November 2021 – Your Financial Pharmacist

YFP 231: From Pharmacist to Calligraphy Artist Working with A-List Celebrities

Posted on November 29, 2021November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

From Pharmacist to Calligraphy Artist Working with A-List Celebrities

On this episode, sponsored by Thoughtful Wills, pharmacist and entrepreneur Rosie Chhun, talks about how her side hustle turned main hustle afforded her the ability to pay off $180k in student loans.

About Today’s Guest

Rosie Chhun is a pharmacist by day and calligrapher by night. She is the artist behind Wander Crafter, a calligraphy and engraving company that specializes in live events and brand activations. Her floral calligraphy engravings make her stand out amongst other artists, allowing her to work with A-list celebrities like Jay-Z, Chrissy Teagan, and Kris Jenner as well as brands such as Netflix, HBO, and Neiman Marcus!

After a major downfall of not passing the CPJE and losing her dream residency, she fell into a deep depression and used her art to create joy in her life and pay off her student loans. After 3 really long years of hustling at the pharmacy and the creative business, she paid off her $180,000 debt and is making big moves in her calligraphy career! She just launched a YouTube channel to teach engraving, a calligraphy business coaching program, and is continuing to work with luxury brands.

The secret to success is to get clear on your messaging and create what you genuinely love creating.

Episode Summary

Dealing with an overwhelming amount of student loan debt is a common story that most pharmacists can identify with, but today’s guest took control of her story by turning her creative hobby into a flourishing business that paid off her debt, all while teaching herself to be financially literate along the way! Today, we speak with the resilient and tenacious Rosie Chhun, a pharmacist, calligrapher, and business coach who grew her side hustle into a thriving one-woman business called Wander Crafter. What started as a crafty hobby to help with the slow repayment on her $180,000 student loan debt has transformed into a calligraphy and engraving business that has since caught the eye of clients such as Jay Z, Chrissy Teigan, Kris Jenner, Netflix, HBO, and numerous other luxury brands. In today’s episode, Rosie talks us through her process of experimentation and settling on her successful business model, how she cut her overhead costs to virtually nothing, and the two pillars on which her business was built. Listeners hear about her journey through pharmacy school and into the field, the burnout from the pandemic that pushed her into taking the entrepreneurial leap, and, finally, the deep sense of reward and achievement she gets from coaching and engraving at live events. If you ever wondered how to turn your passion into a reality, then tune in to get your weekly dose of inspiration today!

Key Points From This Episode

Hear about Rosie’s roots as a pharmacy technician and her journey in pharmacy school.
Having to re-evaluate how she was moving forward and paying off her $180,000 debt.
How paying the minimum hardly touched the interest accruing every month.
How Rosie’s love of calligraphy intersected with starting a business to pay off her debt.
What galvanized her to take action and become financially literate.
Reinvesting back into her business every time things were going well!
Arriving at her successful business model with virtually no overhead costs.
Just getting started, and continuing to learn and evolve as things go on.
The two different pillars that make up Rosie’s business: live events and coaching!
The gradual transition from an expensive hobby to a flourishing business.
How the stress and burnout of the pandemic was the final motivator to leave pharmacy and commit to full-time entrepreneurship.
Developing resiliency and not being afraid to take calculated risks.
Intentionally growing as the demand increases and getting a supportive team.

Highlights

“By paying the minimum [on my student debt], I was hardly even touching the interest that was accruing every month. That was really painful. I realized, even if I had refinanced and did all the things right, I would be in debt for a very, very long time.” — Rosie Chhun [0:08:35]

“Everything is online. I don’t do any additional excess costs if I don’t have to. Really, the only expense that I have right now is gas because I have to get to the location. It’s really nice.” — Rosie Chhun [0:17:36]

“If there’s anyone listening out there, I would say, don’t wait until you’re at an existential crisis to turn your hobby into a business.” — Rosie Chhun [0:25:06]

“There [are] a lot of things that I learned in pharmacy school that I would not have learned out in the real world if I had just entrepreneurship from the very beginning.” — Rosie Chhun [0:27:22]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] TU: Hey, everybody. Tim Ulbrich here, and thank you for listening to the YFP Podcast where, each week, we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom.

This week, I had a chance to welcome Rosie Chhun onto the show, a pharmacist and entrepreneur who owns a successful calligraphy and engraving business called Wander Crafter. During the interview, Rosie and I discuss how her side hustle turned into the main hustle, afforded her the ability to pay off $180,000 in student loans. We also discussed how a couple of difficult scenarios right after the completion of her PharmD led her on the path to starting her own business. Finally, we discussed how her business went from idea to a hobby, to a successful venture that has allowed her to work with A-list celebrities like Jay Z, Chrissy Tegan, Kris Jenner, and brands such as Netflix, HBO, and Neiman Marcus.

Before we hear from today’s sponsor and then jump into the show, I recognize that many listeners may not be aware of what the team at YFP Planning does in working one on one with more than 240 households in 40 plus states. YFP Planning offers fee-only, high-touch financial planning that is customized for the pharmacy professional. If you’re interested in learning more about how working one on one with a certified financial planner may help you achieve your financial goals, you can book a free discovery call at yfpplanning.com. Whether or not YFP Pining’s financial planning services are a good fit for you, know that we appreciate your support of this podcast and our mission to help pharmacists achieve financial freedom.

Okay. Let’s hear from today’s sponsor, and then we’ll jump into my interview with Rosie. This week’s episode of your financial pharmacist podcast is sponsored by Thoughtful Wills. Let’s take a minute to hear from co-founder, Nathan.

[0:01:43] NK: My name is Nathan Kavlie and I’m one of the founders of Thoughtful Wills. Our law firm spends a lot of time thinking about the process of estate planning. There’s no way we can get around the yuck of death. So instead, we focus on being lawyers that you’ll actually enjoy working with. We pride ourselves on being approachable and then we take the extra time to draft documents that are actually understandable. We pair that with technology to make the process cheaper and more convenient. Please visit our website, thoughtfulwills.com/yfp and poke around, then book a meeting with us, please. We are genuinely excited to chat with you.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:02:21] TU: Rosie, thank you so much for joining the show.

[00:02:23] RC: Hi, Tim. I’m so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

[00:02:26] TU: Well, I am really excited to have you on the show and to talk about your pharmacy and entrepreneurial journey. We recently connected via email where you reached out and shared your story of paying off $180,000 and becoming debt-free, while also building an incredible calligraphy business. I shared this story with the YFP team. They loved hearing about your story and couldn’t wait to bring you on the show to share that story with the community. For starters, congratulations on paying off your debt. We’re going to get more into that here in a little bit. But to get us started, back us up a little bit into pharmacy. Where did you go to school? When did you graduate? What drew you into the profession?

[00:03:04] RC: Yeah. I actually started off as a pharmacy technician back in 2009. I worked in a hospital for about four and a half years while during undergrad and just getting experience. I took a couple of years off and applied to pharmacy school and wound up going to University of Washington and Seattle in 2013. Graduated in 2017 and then started the business around 2018 when I realized I needed something else to really pay off the amount of loans that I had incurred, along with some hiccups along the way, which we can talk about in the future or in a couple of seconds, I guess.

[00:03:41] TU: Absolutely. I want to talk about the debt accrual phase for a moment while you’re in school. I’ve shared on this show before that, in my own journey, paid off a couple $100,000 of debt. The debt was racking up, but I really didn’t think that much about it. It felt a little bit like monopoly money, to be honest and it didn’t get real for me until that first payment came due after the grace period was up, six months after graduation. Talk to us about how you viewed your loans when you’re in school. Was it something that you thought, “You know what, I’m going to be able to pay that off later, not really worried about it”? Or was it in the back of your mind throughout school?

[00:04:16] RC: There was a lot of different phases, I feel like. When I was in school, I definitely had it in the back of my mind and that was one of the reasons why I decided to go out of state. I’m originally from California. I live in Long Beach. I did get into USC at the time, but decided to kind of spread my wings a little bit and try to save up some of that monopoly money, if you will. When I was there, the first year, we paid out-of-state tuition, which was around $55,000, I believe for the first year. UDUB had a program at the time if you wanted to claim in-state tuition, you would have had to work 30 hours per week during school. That’s what my roommate and I ended up doing just to prove that we weren’t there just for school. We ended up working and busting our butts for the whole first year, ended up getting in-state tuition for the last three years.

I think at the time of graduation, I had only incurred about 120k, which doesn’t even sound like that much, right? That’s kind of the average these days. Throughout the whole pharmacy school, I was kept thinking to myself, like, “Okay. I’m going to work in a hospital. I’m going to work for a nonprofit. I’m going to get loan forgiveness.” I put in all of the things in place for me to try to get that loan forgiveness over the 10 years of working at a nonprofit hospital. When I graduated, things didn’t work out. I ended up matching to a residency, which was the residency of my dreams. I was so hopeful for the future and ended up moving back to California for. Didn’t pass the licensing exam and so ended up getting kicked out of the program.

At that point, I was hit with a very harsh reality, because the six months are up. Didn’t have a pharmacy job, didn’t have a pharmacy license and I didn’t really know what I was doing at the time. I had no plan and it was a really harsh slap in the face by reality. I ended up getting a grad intern position at Walgreens, which is very fortunate because there’s not a lot of people who get hired into the company as an intern if you weren’t an intern during pharmacy school. I was very lucky there, the store manager who hired me was very generous, very gracious and I’m really thankful for the opportunity for him to give me the job. After I got hired on as a grad intern, I trained for about two or three weeks, ended up getting licensed very shortly after that, and then have been working as a pharmacist since then.

[00:06:55] TU: So you had the residency of your dreams lined up, which many of our listeners know just based on match, rates and how competitive it is, that is difficult in and of itself. So you’ve got that residency of your dreams lined up and things don’t go as planned. You graduate, don’t pass the licensure exam. Obviously, with that comes the inability to complete on with the residency position. You’re able to get on as a grad intern with Walgreens even though you didn’t work with them previously, which is great. Here you are in a very different position than you thought you would be. I think that’s a great intersection then into the business. You’re working with Walgreens as a pharmacist, you have got $180,000 of debt. And to your comment earlier, when it was at $120,000, you said only $120,000. I think that’s where we’re at as a profession. I mean, the median debt loads are now, for today’s graduate, about $170,000, so it’s become normalized, I think unfortunately.

[00:07:49] RC: That’s incredible.

[00:07:50] TU: Yeah. Where did you start to see the intersection between your debt and the opportunity you had with the business and some of the passion you had around the calligraphy work?

[00:08:01] RC: Yeah. When I started working as a pharmacist, finally started doing the 401k stuff, started to get financially literate. Then it was time to pay off some of that loan. I hadn’t consolidated any of my loans yet. I hadn’t refinanced or anything. At the time, my average interest rate for the $120,000 was between 5.6% and 6.5%. I was accruing a lot of interest every single month. By paying the minimum, I was hardly even touching the interest that was accruing every month. That was really painful. I realized, like even if I had – if I refinanced and did all the things right, I would be in debt for a very, very long time.

There was no way that I could pay off that debt without a supplemental income or a side hustle, so I started doing a lot of research. People started saying “You can make an income with this calligraphy stuff.” I started doing calligraphy while I was in pharmacy school in 2013. That was just as a hobby. I would be jotting little things in the corner of my notes during class, I would be like sketching something instead of studying, like I was in calligraphy all the time.

When I finally realized that I could turn that into a business, that was when I started to do more research about entrepreneurship, what kind of calligraphy field I could get into. I would say, probably around the same time that I started working as a pharmacist, I also started this side gig. I played on pretty much every single niche of calligraphy you could even imagine. I did the cards, I did cake toppers, I did banners, welcome signs, wedding signs. All things calligraphy, I have tried and touched on. It wasn’t until, I want to say January 2020, where I actually found my niche of hand engraving. I combined, basically, illustration skills with calligraphy skills and created these beautiful perfume bottles that create amazing keepsakes that people can take home and keep for generations.

[00:10:25] TU: We’re going to link to that in the show notes. Wander Crafter is the business. I hope folks will check it out. It really is, Rosie, beautiful work and it’s incredible.

[00:10:32] RC: Thank you.

[00:10:34] TU: How you’ve been able to apply that gift that you’ve been given. Now, I have to ask, as a father of four boys, and my wife who home-schools our boys is incredibly passionate that they need to learn how to write cursive. So, as someone who does calligraphy and I suspect loves the art of writing, and I suspect learning cursive is probably really fun for you. What do you make of nowadays when sometimes, we’re taking cursive out of curriculums, right? It’s not something that every kid is being taught nowadays.

[00:11:03] RC: I know, yeah. I like tricking my little five-year-old niece into learning cursive.

[00:11:10] TU: That’s great. That’s great. You refinance your loans, you’re pursuing this side hustle, which is allowing you to make some more aggressive payments. Ultimately, we’re going to get these loans paid off. You mentioned just a few moments ago that you weren’t at a point of being financially literate. It strikes me because as I hear you talk, you’re talking about things like loan forgiveness, and interest accrual, and refinancing. Clearly, you’ve invested a decent amount of time and understanding, more information that has helped you on that journey. Tell me more about what you meant by not getting to a point of financial literacy and ultimately, getting to that point. What was the spark for you that really pursued your own learning on that journey to be able to implement those things in your financial plan?

[00:11:53] RC: Yeah. In pharmacy school, they didn’t really talk about financial literacy. Maybe I chose not to pay attention, because in my mind, it was always, loan forgiveness was the solution. When I kept thinking to myself like, “Oh! There’s no way I’m going to be able to get into inpatient if I don’t have a residency.” I think having been in the hospital for nine years, four years of technician and four years of pharmacy school interning, and along with the six months of the residency, I think it kind of just left a bad taste in my mouth too. I just didn’t really want to strive for that anymore, and so I figured, retail is probably the easier way to go, so let’s just do that.

I never really tried super hard to understand, or even learn how to do investing or any 401k stuff, or real estate. Anything like that, I just kept thinking like, I’m not there in my life yet. Because as a student, there’s no way I can make any kind of investment. I just kept thinking like, “I’ll learn it later. I’ll learn it later.” It wasn’t until like, I started working as a pharmacist, got my first figural check, and then had to throw all of it to the loans that I had ignored for six to eight months. Then I saw the big number and was like, “Okay. If I can put $3,000 into this per month, how long is it going to take me to pay it off.” It wasn’t touching it. It wasn’t doing anything. I was like, “Okay. I got to do something about this.”

I started listening to you. I started listening to Dave Ramsey. I started reading a lot, and just having the conversations with friends, and family and asking other mentors and colleagues how they were doing it. That really helped me to kind of build that knowledge base so that I could drop it down faster.

[00:13:49] TU: Yeah, education plus action is power, right? As I hear, you really taking that priority to learn more and then to implement that. And obviously, that ultimately pays off as you’re able to knock out that $180,000 of debt when it’s all said and done because of interest and so forth that accrues when you’re talking about interest rates between 5.6% and 6.5%. Yeah, I mean, it’s crazy. I think that’s the piece. I was speaking with a group, actually, this weekend, and really just highlighting to them that it’s not just that debt that’s occurring from semester to semester, year to year, but you got to factor in also the interest that’s going to accrue over the life of the repayment.

Perhaps it gets decreased through something like a refinance, but it’s a great example where having a plan A, B and C is probably a good idea. Because if folks are thinking loan forgiveness or a certain path, and for whatever reason, that doesn’t work out. What’s the game plan, right? What’s the plan to be able to ultimately knock out that debt?

Tell us, I’m curious as a business owner, often when you’re trying to get a business off the ground, there’s this decision to be made of as you start to see some success. Do I take this money and continue to invest back in and grow the business or do I take this money out as an owner and perhaps apply it towards a goal, such as you are here paying off your debt? As you’re growing your business, as you’re making progress in your debt, tell me more about that decision where you said, “You know what, perhaps I could put this money back in the business and continue to grow. But I’ve really got to focus on the loans.”

[00:15:17] RC: Yeah. I started the business in 2018, tried and failed a bunch of things. We bought the Cricut, which is vinyl. Basically, it’s a little computer that can cut vinyl for you, or fun little paper shapes and stuff. That’s how we kind of started. Then we upped our game and bought a Glowforge, which is a laser cutter. That one’s really cool, because you can cut out shapes with wood or acrylic and little things like that. That was really fun, but that was also a really big investment, especially from – I definitely pulled from my pharmacist salary for that. And just continue to reinvest into the business until I started to really run the numbers and figured out what was truly profitable.

It wasn’t until January of 2020, where I took a hand engraving class from one of my calligraphy mentors and we just hit it off. I loved doing all the hand engraving stuff. Eventually, I figured out a business model where I don’t actually have to supply any of the overhead. With the Glowforge, you have to buy wood, acrylic, and you know all the different colors, and you have to do listings and shipping. It just ended up getting up into all of our profits, and we were making very little for a lot of work. Eventually, with the hand engraving stuff, I created a business model where my clients would actually buy this physical item and send it to me. I would engrave it so I would provide the service, and I would mail it back to them or meet up with them to do a local pickup.

I cut out all the overhead cost and I cut all the shipping. Well, most of it. I still ship every so often. But for the most part, my clients are local, and they can drop by my studio and pick up the engraved item. I ended up cutting out so much of my overhead costs. Now, all I have to do is, I have my supplies already all in one kit. I spend maybe like $10 on nib, like my kit. I’ve already invested maybe like $600 or $700 worth for the machine, and the lights and everything that I need to go on site and engrave for clients in person at events and stuff. Really, I just have a room in my apartment, which I call my studio now, and everything is online. I don’t do any additional excess costs if I don’t have to. Really, the only expense that I have right now is gas because I have to get to the location. It’s really nice.

[00:17:48] TU: That’s a great example, Rosie of often, when I talk with folks that have an idea, there can be some paralysis of trying to think about exactly what is the next step or what might this look like in three or five years. One of things I like that you shared is it took some time, right? You had several different products that you worked through, I suspect in three years, you’ll look back today and say, “Oh, I’ve learned this and this and this now that I’ve had a few more years of experience.”

You’re talking about things like some of the operations, and the equipment, and the overhead. Those things can be so overwhelming at the beginning of an entrepreneur’s journey. But what you did was you got started, right? You had an interest, you had a talent, you had a passion, you had a motivation, which obviously here was paying off that debt. You took that first, sometimes very overwhelming but very important first step, which is, get started and then continue to learn and evolve as things go on.

[00:18:39] RC: Right. Yeah, you just figure it out.

[00:18:41] TU: Figure it out. Right. Exactly. Tell us more about the products specifically or a couple of your main products that you offer at Wander Crafter, and who are the customers. You mentioned some local things and so forth. As you think about your business, the products that you have to offer, the folks that you’re focused on marketing those products towards. Tell us a little bit more about those two things in the business.

[00:19:04] RC: Sure. I have two different pillars that make up my business these days. The first one is live events and that includes luxury brands like Neiman Marcus or Netflix. I’ve also worked for HBO Max a couple of weeks ago for their succession launch. Those luxury companies end up bringing me into the store. Going on-site, and I bring my kit and get dressed up and I create a luxury service for these brands to create a better client experience, and that helps them to sell their products a little bit better, because everyone wants something personalized. There’s nothing more special than seeing your name on a perfume bottle.

Most of the things that I do these days are personalization on mostly perfumes. I’ve done it on like whiskey bottles, water bottles and a couple other stones and things like that. But it is mostly perfumes, just because I think that’s where they have the most profitability.

The other pillar of my business is coaching. After figuring it out for a couple of years on my own, I decided to create a coaching program for calligraphers who want to break into the luxury brand industry. I help them start a business, get over the money mindset. How do you charge for something like this, working on a website, or SEO, photography, videography, and leveraging your social media to create a business model that works for you and helps to bring in multiple clients. Not just luxury brands, but also your local clients as well.

Nowadays, I don’t really do the local clients as much. I tried to focus more my attention on the luxury brands just because that has a bigger return for the time that I put into it.

[00:20:58] TU: Very cool. I hope folks will check it out, wandercrafter.com. We’ll link to that in the show notes. You can see more of the work that Rosie’s done, the engraving, the calligraphy as well as the training program. She’s mentioned the Craft Academy and some items to shop there as well. It is really, really beautiful stuff.

One of the things, Rosie, I like to prod a little bit is, you mentioned before we had hit record that, your pharmacy job was funding a very expensive hobby or business. I think for many folks that are getting started with something, especially something they’re very passionate about, which I think links well to the work that you’re doing here, is that, there’s a mindset shift that happens from, “Okay. I’m going to do this thing that is interesting, it’s a hobby to actually running this like a business.”

What was the transition or the pivot point? Was it the specific markets when you mentioned kind of working with some of the higher end items or the training course? Was it figuring out the messaging or the SEO? What was it that really allowed you to make that transition from a hobby to actually running this as a business?

[00:21:59] RC: Oh my gosh! That’s a really good question. I think the transition, business-wise, I don’t know if there was like an actual, pivotal moment. It was more of a gradual, uphill climb. Until, I mean, to be honest, I think it was just a burnout. I don’t know if I ever mentioned this in any of the emails and stuff that we’ve had back and forth. But during the pandemic, I’m sure you’ve heard a jillion times, it was really hard. The initial panic was really difficult. Because we had to tell doctors like, “No, we can’t give you this Z pack” or tell this family, “I can’t give you 20 Z packs. One, I don’t have any, and two, that’s illegal.” It was a lot of moral decisions that I didn’t have to make before. And then, we kind of got used to that with the mail orders and things like that.

Then the vaccines launched to the public in March of 2021. Honestly, that to me, that was the turning point where pharmacy went from a passion to just painful really. At that point in the business, I was already making probably the same amount as my pharmacist salary. For whatever reason, whether it was feeling guilty for giving up on pharmacy or a duty to help the public or family expectations, I just didn’t have the bravery to really just trust myself with the calligraphy business.

It got to a point where we were doing 30 to 60 vaccines per day, and most of the time, we were by ourselves. It was just one pharmacist for the whole day. It just got to a point where I was completely burnt out. I hated my life. I hated work. The only thing that provided a little bit of light was my business. I just remember like one Friday, I was short on technician and we did 30 vaccines that day. Then Saturday, we did the same thing. At the end of Saturday night, I told my tech, “I can’t do this anymore. I don’t think you’re going to see me Monday.”

Monday came around, I woke up and there’s just this existential dread in my day and I just could not physically get out of bed or go to work. So I ended up calling my scheduler and was like, “Hey! I just don’t feel good today.” I called my doctor and I was like, “I think I need therapy.” Like I’m at a point where I could hurt myself. I could hurt my patients because of not being in it. I wasn’t passionate about it anymore. I went to therapy for a couple of weeks and ended up just double downing on my business, my coaching program, my calligraphy business. From there, it blossomed, it grew beyond what I could even imagine. I mean, if there’s anyone listening out there, I would say, don’t wait until you’re at an existential crisis to turn your hobby into a business.

[00:25:15] TU: Yeah. I hear a big mindset shift that happened. I certainly don’t want to say that there have been positive things related to the pandemic. It’s been a very difficult time for obvious reasons. But here, as you share that story again, for you in that journey and some of that pain that you experienced, personally led to further pursuit of the passion that you’ve had around this work. I hope folks would even go back and listen the last three minutes because, Rosie, like your tone in your voice and your enthusiasm around talking about the business relative to sharing, and I could tell, even self-reflecting on some of my own journey for you. Just a very different vibe, and your voice and your tone.

I think, for folks that are listening that have an idea, whether it’s within pharmacy or something else, whether it’s within the job they’re in or pursuing something as a side hustle, or another opportunity, taking some type of a risk or opportunity that they can pursue. Like having folks around you, whether that’s family, friends, accountability partners, you mentioned providers that were involved that hopefully can pick up on some of those passions, and some of the enthusiasm, some of the things that they’re observing and keep you accountable in that journey as well. Resilience, Rosie is something that really stands out to me as I think back to your sharing of some of the difficulties after graduating from pharmacy school and not passing the licensure exam right away, delay, unable to do that residency. How did that journey and developing resilience through that experience in pharmacy, how has that helped you in the business?

[00:26:44] RC: I think it’s just not being afraid to take risks, calculated risks. Being a pharmacist, I think you do have a little bit of type A, doesn’t matter what kind of personality, but there’s a little bit of OCD in there, and just doing whatever it takes to survive and succeed. I think just being able to – even in pharmacy school, I feel like I learned a lot of skills, whether it was learning how to study, and multitask and manage your time. I think there’s a lot of things that I learned in pharmacy school that I would not have learned out in the real world, if I had just entrepreneurship from the very beginning.

Then even working at a retail pharmacy, I think part of that even comes – that taught me a lot too. Working in retail is really hard. You have to be able to multitask, and manage people and teach people in a way that they will understand, whether it’s different teaching, or learning skills and stuff like that. There’s a lot of things that I still learned working out in the real world and going to pharmacy school that I do apply to the business itself as well.

[00:28:01] TU: One of the things you mentioned, Rosie, before we hit record. We’re recording on the first of a month, and you mentioned you had a really big order come in over the weekend, which is leading to a busy Monday and start to the week for you, which is good problems. But problems nonetheless, when you’re growing, and running a business and you have growing demand and more people want your service. We’ve all heard many stories where sometimes businesses may not keep up with some of that growing demand. Talk to us about, as we look ahead at Wander Crafter, as your products, your services, your time is becoming of greater demand. How are you growing the business intentionally? What steps are you taking knowing that there’s going to be demand that continues to increase? At the end of the day, there’s only one Rosie.

[00:28:49] RC: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I was really literally just thinking about that this morning. How am I going to continue scaling this if I’m the only person who can do the engraving, and the writing, and all that good stuff. Right now, I’m just a one-woman business. I did have an assistant who ended up getting her dream job a couple of weeks ago, so I lost her and I’m really sad about it. I haven’t quite recovered from her leaving me just yet, so I am very hesitant to bring on anyone into the business, whether it’s for social media management or even just assistants, or photography, or anything like that. I am very scared to bring someone on in case someone leaves me again. Maybe you can give me some advice on how to grow your team.

[00:29:39] TU: It’s a work in progress. I feel like it’s one of those things that as you are so passionate about the vision, that you obviously are, and as people really treasure the products that you’re putting out, sometimes you as the business owner, me as the business owner can become the bottleneck of the growth. It’s a hard thing. It’s a hard thing to figure out of making sure that you’re comfortable in that next step, making sure that the quality of the product is to the standard that you want it to be.

But also recognizing that the addition of a team and folks that you trust can ultimately mean a bigger reach and the impact that your work can have. I look forward to watching some of the growth and what happens over the next year or two as you continue to grow in that area.

[00:30:23] RC: Yeah, I’m really excited for where Wander Crafter is going too, the coaching program is taking off, the calligraphy portion of it is taking off too. There’s definitely a high need to hire somebody to take some of that load off so that I can have some kind of a balance in life. But right now, I feel like it’s okay. I’m only working like maybe 20 up to 30 hours a week, which is still less than what I was doing with the pharmacy job, so it’s not too bad.

[00:30:54] TU: And pursuing something that you’re really passionate about, which is awesome. Where can folks go, Rosie to follow your work to learn more about what you’re working on?

[00:31:04] RC: Yeah. I am always on Instagram, so head on over to instagram.com/wandercrafter. I’m also getting really big on TikTok these days, so find me there as well. Also just go to my website, wandercrafter.com. You can find out about the Craft Academy, which is the calligraphy coaching business or program rather. And yeah, just hit me up on Instagram. I’d love to chat with you and maybe give you some inspiration for your own business as well.

[00:31:31] TU: Great stuff. We will link to those in the show notes, the Instagram, the TikTok, the website, the YouTube channel. Really appreciate, Rosie taking time to come on the show to share your journey, and hopefully it’s going to inspire many other pharmacists on their own journey. Thank you so much.

[00:31:43] RC: Of course, Tim. This is a dream. I’ve been listening to you for so long. This is really an honor to be on here.

[00:31:49] TU: So fun. Thank you so much.

[OUTRO]

[00:31:51] TU: Today’s episode of Your Financial Pharmacist podcast was sponsored by our friends at Thoughtful Wills. If you haven’t created your estate plan yet, we urge you to reach out to Notesong and Nathan. They draft custom estate-planning documents like wills, trust, healthcare directives, and durable powers of attorney that fit your situation and reflect your wishes. This is key. These are custom legal documents created and reviewed by actual attorneys.

Thoughtful Wills created two cut-to-the-case packages designed for pharmacists who are ready to get their estate planning in order. You’ll really appreciate their dedication to approachable lawyering and they charge about half of what most law firms charge for the same documents. These documents are such a gift to your loved ones. If you haven’t created them yet, please just get it done. Reach out to Notesong and Nathan by going to thoughtfulwills.com/yfp. Go ahead and book a meeting with them. They’ll take such good care of you.

As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding material should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment.

Furthermore, the information contained in our archive, newsletters, blog post, and podcast is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analyses expressed herein are solely those of your financial pharmacist, unless otherwise noted and constitute judgments as of the dates publish. Such information may contain forward-looking statements which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements.

For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/disclamer. Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

[END]

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YFP 230: 5 Steps to Get Ready for a Home Purchase

Posted on November 18, 2021November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

5 Steps to Get Ready for a Home Purchase

On this episode, sponsored by IBERIABANK/First Horizon, Tony Umholtz talks through five steps for getting ready for a home purchase.

About Today’s Guest

Tony graduated Cum Laude from the University of South Florida with a B.S. in Finance from the Muma College of Business. He then went on to complete his MBA. While at USF, Tony was part of the inaugural football team in 1997. He earned both Academic and AP All-American Honors during his collegiate career. After college, Tony had the opportunity to sign contracts with several NFL teams including the Tennessee Titans, New York Giants, and the New England Patriots. Being active in the community is also important to Tony. He has served or serves as a board member for several charitable and non-profit organizations including board member for the Salvation Army, FCA Tampa Bay, and the USF National Alumni Association. Having orchestrated over $1.1 billion in lending volume during his career, Tony has consistently been ranked as one of the top mortgage loan officers in the industry by the Scotsman’s Guide, Mortgage Executive magazine, and Mortgage Originator magazine.

Episode Summary

If you are considering purchasing a home in the next six to twelve months, today’s episode with mortgage manager Tony Umholtz will equip you with the information you need to prepare for this exciting journey. Tony shares his knowledge about the importance of understanding interest rates, where to find the most up-to-date information on those rates, how to determine your home-buying budget without the lender setting it for you, and criteria used by the lender to calculate your maximum loan amount. Tony also shares the best time to get pre-approved and things to look for in a lender when going through the home-buying process. The discussion covers the five key steps to follow to ensure that you are ready to purchase a home including, understanding the landscape, knowing your budget, getting pre-approval, choosing a lender, and knowing which documents you need to provide once the property is under contract. If you have questions about interest rates, the difference between pre-approval and pre-qualification, the various types of lenders that you can work with, the pros and cons of putting a 20% down payment on a home, the 28/36 rule, or anything to do with credit scores, you’ve come to the right place!

Key Points From This Episode

Why now is a good time to buy a home.
Where you can find out the average interest rates in the home loan industry.
Tony explains what discount points are and why you need to understand them.
The importance of reading the fine print.
Know your budget!
How lenders determine how much they are going to lend.
What the 28/36 rule is.
Tony runs through the pros and cons of a 20% down payment.
How savvy investors look at returns.
Comparing pre-approval and pre-qualification.
The value of a credit report.
How lenders work out your credit score, and why this differs from what you will see if you use a monitoring service.
Examples of the different types of lenders that exist.
Information that you will need to provide to the lender you choose once you have a property under contract.

Highlights

“Lenders look at your gross income. We don’t factor in your after-tax income.” — Tony Umholtz [0:09:23]

“I’m a big believer in being diversified.” — Tony Umholtz [0:10:51]

“The higher your credit score, the better your rates tend to be.” — Tony Umholtz [0:23:12]

“There are advantages and disadvantages for every type of lender that’s out there. So, it’s good to know, get some recommendations, and also to compare the products and make sure it’s a fit for you and that you feel comfortable with the group that you’re working with.” — Tony Umholtz [0:27:20]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] TU: Hey everybody, Tim Ulbrick here and thank you for listening to The YFP Podcast where each week, we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom.

This week, I had a chance to welcome back onto the show Tony Umholtz, a mortgage manager for IBERIABANK/First Horizon. During the interview, Tony and I talked through five steps to getting ready for a home purchase. So, for those that are listening and thinking about a home purchase in the next 6 to 12 months, this episode is certainly for you.

On the show, we discuss the importance of understanding interest rates and how you can find the most up-to-date rate information. We also discuss how to determine your home-buying budget and the criteria used by the lender to determine your maximum loan amount. When is the best time to get pre-approved and what is the difference between pre-approval and pre-qualification? And finally, what to look for when shopping around lenders and going through the application process.

Now, before we hear from today’s sponsor, and then jump into the show, I recognize that many listeners may not be aware of what the team at YFP Planning does in working one on one with more than 240 households in 40 Plus states. YFP planning offers fee only, high touch financial planning that is customized for the pharmacy professional. If you’re interested in learning more about how working one on one with a certified financial planner may help you achieve your financial goals, you can book a free discovery call at yfpplanning.com.

Whether or not YFP Planning’s Financial Planning Services are a good fit for you, know that we appreciate your support of this podcast and our mission to help pharmacists achieve financial freedom.

Okay, let’s hear from today’s sponsor, IBERIABANK/First Horizon and then we’ll jump into my interview with Tony.

[SPONSOR MESSAGE]

[00:01:42] SPEAKER: Does saving 20 percent for a down payment on a home feels like an uphill battle? It’s no secret that pharmacists have a lot of competing financial priorities including high student loan debt, meaning that saving 20 percent for a down payment may take years. We’ve been on the hunt for a solution for pharmacists that are ready to purchase a home with a lower down payment and are happy to have found that option with IBERIABANK/First Horizon. IBERIABANK/First Horizon offers a professional home loan option AKA a doctor or pharmacist home loan that requires a 3 percent down payment for a single family or townhome has no PMI and offers a 30-year fixed rate mortgage on home loans up to $540,250. The pharmacist home loan is available in all states except Alaska and Hawaii. To check out the requirements for IBERIABANK/First Horizon’s pharmacist home loan, and to start the preapproval process, visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/homeloan. Again, that’s yourfinancialpharmacist.com/homeloan.

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:02:46] TU: Tony, welcome back to the show.

[00:02:48] TU: Tim, thanks for having me. Always good to be here.

[00:02:51] TU: Excited to jump into this episode, you’ve been a frequent guest on the show. Last episode we had you on was episode 216, where we talked about common credit blunders to avoid when buying a home. We’re going to link to that in the show notes and dig in some more detail on that topic as well during this episode. So Tony, give us the update. What are you seeing out there in the housing market? It’s been a wild year, right?

[00:03:14] TU: It has been a crazy year. It really has been. A lot of the same things we’ve seen before in the past, the inventory levels are still fairly tight and rates are still low. The one thing I will mention is you know is more of a timing thing for the time of year in the season we’re in, is the autumn in the fall is typically – there’s a little bit less buyers out there. We have Thanksgiving and the holidays around Christmas. Typically, there are less buyers, a little bit less competition. So, it’s often a better time to buy because there are less buyers you’re competing with.

[00:03:51] TU: I think that may be true for many folks in our community that perhaps we’re shooting for a spring or summer home purchase. Maybe they got delayed because of the inventory issue that is well known that’s out there. So today, we’re going to be digging into five steps that folks can take to get ready for a home purchase. We’re going to be talking through evaluating loan options, finding a lender, saving for a down payment, and running the numbers for your budget. So, if you’re thinking about buying a home in the next 6 to 12 months, this episode is really designed for you. If you think combined is in your future, whether that’s now or down the road, my hope is you’ll be able to pull some tips and lessons away from this episode to help you prepare for that journey.

No need to take notes. You can head on over to yourfinancialpharmacist.com/home-loan. We’ve got an extensive resource at that site. You’ll be able to check out a lot of what we’ve referenced today. So Tony, five steps to get ready for home purchase. Number one, know the landscape. So, before you’ve been shopping around for lenders, it’s helpful to have a general idea of what’s going on in terms of mortgage, interest rates, what the market is. So, what do we generally seeing right now Tony, and knowing these, of course are subject to change, and where can someone go to research those rates?

[00:05:05] TU: Well, it’s a good question here, Tim. The first step, just to kind of get a very broad view of the landscape would be, you can actually go to Freddie Mac, freddiemac.com, and Fannie Mae, they actually post rates, but it’s an average rate. So, it’s an average industry rate. You can also find it like in The Wall Street Journal. Clearly online, you can find it but you would look for the weekly average rate, and by Fannie or Freddie Mac. Freddie Mac quotes typically have points in them. So, you do have to look at the fine print with that, that it’s an average rate, kind of a consensus of the industry to tell you where rates are, like a rough idea of where they are, but they’re often quoted with points. So, keep that in mind, because your lender may quote you something the same or a little higher, but it does not have points. That’s just kind of a good place to start, Tim.

[00:05:58] TU: Tony, I’m looking at those rates right now. So, at the freddiemac.com/pmms, we’ll link that in the show notes. So, showing 30-year 3.14 percent, 15-year 2.37 percent, a five-one-year arm, 2.56. And then what’s neat about this is you can look at the trends over the year, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years. And then also let you know what has changed within the last week or the last year. I didn’t know that about points in terms of how these are reported. Some folks may be looking at these and not thinking about the points or what that means in terms of expenses for them. So, just give us a quick definition of points and why it’s important that folks understand that as they’re trying to compare rates, and perhaps get to that apples to apples comparison.

[00:06:41] TU: Sure. Points are actually called discount points. They’re an upfront fee that the lender will charge and it is often a charge in the form of prepaid interest. And that helps you get a little bit better interest rate. But that is a percentage of the loan amount. So, it can be costly. Let’s say, it’s 0.3 percent of a loan amount, if you’re borrowing $400,000, well, that’s $1,200 in additional fees, you’re going to pay if you were to obtain that loan. So, you do have to be aware of points in fees as that is a big component. And then lenders all have different origination fees. That’s another segment of the costs and those are things that you want to look at too, because not all rates are equal, right? There are a lot of pieces of mail people will get. I’ll just leave it at that. There’s a lot of mailers you get with that will quote these really low rates, but then if you read in the fine print, you’ll see how much fees are charged. So, you really want to be aware of that because your payback period could be so long, and it makes no sense to pay points, and often it doesn’t.

[00:07:49] TU: So that’s number one, know the landscape. Number two, a topic we’ve talked about before when we’ve had you on the show, know your budget, and before thinking about pre-approval, it’s important to know your budget, as well as knowing how a lender is going to determine what they’re going to borrow to you in terms of that home-buying purchase. And those things can be an often perhaps should be different as you evaluate what fits in your budget and the lenders looking at what they’re comfortable in terms of you borrowing. So, down payment isn’t certainly is not the only cost. But Tony, talk to us about lenders, in terms of how they determine how much they can lend to individuals or to couples. And I think here, it’s worth talking about the 28:36 rule.

[00:08:37] TU: Sure. I mean, this step is is critical, right? You clearly want to review your own budget and know what you can and can’t afford, because even if a lender can qualify you for a certain payment, that may not be something you’re comfortable with, so it’s very important to evaluate your own budget. Lenders do look. There is, obviously, the 28:36 rule, and this ties back to what lenders can qualify you for, but often we can qualify people up to a back-end ratio, which is a total debt ratio of 45 percent, sometimes even 50 percent with enough down payment. So clearly, we can often maybe qualify you for more than you want to borrow.

The other component to this too, that’s very important to know is that lenders look at your gross income. We don’t factor in your after-tax income. So, that’s another method that we all look at in our industry. We use your your gross income that you report on your W-2, or the gross income before taxation. Same thing if you’re self-employed, we look at your gross income prior to to income tax. So, that helps people buy homes and afford homes, but it is a factor to consider when you’re running your budget. But historically, those numbers, we do go a little higher. Nowadays, instead of 36 which is – I think, let me just dive into what that means.

So, the 28 percent is called the housing ratio. That’s the total amount of your monthly income that is allocated to a home payment, like a mortgage payment on a home. And that mortgage payment includes your principal and interest, and your taxes and insurance, and any other HOA expenses you might have. So, when you buy a home, you had your principal and interest payment on the mortgage, you have property taxes, that you typically pay 1/12, so a monthly amount of the total amount of property taxes on a monthly basis, and then your insurance. So your homeowners insurance.

And then some communities have what are called homeowner’s association fees, that might be $100 a month or $100 a quarter, just depends on where you live. And those are all part of the housing expense. So, when Tim referenced the 28 percent, what that means is your total income, so let’s say you made it just for round numbers, let’s say you made 10,000 gross income as a household per month, we would use 2,800 as your housing expense. I’m not saying that that’s what you need to do. You can actually go a little higher, and of course, you can go lower. But that’s kind of the metric that historically lenders have looked at.

And then the back-end ratio means your total debt. So, that’s going to be the aggregate of all your other debts. So, your car payments, if you have auto payments, on auto loans, student loan payments, we take your student loan payment, any credit card payments you might have, and any other installment loans you may have. It does not include car insurance. Auto insurance, or cell phone bills, things like that, utilities, it does not include those at this juncture. So, we don’t look at those expenses. But that is going to be the aggregate of all of your debts and you cannot exceed that. We call it the debt to income ratio. So, that’s a very critical metric that lenders look at when they’re evaluating you for your pre-approval. That’s kind of a high level of what we would look at.

[00:12:10] TU: Tony relevant to our audience, if I zoom out for a moment, we’ve seen somewhat of a stagnation of pharmacist’s salaries, obviously, that’s very dependent upon the field and someone’s career trajectory. While we’ve seen a significant bump up in home prices, as well, as you know, I just read an article the other day in the journal about home insurance, homeowners insurance costs going up. So, if we think about what’s involved in that 28 to 36, rule 28 percent, again, being maximum monthly housing expenses, 36 percent would be maximum monthly gross income going to all debts, as you alluded to, and of course, student loan debt, has been going up, as our listeners know, too well.

So, these do have implications for our audience, in terms of understanding these rules, what’s involved and to your comment, just to reinforce it, the number that gets spit out by the lender, may or may not be in line with the budget and the rest of the goals. So, we’ve got to take a step back and determine what makes sense in the bigger picture.

Tony, one of the most common questions we get is 20 percent down, yay or nay? What are the pros and cons of putting 20 percent down? I think the reason it’s top of mind for many is just the amount of time and savings it can take to put 20 percent down. So, if I’m buying a $400,000 home, I stay true to that rule of thumb of 20 percent, looking at $80,000, I’ve got $200,000 of student loan debt, I’ve got other competing priorities. That takes time, to be able to do that. From your perspective, what are some of the things that you think about in terms of the pros and cons of that 20 percent down payment?

[00:13:46] TU: Well, you’re exactly right. It can take a long time to save 20 percent. This is a question that comes up a lot. Let’s start with the pro. Let’s look at the pros first. I mean, clearly, you’re going to owe less on your mortgage if you put 20 percent down. So, your payment would be slightly lower. But it’s not that much lower because interest rates are so low. So, that additional 20 percent is really not buying you much of a lower payment. It might be, maybe $100 a month, or something to that effect, maybe $200 depending on the price of the home, but it’s not going to be a substantial amount for the amount you’re putting down. So, that’s one pro clear, I’m going back to the pros, is you owe less.

The other thing is if you’re not a, for example, pharmacists, we have some programs that you can avoid PMI, which we can address later. But if you’re not, let’s say you’re in my role, you I don’t have a PMI option for my career path. So, 20 percent down would help a lot of people avoid PMI. So, clearly that’s a pro. And then, the other thing you owe less on your mortgage so you have a little bit more margin there. Those would be some of the pros. You can also maybe afford more home, because your payments lower, or you’re allowed a higher debt to income ratio, because I did reference earlier, we can often even get approvals up to 50 percent. Well, if you put 20 percent down, there’s going to be no constraints from the MI company or the lender’s underwriting, for example, they may allow you to go to a higher level, because 20 percent down frees you up. If you have great credit, and you’re putting a nice down payment, you can actually get a higher debt to income ratio, often, approved.

So, those would be some of the pros, Tim, of putting 20 percent down. Some of the cons, clearly, one is just how long it takes to save the funds, and that plays into a whole bunch of other things, too, that I see quite often. Number one, you could use that, those proceeds to pay off higher interest rate debt, because mortgage rates are low plus, the mortgage interest is often tax deductible as well. So, you’re really not even paying the actual note rate you’re paying in many cases, so you could use that extra money to pay off other higher interest rate debt, whether it’s auto loans, student loans or credit cards.

The other thing is home repairs, upgrades, if you’re looking to remodel, it’s very common right now. People will say, “Hey, I want to redo the flooring in the kitchen.” And that gives them greater margin to do that. They’ll have their own money, they can actually get into the home, acquire it with less money down. And then of course, they can do all those things they want to do the house which creates value. One thing just to address with like investment, a home is more of a lifestyle to place to live. It’s an alternative to renting, but if we do work with some savvy investors, too. I have referenced before on this climb. I’m doing this for 20 years. I’m getting kind of old. I have quite a few investor clients. And I’ve noticed over the years that some of the savvier investors look at their returns differently than a lot of us would, right?

For example, just think about this. I mean, the average appreciation, let’s take out the last few years it’s been way above this. But normally it’s like 3.5 percent to 5 percent a year, is kind of historical, average appreciation for homes over time. If you were to find a home, let’s say you bought a 400,000 home, and you put 5 percent down such that’s going to be a $20,000 down payment. Okay. Well, let’s say that house, the following year is worth 420. Well, you just made 100 percent return on your investment. You only put 20,000 down to secure the home. And now your home’s worth 420, you just made 100 percent return in one year. I mean, it’s an incredible return, right?

Where if you put 20 percent down, you would have made roughly a 25 percent return, right? So, it’s still a good return, but not the same return. That’s how a lot of the investors that are out there, look at their returns on real estate. So, institutional investors look at it that way. But even us we can look at that way, you know, because that’s what we invested truly, and we put down $20,000 to buy that 400,000 home. And now we’ve made 20,000 in equity. So, we’ve doubled our investment in that case. Versus if we put 80,000 down, which would be 20 percent down, and we made 20,000 and we got a 25 percent return.

So clearly, the con is you don’t get the same returns, right? Your return is not as high. I think I’ll add one more thing to that with returns is, you could also use it for other investments. For example, the team at YFP, IRAs, Roth IRAs, there’s a lot of other alternatives out there to diversify, instead of putting all your money into real estate. I’m a big believer in being diversified. So, I think, clearly a con, if that’s a lot of your net worth that 20 percent, you’re putting it all into one asset may not be the wisest thing. So, those are just some cons there, Tim, to consider. And I guess, as we compare those options.

[00:19:09] TU: Tony, you’re alluding to two really important concepts that tie into the financial plan, which is leverage and opportunity costs, right? Any purchase and financial decision we make, there’s an opportunity costs or an evaluation of an opportunity cost. Here we’re talking about putting more money into a home that might be used elsewhere. I think that for many of our folks, this is a time to do some self-reflection evaluation as you look at risk tolerance, as you look at other goals that you have, looking at student loan debt, looking at your long-term investment retirement picture. That’s one of the things I think the team at YFP Planning does so well with the financial planning clients is help them look at a decision like a home purchase decision, have these conversations about appropriate amounts of leverage and the other goals that they’re trying to achieve, and then help coach through that decision making while looking at home buying in the context of the rest of the financial plan.

I think this is a good place, Tony, that we just remind folks, that down payment, of course, is not the only expense we need to be thinking about, right? We’ve talked about this on the show before, you know, earnest money, closing costs. So, what you’re going to need in some to come at the table to close, but then also, beyond just the ongoing monthly payment, which you mentioned, the PITI concept. So, principal, interest, taxes and insurance, what about everything else associated with that home purchase? So, whether that’s maintenance, and upkeep, and things that you expect, remodeling, finishes, landscaping, equipment that you need for the home, now that you have that home purchase. Really taking a step back, especially for those that might be currently in a renting situation to say, “What’s the total cost? And are we ready financially to make this decision?”

So, that’s number two, is knowing the budget. Number three is getting prepared -approved. So, once you’ve done some research to understand rates, created a budget, safer down payment and some of the other costs I just mentioned, next up is getting pre-approved. Tony, why is the pre-approval process so important? What is it? And how is that different from pre-qualification?

[00:21:09] TU: Well, the pre-qualification is typically a very easy thing that can be done. But unfortunately, this doesn’t carry a lot of weight. So, the key differences are, an actual pre-approval is going to be when a lender looks at your credit report, and then also looks at your income. So, it’s not just looking at credit, it’s actually asking for a pay stub, for example, and we verified your pay stub. Where pre-qualification, you don’t even run credit, you just put in what your expenses are, and tell the lender what your income is, and say, “Okay, great, you’re pre-qualified”, that doesn’t carry a lot of weight in the real estate community.

We talked to a lot of realtors, they call us a lot of times on offers, the listing agents do when they receive an offer and the buyer will include our letter, our pre-approval letter and ask some – they want to know that the client is qualified because it’s a competitive marketplace, and they don’t want their properties being tied up. So, the key difference is the lender has run credit, has reviewed your income. Those are the key differences there between the two.

The other thing that the pre-approval, I mean, that really brings value that I’ve seen over the years is the credit report. I want to bring this up, because a lot of us follow our credit scores, whether it’s Credit Karma, or a lot of these other monitoring services that are out there. But they don’t truly give an accurate reading of what a creditor sees. They’ll give you a kind of a good idea of what your scores are doing, and like if they’re moving higher, then the trend is probably good for you. But they can often be 20 to 30 points, 40 points even lower than what a lender sees. Because we run all three bureaus, we don’t follow one.

So, the mortgage community runs a report that has all three bureaus, TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian and we use the median score. So, we use the median score of the three to determine your credit score. And the value that I think can come here is, clearly, you know your score, which can determine if you qualify, but also your interest rate, right? So, the higher your credit score, the better your rates tend to be. And some lenders, and not all lenders can do this, but some lenders have the ability to help you with rescoring.

Basically, they have a program where they can tell you what you can do to improve your score. And that’s been invaluable for many people that are home shopping right now that we’ve been able to get them either qualified or into a better program by telling them, “Hey, by the way, if you pay down this credit card, for example, your score will go up 20 points.” Or “If you consolidate this loan or whatever it might be, you can improve your credit by this much.” So, that’s been something that’s been helpful during the pre-approval process, Tim, that I’ve seen lately.

[00:23:56] TU: And that’s a good connection back to Episode 216, Tony, when you and I talked about common credit blunders to avoid when buying a home. Again, we’ll link to that in the show notes, but credit is such an important part of the home buying process for the reasons that you mentioned. So, really looking at any due to shore up credit and making sure that you’re understanding your credit scores and using the right tools, so that you’re not surprised when you get into that pre-approval process.

So, that’s number three, get pre-approved. Number four is comparing lenders. Tony, we know that not all lenders are created equal. Ultimately, we’ve got to make this decision of what lender am I going to work with? What type of loan am I going to pursue? I think sometimes these are recommendations that might come from an agent, might be recommendations that come from a family or a friend or coworker, might be a random internet search. So, I think it’s worth talking about what are some of the things that folks should look for in a lender?

Now, of course here, Tony, you’re representing IBERIABANK/First Horizon, and we’re talking about the pharmacist home loan products. So of course, there’s a vested interest in folks evaluating that option. But from your viewpoint, what are some of the things that folks should be looking for when choosing that lender?

[00:25:06] TU: Well, there’s quite a few different types of lenders out there, and all of them have varying pros and cons to working with. So, I could kind give you guys an idea of some of the lenders that are out there, you have what are called mortgage brokers who are true, almost like a middleman between lenders, and there’s pros and cons with working with those types of lenders, because they do have a lot of options where like a larger bank may not have as many options as a mortgage broker. But mortgage brokers tend to be more expensive. I find that they’re typically better when you have a really more tough case, whether it’s a credit score issue or some other issue, they can be more valuable than a bank in a lot of ways. Because they have some more greater flexibility.

Then you have the correspondent lenders, which are mortgage lenders that may have small branches in a city or a town. They’re not a bank, but they are able to lend directly to Fannie and Freddie. They use, not to get too complicated here, but they actually use bank warehouse lines to fund the loans, and then they’ll sell the loans, but they are true correspondent lender. And then of course, there’s banks. But there’s different types of banks, there’s large banks like the Citi groups and the Bank of America’s and Wells Fargo. And then there’s more of a medium sized bank, like the bank that I work for, and then there’s small community banks, too.

So, there’s lots of different sizes, and all have pros and cons. When you’re looking at mortgage lenders, programs are very important. The program that you can get is important. Rates are important as well. The other thing that’s very critical, is being able to fulfill the timelines, because there’s some challenges out there with certain types of lenders where they can’t meet the commitment letter deadline in the purchase contract, or they have a struggle with their appraisal process, or they have a struggle closing a loan in 30 days. Those are questions you need to ask the lender upfront, because different lenders had different operations. Some will actually use outsourced processing, which might be in another state, whether it’s not all under one roof, or the loan originator that you talk to may not have control over that process.

So, those are just some things to think through. But clearly, there are advantages and disadvantages for every type of lender that’s out there. So, it’s good to know, get some recommendations, and also to kind of compare the products and make sure it’s a fit for you and that you feel comfortable with the group that you’re working with. I think ultimately, that’s the most important thing, that you feel confident that they can help you and fulfill the closing date for you. That’s a key element.

[00:27:52] TU: Yeah, that’s a good reminder, Tony. Interest rates, of course, are very important for the reason we mentioned in terms of the length of the loan, and what that’s going to mean in terms of dollars out of pocket. But don’t overlook some of those things about abilities around appraisal and underwriting and closing on time and communication, and making sure that you feel comfortable. There’s, of course, going to be some open communication. There’s a lot of things that need to get done in a short amount of time.

So, I think it’s a good place to highlight the pharmacist home loan product that is offered, Tony, through your organization at IBERIABANK/First Horizon. We’re seeing a lot of interest in the pharmacist community about this product, which many listening might have heard of doctor type of loans and think, “Hey, I’m a pharmacist. I’m not eligible for that.” And here with IBERIABANK/First Horizon, we have an opportunity that is available to pharmacists. So, talk to us more about that program in terms of down payment, what’s involved or not with PMI, maximum loan amounts and where this option is available in terms of where folks may live?

[00:28:58] TU: Sure, sure. Well, this product is often a great solution, and it’s been really fun to be able to help so many people with this program. It is somewhat unique in that you can put very little down payment and not have PMI and still have very aggressive interest rates too. So, to kind of just highlight the program overall is, if you’re a first-time homebuyer, first time buying, you can put as little as 3 percent down. And of course, there’s no PMI. If you’ve owned a home before, it’s 5 percent down. You’d have to put a 5 percent down payment and the no mortgage insurance clearly is an advantage. But the other thing too is oftentimes the rates on this program, the 30-year rate that we offer on it is often better than my 20 percent down rate. So, you’re still getting a really competitive rate and priced very, very well. As far as the minimum credit score is 700. So, there is a minimum credit score you have to be above 700. There’s no like clear reserve requirement. What that means is having extra money reserves of payments in your bank account or investments, which is nice too, for a lot of first-time homebuyers and those that are buying their first home.

But the other piece about the loan limits that Tim referenced, currently, our loan limit on this product is 548,250. But that’s about to change. I think we’re probably looking at at least 625,000 starting January 1, 2022. So, we’re going to see a nice bump up. It may even be higher than that, and that’ll be across the country. So, this program is available in basically the 48 lower states. Alaska and Hawaii are the only two states that we’re not licensed in, but we can offer it in 48 states. So, it’s a nice footprint that we can help and we’ve helped individuals in pretty much every state, I think, that I referenced.

But the loan limit thing is exciting, because I think that’s going to enable a lot more people to buy in higher priced areas. And we may even see that go higher than that in certain areas that are even higher priced. And there are certain parts of the country that priced markets, housing prices are much higher, clearly in California, in and around DC, Northern Virginia. So, those are some places where this could be even higher than 625. So yeah, it’s exciting to see a little bit of a move higher there.

[00:31:19] TU: So sorry to our friends of YFP in Alaska or Hawaii, as Tony mentioned, this is available in the lower 48. We’ve got more information that goes into more detail on what Tony just shared there. You can find that at yourfinancialpharmacist.com/home-loan. And again, that’s a summary of much of what we’re talking about here on this episode as well.

So Tony, we’ve talked so far about knowing the landscape of interest rates. We referenced the Freddie Mac resource, folks can go to find that information, making sure that they’re considering that points may be including those rates, as they’re looking at various options. So that was, number one, know the landscape. Number two, we talked about knowing your budget, the importance of not only the down payment, but also other costs that are involved in the transaction, as well as ongoing costs with the home purchase. Number three, we talked about pre-approval, why that’s so important, how it’s different than pre-qualification, and how the credit score has implications there. Number four, we just talked about comparing some of the lenders and the options that are out there and we talked about the pharmacist home loan product.

So here we are, finally, we put in an offer on that home, we’ve got our lender obviously lined up, we’re working with that agent, hopefully that offer is accepted. And now we’ve got this process that happens from offer accepted to ultimately closing on the home where those keys are handed over. So, what should folks expect in this application underwriting process in terms of forms that they’re going to need to prepare, documents that they’re going to have to show, and any work that they might be able to do in advance to get some of that ready?

[00:32:55] TU: Yeah, so the exciting part happens, right? We’ve got the property under contract, but there is quite a bit of of items that lenders will need. Once you feel comfortable and you found the lender, that’s a good fit for you, lenders, we’re all really going to need the same things, and it’s going to be income information. So, if you’re self-employed, we’ll need typically two years of your tax returns, both your corporate returns and your personal returns. And then for income for those that are employed, it’s a little easier, just need two years of your W-2s, and your most recent pay stubs for the past 30 days. Those are what lenders will need to verify income.

Then we’re going to have to verify your down payment. And typically, that’s going to be bank statements and lenders have different types of ways to do this. We actually have a technology that we’ve – no, it’s not our proprietary technology, we have a FinTech company out of California, that has been doing very well in the mortgage space. They built a platform where when clients enter their information, we can actually do a read only format for your bank statements. So, you don’t even have to supply them. It’ll tell us what’s in the account, and the average two months and we verified it that way. So that’s been really helpful and a lot of clients have liked that.

But outside of that alternative, traditionally, it’s two months of statements. So, two months of your most recent bank account statements to verify the down payment. If they need additional reserves, if the lender needs additional reserves in, if you have an IRA or 401(k), or any investment account, brokerage account, those assets would be verified with a two months of statements or a quarterly statement as well. And then of course, we’ll need a copy of the purchase contract. So typically, once you have a purchase contract available, you’re able to lock a rate in and that’s important because rates can be volatile. They can move in, especially with economic reports, that can cause rates to move up and down and lenders typically cannot lock rates until they have a purchase contract so they know how long to lock it and they have an actual property address for the bond that they’re locking, basically. So, that’s another step that we’ll need.

The other items that you need to work on too, is homeowner’s insurance. I always encourage people that to get started with that as soon as possible, especially if you’re in the southern states, southeastern states during early July, through the end of October. We have some tropical storms down in this area and hurricanes, even if they’re not any threat to you, if they are in, what’s called the box, insurance companies have limits on when they can write insurance. So, we’re always very encouraging to get that process started soon. So, homeowners’ insurance is an important component. And typically, driver’s license, things like that.

The application will go through all the questions about your employment, where you’ve worked the last couple of years, a lot of your vitals, date of birth, social security number, those types of things, and you’re on your way. So, it’s an exciting – that’s when the process officially begins. Typically, the appraisals ordered shortly after that mortgage application is put in. So, we also need to know who your realtors are, if there are realtors involved, so they can open the home – they can be the point of contact for the appraiser. That’s another item that we need to know. We need to know the parties who are involved. And often we do, but I just included that because that’s something else the lender will need to know. You may need to supply that to your lender, make sure that you do. That information, the key contacts in the transaction. But from that point on, that the journey is on, and you’re moving through the loan process after you make that formal loan application.

[00:36:33] TU: Yeah, and I mentioned a few moments ago, Tony, the importance of open communication. This is an exciting time, this can feel overwhelming, there’s a lot of moving pieces and parts. I think much of what you just shared to me is a good reminder of folks of like this is the time to over communicate on both sides, for both the lender, as well as the home buyer, and making sure that you’re being responsive, things need to move quick, there’s a lot of ducks that need to get in a row. The other reason, I think, this section here on our final one on completing the application and bringing this whole process to ultimately a close is folks should be thinking about some of the information that’s been requested and what implications things like job transitions may have, big financial purchases people are making, right?

Ideally, we’re trying to have as little disruption as possible in this time period, because of the information that the bank is requesting from you and wanting to have the stability of both that funds to close as well as looking at your income. So, for folks that are in transition, for folks that have pending large purchases, I’m thinking of the residents or the fellows and those that are moving from a first to a second job. Just be thinking about some of the timeline and the implications that has on finishing up this process and ultimately the overall home buying process.

Tony, great stuff as always. It’s been a great year of having you on the show, and always appreciate your input and your expertise. And folks, again, more information, yourfinancialpharmacist.com/home-loan. You can learn more about all of what we talked about here on this episode, as well as the pharmacist home loan product and get in touch with Tony and the team at IBERIABANK/First Horizon from there. Tony, thanks so much.

[00:38:10] TU: Thanks for having me, Tim. Always good to be here. Thank you again.

[SPONSOR MESSAGE]

[00:38:13] TU: Before we wrap up the show, I want to again, thank this week’s sponsor of Your Financial Pharmacist podcast, IBERIABANK/First Horizon.

We’re glad to have found a solution for pharmacists that are unable to save 20 percent for a down payment on a home. A lot of pharmacists in the YFP community have taken advantage of IBERIABANK/First Horizon’s pharmacist home loan, which requires a 3 percent down payment for a single-family home or townhome, and has no PMI on a 30-year fixed rate mortgage. To learn more about the requirements for IBERIABANK/First Horizon’s pharmacist home loan and to get started with the preapproval process, visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/home-loan.

[OUTRO]

[00:38:55] TU: As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and it is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information of the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment.

Furthermore, the information contained in our archived newsletters, blog post and podcast is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analysis expressed herein are solely those of your financial pharmacist unless otherwise noted and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward looking statements, which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements. For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/disclaimer.

Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

[END]

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YFP 229: How This Pharmacy Professor’s Debt Free Journey Ignited His Passion to Teach Others

Posted on November 11, 2021November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

How This Pharmacy Professor’s Debt Free Journey Ignited His Passion to Teach Others

On this episode, sponsored by GoodRx, Bhavik Shah talks about his debt-free journey, his early missteps, and how he used his experience to further the financial literacy education of other pharmacists.

About Today’s Guest

Bhavik Shah earned his doctorate of pharmacy from Rutgers University and completed post-graduate training in pharmacy practice and infectious diseases at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, PA. He is an associate professor at the Jefferson College of Pharmacy and co-director of the Pharmacology thread in the JeffMD curriculum at Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University. He is an active member of ASHP and ACCP. Within ASHP, he has served as vice-chair and chair of the Year-Round Educational Steering Committee for 2019-2021, where he was able to promote including personal finance education through podcasts with the New Practitioners Forum and Clinical Leadership section advisory groups.

Bhavik is passionate about teaching personal finance to students and colleagues. He has created a personal finance elective at JCP.

Episode Summary

Today, we host pharmacist and educator Bhavik Shah for a candid conversation about his journey of becoming debt-free and the financial missteps he took early in his journey that you can avoid. Fresh out of pharmacy school, Bhavik knew he wanted to pay off his student debt, but he did not have a plan. Bhavik shares the story of how he paid off a hefty student loan of over $80,000 in just six years and shares his advice to develop a plan for student loan debt payment along with a plan for making the most of your income. Bhavik also shares why he believes it is critical to take advantage of Roth payments and how he was motivated by the idea of being his own financial steward. Listeners will learn why Bhavik believes it is essential to get a grasp on the basics of financial literacy before hiring a professional (tax, insurance, or otherwise), and what drove him to create his course on financial literacy, including the reality that student debt creates a barrier to entry for many pharmacists to pursue post-graduate education. He believes that this problem could be solved by including a financial literacy piece in the PharmD program. Listeners will be introduced to several great resources that have enriched Bhavik’s financial understanding and more!

Key Points From This Episode

An introduction to today’s guest, Bhavik Shah.
Bhavik’s academic background and why he chose a career in pharmacy and teaching.
The money scripts Bhavik was raised with and how they impacted his mindset.
How he graduated with $80,000 of student debt and paid it off in just six years.
Why he considers it a mistake not to have taken advantage of Roth contributions to get tax-free growth.
What Bhavik means by emphasizing being your own steward, and what motivated this.
How he learned the importance of understanding the basics before hiring a professional.
Financial education and literacy and why it is important.
What motivated Bhavik to create his course on financial literacy.
Bhavik’s thoughts on whether a personal finance piece should be included in the PharmD program.
Resources he has found helpful, including the White Coat Investor and the Money Guy.
How student debt deters people from pursuing postgraduate education.
The role of financial education in preventing this barrier.

Highlights

“The core, the concepts of living below your means, saving, understanding the value of money, those experiences stuck with me. It made it a lot easier as an adult to approach my own finances with that mindset.” — Bhavik Shah [0:05:02]

“Another mistake I made was not taking advantage of Roth contributions, especially as a student or as a resident, being in that lower-income bracket and having not much time on your side to get that tax-free growth. That is something I wish I had done more of or at all.” — Bhavik Shah [0:14:02]

“There is a taboo centered around talking about money and so I realized people are making the same mistakes and so we need to learn from one another so that is really what drove me to create this course.” — Bhavik Shah [0:23:24]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:00.4] TU: Hey everybody, Tim Ulbrick here and thank you for listening to The YFP Podcast, where each week, we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom.

This week I had a chance to sit down with Bhavik Shah, an associate professor of pharmacy practice at Jefferson College of Pharmacy. I had an opportunity to meet Bhavik a few weeks prior to recording and really appreciated his passion and his enthusiasm for personal finance. On this week’s show, we talk about Bhavik’s journey to becoming debt-free from student loans and why he felt like that was just the beginning of his overall financial journey. We also talk about some of his early missteps and how that helped shape his current mindset and approach.

We talk about why and how he has taken the experience from his own journey to further the education of other pharmacists through podcasts that he’s done with ASHP new practitioner’s forum, as well as by creating and offering a personal finance elective at Jefferson College of Pharmacy.

Before we hear from today’s sponsor, and then jump into the show, I recognize that many listeners may not be aware of what the team at YFP Planning does in working one-on-one with more than 240 households in 40 plus states. YFP Planning offers fee only, high-touch financial planning that is customized for the pharmacy professional. If you’re interested in learning more about how working one-on-one with a certified financial planner may help you achieve your financial goals, you can book a free discovery call at yfpplanning.com.

Whether or not YFP Planning’s financial planning services are a good fit for you, know that we appreciate your support of this podcast and our mission to help pharmacists achieve financial freedom. Okay, let’s hear from today’s sponsor, GoodRx, and then we’ll jump into my interview with Bhavik.

[SPONSOR MESSAGE]

[0:01:44.7] TU: It’s American pharmacist month and to honor the occasion, GoodRx has created the Above and Beyond Pharmacy Awards. These awards recognize pharmacy professionals that go the extra mile, every single day to improve the health of their patients and communities and we need you, the pharmacy community, to nominate your incredible colleagues.

Pharmacists, technicians, residents, and interns that show true leadership, compassion, pride and dedication. Pharmacy professionals are on the frontlines, working every day to transform their communities. The time has come to show them some appreciation. Nominations are open now through November 19, 2021, and recipients will receive education credits and more.

Go to GoodRx.com/pharmacy-awards to nominate someone today. Now, again, that’s GoodRx.com/pharmacy-awards.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:02:36.5] TU: Bhavik, welcome to the show.

[0:02:37.5] BS: Thanks for having me, Tim.

[0:02:39.8] TU: Looking forward to this interview. You and I had a chance to connect a few weeks ago, and we’re going to get to where that connection came from and some of the work that you’re doing in personal finance education and your passion for this topic. I really left that conversation feeling inspired and empowered in my own journey, based on the intentionality, I really heard of how you have approached your financial position and I think that information is going to be really helpful for our community.

Let’s start with your background and work in pharmacy, what drew you to the profession, where did you go to school and then what type of work are you doing now?

[0:03:14.0] BS: Absolutely. I went to pharmacy school at Rutgers University, I did the zero to six program and what drew me to pharmacy is because I knew I wanted to do something in healthcare. And I was sort of deciding between medicine and pharmacy, and I had family pursuit pharmacy and you know, the more I learned about it, it seemed it fit my strengths and my personality. So that’s what drew me to Rutgers and I did my residency training at Thomas Jefferson University and pharmacy practice as well as in infectious disease and I’ve been a faculty member here since 2010.

I have a student of four, hospital medicine rotation, and teach in a number of courses as well as in the medical school too.

[0:04:02.7] TU: Very good, we’re going to come back later about some of the work that you’re doing at Jefferson around personal finance education but I first want to talk about your own journey and your own story. And Bhavik, one theme I’ve noticed on this show, through interviewing other pharmacists, that I have also seen in my own journey, is their relevance of the money scripts that we carry with us.

What I mean by that is the said and unsaid things from our upbringing that impact the way we view money today. Tell us about your money scripts and how they impacted your own journey when it comes to your financial plan?

[0:04:40.4] BS: That’s a great question. My relationship with money started with my parents. They immigrated from India with nothing and they sort of built a life here. They had the means to provide for my brother and I, but it was never to the point where it was abundant, where we could talk about investing or anything but the basics, the core, the concepts of living below your means, saving, understanding the value of money, those experiences stuck with me. It made it a lot easier as an adult to approach my own finances with that mindset.

I really am appreciative of that upbringing, even though I didn’t necessarily have the rarer thoughts and know all the finer things about investing or anything like that. I think that came later but that relationship with money, I think was really key in understanding what it brings and what it doesn’t bring.

[0:05:36.7] TU: I like Bhavik that you used the word relationship with money because I think that is something that is healthy for us to think about is, what is the relationship we have with money? Whether that’s a healthy or an unhealthy relationship, where might that come from? Where do the perceptions and values and beliefs that we have come from in money, and obviously knowing that that very well and likely, is connected to the behavior and how we’re approaching our financial plan today.

Bhavik, as you know today’s graduate is facing on average, about $170,000 in student loan debt. Now, that is much different than what our peers were facing back in 2008 when both you and I completed our PharmD training. Tell us about your debt position after graduating and through residency and not only the position that you’re in debt-wise but also tell me about your mindset at the time around paying off that debt.

[0:06:29.4] BS: When I graduated, my expenses for college were all financed by student loans. My parents, coming from a working-class background, they didn’t have the means to provide for us and that was fine so I knew that sort of going in.

I graduated with about $80,000 of debt back in 2008. I was fortunate enough to go to a state school, I was fortunate enough to be in a zero to six program so that definitely helped mitigate some of the amount of debt that I graduated with.

When I graduated, I didn’t know, you and I know repaying debt, especially student loans, there’s so many different options and terms and it’s very dizzying and I made mistakes along the way. And when I went to residency, I put my loans into forbearance, which looking back that was not the right thing because I was confusing the terms forbearance and deferment.

As I sort of started learning more about things, my relationship with my loans was I wanted to pay them off as quickly as possible so I was – I was a resident for two years, I was moonlighting, picking up extra shifts. And once I became a faculty member, I was working, you know, having them sort of being accustomed to working every other weekend as a resident, I carried that forward so I was picking up shifts at the hospital.

I was able to pay off my student loans in six years instead of a standard 10-year plan. A part of that way that we were able to do that, it was dad’s idea actually. He suggested that we payoff, at the time interest rates on student loans was more high, they’re still high. At the time, he had access to a home equity line of credit. That was very low, that was right after the economy crashed in ‘08.

He had access to cheaper money and so he said, “How about we take a home equity line of credit” we pay off the loans and then I paid my parents back. I looked into that and I didn’t know what a home equity line of credit was back then, I didn’t understand these things but my dad was looking out for me and I really appreciated that because he was able to get a 2% home equity line of credit at the time or two out of 3%.

I was sitting at six and a half percent so I was saving money, he said, “You know, why pay the interest to the government when you could just pay it, keep it within the house?” I was just paying him interest to – he didn’t make any money off of me but he did get a tax deduction out of it so I guess he came out ahead a little bit but it really set me up for success and so I really appreciated that offer. Obviously, they trusted me to pay them back.

[0:09:19.9] TU: Yeah, there’s got to be obviously, trust in that relationship. That strategy, if I heard you correctly was, you’ve got federal loans and I remember, Bhavik, I had fixed interest rate loans 6.8% is the number I remember in my mind in 2008. Some are a little bit lower but many of them were at about that rate and so obviously, home equity line of credit that your father is able to help with lower. You mentioned two to 3% so obviously that difference between six, six and a half two and three percent is significant intra savings, even when you’re talking about a relatively short period of time, which that being six years.

Did you, Bhavik – when I graduated in ‘08 and I think there’s a lot more information that’s out there today. I’m finding that I’m having conversations with graduates today that already have an understanding of unsubsidized versus subsidized and public service loan forgiveness, and refinancing and income-driven repayment. I didn’t know what any of that was.

Did you feel like, at the time, you had an understanding of the nuances and options, and would you agree that it seems like a lot of that information has come a long way here in the last decade since we graduated or I guess, a little more than a decade.

[0:10:28.3] BS: Yeah, absolutely. I think back at the time, I didn’t know anything. I just knew I had to pay it back, I know that the standard 10 year plan was a default and that was, it’s sort of the mindset that I went in. I didn’t know there were other options at the time. I think student public service loan forgiveness was new and so in looking back, I certainly didn’t qualify for it because I was a previous borrower predating 2007.

I won’t have qualified but I didn’t know that at the time. I just knew I had to pay this off and so that’s why I was just motivated to pay it off as quickly as possible. So I was paying extra principle payments to my dad, turns out but I was able to pay everything off in six years. That was like a huge sense of relief.

[0:11:18.2] TU: Yeah, that’s great. One of the things you shared with me when we talked a couple of weeks back is, this resonates with me as I think back to our own journey. Once the loans are paid off, you kind of wondered, “Well, now what?” right? Had you thought much about that post debt payment journey and tell us a little hit about that transition from making big, aggressive, large on monthly payments to no longer, they’re gone, right?

[0:11:43.8] BS: Yeah, actually and that’s where my sort of personal finance journey started was after paying off my student loans, I was like, “Now, what?” and so at the time, I was dating my now wife, girlfriend at the time, I just transitioned my monthly student loan payment and I was just saving cash because I knew, engagement ring, and I’m Indian and when we do weddings, it’s sort of a big affair.

I knew that I want to pay for that and I didn’t want my parents to go into any debt for that. I transitioned towards those expenses, saving for those expenses and so that sort of – once those were done, then it was like, “Okay, now what? Where do I go?” I started learning more about where else to save and invest our funds.

[0:12:34.6] TU: We graduated in 2008, I guess we could call ourselves kind of that maybe second part of the career, right? That mid-career, we’re no longer new practitioners, we’re beyond that or there’s perhaps some evolution of the financial plan, the debt’s paid off, other goals that you’re working on and towards.

And so my question here is, Bhavik, you now sit in this vantage point of, “Okay, I’ve been through this journey, I paid off the debt, I’m now in more of that wealth building, next phase of the financial plan.” What advice would you give to the students that are listening to the new practitioners who are listening or even think about your former self as they are on the front end of this journey, and perhaps feeling overwhelmed by the magnitude of not only the debt but also other priorities of which you’re trying to work on?

[0:13:19.8] BS: Absolutely. I think for me, the challenge that I had was I didn’t have a plan. I had a general sort of vague approach to things but it wasn’t necessary purposeful. And so having a dedicated plan for your student loans is something that I would tell myself. I, looking back, I did what I wanted to do but then, was I optimizing every single dollar. I left money on the table because I wasn’t taking advantage of 403(b) matching at my employer.

I mean, I wasn’t spending the money, which is I guess good, I was still building net worth by putting it towards student loans, but finding ways to get the most utility out of your money was a real mistake I made. Another mistake I made was you know, not taking advantage of Roth contributions especially as a student or as a resident, being in that lower-income bracket, and having not much time on your side to get that tax-free growth. That is something I wish I had done more of or at all.

That’s what I tell students is just there’s a lot of information out there and so going back to your question earlier, which I realized I didn’t answer, because back then, there was not enough information out there, the new programs are really new. Now, there’s a lot of resources out there, just a matter of finding it. You have that, other websites have it blogged. Knowing that and I encourage my students, third year, fourth year, to start thinking about this and that way, in my elective, that when you graduate, you know what you’re going to do. Whether you’re going to pursue this line, what IDR is best for you or not, or if you’re going to refinance, which lenders you’re going to look into, that sort of thing so having a plan.

[0:15:02.7] TU: Absolutely, we talk about it all the time, right? The intentionality of the plan and even if that debt number doesn’t change tomorrow or next month or next year in a very significant way, the power of knowing you’ve evaluated your options and you have a plan, going forward that considers, not only student loans but also other parts of the financial plan, knowing that student loan debt is certainly going to be a big part of the puzzle for many folks that are out there.

When you and I talked several weeks ago, one thing that you said that really stood out to me was your desire to be your own steward, and how much of a motivation that was for you on your quest towards learning more about personal finance, and then applying the things that you’re learning in your own plan and on your journey. What did you mean by that in terms of the importance of being your own steward and what led to that motivation?

[0:15:52.9] BS: I think the biggest experience that I had was, after I had paid off my student loans, you know, we paid for the engagement ring and wedding, I mean those life events that are happening in your 20s and 30s you know, it was sort of like, “Now, what?” My wife and I, when we got married, we had an accountant.

I asked for advice and how to minimize taxes and what more we could do. They offered it and so that sort of got me into thinking, “Okay, they encouraged, a backdoor Roth.” That’s not what they called it at the time but it’s called a none – it was more confusing. I wish they called it backdoor Roth because I Googled it that way. Then, that got me sort of thinking. At the same time, when I graduated as a resident, I was approached by what I thought was a financial advisor but it was really an insurance agent.

He was recommending term insurance, term life insurance and disability insurance which I know I wanted to get, but they were pushing whole life insurance, which at the time for me didn’t make sense. And I pushed back but they have a really good sales pitch and it’s very tempting, but I did not go down that road. But he did end up selling me a term life insurance, which was not what I wanted, but I didn’t know how to communicate that because I didn’t know what specific terms to look for or ask for.

What I was sold was a term 80 policy by one of the big companies in the business. The premium increases as you get older, what I really wanted was a level premium where it’s just a fixed amount per month, doesn’t increase with the face value for a certain period of time. That’s what I wanted but I didn’t use that jargon.

Similarly, he also sold me a disability insurance and he was saying it was like an own-occupation et cetera. Similarly, it didn’t have – it was not a level premium so the premium was escalating and in your 20s and 30s, it looked pretty cheap and I didn’t really look at it how much of a cost in my 40s, 50s, 60s. The own-occupation ended up not being really own-occupation.

[0:18:08.2] TU: Yeah, it’s confusing, yup.

[0:18:09.9] BS: It was only for the first year or two of a claim and then it goes back to any occupation. Again, at the time, I didn’t know what to ask for or what to watch out for. Between that experience and going back to the accountant, I started looking more into the backdoor Roth, and doing it in one of the resources that I stumbled across was White Coat Investor. I learned about what that was and how doing it – and once I executed it and I – the next tax year, I went to my accountant. I said, “This is what I did, my wife and I. Can you help us file 8606?”

He did it correctly for me but he did it incorrectly for my wife. Now had I not known what to look for I wouldn’t have credit and so the basis would have been off of my wife. So that’s why I was saying, you know, I was trusting a professional and the accountant and this insurance agent, with a lot letters behind his name that seemed like he knew what he was talking about, but it was still not what I wanted or wasn’t in my best interest. So that really solidified for me and my wife that we have to sort of take the time to at least understand the basics.

That way if we engage with professionals then we know we are getting what we want to get and if it is appropriate for us.

[0:19:35.5] TU: I think what you just shared there, Bhavik, is a lot of things that are so valuable. Because I would advocate, as you just mentioned whether folks engage with professionals, you talk about accountants, you talk about insurance sales, you talk about financial planners and certainly as you’ve highlighted, not all professionals are created equal. There is some homework that folks have to do to understand the different professionals or credentials, how folks are getting paid, what standards are held under.

Does it makes sense or they act in their best interest or not, and we’ve talked about several of those things on the show but regardless if you are working with a professional or not, I think this concept of being your own steward is so important. One of the philosophies that we have at YFP planning is very much that folks feel that they have the education of the information whether that’s debt repayment, whether that’s investing, whether that’s insurance, whether that is tax as well as they feel empowered in that be in a shared decision that is being made between them and the professional in this case, who would be a financial planner.

Again, even if you are entrusting a professional, to your comment that you just made, really having that understanding, that baseline knowledge to make sure that you feel comfortable and confident in the advice that is given and that also you feel good that it affirms what you’ve been learning on your own. Or that you are able to then engage in that conversation, hopefully have some good and at times perhaps some hard questions and we’ve got more information.

There is a couple of things that you mentioned there, Bhavik, that I sense folks probably might want to dig into a little bit deeper. You mentioned both life, term life and long-term disability insurance. We talked about those on episode 44 and 45 of the show respectively, we’ll link that at the show notes and then back to our Roth IRA, probably one of the most common questions we get, I’ve got a blog post, why most pharmacists should consider it.

Episode 96 on the podcast talks a little bit about what is it, what’s the process, executing back to Roth, some of that, we’ll link to both of those in the show notes. A great example that I think you gave in terms of the importance of being your own steward. I want to shift gears and talk for a bit about financial education, financial literacy is I know that this was in part how we crossed paths and something that we both very much show and have a passion for.

This is evident, Bhavik, in the work that you’re doing and teaching personal finance elective at Jefferson, also within ASHP, you’ve been able to promote personal finance education through podcast with a new practitioner’s form and the clinical leadership section advisory groups. And so one of the questions I want to start with here is, as it relates to the course that you are teaching at Jefferson, tell us more about that course.

How did it get started? What type of support have you had? Some of the general concepts and information that you are trying to teach within that course, is that something that we certainly don’t see at all colleges but I suspect many listening whether it’s a student or alumni, perhaps a faculty member might have an interest in seeing this being offered or something similar through own institution?

[0:22:33.0] BS: The course was a – it sort of was a multi-year process of how I sort of got there. As I spent a couple of years teaching myself about personal finance and then becoming comfortable educating others or pointing to others the right resources, so I first started off with doing a faculty development program or a session on it, and then I start incorporating it with my API students.

I would do topical, topic clinical topic discussions but I would devote Mondays for personal finance topics and I made it optional because I didn’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable. But you know, I was saving on this is Money Monday, we’re going to talk about anything that you want to talk about and so students took me up on that. That sort of showed me that there was a need for it, especially since we don’t really get taught in any and I didn’t have any sort of formal education on it.

There is a taboo centered around talking about money and so I realized people are making the same mistakes. And so we need to learn from one another, so that is really drove me to create this course. I looked at the literature to see what was done at pharmacy schools and there wasn’t a lot published. There were a few papers published, there is really one paper that’s published by Michelle Qui out of the University of Wisconsin.

[0:23:52.7] TU: Yeah, I think that was back in ‘13 or ‘14. It’s been a while too, right?

[0:23:57.0] BS: It’s been a while, yeah and so there wasn’t out there, and I looked at different colleges to see what they had on their websites, how many schools had it and so this was like an untapped – this was a need but it had an untapped potential. In creating this course, I really didn’t have too much direction of what was done. I just sort of created something about starting from the basics like banking, credit scores, debt, what does the interest mean and what does inflation mean.

Then we talked about like module on tax rates, and then we get into the weeds of the different retirement vehicles, student loans. And so you know, it is pretty comprehensive, estate planning and so it’s a one-credit course over 14 hours. Now, it is going to be a two-credit course because there was just so much volume there that the students wanted, and so I expanded it to two-credit hours and so the type of assignments that I give are, I hope, that was sort of practical.

There is a long internal assignment in the course where I want them to finish the course with their own financial plan and so we build that out throughout the course. Existing debt, so what is your repayment plan, what’s your plan for getting life insurance, disability insurance? What’s your plan for your student loans, saving for retirement? Every week we go through that, each of those topics.

For life insurance and disability insurance, I go through policy genius or whatever resource just getting an idea of this is a resource you could use to look at when you graduate and how much it might cost. We go through student loans and we go through the different tech leaders online, and the studenta.gov and we go through PSLF. And so then that way they can put it to paper of what they are thinking about now. And obviously they could change their plan when they graduate, but having that something to refer to it will I think hopefully give them a starting point.

Something that I know I certainly don’t have but having that sort of framework hopefully sets them up for success.

[0:26:08.8] TU: I love you started one credit, you’ve gotten to two credits. I suspect there is a lot of interest from the students as well and I felt that similar but we started with one-credit hour personal finance like in the northeast to have Murdoch University about six or seven years ago, one to two-credit hours and then at Ohio State, we built the three-credit hour online asynchronous course and you know there is a lot to cover.

I think that the students, certainly there is a desire for that information and just some really cool things that you can do obviously in early management systems and other things to customize that learning experience for the students. I love the work that you are doing at Jefferson at that, and I hope for other colleges that we’ll see more of that. Bhavik, I’m going to put you on the spot and I didn’t tell you I was going to ask you this question in advance.

I am honestly curious to hear your input on this and of course, noting that you might have a bias, you probably do have a bias because you are teaching a personal finance elective. I think we have an interesting opportunity in front of us with the ACPE accreditation standards that are set to come out the next version in 2025 I believe and there is currently a comment period through the end of 2021 for folks to give feedback on those standards.

I have often thought and again, biased of course that you know, personal finance education should be considered as a part of the PharmD required curriculum and I think for good reasons, there is perhaps some split opinion on this ranging from is something like personal finance really part of a PharmD large at a clinical pharmacy training program. And I think there is other professions we could point to, whether it’s veterinary medicine and their associations or even medicine in AAMC who have done some more work in this topic than perhaps we have done in pharmacy.

I sense there’s two camps or two thoughts out there of, like absolutely consider what’s going on with the debt loads and the trends like it is a part, or our obligation to make sure students have a baseline understanding of personal finance education. Then others that are perhaps of the mindset of like, great philosophically, great in theory, great idea. I buy into the importance of the topic but is this something that really should be a part of the required PharmD program. What are your thoughts on that?

[0:28:27.8] BS: I think that is a fascinating question and honest, you know, you mentioned the comment period. I already added my comment to that asking that this be considered being incorporated in the document. I didn’t direct them to make it required or elective but I think it should be considered and I think there is an opportunity for it now especially I think there is a well for it and I think it relates to the current standard for where they talk about personal and professional development.

I think there is definitely a fit into that, because a part of personal finance is you need to have that self-awareness that what your own goals are and what you want out of your own career and your own personal life. And money is a tool that helps you achieve that or not, depending on how you use money. And so that’s one of the things I have in my elective is a reflection paper and for students to sort of put down why are they doing what they’re doing with their financial plan.

They just start thinking about it. I think there is a goal for it and I think there is certainly a need for it, and I saw that in the APHA House of Delegates. There was a motion too for every school of pharmacy or college of pharmacy to have such a course either be offered, whether it be required or elective, but at least be offered and so I think the momentum is there. I can comment out on the medical students because I also have a role at the medical college at Jefferson.

[0:29:50.0] TU: Yeah.

[0:29:50.5] BS: Currently, there isn’t a course. There is some content that they are exposed to but it is not as structured or in a course format, so they, the students themselves, they did a curricular gap analysis last year and there’s a strong desire from the medical students to have this kind of content. And so I am hoping that with my hand in two pots, you know, I can sort of bridge that in and open it up the elective to both students. I think that would be great in professional opportunities.

[0:30:23.6] TU: Yeah and I think we have some examples, you know the course you are doing at Jefferson others that are teaching courses, I probably know of 10 or 12 colleges that have some really good momentum in this and similar to other areas. I think in professional education being one, where really pharmacy took a jump out of the gates even ahead of other professions, and you get started, and then it continues to evolve, right?

It continues to evolve over time and so I agree, I think there is momentum. I think the house of delegates you mentioned at APHA SP, the students really being behind this, and credit to what I’ve seen AVMA and AAMC do for their members in both veterinary medicine and medicine respectively in terms of resources they provide with their membership. I think we’ve got a real opportunity in pharmacy especially considering what we have seen in the trends in debt load as well as some of the other pressures that we have on our profession.

That I think the timing is right to be able to see some of these forward. Bhavik, in your journey, again as you are in kind of this next phase in your career, what resources have you found to be really helpful as you’ve navigated this topic of personal finance in the first 13 or 14 years of your career?

[0:31:35.0] BS: Yes, so there is a number of resources that I’ve sort of used and they all have a different role and what is good. But the ones that I sort of go through, and sort of subscribed to on a, I guess daily basis, so The White Coat Investor, I mentioned. He has a blog, a couple of really good books. His bootcamp, financial bootcamp book was really helpful because it sort of laid it out in a very algorithmic manner of like what you ought to do.

That helped me sort of make sure my disability insurance, life insurance was up to date and of adequate coverage. I like White Coat, after White Coat, I was looking at other resources that’s when I stumbled upon YFP and so that was really good. It was good to see there is something in the pharmacy space as well, and it was very helpful to see that it was the same message and so that sort of solidified what I was doing. I also like, I don’t know if you have ever heard of The Money Guy, it’s a YouTube channel.

[0:32:35.5] TU: No, I have not.

[0:32:36.5] BS: No? I really like them. It’s a podcast that’s done by, and they have a YouTube channel of two CPAs/CFPs. And the way they present content is very approachable, very digestible. It’s very beginner-friendly. The one thing that I like most that they have that’s for free is what they call the financial order of operations, and for me, that was something I wish I had ten years ago because I was just trying to think about paying off debt but I didn’t know what to do next with my next dollar.

The way they laid it out it optimizes every single dollar to meet your goals. And so from the tax standpoint, from a matching standpoint, paying off debt, all of those considerations. And so it’s very easy and approachable to do an action plan, so I found that to be helpful.

Another thing to consider about the need for personal finance education in pharmacy curriculum is that there is data out there that shows that students, their career choices after graduation are impacted by their perception and stress related to their student debt and not knowing how to handle it. There is data that shows that folks are less likely to pursue post-graduate training and enter the workforce directly because they want to pay off their loans.

I think the profession will be served best by having this so that students when they graduate, they know what to do and have a plan and that way, they’re making their career choices because that is what they want to do not because they feel like they have to and so I think that will probably help our graduates the most in our profession by incorporating it.

[0:35:05.5] TU: Bhavik, I appreciate the resources and the recommendations. We’re going to link to those in the show notes, you mentioned The White Coat Investor, The Money Guy, YFP, I appreciate the shout out and I suspect our community will find those resources helpful. Bhavik, thank you so much for taking time to come on the show, for reaching out and I really appreciate your willingness to share your story with the YFP community and also very much appreciate your passion for teaching personal finance to others, so thank you again.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:35:33.6] TU: It’s American Pharmacist Month and to honor the occasion, GoodRx created the Above and Beyond Pharmacy Awards. These awards recognize pharmacy professionals that go the extra mile every single day to improve the health of their patients and communities and we need you, the pharmacy community to nominate your incredible colleagues, pharmacists, technicians, residents and interns that show true leadership, compassion, pride and dedication.

Pharmacy professionals are on the frontlines working every day to transform their communities. The time has come to show them some appreciation. Nominations are open now through November 19th, 2021 and recipients will receive education credits and more. Go to goodrx.com/pharmacy-awards to nominate someone today. Again, that is goodrx.com/pharmacy-awards.

[DISCLAIMER]

[0:36:24.2] TU: As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and it is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information of the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment.

Furthermore, the information contained in our archived newsletters, blogpost and podcast is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analysis expressed herein are solely those of your financial pharmacist unless otherwise noted and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward-looking statements, which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements. For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/disclaimer.

Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

[END]

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YFP 228: Why This New Practitioner Decided to Start His Own Business

Posted on November 4, 2021November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

Why This New Practitioner Decided to Start His Own Business

On this episode, sponsored by Thoughtful Wills, entrepreneur and pharmacist, Chris Cozzolino, talks about his journey building several businesses as a recent graduate.

About Today’s Guest

Chris Cozzolino is a recent pharmacy graduate (Class of 2020) from the University of Iowa and the Co-Founder of Uptown Creation, a B2B Business Development and Consulting Firm. Prior to pharmacy school, Chris founded an Amazon Dropshipping store, which he still has to this day. During his time in pharmacy school, he Co-Founded Uptown Creation. Uptown Creation began as an Instagram Growth and Consulting company but has evolved into a more full-service Business Development Firm. Chris has a passion for business and hopes to merge this with his love for the pharmacy community.

Episode Summary

Content creation for social media and personal branding has grown exponentially over the last couple of years but is still fairly new to the healthcare sector. Today on the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast, host Tim Ulbrich speaks to pharmacist and co-founder of Uptown Creation, Chris Cozzolino, about his journey into the social selling space and how it aligns with his pharmacy education. Chris shares his non-traditional career arc, from making money using video games as a teenager to starting his own dropshipping business in college and now to running a hugely successful business development company focused on direct outreach campaigns. In this episode, Chris shares his passionate mindset about impactful contributions and innovatively using all the resources available to create something bigger than himself. Chris touches on strategies in the growth hacking space to build authentic relationships and a trustworthy reputation, as well as always keeping your endpoint in mind. Listeners will learn about the importance of knowing when to pivot your business, focusing on the end goal rather than attaching to a product or idea, plus you’ll hear some insightful perspectives about the benefits and challenges of diversifying across available platforms. Tune in today to hear all this and more!

Key Points From This Episode

Chris shares what drew him into the profession, and the freedom of remote working.
Reflecting on Chris’s non-traditional career path, and building something impactful.
How social media is a fascinating concept of reaching so many people at once.
How making money in a video game as a teenager galvanized his entrepreneurial spirit.
Discussing the big barriers to starting a business, like upfront capital and inventory holding times.
Optimization through combining drop shipping and retail arbitrage.
Chris outlines the challenges and opportunities of not working on your platform.
Having the best of both worlds by making the brand bigger than the platform.
Diversifying across platforms to build community and then converting that traffic.
How Uptown Creation was founded, and key pivots in their journey.
Learning the Instagram algorithm and their specific social media marketing tactics.
Chris shares about his pivot to LinkedIn and what the clients and services entail.
Building authentic relationships and a trustworthy reputation.
Why creating content is still really new for the healthcare sector.
Where Chris sees Uptown Creation heading in the next few years.
The concept of developing your craft, and always being able to be close to the ground.
Always keeping your endpoint in mind.

Highlights

“What I’m trying to create is being able to build something that’s bigger than myself.” — Chris Cozzolino [0:05:53]

“I don’t want to sell anything in a salesy way. I just want to make something that’s really good and then people can decide if they want it or don’t want it.” — Chris Cozzolino [0:22:57]

“That became the ethos of what we are today, is getting rid of bots and automation, putting a human in all the seats that a bot would be taking, and being able to have genuine interactions with people using the internet as a means to contact the right audience.” — Chris Cozzolino [0:25:11]

“I think a big thing that people do wrong in entrepreneurship is they fall too in love with the product or the service or that identity of what they’re doing, rather than the end impact that they’re trying to have.” — Chris Cozzolino [0:33:47]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] TU: Hey, everybody. Tim Ulbrich here and thank you for listening to the YFP podcast, where each week, we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom.

This week, I had a chance to sit down with entrepreneur and pharmacist, Chris Cozzolino to talk about his journey with several businesses that he’s been involved with as a recent 2020 graduate of the University of Iowa. Some of my favorite moments and takeaways from this interview include, hearing from Chris about his decision as a new practitioner to not pursue a traditional career path, but rather start his own business. Also talking about why he is prioritizing LinkedIn as the platform to generate authentic conversations that promote personal and professional success. We dig into the work that he is doing as the co-founder of Uptown Creation, a B2B business development and consulting firm. Really cool story, one of my favorite episodes of this year of a pharmacy entrepreneur who is using his PharmD in a non-traditional way.

Before we jump into the episode, I want to invite you to a free webinar that’s happening on November 10th at 8:30 PM Eastern. Dr. Jeff Keimer, our good friend and author of Fire RX: The Pharmacist’s Guide to Financial Independence will be joining me to talk about the FIRE movement aka Financial Independence, Retire Early. How pharmacists can overcome common barriers to achieving financial independence, how to calculate your retire and need and some investment considerations for those that are on the FIRE path. Plus, if you attend the webinar live, you will be entered for a chance to win a copy of Jeff Keimer’s book, Fire RX.

You can register by going to yourfinancialpharmacist.com/webinar. Again, that’s yourfinancialpharmacist.com/webinar.

All right. Let’s hear from today’s sponsor, Thoughtful Wills and I will jump into my interview with Chris. This week’s episode of Your Financial Pharmacist podcast is sponsored by Thoughtful Wills. Let’s take a minute to hear from co-founder, Notesong.

[00:01:57] N: Hi, there. I’m Notesong, one of the founders of Thoughtful Wills. Our law firm specializes in creating custom estate-planning documents that are understandable. We’ve leveraged technology to offer a lower price point than most law firms. Honestly, it’s refreshingly affordable. As our client, you’re in the driver seat. We’re here if and when you have any questions or just want our input. Our explanatory worksheet and online interview gathers your answers whenever and wherever is most convenient for you.

As a busy mom of three sweet kids and two fluffy sheepdogs, I totally get it. Life is crazy busy. Who has the time? We designed our firm around that too and we poured our hearts into making our estate-planning process less of a hustle. I invite you to visit thoughtfullwills.com/fyp to learn more. Give us a jingle or drop us a note. We’d love to chat with you.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:02:51] TU: Chris, welcome to the show.

[00:02:53] CC: Yeah, thanks for having me, Tim.

[00:02:54] TU: Really excited to have you on and feature your entrepreneurial story and how that’s connected in with your pharmacy journey. One thing I’ve mentioned on the show over the last several months is a goal, I have to feature more pharmacy entrepreneurial stories with the hopes that more folks will see the PharmD as a potential pathway, they can go many different directions. My thought is not that, folks hear Chris’s story and say, “I’m going to go do exactly that.” But rather it inspires and motivates folks to think differently about how they might leverage and utilize PharmD. Chris and I actually share a mutual friend, Ashley Klevens Hayes that connected the two of us. We had Ashley on this show, Episode 95 when we talked about how to level up your career.

Just a couple weeks ago, Chris and I did a LinkedIn live and I left that conversation, really feeling energized and motivated to take some of the expertise and information I learned from Chris to accelerate our own business at YFP, and to be able to serve and fulfill the mission that we have to help pharmacists achieve financial freedom. So excited to introduce Chris to the YFP community if you don’t already know him.

Chris, before we get into your entrepreneurial journey, share a bit about your background, where you went to pharmacy school. when you graduated, and what drew you into the profession.

[00:04:12] CC: Originally, I am from the southwest suburbs of Chicago. When I was looking at universities and everything, University of Iowa was close enough to be close to family, but far enough away to still get away, like you’re trying to do early in college. I was lucky that they have a great health care program going into it, I knew that I wanted to do something in healthcare. I grew up in a family, my dad was in the state police, my mom was a dietician, and my brother has cystic fibrosis and is doing really well with it. But I kind of saw medications my whole life. That was a big part of being interested in medicine.

Then going in early to college, really fallen in love with chemistry. I just really enjoyed those classes and also the – just the philosophical concept of being able to take a substance in medication that can then solve a problem, and providing control to otherwise uncontrollable situations. That’s kind of how I’ve always thought about medicine as it puts control back into people’s hands, which was a nice thought and I liked that component of everything.

Then the other big aspect of going to – I went to pharmacy school at University of Iowa. The big thing that drew me to pharmacy, outside of all those other things, was the ability to work remotely, and to be able to work in different places. A lot of times if you’re a physician or a dentist even, you kind of set up practice, and there’s a lot of opportunity to be entrepreneurial. But once you set up that practice, you’re building your book of business, and you’re kind of set there. Obviously, you can build it bigger, you can move yourself out of the role. But I liked the idea of being a pharmacist, there’s CVS, Walgreens pharmacies all across the country. So if I wanted to travel or live in different locales, it was very doable.

Then also, after that realization that I wanted the freedom to be able to move around, I also realized that there was a remote component with medication therapy management and those roles that were popping up. The concept of working remotely, before it was so common practice, was another thing that kind of drew me into the space.

[00:06:28] TU: Chris, you mentioned some things that I would think of as more traditional that drew you into the profession, in terms of some of the science chemistry, obviously the ability, the impact on patient care. But you’re taking a very non-traditional career path. I don’t know if I love that term, because I’m hoping we’ll get to a point where, you know, we recognize to my comment earlier that the PharmD is really just the beginning of one’s career path and their opportunities.

But when folks hear me say non-traditional, they know what I mean. So you’re relatively young in your career, you haven’t taken that traditional clinical pharmacy job where you’re utilizing your PharmD as much on a direct patient care. We’re going to talk about the work that you’ve done in various entrepreneurial efforts, whether it be the dropshipping business, other summer accelerator programs, the work that you’re doing uptown creation. But nonetheless, it’s been in a different direction.

My question here for you is, like what’s the why behind that as you reflect back on this first part of your career, like, why not a traditional career path? Why do you think you’ve gone in this other direction?

[00:07:30] CC: Yeah, that’s a good question. I think the biggest thing for me is, I’ve always enjoyed creating things and being able to play around. There’s a lot of opportunity to do that within healthcare and within pharmacy. Even though the projects that I’m working on right now, I have an inkling that it will come back to healthcare and come back to pharmacy in one way or another, where I’m able to tie entrepreneurship, growing companies, and doing that within a healthcare model. But the other thing that has always been kind of an ethos of what I’m trying to create is being able to build something that’s bigger than myself. If I’m trying to have as large of an impact on the world, as I want to have, knowing that, I’m going to have to take a lot of things out of my hands, and be able to build a machine or a processor system that is able to put other people into seats that can extend that reach.

That’s kind of one of the concepts of why social media, the internet, and being able to reach a lot of people at once has always been a fascinating concept to me. Because the impact that you’re able to have, as an everyday human is pretty robust with everything that we kind of have at our fingertips.

[00:08:50] TU: A really unique opportunity, right, in the time that we live in. Your desire for contribution, Chris really stands out to me. I just finished reading The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, which is just an awesome, awesome book. He’s got a follow-up called Turning Pro. One of my favorite passages from that book, as he says, “Creative work is not a selfish act, or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being. Don’t cheat us of your contribution, give us what you’ve got.”

I sense that desire in the conversations you and I have had, and we’re going to talk about how that’s threaded throughout your journey. But I often wonder, and obviously, I’m looking at it through the lens of the financial plan, sometimes being a barrier to folks being able to achieve some of the potential that they have, and the ideas that they want to contribute. We’re passionate about that part of it.

But I often wonder as a profession, what could we fully contribute, if everyone’s giving everything they’ve got, and they have that mindset and we remove some of the barriers. I think sharing your story and others is hopefully a source of motivation and inspiration for folks that consider that question.

Chris, your entrepreneurial journey, we’re going to talk in a little bit about the business that is today, in terms of what you’re doing with Uptown Creation. But you know, I think with most entrepreneurs, they can point back to a younger version of themselves, where maybe it wasn’t a formalized LLC or business structure, and you didn’t have a team and employees, but you’re hustling in some entrepreneurial way. Take us back to when you can remember that entrepreneurial journey beginning for you.

[00:10:24] CC: Yeah. I think the start was really, when I was like 12 or 13 and playing World of Warcraft, a video game, and seeing digital currencies that people wanted, and digital assets that people wanted, which is a whole another conversation that has started up again with NFTs and everything. But being able to sell like gold in World of Warcraft was the first way that I made money before even having a job. And then I started to referee as a soccer referee and then had a variety of jobs from there.

But really, that first playground that I had was being in a video game and kind of trying to learn supply and demand, but actually make money as a 13-year-old by selling a thousand gold coins through PayPal to random people on the internet was that original bug, I guess, where I was able to scratch that itch of fulfilling something.

Then, outside of that, I didn’t really do a whole lot other than having minimum wage jobs throughout my high school career and then early college. Then I always thought there was something that I was missing with, seeing stores buy something cheaper, and then sell it for more expensive and make money on that. It just seemed like such a simple concept that there had to be something that I was missing to – otherwise, everybody would be doing that.

It kind of coincided with Amazon Seller marketplace rising a lot and eCommerce rising a lot more. This was back when I was a junior in college. Probably 2015 was – yeah, a junior at Iowa. Yeah. I did my undergrad in biochemistry at Iowa.

When I was a junior, I was working as a pharmacy technician, I was working in a cystic fibrosis research lab. I was just looking for other ways to supplement income and the term dropshipping came up. And that’s something that I just became fascinated with because it was a way that you could sell physical products and not hold an inventory. That’s usually the biggest barrier I found with buying something cheaper, selling it for higher, is you have to put that upfront cost and to get that thing for cheaper, and then sit on that inventory to then be able to sell it. But drop shipping took away like that variability.

So the initial business that really got me involved in the entrepreneurship community at University of Iowa, which I’m lucky that they have such a good program and had so many connections, and ways to foster an environment. I know not every school has that. But that was the original business model.

To break it down even more simplistically, I was following somebody on Instagram, who was talking about finding products on eBay, and then selling those products on amazon.com and never having to purchase the product until it was already sold. Somebody would buy it from you on Amazon, you would get their shipping information, their name, and then you could take that information and go back to eBay, and put that into the shipment address, and then put your credit card information in and it would just ship the product directly to that Amazon customer and you collect the profit in between.

That was the first low barrier to entry that I had to be able to experiment again, and the risk was pretty low. I was able to do it with a credit line of like $1,000, because I was a college student with nothing but debt, and nobody wants to give you money or credit card, so I was able to do that with limited startup costs. That was a big factor of that being kind of the first step into, but I learned a lot about customer service, about human nature, and about expectations that people have when they’re purchasing something.

[00:14:10] TU: Yeah, and I love that as an example. As you mentioned, you know, some of the big barriers to starting a business can be upfront capital, can be inventory holding times, right? Especially when talking about product-oriented businesses. Being able to learn some of those lessons, which I would argue you probably already see a direct connection to the benefit that’s been and furthermore will into the future. But to be able to learn those lessons without having to go through that pain of going further into debt and so forth, extremely important to you. Did you continue that through pharmacy school then?

[00:14:42] CC: Yes, I continued that through pharmacy school and I continue that to this day, and it’s evolved a little bit more from an Amazon to eBay dropshipping model, so we have other suppliers. But the big versions of selling are selling products on Amazon and sourcing those from walmart.com and then vice versa. Selling things on walmart.com as a Walmart seller and sourcing those from amazon.com.

So really, the terminology for it, if people want to look it up, is a combination between dropshipping and retail arbitrage is really what it is. Retail arbitrage usually is done by people going into Walmart, finding a sale, checking it on other websites online. If they’re able to make money, then they’ll go check out at Walmart and then ship that product out. This is kind of the way to do it at scale without having to physically go into a store but just doing it online.

[00:15:34] TU: Chris, my naive – and I’m following the methodology, and I suspect we have many that are listening, maybe interested in a side hustle that are going to go down this rabbit hole, which is cool. My naive understanding of this type of opportunity brings up a question. I often think of businesses that might be built on the back of something else versus businesses that you have full control over.

We’re going to talk in a moment about what you do at Uptown Creation and in that environment. Chris and co-founder and partners can make decisions tomorrow, today and do what you want in terms of the business in the direction. When I think about a business model or a side hustle, whatever you want to call it, with something that we’ve been discussing that might be built on the back of like an eBay, or a Walmart, or an Amazon. What challenges does that present, as well as perhaps opportunities, how do you as an individual that is trying to grow something strategically, whether you look at that as a business or not? How do you plan for some of those unknowns that are out of your control when it’s not on your own platform?

[00:16:36] CC: Yeah. I think that is a great thing to bring up, and that that is one of the – I wouldn’t say risks, but one of the pitfalls is that, Amazon can stop people from selling at any point on their platform, and then you’re reliant on that as your sole business. You’re kind of at the mercy of whatever platform you’re using. By the benefit that you get is, you get all the attention that Amazon has and all the web traffic that Amazon has. That’s the benefit of using another platform that isn’t your own, but then you’re at the mercy of that platform at the end of the day.

That kind of goes into the whole social media part of things. Anybody who has tried to build a brand or build something on social media, probably understands that they’re at the mercy of that platform, whether it’s Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn.

To be able to mitigate your risk, I think first, being able to identify like that is a risk that needs to be overcome. I know with, let’s say, Instagram influencers, for example. If Instagram was to go away, so many of those influencers would be wiped off the face of the planet and nobody would know who they were. So being able to make the brand bigger than the platform is kind of the best of both worlds, in my opinion, whether it’s selling physical products, building your personal brand, or anything else where you’re leveraging something on the internet.

It’s a matter of being able to use that platform, that traffic, because it’s convenient and it drives a lot of traffic and attention. But then being able to do something with that, that you’re able to take people someplace else.

For example, if I wanted to make my Amazon business bigger than just my place on Amazon, I would include packing slips, for example, that would direct people to my personal website where they could check out the other products. Maybe there’s a little bit of a discount if they go there. But then now I’m taking the traffic from Amazon and directing it someplace that I have a little bit more control over.

[00:18:38] TU: And you see so many companies doing this, right, that are trying to get to that direct-to-consumer relationship and I think for the reasons that you’ve mentioned. That was a lesson, Chris, I learned early on in YFP. I think I might have picked up on that from some of Pat Flynn’s work with Smart Passive Income. The concept of being at the mercy of an algorithm, and that could change and has changed in different platforms. How do you diversify across platforms and then how do you utilize them not as the end game, but as a source to further promote, and build that relationship with the community, the audience that you have, and then convert that traffic?

Like for us, a big part of that is getting folks over to our platform, and thinking about a way we can then engage with them via email or other types of educational offerings that we want to do. But you know, if I’ve fully built the YFP community on the back of Facebook, or Instagram, or whatever, and something changed drastically tomorrow and I wanted to promote a webinar. All of a sudden, I don’t have an audience to promote to, right? I think there’s a lot of wisdom in what you said.

You started the dropshipping business while you’re in college, found some success in it. I’ve continued to grow it, but that didn’t stop you from starting another business. Talk to us about Uptown Creation, what it is, and what’s the story behind why you launched the business, and ultimately the problem that you’re trying to solve?

[00:20:01] CC: Yeah, that’s a great question. Uptown Creation was founded in early 2016, and with my current business partner, who also went to the University of Iowa, his name is Conor Paulsen, and we both had companies beforehand. He made a men’s leather good company, where it was very personalized leather good products that he was creating; bags, duffel bags, everything like that, belts. But you were able to have – his customer was able to have a part in the creation of it from meeting the leatherworker that’s going to be creating stuff, having things very, very customized. He was in a business where the customer relationship and their customer experience was really at the center of it, and that’s why they were able to do what they did because they provided a great customer experience.

Where what my business was, was more trying to scale things and do things at as large of a level as possible. Then kind of use the attention that was from another platform and drive it to myself. We became friends through the entrepreneurship communities at the University of Iowa, so the Founders Club was a club where you can kind of had to have a business, and then there were different tiers of it based on the income you were generating from your business. That allowed you to do pitch competitions, startup accelerators and everything.

Uptown Creation started in a startup accelerator at the University of Iowa. Conor, my business partner came to me and asked if I wanted to do this thing for the summer. We had some other people that were in it just for the summer. It started off as a YouTube company, essentially, which is nothing what it is today, but the goal of it originally was to be an educational company, and create YouTube videos to kind of teach people the things that college didn’t teach you. They went through that startup accelerator over the summer. I had already done one in the past, so I can be directly involved and compensated that way. But I kind of had a backburner role in it, and that was as I was entering pharmacy school in 2016.

At the end of that summer, Conor and I looked at each other and the other people that were involved, it turned out that we were the only ones that wanted to continue doing anything with the business. Now, it was Conor and myself, and we had to figure out kind of what to do.

That was the first big pivot is, we knew that we wanted to create some sort of education that we were able to provide other people, the format we weren’t married to. But we knew that YouTube was a way to make money from ads. But we knew that we also both had a background in selling physical products. This was at the same time that Instagram was initially talking about something called shopping on Instagram. This was back in 2016, they started to talk about it. It didn’t get launched until earlier this year, which is funny, but that drove us to learn Instagram.

One of the problems going back to Amazon, that Amazon selling brings up is that Amazon takes a 15% cut of everything that you’re selling. We were naturally looking for other ways to sell physical goods then and have a little bit less of a cut be taken. We saw Instagram as the potential for that if we were early on enough. We spent the next couple of months growing some Instagram accounts.

And long story short, we realized that we were really good at growing communities on Instagram and growing Instagram accounts that people started to come to us and want to pay us for that. When you are making no money as a business, and you have people that want to pay you for something that you’re doing, you usually take that opportunity, so you can keep the business going.

So that was kind of the next big pivot. Maybe we’re not going to sell our own educational resources or our own physical products on Instagram. Maybe we’re just going to help people do Instagram better than what they’re doing currently and then let them get more attention for whatever they’re working on whatever products they’re working on.

That kind of put me down the rabbit hole of learning the Instagram algorithm really, really well. Learning social media marketing tactics specific to Instagram, better than most people I can think of, and doing that through online forums, and the underground communities that exist in the growth hacking space. I was in pharmacy school, and also simultaneously doing that. I like to learn things, so that was a good hobby to have outside. But then we started bringing clients and people started to want to pay us for these Instagram services. Unfortunate that – so this is I guess a good touchpoint to have.

Another reason why my business partner and I decided to go into business together was, we complemented each other very well. He is very front-end sales, talking to people, networking, probably the best networker I’ve ever met in my life. And I was very – I don’t want to sell anything in a salesy way. I just want to make something that’s really, really good and then people can decide if they want it or don’t want it. I’ve always been more of the service fulfillment and service creation component of the business. Whereas, I had a partner early on that did the things that I didn’t want to do. I think that’s imperative because that set us up for success.

[00:25:28] TU: I think you’ve done that really well, Chris. Like when I look at – if folks haven’t looked – we’ll link in the show notes to some of the educational content that you’ve done on LinkedIn, which we’ll talk about here in a moment on YouTube. I think you have very much that persona of a desire to provide good value and good education. From there, I suspect the business development opportunities come to be so that complementary approach between you and your partner, I can see why that was so important and the value that you bring to the team.

Pivot is a word you mentioned a couple of times. You mentioned the beginnings with YouTube, the pivot to Instagram. And now I understand much of the work that you’re doing focuses on LinkedIn. Talk to us about that pivot to LinkedIn, and some of the services that you offer now and the types of clients that you serve.

[00:26:16] CC: Definitely. As a commonality that – about all the businesses that I’ve started have been kind of built on the backbone of something that already has a lot of attention, whether it’s Amazon selling, whether it’s Instagram, whether it’s LinkedIn, business development. It’s always been being able to drive attention from something else. As I mentioned, you’re also at the mercy of that platform. We were using a lot of bots and automation on Instagram, found out Instagram doesn’t really like that too much. They do their best to keep that stuff off of the platform.

We realized that if we wanted to scale the business, we needed to not have those variables, because it was easy to have 50 clients, 100 clients. But if we wanted to ever grow bigger than that, we wouldn’t be able to wake up one day and Instagram changes their algorithm and now we have to rethink our whole process and deal with customer service of 100 people.

That led us down, “Okay. What if we just played within what the social media platforms want us to do anyways? That’s creating real conversations, having a very human component to things.” That became the ethos of what we are today, is getting rid of bots and automation, putting a human in all the seats that a bot would be taking, and being able to have genuine interactions with people using the internet as a means to contact the right audience. As Uptown Creation sits today, it’s a business development company really focused on direct outreach campaigns.

What that looks like in practice is, targeting people on LinkedIn, and then starting conversations in their inbox, but not the spammy messages that everybody receives. More of a message, you know, I think given that example. If I was going to reach out to you, Tim, I would go to the YFP website, I would look at a podcast, I would try to find an episode where I’m able to bring up a guest name, listen to the first 10 minutes. And now, when I message you, I’m going to bring those things up. That’s how I’m going to inevitably start that conversation and hopefully get you to respond. Because while you have 20 other messages that are clearly spammed out to everybody, this is the message that you know is sent to you directly.

[00:28:26] TU: That’s how genuine conversations, and rich relationships, and meaningful long-term relationships start, right? Is having a true vested interest in someone else and identifying where that collaboration can happen. I love that approach and as I mentioned, we’ll link in the show notes. You did a great series on YouTube going step by step through the LinkedIn process, and what you guys have done with clients in terms of looking at that as a business development opportunity.

When I look at Chris, your LinkedIn presence, and again, we’re talking here from the mindset of, it’s not just about the number of followers and how many people do message, but authentic relationships. And the fact that you’ve been able to build those authentic relationships also build a large profile, a large following of what you do, I think over 20,000 something, folks that are following the work that you’ve done. Talk to us about the positive impact that has had on you professionally, personally, as well as for the business and what you’re doing at Uptown Creation?

[00:29:24] CC: Yeah. So personal branding has been kind of a buzzword that I’m sure everybody’s heard. That was a big component of the work I was doing on Instagram, a big component of what people talk to you about as you’re going through pharmacy school. The way that I like to talk about personal branding is really, it being your reputation, and nothing more, nothing less than that. But personal branding, kind of being the online word for it.

But in the real world, you have a reputation, people think of you or hear your name, and they think certain thoughts or remember certain things that they’ve seen. Really, since I’ve done so much consulting work with clients of trying to get them to create content, trying to get them to spread their message, use the free traffic that the internet provides. I realized I needed to also do that myself and be a practitioner of that, which was uncomfortable for me at first, because that’s not my natural way of being.

I think a lot of people think that, “Oh! If somebody is creating content or creating videos, like they’re seeking attention, they’re more outgoing than I am. They’re –”, all these other preconceived notions that people may have. When in reality, it’s really just being an effective communicator, and also building your reputation online.

With the community that builds up through my own LinkedIn outreach and content creation, there’s been a lot of great relationships that I’ve made. I mean, this is one of them, because I don’t think I would have ever met you, Tim, if I didn’t have those other interactions with other pharmacists that say, “You really need to talk to this guy.”

Just from a sheer meeting people in the industry component, I don’t think that that can be understated, how much that has helped. I mean, even with jobs that I’ve been offered in pharmacy, specifically, and just the conversations I’ve been able to have with people greatly exceeded my expectations. The cool thing about it, especially in health care, and pharmacy is that, in the entrepreneurship communities and business, this is nothing new. Everybody’s been creating content for a decade or more since YouTube came out as a platform. It’s still really new for healthcare. There’s not a lot of people that are known for things online, or have a brand. I think, ZDoggMD is probably one of the biggest brands that exists that a lot of healthcare people know. It can set you up for speaking engagements, for having those side hustles, those side gigs, but also creating something that you’re known for that then you can progress your career with.

[00:32:01] TU: I would add too, Chris. I think the benefits professionally to many folks, I think may seem fairly obvious in terms of opportunities, and the network, and the relationships that come from that or in your case, what that means for the business. I also just get a ton of fulfillment, and joy in really connecting with other pharmacists, learning about what people are working on, what problems they’re trying to solve, opportunities that have frustration challenges.

That’s one of the things I love most about the work I do at YFP, is I get to have conversations like this, or talk with prospective clients and pharmacists all across the country in all different phases of their career. The point I’m making is, don’t underestimate folks listening of, yeah, I mean, it’s going to have professional benefits for sure. But also, just some of that personal satisfaction and joy that can have from developing those meaningful relationships.

Chris, I know at the time of recording, you’re doing some strategic planning for the business right now. I’m curious, as you think about the evolution of the business thus far, you’ve talked about a couple of pivots that you’ve made, you put your hand on the crystal ball, like what does Uptown Creation look like in three or five years? Where do you guys see yourself going?

[00:33:09] CC: Yeah, that’s a great question. I want to make it like explicitly clear that Uptown Creation started as making YouTube videos on the Internet, went to Instagram, and is now at a completely different spot with direct outreach marketing. I think that’s a good learning lesson for a lot of people in that, especially pharmacists that are looking to do anything outside of pharmacy, or even just start a side hustle. It’s good to get out of your own way sometimes, and just start and know that it’s going to evolve into something else and that’s okay, as long as whatever that end mission or that end goal is being accomplished.

I think a big thing that people do wrong in entrepreneurship is they fall too in love with the product or the service or that identity of what they’re doing, rather than the end impact that they’re trying to have. If you know that the journey to getting to that end can change and it’s okay. I think that makes it a lot more freeing, that it doesn’t have to be what you’re doing right now, but you have to start to be able to get to that endpoint.

Going back to your question of kind of what the outlook for Uptown Creation is. We are very clear now kind of what we’re good at what we do, and that is direct outreach marketing. Meaning, you can use paid ads, Facebook ads, and other paid forms of traffic online to bring people in and that’s what’s called a one-to-many approach. You’re showing an ad to thousands of people. Well, we are the experts at, and growing our services in, is the one-to-one approach, and being able to have very specific targeted conversations.

So as the mediums change that are effective right now, LinkedIn, email marketing, even cold calling, and cold texting are still really effective ways if your targeting is right, but that’s going to change over the next five to 10 years, which is okay. LinkedIn might not be the best platform to do outreach on and that’s not where people are hanging out online. That’s when we’ll make more pivots, but really being on the bleeding edge of direct outreach, marketing, conversational marketing. Social selling is the term, that’s another buzzword, is where we’re headed over the next five years.

[00:35:24] TU: I love that. It’s so in line with what you just shared, which is great advice for folks that are growing something or thinking about something is, keeping that goal and vision you have in mind, understanding the methodology of getting there might change, likely will change, just given how quick things are evolving today.

[00:35:42] CC: The one thing that I want to plug as well, because I think that this is like interesting insight for people. The reason why marketing and direct outreach is interesting to me as – I’m 27 right now. I plan to have other businesses. I want to do things in healthcare. But if I’m able to build this engine of direct outreach, bringing in traffic, starting conversations, this is something that I can apply to future businesses that I create regardless of the industry. Building this engine early on in my career, that can then be applied to other companies in the future.

[00:36:17] TU: Great stuff. Chris, I want to talk about the concept of developing your craft. I’m a follower of the Uptown newsletter. This morning came out and you said the following, “What I love most about Uptown Creation is that what we do just makes sense. It makes sense that reaching out to someone on the Internet is an extremely personalized way, it would elicit a response. This is what sets the framework for us as an organization. As the marketplace continues to evolve, we will evolve faster because we are practitioners of our craft, and practitioners always win.” What does it look like to be a practitioner of your craft? What do you mean by that?

[00:36:55] CC: Yeah, and that’s a little Gary Vaynerchuk insight there. It was somebody that I follow and admire. But really, being the person that’s doing the thing that you’re selling, or the thing that you want to be known for can’t be overstated. That’s why there’s so many pharmacists out there that are experts in oncology, experts in nutrition, experts in all these different fields that are practitioners every single day, and have things that are worth sharing to people that aren’t doing that every single day, even if you don’t really see that yourself.

If you’re doing something every single day, you are an expert, whether you like it or not in that thing, and you know, more than 99.9% of the population that’s not in that thing. Really making sure that you always have your finger on the pulse so to speak, and by doing whatever you’re known for, or whatever you’re in business for, you can never be blindsided.

I think a lot of business owners start to grow as a company, and you have to put other people into a lot of the seats that you were doing before. But always being able to be close to the ground and be doing things yourself that are directly related can’t be overstated, because that’s the way that you stay up to date.

[00:38:17] TU: Great stuff, Chris. Really enjoyed the conversation. Appreciate you taking time to come on and share your story. Look forward to having you back on the show in the future as you further develop some other projects that are coming. What’s the best way that folks can connect with you and reach out to you if they have a question or want to learn more about the work that you’re doing?

[00:38:35] CC: Yeah, connecting with me on LinkedIn is probably the best. So Chris Cozzolino. Then my email address if anybody wants to email me is [email protected] and checking out uptowncreation.com is probably the next best way to learn more about what we’re doing.

[00:38:52] TU: Awesome. We will link those in the show notes so folks can reach out to Chris. Chris, thanks again for your time.

[00:38:58] CC: Yeah, I’m excited for future conversations.

[OUTRO]

[00:38:59] TU: Today’s episode of Your Financial Pharmacist podcast was sponsored by our friends at Thoughtful Wills. If you haven’t created your estate plan yet, we urge you to reach out to Notesong and Nathan. They draft custom estate-planning documents like wills, trust, healthcare directives and durable powers of attorney that fit your situation and reflect your wishes. This is key. These are custom legal documents created and reviewed by actual attorneys.

As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and it’s not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding material should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. Furthermore, the information contained in our archive, newsletters, blog post and podcast is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analyses expressed herein are solely those of your financial pharmacist, unless otherwise noted and constitute judgments as of the dates publish. Such information may contain forward-looking statements which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements.

For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/disclamer. Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

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