Your Financial Pharmacist

10 Lessons Learned: Employee to Entrepreneur

On this episode, sponsored by Insuring Income, YFP Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, shares ten lessons he has learned on his journey from employee to entrepreneur.

Episode Summary

This week, Your Financial Pharmacist Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, shares the top ten lessons he has learned over the past five years while taking Your Financial Pharmacist from a hobby to side hustle to a full-time business. Tim shares his most impactful takeaways on his journey from employee to entrepreneur and advice for those looking to take the same path. Tim shares how he found the motivation and inspiration to get started, the importance of the foundational why of the business that transcends motivation, the mindset required to move from employee to entrepreneur, and the incredible value of partnership. Tim shares ways to build on and nurture business partnerships and shares a helpful resource for maintaining successful business partnerships that help your business thrive. He shares why it is crucial to establish your core values early and how and why you must embrace the role of CEO. Considering growth and expansion, Tim outlines the need for implementing systems and processes. More specifically, he mentions having a system for evaluating the business. Tim shares a common theme he has discovered in the last five years interviewing pharmacist entrepreneurs, a passion for learning that drives entrepreneurial success. Lastly, Tim shares how identity and role differ and how embracing failure is necessary for business leadership.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRO]

[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 fly solo to talk through 10 lessons learned through the first five years of starting your financial pharmacist and making the transition from hobby to side hustle to business.

Before we jump into the episode, I’m excited to announce that we’re doing our first ever virtual summit, employee to entrepreneur building blocks for starting and growing a business. The Employee to Entrepreneur Summit is designed for pharmacists who are planning or actively working on a side hustle or business idea. The summit will be hosted live via Zoom the evenings of Tuesday, August 30th, and Wednesday, August 31st. Topics and activities will include how to hone your mindset and uncap your potential as a business owner, how to grow a business from a position of financial strength, retirement savings and tax optimization strategies as a small business owner, how to develop a system for achieving business financial goals.

We’ll also be featuring several examples of pharmacists that have made the transition to entrepreneur and are monetizing their clinical expertise. Some awesome bonuses for those that sign up by August 23rd, including a one-on-one implementation meeting with myself or certified financial planner, Tim Baker, access to a live goal setting workshop that I’ll be leading to help focus on setting and achieving big personal and business goals. Finally, on-demand access to several bonus expert interviews, including how to sell with confidence marketing strategies and how to evaluate healthcare insurance options as you make that transition from employee to entrepreneur. You can learn more and register at yourfinancialpharmacist.com/businesssummit. Again, yourfinancialpharmacist.com/businesssummit.

Okay, let’s hear from today’s sponsor, Insuring Income, and then we’ll jump into the show. This week’s podcast episode is brought to you by Insuring Income. Insuring Income is your source for all things term life insurance and own occupation disability insurance. Insuring Income has a relationship with America’s top rated term life insurance and disability insurance companies, so pharmacists like you can easily find the best solutions for your personal situation. To better serve you, Insuring Income reviews all applicable carriers in the marketplace for your desired coverage, supports clients in all 50 states, and makes sure all of your questions get answered. To get quotes and apply for term life or disability insurance, see sample contracts from disability carriers or learn more about these topics. Visit insuringincome.com/yourfinancialpharmacist. Again, that’s insuringincome.com/yourfinancialpharmacist.

On November 6th, 2015, I wrote the first blog post under the name Your Financial Pharmacist. That post was a chronicle of the journey that my wife, Jess, and I took into and out of $200,000 of debt. Furthermore, it was an acknowledgment that there was a need to develop a community of pharmacists that could encourage and inspire one another on their path towards achieving financial freedom. Fast forward to 2022, the YFP community is now 13,000-plus strong, but it started with a list of less than 100 individuals that I twisted their arms to say yes to receiving my first blog post. Those blog posts led to some speaking engagements and more pharmacists coming forward to share their own stories.

After that, I was invited to do some speaking engagements, which would eventually lead to relationship with a National Pharmacy Association that helped increase the awareness of the mission of the work that we’re doing at YFP. Shortly thereafter, I would co-author the book Seven Figure Pharmacist with Tim church. Not too long after that, I would connect with my business partner of now five-plus years, Tim Baker. Funny enough, we recently discovered that Tim began his work to start a fee-only financial planning firm for pharmacists within the same week that I wrote that first blog post in November of 2015. Tim Baker, after we met, we would decide to launch the YFP Podcast in July of 2017, which was the beginning of a friendship and a partnership that was essential to grow the business to where we are today.

When I reflect on the past five years and the ups and downs of going from hobby to side hustle of business to making that transition from employee to entrepreneur, here are the top 10 lessons that I’ve learned along this journey. Number one, start. In July of 2015, I was traveling to the AACP Annual Meeting in National Harbor, Maryland. The book I selected for the trip to read on the plane was Start by Jon Acuff. It’s a special moment when a book collides with your life path, and this was one of those moments. You see, at the time, I had been thinking about the idea of YFP but was struggling with what to do with the idea. I was reflecting on my first business venture, a company called Farm Forward, and the lessons that I learned from taking those initial baby steps into entrepreneurship. It was the words Jon Acuff penned in Start that would push me over the edge to formalize the initial idea of YFP to get the name established, to set up the legal entity to build the first prototype of the website. It was rough, and to ask 100 friends and colleagues to join the start of my email list and ultimately published that first blog post.

I needed the words of encouragement from Jon Acuff to just start. I knew I had to heed this advice because the idea of YFP would not leave me alone. I couldn’t stop thinking about building a platform for pharmacists to learn more about personal finance, to bring a community together. I knew it was needed, and I knew it could have an impact. But fear still crept in, with questions like, “What if it doesn’t work out? What if nobody likes the blog post? What if this is a good idea only in my head, and who am I to write on this topic, not being a financial planner myself?”

Speaking with many entrepreneurs over the last five years on the YFP Podcast, this theme of just start keeps coming up again and again. Those who have built something that is solving a problem and serving others all had to work through their own fears, anxiety, and unknown to take the first step. You see, many great ideas never see the light of day. Too often, individuals get paralyzed in the analytical phase where passion gets muted by excuses, questions, and doubts. Sometimes, you just have to jump in the deep end and figure it out. The idea of just start has stayed with me through the entire journey so far of YFP. It doesn’t just apply to getting a business off the ground.

As I reflect back over the past five years, we’ve evolved from three companies to one company. We’ve changed our logos and branding, we’ve redesigned our website multiple times, we’ve reformatted the podcast, we’ve identified better tools and solutions inside of the business, and we’ve taken the lead to grow our team. None of these were smooth-sailing, and the only way we were able to identify and grow is because we ended up in the first place of just starting. There had to be a beginning. So that’s number one is start.

Number two is a strong why, a strong why. In his book, Start with Why, Simon Sinek talks and says that every one of us has a why, a deep-seated purpose, cause or belief that is the source of our passion and inspiration. Making the shift from employee to entrepreneur will inevitably include bumps along the way. Challenging days and seasons are to be expected, but getting stuck and being a prisoner to your motivation is not an option. Motivation alone may not provide enough fuel during the challenging seasons. Therefore, it’s critical that the why of our business and its offerings transcend the level of motivation that we have on any given day. We need a strong enough why that drives us to commit the time and effort that the business needs.

One of my favorite podcasts over the past several years is How I Built This with Guy Raz. On this show, Guy takes the listener behind the scenes with a founder to hear about the movements that they have built. Many of these stories have trials and tribulations, and it was in those moments, in those trials and tribulations that the passion behind the idea and the problem the product or service was solving would help propel the founder through that difficult time.

At YFP, our mission has helped pharmacists achieve financial freedom. Why? Because having a financially well pharmacist workforce is in the best interest of the profession and, ultimately, the patients that we serve. Furthermore, the profession of pharmacy needs big ideas. We need disruptive ideas, ideas that are going to improve the health and wellbeing of our nation. But the problem is big ideas, disruptive ideas, these rarely come from someone that is living in a state of financial stress.

If someone’s overwhelmed with student loan debt, if someone’s confused about how to best save and invest for the future, if someone’s frustrated by the fact that they’re making a good income but not progressing financially, or if they’re anxious that they feel like they’re financially behind, any one of these is a killer of a dream, a killer of a big idea. So we’re on a mission to change this narrative and to empower pharmacists, to ensure that future generations of pharmacists are financially well, and to embed financial literacy into the core and fabric of our profession. I remind myself of this mission every day, and this propels me through the highs and through the lows. Our mission is greater than any one challenging season of the business.

Number three is mindset, mindset. Since leaving my work in academia most recently in a position at Ohio State to work full time on the business, I did not anticipate the growth that would happen and that was needed related to my mindset. Thanks in large part to an incredible coach and mentor, Chris Caldwell, I would begin a journey that dug into some serious self-reflection that was stimulated by some really deep questions, questions like why is achievement so important to me and my identity? Why have I struggled to just be present, without work or accomplishment? How could my life look if I embrace the purpose of just being the best version of myself? What do I actually want? What are the stories that are telling myself? In what ways am I showing up as an inauthentic version of myself? What artificial ceilings have I created in my personal and professional life, and why have I created these ceilings?

Over the past year, I’ve come to appreciate that I’m just beginning a lifelong journey of digging deeper. This journey of leaning into some hard questions with the goal of living to my fullest potential and being the best authentic version of myself that I can be has been one of the greatest gifts of entrepreneurship that I did not see coming.

Number four is the value of partnership, the value of partnership. In the summer of 2015 after meeting on Twitter, yes, that is a real thing, I had the chance to connect with Tim Baker in person. We met at a Bob Evans of all places off I-71, about halfway between Cleveland and Columbus. As Tim Baker likes to tell the story, he found me on Twitter and is wondering, who was this other Tim that was talking about personal finance in pharmacy? At the time, Tim Baker was living in Baltimore and was visiting his sister in Columbus, which provided the opportunity for us to connect in person.

The timing was perfect because at that time, I was struggling to connect the education piece of what I was doing around personal finance, with a sound financial planning offering. I knew that was going to be an important piece of the puzzle of transition to work into a viable business, and I knew that service was needed in our profession. I was in the process of talking with several planners in Northeast Ohio, trying to understand the lay of the land and how the industry works. You see, at this time, I was not aware of terms just fee-only and fiduciary, and I quickly realized the complexities of the industry after having several conversations with different planning firms. I was frustrated by the lack of transparency in pricing and how the industry historically has not served folks in the early stages of their career, since how much one has an assets was usually a prerequisite for a planning relationship.

When I met Tim Baker that day in Bob Evans, he shared his journey starting in the United States Military Academy at West Point that would lead him to a career in logistics for a major retailer and then a construction company in Ohio and California. After realizing that he wanted something different, he made a pivot to a career in the financial services industry. After working at a small independent financial planning firm, he decided to take the leap to start his own business, offering fee-only financial planning services focused on the pharmacy profession. At the time, the business was Script Financial. Through a friend at West Point, who was married to a pharmacist, he identified that there was a gap in the industry in serving pharmacy professionals.

Now, I was hooked when I learned about the meaning of fee-only and the fiduciary standard, and that combined with the alignment on values and growing a small business led Tim and I to start collaborating on the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast. This collaboration furthered our friendship and respect for one another, which led us a step further towards eventually becoming business partners.

Now, growing up in a family business, I observed firsthand the challenges that can come from partnerships, especially when it’s family members that were involved as partners. From that experience growing up and hearing many other individuals’ words of caution about partnerships, it shouldn’t have given me a pause, but it never did. I knew if there was alignment on vision and respect for one another, we could thrive and work through challenges. That has been exactly the case, and I’m so grateful for the friendship and partnership that Tim and I have.

One resource that’s been key to our partnership is the Book Partnership Charter by David Gage. This book takes two or more individuals going into business together through a series of activities and challenging discussions that lays the foundation then for the operating agreement. Tim and I have made it a priority to annually review and update our charter and check in on the health of the partnership.

Number five is establish your core values of the business early. Establish your core values early. When starting a business, it’s easy to be off and running in the day-to-day such that activities like strategic planning or vision setting or setting core values might not be the priority that they deserve to be. I’m so grateful that early on, we decided to set a set of core values that several years later serve as the guiding path for the culture of our company, for the benefits that we offer our team, for how we hire, and for how we evaluate our team members. One resource here that was really helpful was the book Delivering Happiness by the late Tony Hsieh, the Founder of Zappos.

Number six is embracing the CEO role, embracing the CEO role. I can easily fall victim to squirrel syndrome. As the founder and leader of a business, it’s a fine line between identifying new opportunities and getting sidetracked and losing full focus on the core mission. A couple of years ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Samm Anderegg, CEO of DocStation, and he would provide some advice to me that has stayed with me and helped me to refocus when I’m feeling overwhelmed or sidetracked. The advice he would share that is at the end of the day, the CEO has three main responsibilities, and that is vision, people, and resources.

For vision, it’s the CEO’s responsibility to ensure there is a compelling vision and that the vision is core to the business and well-understood and accepted by the team. The products, the services should be aligned to the vision, and new opportunities should be evaluated for alignment to that vision or perhaps lack thereof of alignment. When it comes to people, as a business grows beyond its founders, the success of achieving its mission is dependent upon the people that are hired. I’ve come to appreciate how important it is to build the right team and to ensure those team members have alignment with core values. Beyond the minimal technical expertise for one to be able to do their job, it’s the other things that matter most. For us, that includes alignment with our core values, including be kind, value team, optimize, you serve the community, and embrace ownership.

When it comes to the third component, that third main responsibility of the CEO, in terms of money and resources, the CEO has to have oversight to ensure the resources are sufficient to keep the ship moving forward. Cash money in the bank to keep the lights on, pay the payroll, and keep that vision going in the right direction. Now, depending on the nature of the business, one may have cash flow, decide to cash flow the business, or they decide that they’re comfortable taking out some type of debt or additional capital from investors to be able to fund the business.

Number seven is implementing systems and processes, implementing systems and processes. When starting a business, it’s all hands on deck and all roles. It’s natural to wear every hat there is, and the energy behind the idea typically sustains us through this phase. Whether it’s content creation, marketing, sales, finances, HR, IT, we do our best to wear every single hat. But at a certain point, if the goal is to expand the mission and reach of the business beyond yourself, naturally, two things need to happen. One, you have to be comfortable delegating that work to someone other than yourself. Two, you have to download that information in your head in such a way that a process or service can be replicated and built upon by someone else.

Let me give you great examples. I think my business partner, Tim Baker, has a really good mind in this area of the importance of systems and operations and being able to document those systems and operations. In 2020, we realized that in order for us to achieve our mission of helping as many pharmacists achieve financial freedom as possible and being able to transform the financial wellness of the profession of pharmacy, we were quickly going to run into a barrier if Tim Baker remained a full-time financial planner. That was eventually going to be a ceiling for us.

One problem here is that was going to quickly lead to burnout, as he was trying to be an owner and a full-time planner. Two, him stepping out of that seat was going to force us to develop the systems and processes to replicate the financial planning model and approach in a way that could be scaled. This was really our first aha moment of needing to fire ourselves from various roles, and that has been our mantra ever since. What should we be doing next to make the business less dependent on us so that we can further expand the mission of the offering?

Not only does this mindset allow the business to grow, but it also makes the business more valuable because it’s not just dependent upon you. It also increased the likelihood the business could go on when you decide to retire or take an extended break, and it reduces the risk that you will become a prisoner to your own business. Two books that have really helped shape my mindset on the value of systems and processes inside of a business are The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber and Traction by Gino Wickman.

Number eight is developing a system for evaluating the business. Now, building upon the previous concept, which was implementing systems and processes, once you begin to systematize and process the processes and operations and bring others into the business, we need to make sure that we have a system to regularly evaluate the success of the business. Now, this will naturally evolve over time, but this would include things like key performance indicators, KPIs, and a method to track and review those.

In the book Traction by Gino Wickman, he recommends developing a scorecard that has 5 to 15 of the most important metrics that can help you quickly identify the health and direction of the business. Now, naturally, the question is, well, what are those metrics, right? He proposes a great question in the book to get you thinking about what those 5 to 15 metrics might be, and that question and scenario who presents is imagine you’re on a desert island somewhere. All you have is a piece of paper with a handful of numbers on it. These numbers must allow you to have an absolute pulse on your business. What are all of the numbers that must be on that piece of paper, right? That activity is designed to help you come up with what those 5 to 15 metrics might be for that scorecard.

In addition to Traction by Gino Wickman, I would also recommend here the book Profit First by Mike Michalowicz. We’ll link to all these books in the show notes. The Profit First methodology has really been instrumental for how we handle our business finances and really helps expose whether or not you are accounting for all of your expenses. It ensures that as a business owner, you’re taking some amount of profit home each quarter, even if that’s just 1%, that you’re putting aside money for your taxes, and that you’re paying yourself a sufficient wage for your time and efforts. For many, this model helps expose the true financial health of a business and often can shine a light on a business that is not as profitable as it thinks it is or that is not charging enough for its services.

Number nine, become a voracious learner. Become a voracious learner. In conducting over 200 interviews for the YFP Podcast, I’ve noticed a common thread among the entrepreneurs that I’ve talked with. Those interviewed often demonstrate humility in knowing that no matter what credentials they carry or success that they’ve had, there is always room to learn and grow. They are hungry to learn. This is evident in the books they’re reading, the professional development courses they’re taking, and the time and money they’re investing in services to grow personally and professionally.

In the book, The End of Jobs, author Taylor Pearson argues that we are rapidly moving into a time period when one’s credentials and degrees have limited value, thus requiring continuous learning and growth. The good news is that we live in a time in history when learning is more accessible than ever, and I’ve come to appreciate that one of the greatest things I can do for my company, our team, and the community we serve, is to continuously learn and grow.

This has led to a constant growing list of podcasts and audiobooks, and here are some of my favorites from the past year. The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, Procrastinate on Purpose by Rory Vaden, The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster by Darren Hardy, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer, A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, and Changes That Heal by Henry Cloud. Again, we’ll link to all these books mentioned in the show notes.

Number 10 and perhaps most important is identity versus role, identity versus role. I alluded to this a little bit in number three when talking about mindset, but it’s worth coming back to this one a little bit further and another shout out to Chris Caldwell for bringing this concept to my attention. Based on the IR theory, identity and role theory, it’s common for us to believe that our identity, our self-worth can be derived from how well we perform in various roles. That could be as a spouse, as a parent, as a pharmacist, as a business owner. If we can’t separate our identity and our roles, our self-worth can ebb and flow with how well we have or have not performed or a perception of that in various roles.

This is natural, considering that we are taught from a young age, many of us, to tie success to the affirmation we receive from others. But here’s the problem. We are naturally going to experience failure in our personal and professional lives. Experiencing failure and being a failure are two very different things. Experiencing failure and being a failure are two very different things. But if we’re not careful, through experiencing failure, we can convince ourselves that we are a failure, and this can lead to a shake in confidence. This can lead to playing it safe and avoiding future risk.

But in my mind, that’s not the biggest threat. The biggest threat and tragedy is when we let failure escalate to a feeling of less than and a feeling of having a diminished self-worth. Without the right perspective and accountability, these feelings can quickly creep into every corner of our lives, and we must not let this happen because experiencing failure, again, is not being a failure. That does not equal being a failure. As many leaders and entrepreneurs know, experiencing failure is to be expected and can be welcomed with the right mindset. Albeit painful at the moment, through failure, there can be great growth. If we can begin to accept that there is growth in failure, we can entertain the idea that failure is essential.

I’ve struggled with this mindset shift, which is also true, I suspect, for many of my peers in the profession because it’s drilled into us from our education and training that mistakes should be avoided to prevent medication errors as close to 100% accuracy as possible is the goal. This makes sense for patient care, but this mindset of getting it right all the time shouldn’t carry into all aspects of our work and our lives for that matter. That mindset of 100% accuracy all the time is exhausting, and it prevents real growth because it doesn’t embrace failure. But if we can anticipate and welcome failure, our mindset shifts from disappointment to learning and minimizes the likelihood that we’d let the experience of failure creep into our identity and our self-worth.

So those are the 10 takeaways, the 10 lessons that I’ve had in this journey of starting YFP back in 2015 and making the transition full time and reflecting back on the past five years, from hobby to side hustle, to business, from employee to entrepreneur. That’s why I’m so excited. We’ll be digging into these points and so much more during our upcoming virtual summit, employee to entrepreneur building blocks of starting and growing a business.

The Employee to Entrepreneur Summit is designed for pharmacists who are planning or actively working on a side hustle or business idea. The summit will be live via Zoom the evenings up Tuesday, August 30th, and Wednesday, August 31st. Topics and activities will include how to hone your mindset and uncap your potential as a business owner, how to grow a business from a position of financial strength, retirement savings and tax optimization considerations as a small business owner, how to develop a system for achieving business financial goals. Also, we’ll be featuring several examples of pharmacists that are monetizing their clinical expertise and have made that transition from employee to entrepreneur.

Bonus content for those that sign up by August 23rd, including a one-on-one implementation meeting with myself or certified financial planner, Tim Baker, access to a goal setting workshop, I’ll be leading to help focus on setting and achieving big personal and business goals, as well as access to several bonus expert interviews, including how to sell with confidence marketing strategies, evaluating health care insurance options, and more. You can learn more about the summit and register at yourfinancialpharmacist.com/businesssummit. Again, that’s yourfinancialpharmacist.com/businesssummit. As always, thanks for listening and have a great rest of your day.

This week’s podcast episode is brought to you by Insuring Income. Insuring Income is your source for all things term life insurance and own occupation disability insurance. Insuring Income has a relationship with America’s top rated term life insurance and disability insurance companies, so pharmacists like you can easily find the best solutions for your personal situation. To better serve you, Insuring Income reviews all applicable carriers in the marketplace for your desired coverage, supports clients in all 50 states, and makes sure all of your questions get answered. To get quotes and apply for term life or disability insurance, see sample contracts from disability carriers or learn more about these topics, visit insuringincome.com/yourfinancialpharmacist. Again, that’s insuringincome.com/yourfinancialpharmacist.

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 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 posts, and podcasts 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 published. Such information may contain forward-looking statements that 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.

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YFP 265: 10 Lessons Learned: Employee to Entrepreneur

10 Lessons Learned: Employee to Entrepreneur

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