I mean, how much are you actually earning in the business? And is it comparable to what you were making full-time as a pharmacist?

Stephanie Roberts: I think my husband wishes I was a little bit better with numbers and keeping up with things like that, but Shopify and having that online presence has really helped me to see that and see my profits and, you know, tax season is going to be really interesting this year as we figure out what we’re doing with a new business. But after this year, hopefully we are more informed about everything we need to do better next year. But yeah, it’s doing better than pharmacy. I think I would have made that jump even if it was maybe doing a little bit less than pharmacy. I think we could have handled that in our finances. I have, again, my husband has a Master’s in business and education that I don’t even understand. But you know, so he’s wonderful to have around. I call him the CFO. But yeah, it’s doing better than pharmacy, which is a huge surprise. I would go ahead and estimate that it’s going to be over six figures this year. And I mean, that’s pretty cool. I don’t know that I could ask for more. So —

Tim Church: I mean, that’s incredible right there because I mean, I know there’s a lot of people that obviously are doing — designing art and doing creative works. And I think they dream of even getting remotely close to what you’re making. And so the fact that you’ve been able to do it and replicate the process and continue to have — there’s a need out there, obviously, for people that want your designs. I mean, that’s just incredible.

Stephanie Roberts: It is incredible because who would have even thought outside of the pharmacy network I was going to find an audience for pill petri? But I mean, it far surpasses just people in the medical field anymore. I mean, there’s all the nice, fancy blog influencers, I mean, Instagram influencers and things like that. Again, other people buy it and then share it. And it’s — I would have never imagined that somebody that wasn’t in pharmacy or medicine period would want these. So I mean, yeah, just crazy. And I feel humbled by it but also feel like gosh, I look at some people that are just so talented and I wonder if their sales are like this or they’re close to this and things like that. I don’t feel worthy of it. But it’s — I’m grateful. And it’s been a really fun ride. So yeah. I put my time in at least. I may not be as wonderfully talented as they are, but I have definitely worked my butt off. I can say that. I have put the time in for sure.

Tim Church: It’s easy to tell that. And like you said, coming from your initial motivations for even pursuing art were way beyond the ability to monetize it. So I mean, I think that’s really cool. Now obviously, you’re the secret sauce of the business and creating these awesome designs. But does anybody help you with different aspects of it?

Stephanie Roberts: I have been bringing in more people, and they are to help with it. Like I said, the coasters at this point are — it’s almost like manufacturing. We make hundreds a week, and it is probably more time-intensive than anybody ever assumes when it comes to how many layers of resin you pour and putting the pills in, creating the capsules we make with the glitter and the sprinkles inside, I mean, I have thousands of those we make. So it’s not just buying over-the-counter drugs, but it’s making the glitter capsules that are kind of, again, the secret sauce that people are just like, where do you buy those? We don’t buy them. We make them. So the people I have helping me, funny enough, are technicians I’ve recruited, interns I’ve recruited, and somebody just started for me recently as one of my fellow pharmacist’s daughters. So it’s been kept close to home. I hope to hire somebody really full-time and, you know, become more of an assistant. I always tell people when I say, “Do you want to come over and help?” I mean, obviously, they get reimbursed. But you know, it’s not the most fun. But you know, we try to make it fun. It’s just time-consuming and we listen to our podcasts and we watch TV on the iPad or do whatever. So we keep it as lively as we can. And it’s not boring. It’s not the most fun. But it’s, you know, it’s better than on your worst day in pharmacy for sure. You know, the days when insurance is down and you know the customers don’t understand that and somebody’s sick and the very worst days, you’re like, yeah, you know, at my worst I may be a little bit bored on some occasions. But yeah, it’s still pretty great. I like the day-to-day

Tim Church: What about an accountant or a lawyer to help with some of the legal issues with the business? Anything — any of those people supporting you?

Stephanie Roberts: Well, I don’t have a lawyer that I have kept on staff or anything like that. But in the beginning, before we jumped this as a full-time career, my husband said, “You really need to figure out if this is legal. Legal, legal, legal.” I had kind of already been doing it, but he’s just like, you can’t jump to this full-time — and I had researched it on my own as much as I could to make sure everything was OK. So I think I contacted three different pharmacy lawyers that I knew of. So they were pharmacists plus attorneys. And they were all gracious enough — I mean, just on a friend basis looking into it for me. And nobody could find any reason why this would be, you know, illegal. Again, they’re over-the-counter medications, there’s no prescription medications in there. People shouldn’t be able to get — I mean, to get into the resin to get into a medication, you would have to use a drill. And by the time you got down to the pill, it’s going to be obliterated. So you know, good luck trying to get that Tylenol out of there to take it, but I don’t think it’s going to hurt anybody.

Tim Church: I was going to go for the Sour Patch Kid or the Swedish fish.

Stephanie Roberts: Oh, OK. Yeah, I mean, just swallow the coaster whole. That would probably easier to do than to get down to those. And on the gummies too, I mean, I’ve covered those with like shellac-type substances. So yeah. You’re not going to want them. So definitely have an accountant that will be helping us with our first tax season as a sole proprietorship this year. Plan on becoming an LLC. Should have done that last year, but time definitely got away from me. LLC I think would be much more beneficial. But yes, an accountant is a must. I don’t think we would do this on our own. Not yet. Maybe in the future. Probably not. But — and I hope I never need a lawyer, other than the initial, “Hey, is this legal?” I hope I don’t need another one for any reason.

Tim Church: But one of the things along the lines I was going to ask was, do you have any patents or other protections on your designs?

Stephanie Roberts: I have looked into patents, and patents on art are pretty difficult. You can get them, but then you have to enforce them. And when I get into something, I really — I get into 175%. So I have done every online course and researched other entrepreneurs in every field and even people like — I think it’s Sarah Blakely that does the Spanx brand. As a male, I don’t know if you’re aware, but I mean, Spanx is a huge brand. So maybe at this point you know what that is. But I mean, even on her designs, she said she had patents and people were ripping it off here and there. And she’s like, you know, I didn’t have enough time, I didn’t care enough, really, to go after every one of them. I just was focused on what I was doing. And that girl is into making billions these days. So there’s a lot of stories kind of like hers that make me believe there’s copycats. I already have copycats. And I try to just see it as flattery. They’re not doing as much. But —

Tim Church: Their shops are open, right?

Stephanie Roberts: Yeah, yeah, their shops are open all the time, just like — yeah, exactly. But yeah, I think I’m just going to keep my blinders on and keep trying to do what I’m doing and always stay ahead of them. That’s kind of one thing, it’s kind of motivated me to always stay ahead and be thinking of more, not to get comfortable or same like, you know, looking ahead, maybe we could assume I have some business in the future. But let’s not always assume. Let’s just work and earn that business and keep your clientele and keep the customers coming back for more. So it has motivated me in that way to not get comfortable and say, this is easy-peasy from here on out. No. I need to always be doing more. So that’s pretty cool.

Tim Church: So Stephanie, what advice would you give other pharmacists out there who have other interests and passions beyond pharmacy that maybe have the potential to be monetized?

Stephanie Roberts: I don’t know if I would say, jump into it. But you can do it. I mean, I just, I really think if you have a passion and a will — I saw this quote I think just two days ago, and it’s so simple. But it just really hit home for me, and it was just like, “I don’t know how, but I’m going to do it.” I mean, it was something like that. But I don’t know how, but I’ll make it happen. And it’s just like yeah, that’s exactly what it is. I don’t always know the how, but I’m going to figure it out and I’m going to do it. And I think anybody can. I think as I’ve entered my 30s and the more I’ve listened to and digested all these wonderful podcasts that exist that interview all these amazing entrepreneurs and people doing — it’s just like, you can do it. I mean, it’s amazing you can do it, how you can think outside the box and really make it happen. Growing up, I just really didn’t do that. It just seemed like degree all the way and that’s all you can do. And now I really want to educate my kids on — I mean, college is wonderful and I hope they go to college, but there’s so much more outside of that with being creative thinkers and finding a solution to a problem and that’s how some of the best inventions are made. I would just say if you’re really into it and you have a passion for it, do it. I don’t think money is always the best motivator. I think after awhile, you would get — you’re going to be exhausted and give up if it’s only about the money because I know from experience if this had only been about the money, oh, I would have given up a long time ago. It’s been exhausting. It’s been hard. But like I said, with three little kids at home, it’s not been easy. But I wanted it. So I kept on going. And I went days with only three hours of sleep every night. And that really takes a toll on you. But I wanted it. So I was going to keep on going. And I don’t think if you’re doing it only for the money that you would push through all the time. So you know, if you find something you’re passionate about, go for it.

Tim Church: I love that. Well said, Stephanie. Well thank you so much for coming on the show, sharing your story, really looking forward to hear how you continue to just explode this business. And I look forward to the day when you’re shop’s open and possibly I can order something for my wife. But also I like the coasters too, so even though you said you’re catering to a lot of women out there, I definitely think that there’s some really cool designs that you’ve done, especially if you’re a pharmacist or have that background that are really cool to have in your house. So I would encourage you to check out some of the designs. So if someone wants to reach out to you or learn more about what you’re doing and Art by Stephanie, what’s the best place to go?

Stephanie Roberts: Well thank you so much. And I have made some male designs for some male pharmacists and some doctors that did not have glitter pills in them. That’s all it takes. You just subtract those out, and it’s a male coaster. But Instagram is the best place to find me, and it’s pretty simple, but it’s @artbystephanieroberts. And you can get everything you need from there. The link is in the profile for my shop. Again, that’s most Sundays. But you know, @artbystephanieroberts on Instagram, you can find my email from there. And that’s really the place to go.

Tim Church: Thank you for listening to this episode. And as always, if you liked the content and want to hear more side hustle and pharmacist entrepreneur stories, please leave us a review on the Apple podcasts app or whatever player you use so we can get the message out and help other pharmacists on their financial journey. Just a reminder, if you want to win some of Stephanie’s art, follow @YourFinancialPharmacist and @artbystephanieroberts on Instagram and then comment on our audiogram post that’s going to be posted on Instagram Friday, March 13. And you’ve got one week to do this, and we will announce the winner the following week on Friday, March 20.

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YFP 142: Scripting Your Dream Career with Dr. Adam Martin

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Scripting Your Dream Career with Dr. Adam Martin

Dr. Adam Martin joins Tim Ulbrich on the show to discuss his most recent book Gen-Z Pharmacist: Dominate Pharmacy School & Script Your Dream Career.

Dr. Martin is the founder of The Fit Pharmacist, host of The Fit Pharmacist Healthcare Podcast and a two-time author.

About Today’s Guest

Dr. Adam Martin works with people to write their script for success using proper nutrition, stress management, and the power of a positive attitude. He earned his doctorate of pharmacy degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy, and with over 7 years of experience working full-time in the community pharmacy setting, he’s passionate about empowering other pharmacists and pharmacy students to put the health back into healthcare through leading by example in their professional practice to not only live their best lives, but to inspire others along the way to do the same. He pairs his PharmD with his expertise as a certified personal trainer and nutrition consultant to guide self-care back into healthcare.

Dr. Martin is the founder of The Fit Pharmacist, LLC. As a National Speakers Association (NSA) Professional Speaker, Adam’s core passion is traveling to pharmacy schools across the world to speak to pharmacy students, sharing practical plans of action that will empower them to maximize their careers and create a competitive edge in the profession to maximize their success and degree of impact.

He has made his life’s work showing people how to take control of their overall wellness, sharing SimpleSolutions through his writing for numerous pharmacy publications including PharmacyTimes magazine, and is the author of the best-selling book Rx: You: The Pharmacist’s Survival Guide for Managing Stress & Fitting in Fitness as well as the forthcoming book Gen-Z Pharmacist: Dominate Pharmacy School & Script Your Dream Career.

He is the host of The Fit Pharmacist Healthcare Podcast, sharing successes and practical strategies from the most successful minds in the profession of pharmacy with a new episode released every week. You can subscribe and learn more here: https://thefitpharmacist.com/podcast

With a passion for learning and serving his patients, he’s an inaugural member of the Pennsylvania Pharmacists Association’s Leadership Excellence and Advocacy Development (LEAD) program, and strives to serval the global community of pharmacy as a medical missionary, having served in Honduras and Panama as a pharmacist in the field. In 2019, he was named the “Most Influential Pharmacist” by SingleCare’s Best of the Best Pharmacy Awards.

You can connect with him on Instagram

Twitter / Facebook / LinkedIn: @FitPharmFam

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thefitpharmacist

Summary

In this episode, Dr. Adam Martin digs into his reason for writing his most recent book the Gen-Z Pharmacist: Dominate Pharmacy School & Script Your Dream Career and key points in it.

Adam explains that the number one problem he heard other pharmacists say was that they were never taught how to be a pharmacist. Although they were extensively trained in medicine and other essential knowledge that lays the PharmD groundwork, they didn’t know how to enter the workforce, interact with their colleagues, develop their career, or attend conferences. Essentially, pharmacists entering the workforce already felt behind.

Adam identified this problem and knew that something needed to be done. He’s very passionate about giving back to pharmacy programs and wanted to make a lasting impact on students. He decided to focus on what isn’t taught in a PharmD program but needs to be known. Over a four year period, Adam wrote his second book, Gen-Z Pharmacist: Dominate Pharmacy School & Script Your Dream Career.

The book is divided into two parts. The first part is about your prescription to dominate pharmacy school. Topics like clarifying your why, molding your mindset and networking are discussed. Part two delves into how to script your career. This section consists of 22 expert interviews with some of the best pharmacists in their niche. In this section, pharmacy students ask seasoned pharmacists what they would have done differently in the pharmacy school and their career to get to where they are today but faster.

Mentioned on the Show

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich: Hey, what’s up, everybody? Welcome to this week’s episode of the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast. I’m excited to welcome Dr. Adam Martin back on the show to talk about his most recent book, “Gen Z Pharmacist: Dominate pharmacy school and script your dream career.” Dr. Martin was previously on the show back on Episode 091 with Tim Church as a part of our side hustle series where he talked about how to become a fit pharmacist. Now, for those who don’t already know Adam, honestly, I’m not really sure how that’s the case as he’s everywhere having a positive impact, now internationally as well on so many so early in his career. His mindset, positivity and energy for helping inspire others to be the best version of themselves is second to none. I’ve been blessed to get to know Adam over the past couple years, and he’s inspired me and I’m confident will do the same for those listening today. Adam, welcome back to the show.

Adam Martin: Dr. Tim, it is a pleasure to be back, my man.

Tim Ulbrich: So glad to have you. It’s great to have you back in front of the YFP community, and it’s an exciting time for you with the recent book launch we’ll talk more about on the show as well as getting back from an international speaking gig. Tell us more.

Adam Martin: Yeah, man, so that was a blast. I actually just got back from speaking in Ireland at two pharmacy schools. So I was invited to speak on a mental health symposium in the city of Cork, Ireland. So flew into Dublin and then drove to Cork. And in Ireland, there’s three schools of pharmacy. So a little background: The healthcare system in Ireland is roughly three years behind that of the rest of the world. So just to paint a scenario for you, if someone has a mental health crisis, let’s say they have suicidal thoughts and they go to their provider, at that point, there is a 6-8 week waiting period for them to get any kind of treatment.

Tim Ulbrich: Gees.

Adam Martin: That paired with the fact that there’s a lot of stigma and no one’s talking about mental health is what’s prompted the creation of this symposium. So I was invited to speak. It was the first time ever in the country. All three schools of pharmacy were there. There were about 250 pharmacy students from the country. I spoke along with psychiatrists and pharmacists doing groundbreaking research to advance mental health. And it was the first time that there was a gathering to talk about mental health resources available and how to break down that stigma and lead to a positive impact. And the other thing that was fun — and I didn’t know this until shortly before the talk — is Irish people tend to be somewhat reserved. So they’re not used to my speaking style, and if you ever heard me speak, it is not a talk. It is an experience.

Tim Ulbrich: You bring it. You bring it.

Adam Martin: Yes. So I get everyone engaged, I get literally people up dancing in the talk. So they — the words that they used was “bloody brilliant.”

Tim Ulbrich: Bloody brilliant.

Adam Martin: It was a blast, man. And then I went the next day to speak at Trinity College at Dublin all about self-care, specifically for combating burnout that we’re facing in our profession because we hear about that all the time here in the States, but this is something that’s global. So it was an honor to be a voice representing pharmacy from the United States to talk about that in Ireland and bring what I’ve been working on here over there.

Tim Ulbrich: What an awesome experience. I mean, we talk about opportunity meeting the interest, the passion you have, the impact that you want to have. But just to be able to have that experience in Ireland, I followed you on Instagram throughout that journey. It looked like you were having a blast while you were there. So not only that, but you’ve got a second book out as well. I mean, how does that feel? We’ll reflect more on the details of the book and some of the concepts in there, but man, as you’re on the back end, the journey of writing a book is intense. I’ve joked with many, I’ve done it one, I’m not sure I’m going to do it again.

Adam Martin: Yeah.

Tim Ulbrich: But you’ve done it twice now. I mean, how does it feel to be on the back end of it?

Adam Martin: Oh man, so this actually is a funny — it leads me to a podcast that I did with a really world-renowned author. His name is Michael Lozier. And if you ever heard of the law of attraction, there’s a book called “Law of Attraction.” And it is a phenomenal read about mindset. But when I was interviewing him, I said, “Oh, I love your book. I’ve read it like five times, listened to it.” And he’s like, “Oh, that’s funny. I wrote it 100 times.” And at the time, I laughed. But after writing my second book, I was like, that is so true. So yeah, man, it’s a lot of revision and that’s really what people need to know is if you’re thinking about writing a book, really doing anything, the first draft is going to be trash. So you have to get started and dive into that process. And it’s fun. You learn, you get insight as you go. But that won’t happen until you get started. So that’s my learning experience and turned into piece of advice for anyone considering going down that path.

Tim Ulbrich: I think that’s great advice, and I think for many that have the aspirations of writing a book, they see a finished product and they think, oh my gosh, it’s so overwhelming, I’m never going to get there. But as you and I both know, to your point, the first draft often you look back at and you’re like, what was I thinking? You know, in terms of what I had here. But just the small compound effect, you write a few hundred words a day, you keep at it, and you get a draft on paper, you make revisions, you get feedback from others, and you start to refine your message and see what’s resonating.

Adam Martin: Absolutely.

Tim Ulbrich: So let’s talk about the book in detail. Again, the title is “Gen Z Pharmacist: Dominate pharmacy school and script your career.” Our listeners can learn more and get a copy at FitPharmacist.com/book. Now, three things that I love about this book as I had a chance to get a sneak preview from Adam: No. 1 — and I’ve shared this with you already — I think it’s really written in a way that is easy to understand, it’s digestable, and it’s written by someone who really has been through this journey. You know, you’ve walked the walk. And I think you’re doing a great job of teaching it. And I think it’s written in a way that it’s action-oriented is really the second piece that I love is that you can’t blow through this book. I think you’ve done a really nice job of you’re talking about some big things in the text in terms of mindset, you talk about leadership and time management, all these different concepts, and you really do a great job of forcing the reader to stop, reflect, and actually have space in the book where they can do some activities to think about that. I thought that was awesome. And then the second part of the book, which you called “Script Your Career: Experts speak,” you’ve got I think 20-something I think different experts that you have examples and stories from that I think really just showcases not only the journey you’ve had but also others. And so the thought that went behind this, you know, I think often when I see people that publish multiple books, you think, man, what are they pumping out? How quick are they doing it? What’s the quality? The intentionality here was awesome, and I think you did a really wonderful job. And I’m excited to talk more about this. So let’s start with why. What was the need? I mean, you’ve got your first book that was out, I see a copy in the book here as we’re recording.

Adam Martin: Yeah, there it is.

Tim Ulbrich: What’s the need for a second book? What was the mission and the vision?

Adam Martin: Absolutely. So first off, thank you for the kind words, Tim. I really appreciate that. It means a lot coming from you. I have tremendous respect for you and all the work that you’ve done and the impact you’re making for pharmacy. And I think that’s why you and I resonate so well and why we’re joining forces, sneak preview, for something coming up later in the spring. But to answer your question, so I’ve worked first as a nutrition consultant, and I’ve been doing that since 2013. And my niche is pharmacy students and pharmacists. And you know, we talk about problems, struggles, things like that. And the No. 1 problem that I kept hearing was very similar to what we all faced when we graduated. And that is I was never taught how to be a pharmacist. Yes, I was taught all the knowledge and all of the medication information and all those essentials that laid the groundwork for what our PharmD is for. But when it comes time to actually entering the workforce, interacting with your colleagues and then also developing your career in an increasingly competitive industry, how do you leverage social media? And then there’s all this talk about personal branding. Oh yeah, and then there’s conferences. And then there’s all that stuff that you’re not taught about in a structured way. And you get out in the workforce and then you feel behind. And something that’s something that people were struggling with a lot. So I thought, man, something needs to be done about this. So you asked why a second book, but the fun fact is I actually started working on this book before my first book came out. So this book was a four-year process because I do work full-time in the community and run a business. So time was interesting. But as far as the reason why, that comes to innovation. And that’s a core belief and a core concept at University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy, where I graduated, that being innovation, leadership, and excellence. So whenever I graduated, if you guys know my story, I was quite on the struggle bus to even get into pharmacy school.

Tim Ulbrich: Last seat, right? Last seat.

Adam Martin: Yeah. Last seat. Last one to get in, and no one in my class knew it. But I ended up being president of my class and all that other stuff. But because of that, and I worked so hard to get in, I was tremendously grateful for the opportunity and I had just such an amazing learning experience with phenomenal faculty and just great networking. So when I graduated, I started to think, man, I really need to give back. Like I need to get involved. So I started guest lecturing and helping some of my professors here and there. But working full-time, I would only be able to get in like when my schedules aligned, like once a semester. So that wasn’t really making a huge impact. Then I thought well, they asked for contributions financially, which is great, but I’m not a gazillionaire yet. But you know, after reading “Seven Figure Pharmacist,” it’s going to happen. Shameless plug. But you know, I don’t have enough money to make a huge impact with like a building or whatnot. So I thought, you know, how can I put this concept of innovation into practice? So I thought, what am I good at? What do I enjoy? What do people resonate with? And it’s writing and speaking. So I thought about what they don’t teach you in pharmacy school but what everyone needs in order to be a successful pharmacist. So I reached out to the dean and I said, “Hey, I thought about this idea of writing a book to complement pharmacy school. But before I do it, I just want to make sure that this doesn’t exist so I’m not spinning my wheels.” And she said, “No, it doesn’t exist.” So I was like, awesome. Well, what I want to do is I want to write a book helping students on this process so that when they graduate, they have the groundwork to hit the ground running. And what I want to do is reach out to 22 of the best pharmacists in their niche that are really crushing it. So like nuclear pharmacy, administration, dean of pharmacy school, how to get a residency if you want to get a PhD after pharmacy, all of those types of things. And what I want to do is I want to interview them and say right now, you are the best at what you do. And you’ve been doing this for years. If you knew you were going to end where you are now on your first day of pharmacy school, what would you do differently to get there faster? What organizations would you have joined? What publications, what meetings, all of those types of things. And that was my original idea. And she said, “That’s a great idea, but what if instead of you doing the interviews, you have pharmacy students do them so it’s not only a book for pharmacy students but written by pharmacy students.”

Tim Ulbrich: Love it.

Adam Martin: And it sounded great until I realized how to implement that. So you’ve got a dude that’s full-time community — and if you guys work in community, you know how rigid that structure is. I mean, we’ve got to submit our vacation requests like a year and a half advance. So you’ve got that. I’m running a business, diving into my speaking career, OK, and then you’ve got 22 super busy people that are crushing it and then you try to get pharmacy students who are in pharmacy school in leadership positions. So try to align those schedules 22 different times.

Tim Ulbrich: Sure.

Adam Martin: And that turned into four years.

Tim Ulbrich: So Adam, what I hear there is a lot of persistence as well as certainly some good mentorship and folks that gave you insight into the book. But I think that last part, you know, interviewing 20-something folks that are crushing it in their respective careers, honestly, that alone could probably be a separate book, could be a separate resource, could be a separate podcast — not that you have free time. But really getting insights into folks, you know, that’s something that I often wonder is I love the concept of sitting down with somebody and just asking them about you know, what’s made you successful? What’s your routines, your habits? And there’s obviously a lot of networking to be had there but also to learn. And that was really a big takeaway for me as I read this book was man, I wish I would have had this in pharmacy school. I wish I would have had this available to me. I just think it’s an incredible, incredible resource. And I see so many connections between this and the financial piece.

Adam Martin: Oh yeah.

Tim Ulbrich: And again, sneak preview, excited we’re going to be collaborating on some things, more things going forward. But in the book — and we’ll talk here in a minute — you talk about clarifying your why and mindset and time management and developing an outside passion and leadership and mentorship and thinking about the long game. And the thread, so much of that for me depends on is your financial situation in a position that you can clearly focus on all of those things? Because what I hear from so many people is, yes, yes, yes, but hey, I’m in $200,000 of debt and I can’t see what’s beyond this $200,000 of debt. And so I think there’s so many connections here to having a sound financial base and having a good financial plan so that you can be able to focus on these things. And so to that point, Chapter 1, which I loved, you started with this concept of clarify your why, which is something we talk about on this show as it relates to one’s financial situation. But tell me more about what you mean in terms of this concept of clarifying your why.

Adam Martin: Absolutely. So with the book, there’s two parts. The second part we talked about are the interviews that we did. So what that is it’s looking Part 1, the concepts we explore and how people in the industry have put those into practice and are thriving because of it. So it’s kind of like, here’s the script and literally Part 1 is “Your Rx to Dominate Pharmacy School.” But then Part 2 is here’s people that did this, and here’s the result. So absolutely. And that comes down to two parts. So we want to impact patients. We want to have a way to help people enrich their lives. We can’t do that until we can do that for ourselves. So that’s why in the first part, there is self-mastery and then relationship building. So the reason that the first chapter is clarify your why is because in order to thrive in your business, in your personal endeavors, whatever that looks like for you, you will face adversity, you will face setbacks.

Tim Ulbrich: Yes.

Adam Martin: Guaranteed.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

Adam Martin: And if you only have a short-term goal like “I want to make a ton of money,” or “I want a name for myself” or whatever that is, you will fail every time. But if you have a why that is bigger than yourself, if you have a purpose that extends farther beyond you, you will be able to realign with that and stick through that and do what it takes to overcome those hurdles.

Tim Ulbrich: Yes.
Adam Martin: For example, if you’re listening to this and you have kids, alright? When you’re sick, when you are exhausted, when you’ve got projects on the line, but your kid needs help, you do it anyway because it’s something bigger than yourself.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep, absolutely.

Adam Martin: It’s the same concept. So that’s why having a why that is clear, aligned with your goals and is bigger than you, making it about other people instead of just yourself, that’s the secret to staying at the long game because it is a process. And the thing you people have to realize is it’s not — and this is something that’s rampant in our profession being everyone Type A. I mean, I’m so Type A, my name starts with A. So I get it, y’all. Real talk. But you have to realize that it’s not going to be getting it right the first time. You can’t focus on being perfect. And we’re wired to think that way because literally as pharmacists, depending on your role, if you’re dispensing, one mistake could kill someone. That’s reality. So we take that thought process, and it translates into other areas of our life. So you have to shift your focus away from perfection and on progress because it’s a process not a one-and-done, and you have to realize that the value is on progress not perfection.

Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely. And if I could even add onto that, you know, Seth Godin, one of my favorite authors, would argue that you want to run from perfection. You want to fail often but quickly. And obviously, there’s places where you don’t want to fail and when you think about medication safety and other things. But you know, in terms of developing yourself as an individual, a road of perfection and a road of no challenges is one of the greatest fears I have for my children.

Adam Martin: Yep.

Tim Ulbrich: I don’t want them to have that, you know. They need to have adversity. They need to learn through that because as I reflect back even on a young career, like those moments, being in those, however painful they can be and however significant they seem in the moment, that’s really where the sweetness is happening. And to this concept of why, you know, again, to the listeners, the action-oriented nature of this book, I’m on page 6 here. Here I am, maybe I pick up your book and I feel like I’m just going to fly through this thing. And I’ve got to sit down and reflect on my why. And I can tell you that I recently did this activity to over 100 students in a personal finance course here at Ohio State, and I had them reflect on their why using some of the life planning questions we’ve talked about before on the podcast. And I will tell you through those responses, rarely have people thought about this question. And this is somewhat uncomfortable to think about. I think that’s good, that’s the purpose of the activity, you stop, you reflect. But again, I think it speaks to the nature of this book, you’re not just talking about this concept, you know, here I am on page 6 and I’ve already got to dig in and do some work, which is awesome.

Adam Martin: I love it, man. But yeah, to your point about the action-oriented nature of the book. And I’m an NSA professional speaker. And I tell people this at almost all my talks. I’m not a motivational speaker. I’m not here to pump you up. If you want to get pumped up, go to the gym. I’m here to literally make an impact and get you thinking to change your life and move the needle in the direction so that we can create momentum right now because when I leave, there’s two choices. I leave and a couple days later, you’re right back in your old habits.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah. Right.

Adam Martin: Or in the moment while I’m with you, we create an action plan so that you can just do simple steps to get the momentum moving. And that’s the key because I’m really good at bringing the energy and getting people in peak states of motivation. But unless you do something with that, nothing’s going to happen. So I took that same concept with the book. I talk about the concepts in simple terms to lay it down. But at the end of every chapter, there is a place to put that into practice specific to you, the reader, because all of us are different. We’re all at different places in our life. I’ve had pharmacists that have been graduated over 15 years saying, this book is starting to change my career. So while it’s catered to pharmacy students, it depends where you are in your career. And this really can impact anyone in the profession.

Tim Ulbrich: Well, and to that point, Adam, I mean, I’ve been out of school for 12 years. And I tried to hang onto my title of “new practitioner” as long as I could, but I don’t think I can use it anymore. But I think there’s something to learn here for everyone. I mean, to me, the mindset is you are always learning. So while I talk about your why all the time or I talk about mindset or time management, like, I don’t have all the answers. I mean, I always have something to learn in these areas. And I think this is another great resource that yes, it’s really geared toward pharmacy students, but I think many can learn beyond that. Now, Chapter 2, Mold Your Mindset. And I want to spend a few minutes talking about this because one of the things I love about you, Adam, is I feel like mindset, mindset, mindset. You know, I had a chance to meet with you in person on a couple occasions, and I strategically brought my son with me one time because I wanted him to see firsthand, you know, he might not be able to articulate it as 7 or 8 years, but being around people like you that have positivity, have mindset, you know, it’s a choice that you make despite circumstances that are around you, you know? It reminds me, I’m coaching first and second graders in basketball right now. And we’re learning a lesson on joy v. happiness.

Adam Martin: Ah.

Tim Ulbrich: And so this mindset thing, I want for a moment, give us some practical tips or strategies because I think you do this so well. And you talk about in the book as well that you’ve used or you’ve seen others successfully implement that helps to mold the mindset. You know, I think we all agree that having this mindset is incredibly important, but what are some things that folks can think about that either worked for you or that have worked for others?

Adam Martin: Absolutely. So it really comes down to what your focus is. So Bruce Lee once said, “As you think, so shall you become.” And it’s really a simple concept, but when you try to apply that to the organized chaos of pharmacy, it doesn’t seem so simple because you’ve got a lot of things. You’ve got doctor calls, you’ve got texts, you’ve got patient questions, you’ve got errors, you’ve got issues, all of that stuff. But you’ve got to put a smile on that face. How are you going to do that when you feel stressed and stretched too thin to even like have time to drink water or eat lunch during a break you don’t get or stand on your feet for 13 hours? How are you going to do that? How are you going to smile? How are you going to make it real? So it really comes down to the focus of how you’re going to conduct yourself at work or in your job and then also outside of work because if you’re having a stressful moment and you need to deal with that, that’s not really practical in the moment at a pharmacy because your patients are your priority.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

Adam Martin: But if you don’t put in that work of self-growth and development outside, that’s really where it comes from. So to answer your question, what’s a simple tip? It’s really what you focus on. So in pharmacy, in life, there are two realities. There are things that you can control and there are things that you cannot control. And what we tend to do as Type A pharmacists is we like to just blur that line, like, oh, we’ll figure it out. We’ll make this work. So we’re wired as humans to focus on the negative, that’s what we’re wired to because that’s what kept us alive back in the primal age. And you guys probably listening to this, you probably see this happen. You have a win, something’s checked off the list, and it’s just gone. And now you’re focused on what’s the next problem I need to fix.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

Adam Martin: And we get our focus set on problems we can’t fix. And if you just look on Facebook at a lot of the large pharmacy pages, that’s all you see is bickering and complaining about things you can’t necessarily control. And while they’re true and I’m not saying there’s no problems, there’s always room for improvement. And yes, there are some issues that we’re facing in our profession. If you focus on that long enough, that’s exactly what you’re going to get. That’s the mindset you’re going to have. That’s the emotion you’re going to create. And that is the action you’re going to interact with others as. So I’m not saying ignore problems, I’m not saying that if you go out in your garden and you see weeds, you close your eyes and say, “No weeds, no weeds, no weeds!” If you open your eyes, the weeds are still there. You’ve got to get down on your knees and yank those suckers out. But what I am saying is focus on the fact that you have the power to pull those weeds out.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah.

Adam Martin: Focus on what you can control and focus on those wins. Look at where you can make an impact, both in your own life and in the life of your colleagues, partner and your patients.

Tim Ulbrich: And I think this is another great example, Adam, and you go on I think in Chapter 3 or 4 talking about self-care and again, bringing back the financial piece, being in a position of having a good mindset, being able to mold your mindset, you have to have other behaviors, other strategies in place to give yourself the opportunity to be there. You know, I think about the value of something like a morning routine for a community pharmacist who gets up, alarm clock goes off, you start checking your email, the day is crazy, you run into a 12-hour shift, and you walk into chaos and in the moment, maybe a floater left you a bunch of baggage from the night before, the phone starts ringing.

Adam Martin: No.

Tim Ulbrich: That day from the very beginning was set up to not necessarily be successful in terms of mindset. So what I like about — and for me, it’s been things like morning routines that include journaling and meditation and prayer and gratitude reflections. And you give some great examples here in the book as well. But I think this is a great area for folks to think about what works for them but starting your day with intentionality, No. 1, and really leaning on others and seeing what others are doing and seeing what ultimately will work for your plan as well. And you know, many have heard this said over and over again, find those that are doing things successful that you want to role model your behaviors after. Find out what they’re doing. And hint, many of those people are very willing to share what their successes are and to talk about it. And so I think really finding people that you look at and say, wow, they’ve really got a different attitude about the day, they’ve got a different mindset. Well, why is that? You know? Ask them some questions, learn about their behaviors and habits. And I think you do a really nice job in Chapter 2 talking about some ways that folks can do that.

Adam Martin: Thank you. But yeah, to your point, that’s absolutely spot-on. You’ve got to have those morning rituals. And it’s super important. But looking at — because what you said happens at the time of getting into work and there’s all these problems. And that’s a slippery slope with the mindset of looking at problems saying, oh, it’s going to be one of those days or, oh, this always happens to me. If you say things like that and believe things like that and say like, oh, I don’t have hours, I don’t have the time, blah, blah, blah, that’s what you’re going to look for. That’s what this concept plays out to be. But instead, if you ask the question of how is this happening for me and if you just change that just a little change in your mindset but specifically the questions you ask will determine the quality of your life. So I just want to harp that point because it’s huge at breaking that slippery slope of negativity.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, absolutely. I love that. And I’m going to jump ahead here a little bit in the book. My goal here is not that we would cover the book in its entirety.

Adam Martin: Oh yeah.

Tim Ulbrich: I want folks to pick it up and read it and take action themselves. But in Chapter 9, you talk about Nurture Your Networking. And as soon as I saw you make a connection between network and net worth, I said, “I’ve got to” — I mean, it’s a financial show. Got to ask him about them. It’s something we’ve talked about before, the power of networking. We had David Burkus on the show to talk about his book, “Friend of a Friend.” So talk to me about networking, the importance, the value and ultimately, you know, why a pharmacy student should be really strategically thinking about this and how they may feel like hey, I’m in a vulnerable position, I don’t really have much to contribute or share, you know, some practical strategies for how they can implement this.

Adam Martin: Excellent question. So the profession of pharmacy hinges on one concept: It’s all about relationships. And that is so true. And that applies to all areas of life, whatever profession, whatever niche you’re in. It’s all about relationships. And how many of you have heard pharmacy’s a small world? So that’s the truth. And you can either ignore it or ask how can I be resourceful with this fact, coming back to that question that you ask yourself. So a lot of times, to your question of how can people get started if they’re a pharmacy student or if they have this thinking of, oh, I haven’t started yet. And they get in that trap of comparison like, oh, well I don’t have a podcast or I don’t have a book or I don’t have Your Financial Pharmacist success, like who am I to say this and that? Don’t fall into that imposter syndrome.

Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely.

Adam Martin: Every single person would be so grateful to learn from your experience. And in another chapter, I talk about the three levels of mentorship. And that is the concept that a lot of us think of as, oh, just get someone that has more degrees than the thermometer and learn everything that they know. And that’s mentorship. That’s one of three parts. The other part is having someone on your level that is looking to make progress. But the other part that so many people miss is the best way to learn is to teach. And while you might think that you’re not “there yet,” or you haven’t “made it,” whatever that means, you have people in your influence, in your school, in your company, that would love to learn your points that you’ve gone through, that are starting where you started a year or two ago. So the third part of mentorship is teaching someone who is starting where you started. While you might not think you have value, everyone has a story, everyone has experiences, and everybody wants a mentor. So by teaching that, it creates what I call the win-win-win framework. You can stock that so that you win, they win, and the people you serve win because both of you are rising together.

Tim Ulbrich: Love that. Great advice. So again, we’ve just hit on a couple high points here. I would encourage our listeners, check out a copy of the book, FitPharmacist.com/book. And as Adam mentioned, Part 1 is Your Prescription to Dominate Pharmacy School, ranging topics from why to mindset, self-care, time management, networking, mentorship, just so much wisdom here. And again, a resource I certainly wish I would have had in pharmacy school. And then Part 2, Script Your Career, experts speak, over 20 different experts sharing their career journey, stories and what’s allowed them to be successful in their own regards. And I think, Adam, before I wrap up with a couple questions here, I want to come full circle. You know, you alluded to this concept of making it, whatever that means. And I think bringing this all the way back to the beginning, this is why I loved that you started Chapter 1 with the why because all of this really goes back to this concept of what is the goal? You know, I think so many pharmacy students have this image of success in their mind or residents, they’re chasing something. But they haven’t stopped to think about what are they chasing? Why are they chasing? And do they really want to be chasing that?

Adam Martin: Absolutely.

Tim Ulbrich: And you know, this is where you see people I think often that may be 5, 7, 10 years out and maybe they finally got to whatever they had aspired to be, but they look up and say, “I’m burned out, I’m miserable. This isn’t what I thought I would be.” And I think it goes back to all the way to the beginning, taking time to stop and reflect and say, “Why? Why? What was the purpose to begin with?” And then you start to mold the plan around the why. So we often have people that approach us and say, “You know, I’ve got a really cool idea. I’d like to write a book. But my gosh, I have no idea where to start.” You mentioned four years. We might have scared them based on that statement. But talk to us about process. Like what was this like for you in terms of the daily, the weekly, the monthly rhythms to ultimately have something that you’re holding in hand and you’re distributing it? What was the process that you were able to implement to write the book?

Adam Martin: Yeah, so that comes to what we started this podcast talking about is you don’t want to be perfect the first time. You want to leverage your struggle to create your strength. And that’s really how my whole personal brand began, and that’s a whole other podcast that I think we did, actually. But the thing is is for me, one of my weaknesses is I get great ideas. And if I don’t write them down right away, they’re gone. And I don’t know if you ever resonate with this, but you’ll have a great idea and then like you get distracted and then you think, oh, what was that awesome idea? And you like think and think and think and it never comes back. So I learned quickly to avoid that pain of what was that golden nugget to writing things down. So I would just get ideas, whether it was driving to work or at home or whatever. Most of my ideas come from walking or in the shower. Real talk.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep. I’m with you there.

Adam Martin: So I would just write those down. And that’s literally how I started. I got these ideas and as I kept writing them down, I started to see the structure. I started to see how those aligned in a bigger picture. I would have — so I’m very active on Instagram @thefitpharmacist is the best place to reach me — but I would have people ask me questions through DM or commenting on my posts about struggles, about things they’ve been dealing with. And I kept seeing repeat questions. I was like, wow, there’s a need here. This needs to be addressed. So collectively, just taking notes and engaging with people and just being of service to others, that’s where this content, that’s where this concept came from. So a lot of people think, oh, you’ve got to sit down and crank it out and write 12 hours a day. No, guys. Like this book started from getting an idea and writing it down.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

Adam Martin: Getting an idea and writing it down. Doing it over and over again and just looking at how can this be of value? And that’s how you start. It’s always a draft when you start. So why not start with one word?

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and this reminds me of one of my favorite books, “The Compound Effect” by Darren Hardy, you know, which relates to finances but any goal, any project you’re working on, is small steps eventually over time result in big things. And I think that’s so true with writing, you know, you’ll see often people will do writing challenges, a few hundred words here or there. But it’s really true. It’s the habit, it’s the practice, and you surprise yourself. You look back and say, “Wow. I didn’t realize I could do this.” Then you start to shape it, you form it, it becomes a chapter. You beat it up, you get to Version 2, Version 3, and so on. But so much less intimidating than starting out and saying OK, I’m going to write a book from scratch. And I always encourage people, if there’s a topic you’re really passionate about, you know, start writing it down and posting things on LinkedIn and doing some other things. Then after 10 or 15 or 20 of those, you’ve got the beginnings of what could be a chapter or a section of a book or certainly could be a podcast or some other medium. Something I also want to point out to our listeners that are thinking about OK, so yes, Adam, you’ve written a book, but you’ve also built a brand. And sometimes I hate that word because I think it’s like we envision Adam as just like scheming in his house how to brand and market things. But the point I want to make here is that as I followed your journey for several years, you started in one place, which is a place I’m passionate about. You provided a value and service to others based on a pain point and a problem that needed to be solved and was one that you were passionate about. You didn’t start by thinking about how you were going to scheme a brand. You started by providing value, providing value, providing value, consistently, regularly, and from that, you’ve learned from the community what they’ve like, what they’ve resonated, what they’re passionate about, where you can provide a service. And so as you’re working then on a book, something like that, you’ve got a group that’s been following you and following your work because you have served them. And I think in my opinion, great businesses are formed off of serving individuals. And I’ve truly believed when you do that well, often the business will follow closely behind.

Adam Martin: 100%. And that comes back to your question about what’s the value of networking, and it’s what you just said. It’s all about relationships. So again, I like providing value in everything I say whether it’s a podcast or talking, so challenge to you, the listener. If you’re thinking about writing a book, if you’re thinking about doing any sort of endeavor whether starting or diving deeper, ask yourself two questions: What are you passionate about? And how can this help other people? Just like someone who thought, I’m passionate about investing and creating financial freedom, I see that there’s a problem with students coming out of pharmacy school at an average of $120,000 in debt, there is a need. I can help them based on my passion. Who am I describing, Tim?

Tim Ulbrich: Sounds familiar. Vaguely.

Adam Martin: Yeah, you. Exactly. And because of that, because you focused on that, you have built a brand that is so strong because it’s not based on scheming or how can I get a quick buck? It’s on how can I create relationships with people that have a need that I can solve based on my passion. And that concept, that’s your avenue. Mine’s the same with mindset and health. And I realize that our niches, you know, cross ways in a lot of different paths. And in speaking with you through the years, that’s what’s been so exciting with what’s coming up in the future because yes, self-care, self-development is great health and fitness-wise and creating that freedom, but then there’s also the financial piece. That’s the piece that together, creates the whole picture of the pharmacy student, of the pharmacist, to really be the best version of themselves so that they can dispense their full potential to those that they work with and serve.

Tim Ulbrich: And speaking of those paths crossing over, you and I have been scheming for a long time to figure out, man, how can we work together on a speaking engagement, something we both love doing, we’re passionate about inspiring others. And we’re excited to announce it’s finally going to happen this spring. Saturday, April 30, the Ohio Pharmacists Association annual meeting in Columbus, Ohio, really excited. Great meeting that OPA puts on each and every year. They get a great draw of students and new practitioners and pharmacists and we’re excited to bring this topic. So for those that are attending the Ohio Pharmacists Association meeting or maybe perhaps we can inspire them to do that after hearing this, what can those attending expect to hear from our session? What can they take away?

Adam Martin: Absolutely. So real, practical tips on how to manage stress, fit in fitness and create financial freedom for your life. Those things are crushing our profession. They are stopping people from living their dream and leading to burnout, which is a huge epidemic. And by the way, not just here in the States, but I saw it in Ireland too. And that’s why there was a whole conference on self-care because there’s a need, because there’s advice out there. And I’m sure a lot of you resonate with this. It doesn’t seem practical, it’s not specific to our profession and/or taught by people that are actually in the trenches, facing these problems themselves. That’s why I’m really excited for this because I speak the truth, like I’ll talk and I’ll be like, “Hey, I just dealt with this issue yesterday working my 13-hour shift.” Tim, you got out of school with — like your transformation financially is tremendous and you write about that in “Seven Figure Pharmacist.” And that’s the real talk is we face these things ourselves. And we’re able to speak about them with such conviction and passion because we’ve overcome them and we want to help you do it too.

Tim Ulbrich: It’s going to be a lot of fun. Saturday, April 4. I said the 3rd. It’s actually Saturday, April 4. We’re on for 8:15 a.m. And I can tell you, I don’t think the coffee’s going to be needed when Dr. Adam Martin is in the room. So we’re going to bring a lot of energy. We’d love to see you there. You can register for the OPA annual meeting, learn more about the scheduled events, including this session, by visiting OhioPharmacists.org. So Adam, in addition to picking up a copy of the book, FitPharmacist.com/book, best way for our listeners to reach out to you and learn more about the work that you’re doing over the Fit Pharmacist?

Adam Martin: So the ‘gram is jam. So hit up Instagram, @thefitpharmacist, also on the Facebook page where I create many memes because laughter is the best medicine. So you can get all of your funny memes and gifs and everything else in between on The Fit Pharmacist. That’s Facebook, @FitPharmFam.

Tim Ulbrich: Awesome. Always a pleasure, always inspired by the work that you’re doing. Excited for more collaborations in the future and to see what lies ahead and certainly greatly appreciate you taking the time to do this interview and to share your work with the YFP community.

Adam Martin: Hey, Tim, it’s an honor to be on here. Thank you so much for having me. I believe 100% in what you’re doing. And that’s why I’m super excited for this collab.

Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely. And to the YFP community, as always, we appreciate you joining us. And if you like what you heard on this week’s episode of the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast, please leave us a rating and review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your shows each and every week. Again, thank you for joining us, and have a great rest of your week.

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