Author: Caitlin Boyle

Kun Yang, a pharmacist and Co-Founder & CEO of Pricklee Cactus Water, shares how and when he knew the entrepreneurial path was right for him. In this episode, he discusses the experience of being on Shark Tank, where he effectively navigated a negotiation with two sharks that led to a deal, and the most important skills he has had to acquire as an entrepreneur leading a growing company.

About Today’s Guest

Kun Yang is a recent dad and pharmacist-turned-CPG entrepreneur. He grew up in Canada but has spent his professional life in the United States, where he is building his business, Pricklee Cactus Water, with some incredible humans who want to make the world a better place.

Pricklee is on a mission to inspire people to be resilient like the cactus through health, happiness, and sustainability. The refreshing cactus waters are made from the drought-tolerant prickly pear cactus and packed with antioxidants, electrolytes, and vitamin C, with 50% less sugar than coconut water. It’s 100% refreshing, with 0% pricks.

Kun is passionate about brand building, CPG, leadership, founder stories, futurism, mental health, and all things wellness. He looks forward to connecting and learning from others that build businesses through conscious capitalism!

Episode Summary

This week on the YFP Podcast, YFP Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, welcomes fellow pharmacist and Co-Founder & CEO of Pricklee Cactus Water, Kun Yang, to the show. Highlights from this episode include hearing Kun talk about how and when he knew that an entrepreneurial path was right for him, the experience of being on Shark Tank, and the skills he has had to acquire on his entrepreneurial journey leading a growing beverage company. The discussion begins with Kun sharing his start in pharmacy, his pharmacy education, the moment he realized that a traditional pharmacy path might not be right for him, and the surprising story of how he got started as an entrepreneur. Kun speaks on how Pricklee came to be, his experience navigating negotiation with two sharks on Shark Tank, and ultimately getting a deal for Pricklee. With the added attention from the show, Kun shares how Shark Tank positively impacted the business in unexpected ways. He discusses the power of having a mentor, the skills needed to be a true leader, how he views leadership, and how he is cultivating a culture of growth in his company. Listeners will also hear an interesting parallel between parenting and entrepreneurial leadership. 

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

• YFP Planning: Financial Planning for Pharmacists
• Schedule a free Discovery Call with YFP Planning
• Pricklee Cactus Water
• Shark Tank US | Barbara and Kevin’s Prickly Fight Over Pricklee Product
• Hangry: A Startup Journey by Mike Evans
• Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight
• Brian Scudamore: Founders Stories Podcast
• Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It by Chris Voss
• Connect with Kun Yang on LinkedIn
• Your Financial Pharmacist Disclaimer and Disclosures

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. 

On this week’s episode, I welcome fellow pharmacist and the Co-Founder and CEO of Pricklee Cactus Water, Kun Yang. Highlights from the show include hearing from Kun about how and when he knew the entrepreneurial path was right for him, what the experience was like being on Shark Tank, where he effectively navigated a negotiation with two sharks that led to a deal, and the skills that he has had to acquire that have been most important to his entrepreneurial journey and leading a growing beverage company.

Now, before we jump into today’s 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 250 households in 40-plus states. YFP Planning offers fee-only high-touch financial planning that is customized to 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 jump into my interview with Kun, the Co-Founder and CEO of Pricklee Cactus Water.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:01:20] TU: Kun, welcome to the show. 

[00:01:21] KY: Glad to be here, Tim. Nice to see you again.

[00:01:23] TU: So we had an interesting crossing of paths through a mutual connection in the biopharmaceutical industry space, where we’ve done some personal finance education with some of the fellowship programs. You spent the early part of your career, before working on Pricklee, in an industry role. So let’s start there. Tell us about your career path into pharmacy, where you went to school, and what led you to going down that path of industry.

[00:01:50] KY: Yeah. So I graduated from the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy 2015. I have a lot of pride in my alma mater, and I think many people might relate to this. But it’s almost like the further removed you get, the more you realize how lucky really you were in that situation. But I had a chance to kind of go back this past year as the white coat speaker, and it just brought back a flood of just really incredible memories and just appreciation for just how difficult it is to be faculty and kind of lead the next generation of youth and just had a lot of proud moments to kind of know where we kind of came from in that space. 

But I kind of grew up all over the place. I mostly grew up in Canada, and I always knew that I wanted to pursue health and wellness and many different components and also had a very, I guess, just entrepreneurial mindset to begin with. So I think pharmacy really kind of attracted me because fundamentally so much of pharmacy as an industry has been built upon independent business. Just the kind of skills that are required to be successful, to be able to socialize, to connect with your patients and provide value and help them lead healthier and better lives and be that trusted partner really kind of just gravitated to that profession. 

As I entered pharmacy school, I think I realized that there was a lot of different ways that we could make an impact in society. Over time, as I learned more and more about all the incredible opportunities to affect population health and take all the skills that we were getting in pharmacy school and apply them in really creative ways, yeah, I just naturally gravitated towards more “nontraditional” roles. But I would just say that they were just roles that I think allowed us to flex additional skills that we didn’t know we had, and then eventually ended up pursuing a fellowship through MCPHS at Biogen in a sort of medical value-based outcomes type program, which is sort of a managed care-focused direction because I was very involved with AMCP and was very interested in the whole population, health management piece of that profession, going into graduation. Then through that, just really found myself appreciating and just developing a lot of incredible skills in the biotech pathway.

[00:03:57] TU: You and I talked maybe a week or two ago, and we’re talking about for those students that have that business or entrepreneur type of desire, I think the industry pathway is a natural one where there’s some exposure to that. But certainly, that’s still a step away from entrepreneurship and growing your own company, still a very different experience working within an organization, although, of course, less clinical and more business minded. 

I’m curious, before we talk about Pricklee specifically, was there a moment during your fellowship or perhaps a moment in your first job where you looked around and you’re like, “Man, this just isn’t for me. I’ve got this entrepreneurial itch. I’ve got this pharmacy degree. Maybe I’ve been down this pathway, but like I don’t see myself doing this for 30 years.”

[00:04:43] KY: I think there were a lot of moments. When I look back, it wasn’t like I think one specific. I mean, I do have a specific moment that I’ll share, but I think there were a lot of feelings that I think that felt familiar to me, even in that moment, that I can kind of trace back and say, “Okay, this kind of makes a lot of sense.” So the moment really was walking into – I just finished our fellowship, and programming had started at a new company with a spinoff of our existing fellowship business. I kind of just walked in and had really, really fallen in deep appreciation for the opportunity and the people that I was working with. 

But I think one of the days I kind of walked in, and I looked around, and this was still pretty early on in our journey, but something hit me that I had always thought that through all the different career changes and exploration of getting to that point that going this “non-traditional” path would have led me to move away from this feeling of “imposter syndrome” or feeling like everything that I was doing was actually getting more and more specific. It was because it was leading me to a point of clarity, right?

Really, over time, I realized that imposter syndrome and point of clarity had a lot to do with an understanding of who I wasn’t, as opposed to understanding of who I was. I think that’s something that probably a lot of us can relate to is growing up in your 20s and maybe sometimes early 30s, you have a lot of ideas of maybe what you don’t like to do, right? What are some of the things that don’t excite you? What are some of the general things that do excite you? But you may not really understand specifically why or what you’re really good at to allow you to succeed in those roles. 

Again, all those feelings led to that one moment I walked in and looked around in this open office setting. I was kind of like, “Man, there’s a lot of incredibly talented and smart individuals around me. And if I work really, really hard here for another 15, 20 years, I can really be like one of them.” These were at the time, again, all my heroes I look up to that kind of forged the pathway for us before. I guess it hit me in that moment that there wasn’t a specific role that I could look at and say like that is exactly in specific what I wanted to do. I think that that was my – I call it a quarter life crisis moment of really all that imposter syndrome bubbling and kind of blowing up all at once, realizing that, wait a second, how could I have done all this and pursued all this specificity, only to feel this still in this moment? There’s not much more specificity I could pursue. 

That was when it really kind of became an introspective question of like is there something outside of pharmacy that I could apply my skills to, still within the health and wellness space that we’re really passionate about, that I could find truth and clarity? 

[00:07:17] TU: Where do you attribute – Obviously, you have an entrepreneurial spirit and desire. You’re pursuing that with the work that you’re doing at Pricklee, and I suspect this may not be the first venture and the last one that you’re going to do. Where do you attribute that entrepreneur spirit coming from?

[00:07:33] KY: It’s a really good question. I think it is family-driven in many, many ways, right? I’m a first generation American. My father actually immigrated over from China when I was one and then moved over to Canada when I was three and a half. To see kind of his journey and where he came from, where it was a small farm town that was – He was the first person in his entire family lineage to graduate high school and then did do college and all that stuff, and it wasn’t like there were resources around him. 

So for him to kind of persevere and find a way through all that, pursue higher education, and then bring us over and provide, create a better life for his family, and then give us this opportunity then to live a really privileged life of education, of connectivity, of culture, of just growing up in North America, Canada, and the US, and really being shielded from a lot of that and realizing that, for me, a lot of the journey of getting to really, I guess, in many ways what I had initially idealize as the pinnacle of success, which was I think much more defined from a lower wealth generation value standpoint of like earning and salary and maybe comfort from a capitalistic standpoint. Getting to that point and realizing that it was much more than that, that was behind the growth that my father and sacrifices my father had made. 

To look at that journey that he went on as a pretty entrepreneurial one himself, I think I got a lot of that same sort of mentality of like, okay, this still feels like the great opportunity has been presented. How can you take this opportunity and truly make a bigger impact? And take that opportunity and say if you have that privilege, and you have the connections and maybe the skill sets and the network to do more, to truly make an impact on society. Can you look introspectively and find authenticity in that journey to make that impact as positive and helpful as possible? So that’s really kind of where I think the initial energy came from.

[00:09:31] TU: I love that, Kun. One of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, and I think your alma mater could give them some credit, is light years ahead in terms of a focus around entrepreneurship and nontraditional career paths. They put some specific efforts in that area to really be intentional and brand themselves as such. But I’ve often thought like we recruit for someone who wants to be a pharmacist and that clinical type of a mindset and then hope we can apply some entrepreneurial principles on top of that. I almost wonder if we need to flip the script in that like you recruit people that have an entrepreneurial mindset or interest, and then pharmacy gets overlaid on top of that. It’s just a totally different shift in how someone is thinking. 

I think what’s interesting about your journey, and I think there’s a lot of people that may feel some of that imposter syndrome or feel that tug and pull of like, “Hey, I have an interest in this or that, but my identity is in I have a PharmD, or I’ve done a fellowship, or I’ve done two years of residency.” We know the reality of the sunk cost fallacy of, “Hey, I’m $200,000 in, right? And I’m not going to pivot or take that risk.” So I just think there’s a really neat opportunity for our academic institutions to be able to take this up and see what we can do in terms of some of the disruption that’s happening in our profession and how can we, especially as we train the next generation of pharmacists, be a part of that. I think to Maryland’s credit, they’re making some progress in this area, which is pretty cool.

[00:10:56] KY: I think that that’s a very, very, very astute point. I would just say like still early on in my journey, so I imagine that my view on this and perspective will change over time. But I would say that what I found in our in our journey, where we’ve kind of really broken into multiple industries now and almost from the bottom up and try to find value in that, it really comes down to aligning the journey to some core set of values that are intrinsic to an individual. I think that that’s something that a lot of institutions have maybe not done effectively. I think, obviously, professionalism, and I think core behaviors of what a profession should look and act like are definitely important. 

But I do think that sometimes a lot of students come into these professions with personal values that are maybe extremely different, right? These personal values are often shaped by households and maybe by your initial friend network, right? I guess the challenge of this is then if most people are within this way of, this mindset of thinking you go through life, really kind of reflecting the same values that you’ve kind of been around since you were a kid, right? Your parents’ values and the friends that you’ve kind of grown up with. 

It’s really hard to break free from that, right? Because as you get more and more within a bubble of people in terms of the work that you do, your interests become even more specific. The challenges that you own become more specific. It’s probably very hard for an average pharmacist to relate to like the challenges that a construction worker, for example, would relate to day-to-day. So naturally, these worlds don’t collide as often as you would see, right? So what does that really result in? That results in people finding answers to like these bigger questions of like how do we become more entrepreneurial? Or what can we do with our pharmacy professions? 

They find answers amongst their direct community. Why is that challenging? Well, it’s challenging because a lot of people that go into higher education, they come from families where maybe their parents didn’t do this, right? Or maybe this is now a wealth generation they’ve entered making pretty healthy salaries, where their parents didn’t have that luxury, right? So what happens is you’re not asking maybe your reference point of like what success looks like is anchored to people that have never had the type of wealth opportunity that you do now. So to find answers to the questions that like, well, what’s next? If we’ve hit our milestones of getting your house or like having children and doing these things that seemed like, pretty far reaching milestones previously, and you’re starting to trend in that direction, where it’s pretty feasible, then you start thinking, “Well, what’s next right?” Then the answers often become, okay, invest your money, do these things, and grow your wealth. 

Then simultaneously, alright, who else would you ask? You ask your friends and your colleagues, who, again, were raised by the same kind of parents that you’ve been around. So it’s really hard to get answers to these bigger questions of how do you make more out of the way that our institutions are set up when a lot of the influence of what the values are in society are really limited to the same influences and values that you were raised with, right? So what I found is when you want to answer a question as big as what’s next, ask people that have done those things. So a lot of the mentors that I’ve met in my life that have made these tremendous impacts, I mean, they’ve built and exited companies, global companies. They’ve done these things. Time and time and again, you start to realize that oftentimes the value system changes from one of just wealth creation to one where you start to realize that your wealth is really a set of tools that you can leverage to create value for others and to create not just a better life for yourself but for your profession, for people around you, for anyone, right? 

I think as you meet more and more successful people that have gone through that journey, you really feel that, and it’s not only just really inspiring to see that that’s really what people stand for at the end of the day, but that that’s what the world and the universe tends to reward in the long term.

[00:15:04] TU: It’s such a great point, and I’m reading right now Hangry by the GrubHub founder. It’s a great book. It reminds me a lot of Shoe Dog. It’s another great read on kind of an entrepreneurial startup story, that one, obviously, of Nike and Phil Knight. But he talks about in the GrubHub journey like his initial goal was like do this thing to be able to pay off student loans. Then it gets to this point where he raises $31 million, and he gives up a stake of a company, and then it’s like, “Oh, wow. This got like really real. And, obviously, I’m now exceeding that goal, and there’s on to something else.” 

Then, obviously, at some point, he exits what will be a multibillion-dollar company, and then he’s kind of asking this question of like, alright, that wealth and, obviously, paying off that debt was a very small goal that wealth was achieved. But like I’m trying to find my identity back of like who am I, what do I want to be, what do I want to be my legacy and my contribution. 

So let’s shift gears and talk about Pricklee. For those that aren’t familiar with Pricklee yet, and I hope they will become soon, if they’re not already or they haven’t tried the product, what is it, and how did the idea come to be?

[00:16:07] KY: Yeah. No, it’s definitely an interesting story. So Pricklee is a cactus water. It’s a delicious, refreshing cactus water made from really the most sustainable and resilient plant on the planet, the prickly pear cactus. It’s packed with electrolytes, antioxidants, vitamin C, that just offers superior and natural hydration. It’s about half the sugar and calories of a coconut water, and it’s really just good in smoothies by itself, mixed drinks, and really any which way you want to have it. So that’s really what Pricklee is. 

We actually created Pricklee right in the middle, again, of our fellowship. Our co-founder, Mo, grew up in Lebanon, and his grandma used to make prickly pear mixed drinks, prickly pear just smoothies, prickly pear just hydration beverages all summer long. It’s his favorite thing going up with him and his siblings. So one day, when he was shopping at our local grocery store, and he saw prickly pears in the market, he was blasted with nostalgia. He’s like, “I have to bring this back to my friends.” So he shared it with us. We were just blown away by the taste. 

Then being in health care, we look at the benefits. That was really, really interesting as well. I think over time, we just realized like this is such an amazing opportunity to take a health and wellness platform, introduce an ingredient that meant something, significant to one of us, and then find ourselves in this, and that journey of really discovering authenticity through the creation of Pricklee, and figuring out that we could leverage the platform of the cactus to inspire people to be resilient. To really promote health, happiness, and sustainability became really what our core mission was. Then over time, really that mission manifested itself into a company that we now are privileged enough to be able to support and to grow every single day.

[00:17:47] TU: So I want to talk about your Shark Tank experience. You and your co-founder, Mo, also a pharmacist, appeared on Shark Tank, season 13, episode 22. We’ll link to it in the show notes, if folks want to go back and watch it. You were looking for $200,000 for 5% equity, which equates to a $4 million valuation. I want to talk about the numbers. But first, I want to hear about the experience. What was it like walking through those doors, and how did you prepare for that opportunity? Because as I’ll ask you in a moment, there were some instances in your responses with the sharks that it was clear you had done a lot of preparation. So I’m curious to hear how you went about that preparation. 

[00:18:28] KY: Yeah. So we’d spent almost two years just sort of beta testing our product at farmer’s markets, figuring out how this whole industry worked. It was really, really something that just blew our minds because of how complex the industry was and the different aspects that went into it from D2C e-commerce, to retail, to supply chain, to operations, to production, to sales and marketing. I mean, there’s just so much to uncover, and it took us some time to really grapple around that. So we didn’t launch until February 2021. 

Something to note of that is, I think, pharmacists and STEM individuals, specifically, are fantastic entrepreneurs because testing is so ingrained in our DNA. So we really went through it pretty – Really kind of taking our emotion out of it as much as we could. But in any case, we launched in February of ‘21. Within the first week, we’d run these Facebook ads and the production studio at Shark Tank, at SEMA, and these ads. So they reached out and were like, “Hey, you guys should apply.” We thought it was a complete scam. We had no idea this was real thing. But we pursued it. Next thing you knew, we had this gigantic application. It was like 40 pages. I mean, we were just spewing out all aspects of our life in this application.

This ended up being like a 16-month process from when we first [inaudible 00:19:44] to when we’d been filmed and then when we finally aired the following May. So it was probably the longest kept secret of our lives. When we started getting through the process, the team assigned us a production staff that really helped us kind of frame the pitch, prepare us for the kind of conversations that we’re going to have. A lot of that was just, again, an ongoing 16-month journey that eventually led to the air date on Mother’s Day weekend, actually May of 2022.

[00:20:15] TU: I’m curious. Yesterday, I was listening to a podcast of the founder of 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, and he had talked about a moment in their business, which it took them eight years to get to a million dollars in revenue, and now they’re north of $600 million a year. So a very patient slow growth and then, obviously, more of an explosion of that over time. But he talked about this instance where, after a lot of persistence, they got on to Oprah, a huge opportunity, couldn’t hire enough people to have the phones ready after that went live. But they didn’t have a same experience when they went on The Ellen Show. It was actually very quiet after that, and part of that had to do with, obviously, people can more easily get in touch now than they could when they went back on a previous show with Oprah. 

But I’m curious how defining of a moment was that? Or was that not in terms of that goes live, and the business changes?

[00:21:07] KY: Yeah. I mean, I definitely think it was it was a defining moment. I think a lot of companies find a lot of luck in different components. You kind of have to. I mean, timing luck, it’s in every company’s journey. Shark Tank has manifested as one of those things for us, for sure. We had been on this like interesting media tour. Leading up to Shark Tank, we had actually filmed TODAY Show in August, right before we had filmed Shark Tank in September. That was a pretty big deal. I mean, Al Roker drinking your product on air. I mean, sharing your story. We got some texts about it. But it wasn’t comparable to the Shark Tank experience. 

I mean, I think there’s something societally and culturally relevant about Shark Tank in the connection that every person has with that being like some pinnacle of entrepreneurship and a goal, and a milestone I think a lot of people will look for in starting businesses. So I think that there’s something innately exciting about it. Still to this day, anytime people see our booth, our materials, see us out in public with Pricklee, like we definitely get people being like, “Oh, we saw you guys on Shark Tank.” We always – The number of times we’ve had to tell the story of like, “What was that like?” It’s definitely something that we’re passionate about. But it was definitely one of those things where that was absolutely Shark Tank. 

[00:22:23] TU: Not once. I don’t think not once did you or Mo mentioned that you were a pharmacist on that show. Was that an intentional move?

[00:22:30] KY: I think we actually did but –

[00:22:32] TU: Oh, did you?

[00:22:32] KY: Well, so the time that you’re in there is quite a bit longer than what actually gets aired. We think we’ve been there for almost 45 minutes. It was cut to eight. They did a really good job of actually representing the conversation and negotiate the intent of it. But, I mean, at the end of the day, I mean, they’re trying to put on a good show and trying to make it very, very snappy and quick. 

It was funny. We had like a couple of our partners and friends actually fly in and put on cactus suits to like introduce the brand and the products, and that entire segment was cut out. So it was really funny. I mean, they were there. You saw them. But the whole dance sequence entrance, that was cut out. I guess they weren’t – I guess we just didn’t rehearse well enough, or like it wasn’t entertaining enough for dancers across the US. But, yeah, I know. We talked about it, I think, a couple of times. But definitely within the 45-minute segment, they cut that down to 8 minutes.

[00:23:22] TU: So one of the things Tim and I were talking about this, Tim, my partner at YFP last week, he does a lot of teaching on negotiation. One of the things that happened in the Shark Tank episode, at least, of the eight minutes that they filmed, is when Kevin – He went on this rant of, “I hate beverage deals. However, I like this product.” He ended up countering that. I think it was $200,000 for a 20% stake, instead of a 5% stake. Then you had a brilliant response, and you said something along the lines of how are we supposed to do that? Then you provide the rationale behind the how are we supposed to do that, in terms of needing the cash flow and so forth to grow and sustain the business, which is a textbook calibrated question or negotiation. 

The book, How I Split the Difference, Chris Voss, he talks about this question precisely. So I assume you were prepared for that specific type of instance, where you had to negotiate. Was that fair?

[00:24:17] KY: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, no Shark Tank deal goes on air and comes out the way that it was presented. It was kind of incredible how textbook the negotiation went to how we had prepared. We expected them to go to 20%. We expected Kevin in negotiation and then go to a royalty deal [inaudible 00:24:34]. Then our whole bottom line was going to be to offer the initial deal at a 5% line of credit. So the fact that it played out to a tee was just mind-blowing, I think, in terms of the preparation of that and to feel like we were actually in control of the entire conversation was pretty. 

One of our first actual adviser, Patrick Muldoon, who’s the previous CEO of Zola Coconut Water and Detour Bar, an incredibly brilliant guy. He was the one that, to your point, brought up Chris Voss, How I Split the Difference. We read that. We kind of really prepared. What happens when this likely scenario occurs that somebody’s – Let’s say you left with one truck, and you have an offer, and it’s 20%. The fact that, again, happened at that exact moment was really funny. This is a guy who’s gone through so many tough negotiations in this life and I think can really speak to experience with it. Just he kind of coaches the same thing.

Like at the end of the day, when you’re in a tough situation, I think that the best thing to do is ask questions, right? There, you’re faced with an impossible situation or impossible task or ask, which oftentimes is the case with Shark Tank. These deals are impossible deals. Yeah. Yeah. Like you ask the question of like, well, lean into their expertise and experience and figure out what is it that they’re looking for? Oftentimes, that opens up the conversation from seeming like your back against the wall, no counter. This is the final offer on the last shark, to then turning that into an actual conversation where that results in negotiation. That’s absolutely part of the game.

[00:26:01] TU: It’s interesting seeing Barbara jump back in. I didn’t see that coming. Then I thought it was cool that you guys got caught a little bit in the middle for the benefit of at least the show, where there’s, obviously, an ego play going on between the two of them that she – So that was fun to watch.

[00:26:17] KY: Yeah. We were like, “Was this about us?”

[00:26:19] TU: Right. Kun, I’m curious that as your role expands, obviously, you’re leading a rapidly growing beverage company. I don’t think any schooling, including a PharmD program and even one that has more of an entrepreneurship focus, I don’t think any schooling can prepare someone for the work and the leading that you’re doing now. I’m curious, what what skills, if you had to pick one or two, we just mentioned negotiation potentially one, what skills have you really had to develop and hone that have proven to be most valuable to you in terms of leading this company?

[00:26:52] KY: Well, it’s hard to boil that down. So I would say if it really comes down to it, I think leadership is definitely the one that has been the most difficult for me because I think – I mean, I don’t know. I think leadership is often put together as this package of people in roles, in “leadership positions,” and that’s oftentimes rewarded. There’s often momentum built around that, right? If somebody tends to be active and speak up, this tends to happen. But you really realize over time that it’s really not about that. It’s really about how do you serve the people, your constituents, your workers, your partners, your friends, your customers, and your vendors, everyone that you work with. 

Again, finding a voice of authenticity and a mission that’s so much greater than the product that you’re selling, ultimately, at the end of the day, and making sure that that’s an authentic mission and a set of value systems that really represents the people that are truly behind this company because the company really is just a journey. It’s really a journey of humans coming together, bringing their talents, introducing their networks of other talented individuals to come through. So at the end of the day, does the product really matter? Or is it really the people that come together and make it come to life? I really kind of believe that latter certainly to some extent. 

But that was a really hard thing to understand. Because I think the skills that – Again, the leadership skills that are oftentimes rewarded in a corporate setting are oftentimes selfish and ones where it’s like what are you good at. You tend to see this too with a lot of individuals that when they find themselves in conversations with senior leadership, for example, which oftentimes isn’t the case in a corporate American setting, I mean, most of the time, it’s jockeying of position of like, “This is what I’ve done. This is how I’m effective. This is what I lead.” It’s like that doesn’t really provide a lot of value in your conversation, right? 

I mean, the ultimate value, understandably, for any business is to move forward as a company because that improves everyone’s livelihood and, ultimately, your customers’ livelihood, right? So I think when you look at it in that macro, you realize it’s not about the individual. It’s about the bigger piece of like what are we all working for and realizing that the individual growth journey will actually lead to overall growth in the business. But, again, if you come from a place where you’re thinking about your specific role in that, as opposed to looking top down on how do you truly create and cultivate a culture of growth, it’s really hard to understand how to take yourself out of that and turn it the other way around and reflect all of that growth towards others, while still finding that your personal growth journey is actually felt that. 

So that was a really, really extensive journey that I’m still on, and I think there’s a lot of the people in my team and partners have been extremely patient with me through that. That I would say has been the hardest, most emotionally intelligently challenging thing and process that I think I still undergo, and I still just – I’m so in awe of people that have mastered that, and I see how they bring them to home to their families too. That’s really, I think, what keeps me excited about the growth journey in that specific way.

[00:30:14] TU: I love what you just said there, and I think you can relate to this as a relatively newer dad. But I think parenting and entrepreneurship, at least in my own journey, have really forced some of the most significant inner reflection, which can be humbling and painful sometimes in the moment of like – My kids, I love them to death. But parenting exposes every limitation I’ve ever had that I was able to hide. 

I think entrepreneurship can do the same. But I think if you lean into that, as I hear you are, it’s such a rich and rewarding journey of what are the opportunities to grow and to develop and flourish and to really think about some of these bigger questions of, sure, there’s going to be opportunity to build some wealth and create jobs and provide a really cool company and a product that’s awesome and tastes great. I can attest to that. My boys and wife can attest to that that have tried the product as well. 

But it’s bigger than that, right? It’s bigger than that, and you’re already talking about that. I think that bigger than that also enhances the product, and it makes it attractive to people that are using it and the team that is behind that. It’s energizing when you have that type of a mindset. 

[00:31:21] KY: Oh, my gosh. You hit the nail on the head. I mean, that same mentality when you apply it, to your point, I mean, having a kid, immediately put somebody significantly ahead of you in terms of priorities. That is what you have to do with entrepreneurship too, right? It’s really just not about you. It’s about the people that you serve. I think when it comes to product that you hit the nail on the head. I mean, as soon as we launched our product, we already knew that we were selling a product, and we had to find authenticity in our journey to express a brand, and that’s exactly what it was. 

It just so happened that we had – I had my daughter in that really existential brand, soul searching phase. So it actually really helped us internalize like what it meant to feel empathy for consumers in that way and build a brand that really spoke to their needs, as opposed to a brand that we wanted to express ourselves. Then finding a common ground of authenticity so that when we build everything, it feels like a true genuine expression of self, as opposed to here’s a list of factors and characteristics of this product that you should buy into. 

Sort of I think there’s a really interesting tidbit on that that I’d love to share, which is growing up in STEM, we were kind of taught to look at data and place data at a level of gospel sometimes, right? Where like the higher the end, for example, the more statistically significant, the more correct this data point ends up being. That is absolutely true, and there’s obvious logical science built into that way of discerning data. Then simultaneously, you do have occasional situations where a clinical trial may fail. Yet you have individual patients that may be cured of cancer. Does it necessarily mean that the product is not good? Or was it not tested in the right patients? I mean, you start to answer a lot of these interesting questions. 

But the reason I bring that up is because this comes back to the value system of health care, which is it’s interesting. Because within healthcare, we’re tasked to be compassionate to care for our patients, and there’s sometimes like a disconnect with the way that we think about our jobs and the way that that happens. Because when you look at datasets, you look and you’re taught to think that the higher the data set, the more accurate, the more useful this information is, almost to the point where an N of 1 becomes tossed away as meaningless. 

The irony is as we’ve built in our consumer journey, we’ve put all of our efforts into appreciating the N of 1 because the N of 1 is actually the lived journey that every single human being on this planet is born into, like every single person goes through an end of one journey. Your journey is your journey. That’s it, your perspectives, people that you’re with. I mean, that’s uniquely yours. That’s what you’re born into. That’s what you die with. The fact that that’s held out important sometimes or the importance of that, the significance of that is lost in our way of appreciating that people aren’t data points, people are people. 

If we sometimes look at that N of 1 in the context of a broader dataset and find appreciation in the outliers, you actually will find a lot more answers to those questions that you may not even know you’re asking for. That’s actually where entrepreneurship really, really has taught us is we don’t find a lot of value in our aggregated success. Aggregated success is just the status quo of what’s working. We have so much failure that there’s no real N of 1 failure that you’re looking to innovate on. 

But occasionally, we get an N of 1 that just blows our mind. How did that happen? Like where’s that coming from? Why is that happening? That insight that we get, picking up the phone, talking to that one person, can shift business strategy in ways that are so significant and unlock opportunities that we’d never considered, and it’s because we value that N of 1. I think if we look at that in health care and truly ask those questions, those deeper questions of making sure we don’t lose that context in the scheme of pursuing greater science, I think we can probably affect the holistic health of patients in a greater way as an industry. So that’s something that, again, going back full circle to your question of institutions is something that, as a value system, we should probably try to find a way to embed in our curriculum.

[00:35:30] TU: Great insights, Kun. Really have enjoyed the conversation. I’m excited to get this out to the YFP community. Where is the best place that folks can go to connect with you and to get involved perhaps in Pricklee as well?

[00:35:43] KY: Yeah, absolutely. So you can find us – For myself, personally, you can find me on LinkedIn in just Kun, K-U-N, last name Yang, Y-A-N-G. Yeah, feel free to connect and reach out if you ever want to have a conversation. We’d love to meet other pharmacists and hear about your journeys. 

Then also, it just so happens that we actually are just opening our seed investment round for Pricklee as well. So if that’s something of interest, please feel free to reach out and let us know if you have any questions or want to learn a little bit more about that opportunity as well.

[00:36:11] TU: Awesome. We’ll link to both the Pricklee site, as well as Kun’s LinkedIn profile in our show notes. Kun, thanks so much for taking time to come on the show. I appreciate it.

[00:36:19] KY: Yeah. Thanks so much for the opportunity, Tim. I had a great time. 

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[00:36:22] 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 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. 

[END]

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[pt_view id=”f651872qnv”]

Dr. Jimmy Pruitt, an emergency medicine clinical specialist and entrepreneur, discusses what led him to start the Pharmacy and Acute Care University, how he monetized his clinical expertise through developing masterclasses, workshops, reference libraries, community forums, and webinars about the effective use of medications in the management of critically ill patients, how he has balanced the start and growth of his business while working full-time, and the role his business has played in helping him achieve his financial goals.

About Today’s Guest

Dr. Jimmy Pruitt is originally from Orlando, FL, and is a combination of nerd and gym funky having a background as a division 1 cornerback then turned Doctor of Pharmacy from Presbyterian College School of Pharmacy in 2017. He completed a PGY-1 Pharmacy Residency at Florida Hospital Orlando, and then went on to Grady Health System in Atlanta GA for his PGY2 Emergency Medicine Residency. Dr. Pruitt is currently an Emergency Medicine Clinical Pharmacy Specialist at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, SC.

Dr. Pruitt was honored with the Excellence in Diversity from MUSC College of Pharmacy, Presbyterian College School of Pharmacy (PCSP) Alumni of the Year, and keynote speaker for the 2021 PCPS graduation. Dr. Pruitt’s professional interests include cardiac arrest, shock syndromes, trauma, hosting the #1 Emergency Medicine Pharmacy Podcast “Pharm So Hard” and operating his new pharmacy academy called Pharmacy & Acute Care University.

Episode Summary

This week on the YFP Podcast, YFP Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, sits down with emergency medicine clinical specialist and entrepreneur, Dr. Jimmy Pruitt. They touch on what led Dr. Pruitt to start Pharmacy & Acute Care University, how he has scaled the business, and how entrepreneurship has moved him forward in his financial plan.

Dr. Pruitt started by answering questions presented to him by other clinicians, often looking for resources for himself and other pharmacists. Jimmy decided to start Pharmacy & Acute Care University, meeting a need in the community while monetizing his clinical expertise by providing pharmacy-related content from a pharmacist with experience. To date, Jimmy has developed masterclasses, a reference library, workshops, community forums, live seminars, literature reviews, and webinars about the effective use of medications in the management of critically ill patients. One of Dr. Pruitt’s goals for the platform is to be inclusive of healthcare providers outside of pharmacists. 

Tim and Jimmy close the interview with a conversation about balancing entrepreneurship with competing responsibilities. Jimmy shares the first steps he took to build his business, how he has formed his team behind the scenes, and how he overcame some early challenges of expanding the PACU and its offerings. Lastly, Jimmy shares some personal insight on how Pharmacy & Acute Care University helped him reach his financial goals and reframe his view of retirement.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

• YFP Planning: Financial Planning for Pharmacists
• Schedule a free Discovery Call with YFP Planning
• Pharm So Hard Podcast
• Pharmacy & Acute Care University
• KelleyCPharmD
• Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork by Dan Sullivan
• Membership Geeks Podcast
• YFP 265: 10 Lessons Learned: Employee to Entrepreneur
• The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael Gerber
• Procrastinate on Purpose: 5 Permissions to Multiply Your Time by Rory Vaden
• Follow Jimmy Pruitt on Twitter: @pharmd_intheed
• Your Financial Pharmacist Disclaimer and Disclosures

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 the opportunity of sitting down with emergency medicine clinical specialist and entrepreneur, Dr. Jimmy Pruitt. During the show, we discussed what led him to start the Pharmacy & Acute Care University. How Dr. Pruitt has monetized his clinical expertise through developing masterclasses, workshops, reference libraries, community forums and webinars. How he has balanced the start and growth of his business while working full time. And the role that his business has played in helping him achieve his financial goals.

Before we jump into the show, I recognize that many listeners may not be aware of what the team at YPF Planning does in working one on one with more than 250 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, who 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 jump into my interview with Dr. Jimmy Pruitt.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:01:20] TU: Jimmy, welcome to the show.

[00:01:21] JP: Oh, thanks for having me on. It’s definitely a pleasure to get started with this and talk to you guys a little bit more about in Your Financial Pharmacist.

[00:01:31] TU: Yeah, I’m really excited to share with the YFP community about how you’ve been monetizing your clinical expertise, a topic we’ve been talking more about on the show over the past couple of years. But first, before we get into all of that, tell me what drew you into pharmacy, where you went to school, and when you graduated?

[00:01:47] JP: Perfect. I was fortunate that in high school, I had a chemistry professor that really challenged me to think more outside of sports, because my plan A was to go to NFL, and get lucky and went to a pharmacy school that had a football program. It was great. So, I went to undergrad at Presbyterian College and went to pharmacy school at Presbyterian College, and I was fortunate that I was able to live up two my passion with pharmacy and football and really, gave me the background to want to connect with a team, to be a team leader, and to just produce something more than what I’m used to. So, that was really my background and just being good at chemistry, being good at math, and a special interest to the medications.

[00:02:29] TU: So, you graduate from Presbyterian in 2017. Tell us about the career path since then, post-graduation, residency and the initial clinical work that you’ve done.

[00:02:39] JP: After pharmacy school, I went to AdventHealth Orlando, and was able to get a very good foundation at that very large program. It’s one of the top five largest programs in the nation. From there, I really solidified me enjoying the acute care side of things, and particularly, the emergency department. Then from there, I went to Grady Health Systems in downtown Atlanta where I got to see and do more than I can ever imagine and that was just phenomenal. And more particularly, being able to see and manage those critically ill patients in a manner that most pharmacists and the laws don’t really allow them to do.

So, I really got hands on with those patients and really working with physicians, nurses and things of that nature really helped me understand my expertise. And then from there, my first job outside of residency was at Augusta University Medical Center, which is another large academic medical center that has a level one trauma center, really got my hands dirty there, and I was also still working at Grady Health Systems on my off time. So, I’ve worked quite a bit that first year and a year and a half. And as of lately, I’ve went to the Medical University of South Carolina, which is another again large center and trauma center as well, where I’m also part of the faculty at the School of Pharmacy and teaches on the acute care side of things.

[00:03:55] TU: Well, no wonder why you’re busy. Before we hit record, I asked you, “Hey, how are things going?” He said, “Busy.” It makes sense. You’ve got a lot going on and we’ll talk about the business in addition to the full time work here in a moment. But I’m going to brag on you for a moment because a lot has happened in a relatively short period of time. So, you graduated pharmacy school 2017. You did residency training, as you mentioned, PGY 1, PGY 2, and you’ve had quite a large amount of success as a new practitioner. You were honored with the Excellence in Diversity from MUSC College of Pharmacy. You were the Alumni of the Year from your alma mater, also the keynote speaker for their graduation in 2021. You’ve started a podcast, Pharm So Hard, we’ll link to that in the show notes. We’ll talk about, here today, Pharmacy & Acute Care University is really the business that you have been building to help clinicians that are wanting to improve themselves as it relates to that area of practice.

So, let’s jump into that. Tell us about when you decided to start pharmacy and acute care University. We’ll link to that site in the show notes. But it’s, pharmacy-acutecareuniversity.com. When you decided to start it and why you started it? What was the genesis and the origins for doing that?

[00:05:06] JP: Absolutely. So, the precursor to Pharmacy & Acute Care University was a thing I used to call a blog called pharmacy frothy pearls. And what it was initially, that was just a short form, a handout, it’s using front and back that really summarize a disease state or a particular topic, and many people really enjoyed that, and I was fortunate to win an essay, who’s got talent for that, but people want a little more. I kept trying to make pharmacy pros larger or more in depth, but it really didn’t – it really wasn’t what people wanted. And as I continue to build websites and continue to get more involved in the podcast, I wanted to see if there was a way for me to monetize some of this, so I can build these platforms. And really, the next step for me was to figure out a way to, okay, build something people want and go from there.

So, about last year, I was able to really go about doing things where I planned out, what would this look like? And that step for me was to be able to go for it and create a university or academies where I can build things that not only myself, but other preceptors that individuals can be a part of, and it really was something that was I just figured out, if you want a topic, let me know and I’ll ask people what they wanted. I looked online to figure out what are the disease these people are interested in, and what, I think, they’re missing, and I really start to build upon that, and it really was the thing I want to separate, being able to give people things they need from our free standpoint with my podcasts and pearls, but then be able to get a little bit more in depth and provide some more value.

[00:06:35] TU: Critical care is certainly not my area of expertise. Emergency medicine, critical care. But I know enough within the profession that this is a topic that certainly there are groups within pharmacy associations. There are large critical care organizations outside of pharmacy that are well respected, and certainly ones that clinicians go to for resources. So, what was the gap that you saw? What was the opportunity that as you looked at those other “competing resources” that were out there, that you felt like, you know what, there’s a gap here that we really have an opportunity to build something that can supplement those resources?

[00:07:09] JP: Absolutely, Tim. So, one of the things that I noticed was that, unfortunately, when you get so big that a lot of the resources are really catered to a large percentage of practitioners. And what I want you to do is figure out what are the things that I need on a day to day basis that are necessarily not there. So, some of the times, I spent a large percentage of my time collecting resources, collecting and organizing resources. And I really wanted to figure out if there was a way for me to have all that in one click, that would save me hours of time. And also, I thought about as a resident, I spent even more time trying to figure out what is actually useful? What do I actually need to read?

So, that was the first thing that came to me with the reference library within PACU, was figuring out what do I need that’s not currently there, and what I spend the majority of my time on as a resident, and then now as a preceptor. So, I started going through different aspects and figuring out is there an easier way, or a more convenient way to organize these resources? And that was like the first step to this. And then I thought myself, how can I make this more all-inclusive, so I don’t have to go to five different websites? Because what I noticed was, I would consume a ton of content, but I had to go to five or six different websites to get that information, or I had to spend a significant amount of money each time I got those things, when I only really wanted one topic or so.

So, that was the basis for me creating a platform that included all of these things, and really helped me understand that maybe there’s a niche there for me to be able to go in and talk about the things that I do, and emergency medicine as being one of the newer specialties, and really build emergency medicine outwards, and go from that, to critical care, to internal medicine. And really, I thought about all of acute care pharmacy, there are certain things that we can build for them that they’re needing, and a lot of the content I build is based off what people send me questions on and things they say that they need. So, that was really the niche that I picked up on.

[00:09:08] TU: Yeah, so valuable information to hear there. It’s one, you’re living it, as a clinician, you went through the training, you feel the pain point yourself, and then I think you mentioned a great point there as well that something that resonates with me at YFP is questions that come in. You start to see themes and repetition, you start to pick up on okay, what are the pieces of content? What are the resources that would be helpful to serve people in the community?

When I take myself back Jimmy to being in pharmacy school, which was a while ago. I graduated 2008 and I remember going through rotations and like critical care was overwhelming. It’s quickly rising, it wasn’t for me. But I remember working with a lot of critical care practitioners and I can see why the resource you’ve built is of such value to them. And you mentioned one thing already that there’s so much information, different resources that are out there, so maybe not something about well as succinct as it could be. And obviously, you’re trying to address that pain point in the academy.

I also, when I think of critical care, I think of the confidence level that’s needed among the practitioners and just the amount of information, the urgency of some of the care situations, time management, just the overall competence of the practitioner. Are those other things that you’re seeing in the community where folks that are interested in your model might be struggling with some of those areas as well?

[00:10:26] JP: Absolutely. And those ways that I’m trying to address that through our community forum, and just be able to have a conversation, because a lot of times where depending on what your practice or depending on where you’re doing your training, you may not have people that you can talk to that’s been through the scenarios that they’re training you on. The patient population may not be big on that. So, a lot of the time, we’re having mentor sessions, and we’re having one of the things I’m working on for next month, is given a class based off resources to use to save you time and organize yourself.

So, all these things, we’re looking at ways and where we can create content for people, not just on the clinical side of things, but also on the site where they are able to organize and to be able to be a little bit more confident, and maybe having one on one conversations with myself, maybe have a one on one conversations with others, and that’s where I think that we’re unique, because we’re small enough to take the needs of our clientele and say, “Okay, what else do you need?” And then I can go and use the podcast. I can go out and use all the other social media platforms that I’ve been successful on to find these people and to give them what they need.

[00:11:34] TU: When I look at your mission, Jimmy, you mentioned to empower healthcare providers with the knowledge and skills they need to provide evidence based safe care for critically ill patients. So, that terminology, healthcare providers, suggests it’s broader than pharmacists. Are you building an interprofessional platform? Is it mostly pharmacists? Tell us more about the demographic of your audience?

[00:11:53] JP: Absolutely. As of right now, the majority of our audience is going to be a pharmacist base. But again, we do have a few nurses, we do have a few physicians. And the ultimate goal is to be inclusive of everyone who utilizes pharmacotherapy to treat patients. So, the big goal, I want this to be something that everyone can use. And we have some different plans for the end of the year in early 2023, where we can provide certain solutions to a medical residency program. There’s an interesting component to where they have, at least for emergency medicine, they have a pharmacotherapy or pharmacology section within their training that needs to be marked off.

As of now, there is not a standard of how to satisfy that. So, the more and more I teach within a residency program, I have a standing position where I teach once a month to our medical residents, I’m noticing they really value that. And what if your residency program doesn’t have a pharmacist? What if you don’t have an EM pharmacist in your program? Eventually, we can get to the point to where we can provide some resources for those practitioners as well. The same thing I get from the NPs and PAs, they want more pharmacy related content from pharmacists actually practicing at the bedside. Now, I think that’s the unique component of where we’re trying to take the platform and grow this to where it can be everyone, but again, we provide you what you need, and create it in such a way that is suitable for that particular person at their time, in their training.

[00:13:20] TU: I think it’s a really interesting niche, the medical residency. Again, you’re living it, you’re teaching and working at a large academic medical center, you work with medical residents, right? So, you can design and customize curriculum and experiences in a way that you know, will be meaningful that have been tested. But to your point, not every medical residency program has access to a pharmacy practitioner. Especially, if you’re looking at something like achievement of goals and objectives within a residency program, it’s a really interesting opportunity. And to further that point, one of the unique aspects as you look at potentially marketing products and services out to residency program directors, is they’re a pretty well-defined market. You can figure out who they are and begin those communications and the network of those folks is relatively small versus blasting out the service more broadly. 

So, tell us more about Pharmacy & Acute Care University. What do you offer? You’ve mentioned a couple things with the reference library, community forum. What are the core offerings of Pharmacy & Acute Care University?

[00:14:23] JP: Absolutely. So, we have a few. Our main ones I’ve mentioned before is the reference library where again, we collect this content and save you time by putting it to where you have a quick review. So, we not only give you the guidelines and a primary articles, we can give you review articles and something that other places and other platforms haven’t included, is the podcasts and blogs that are out there, that are also pretty useful. We get all those things together because we know that our residents, we know that our physicians and PA, NP, are using those blogs. So, why don’t we look at those, examine and see if they’re useful and provide them with something that they’re going to use as well.

[00:14:59] TU: That component of that can be our master classes. This is our traditional course. I think this is something that most people are familiar with, where you go through some modules, you answer a few questions, there are some videos and different multimedia. Again, you can do on your own time, on demand class. The most popular of our platform is going to be the live seminars, and that’s basically you have a live event to where I open this up to everyone, and we can get some continuing education credit for it as well, and we those at least once a month, and that’s again, open to everyone. And then from there, if you want to get access to the slides, you want to get access to recording or continue education, that can be available inside our membership.

And lastly, something that’s new that our audience ask for was literature review. So, where we examine an article every other week, and we’re going to continue to expand this, and we break down an article based on our review. So, we read article, we provide our analysis of what it is and how to utilize that within practice, and we send you a summary of that to your email. So, if you can listen to the five to 10-minute spiel on it, you can. But if you just want to get to the bare bones, and add that to your knowledge, we have a handout that we send you every few weeks that you can just get continually updated information that’s out there in literature.

Lastly, for our more advanced practitioners, and really everyone can use this, is our patient case questions. So, we can provide you information up front, but how do you know if you really know it? Or you think I’m an advanced practitioner, I know these different things. Well, how about you test that knowledge and see if you really do and see if you can do some space retrieval and bring back some things that you highly haven’t studied in maybe a couple of months or even years. So, that’s one of the things that we’ve added on to where – this is why I call, pack you a complete, an all in one platform is simply because we can teach you something, you communicate within the community forum, but you can also test yourself and get continuing education. So, you don’t really have to leave outside of that ecosystem that we’ve created to get almost anything else. And if there is, again, I made it to where we have a wish list within our forum, to where you can put in what you want, and I work on using my network to build those things.

[00:17:10] TU: I love it. It’s such a cool example of how you’ve been able to monetize the clinical expertise, but also be able to fill a gap that’s out there and be able to serve other pharmacists and healthcare professionals with these resources. I want to dissect a little bit of what you’ve done, because I think for many that are listening that say, “Hey, I think I could monetize my clinical expertise.” And that could be building something like you’ve built it, or I’m also thinking about, a shout out to Kelley Carlstrom, at Kelley C., PharmD that has built an incredible community for oncology practitioners. Or it could be somebody that is thinking, “Hey, I want to contribute to a community that already exist.” One like Jimmy has built or one like Kelley has built. But that can be overwhelming to think about building something.

So, I’m looking at your site and you’ve described all of these products and offerings. You’ve talked about a reference library, a masterclass, community forum, live seminars, a membership feature. You’ve talked about literature reviews which you’ve launched more recently. There’s a membership component to login. You’ve talked about a podcast, a blog, a social community, there’s a lot of pieces that are there. And so, the question is not just the time investment, but also, where do I start? Where do I start?

So, if you take yourself back to the beginning of this journey, and obviously you’ve evolved and built this over time, and you have plans to continue to do so as you just mentioned, where did you start from idea to, “Hey, I just want to take one step forward on this path towards building this vision.” What were those first one or two or three steps that you took to build what is now up on the website?

[00:18:42] JP: I think the big thing, particularly when looking at Pharmacy & Acute Care University, and I call it PACU, for short. The first thing that I did was, I knew that I didn’t know much about building this platform. One of the things I did was actually reading a book called Who Not How by Dan Sullivan, and it really opened my mind. Because the first thing I did was read that book, and I realized that I didn’t have to know everything. Once I got out of that fear, it’s more of a mindset shift. So, I think the first step is just figuring out where your mindset currently is. And ask myself, “What do you want to do? Do you want to educate people? Do you want to connect with people?” For me, one of the things that I enjoyed the most was educating. It’s something that I did within residency first, with just doing the pharmacy pearls. And that was something that I just did for the Emory residence, and I just did – on a Friday, I will get a small topic and go from there. And I realized that that was something I really enjoy, and I thought to myself, if there was a way for me to bring that type of information, that feeling that I got to a wide source of people, and if I can make a business around it, would it be something I can do? And I knew at the time I didn’t know how to do that. But I read that book and it was Who Not How, then I realized, I say okay, “Who do I need to know or who knows this type of platform that I can build?” I got a podcast called The Membership Guys and they would talk about how to build their own memberships and I read a book on that. And then they walked me through step by step.

So, I think the mindset was first and then figuring out that there’s other specialists, and that’s what’s the first step for me, just reading a book. The very first step was reading a book and figuring out that I really enjoy educating. So, the book, the mindset change, and just figuring out what at the simplest level, what do you want to do? And for me, it was figuring out a way to educate and connect with people.

[00:20:40] TU: I love that, Jimmy. And the reason I asked that question, and I can remember my own journey is a lot of people will start with an idea. And if you think about this, like a visual of a roller coaster. You ride that energy high of the idea, you’ve got a solution to a problem that you see out there, and then you start to get into the weeds, right? And some people jump into WordPress, some people jump into logos, some people jump into how am I going to price my products or services or offerings, and that is typically where people get hung up, they might get lost, they might get overwhelmed. And I think the advice you give on mindset shift, and even that next step of a book, it was Who Not How by Dan Sullivan. We’ll link to that in the show notes.

But that’s one tangible step, I can read something that can evolve my thought process, it can open up my eyes to before I get into the weeds, who might help me on this journey along the way and make sure that I can keep that momentum going forward. So, my question building on that, Who Not How is as we look at PACU and what you have offered today, I’ve gotten the impression based on our conversation that it’s not just Jimmy, there’s other people that are involved in the business, whether that’s contributors, whether that’s contractors that you’ve worked with, to help you build out the site and other things. Is that fair? And if so, tell me more about the infrastructure of who’s helping you build the community that you have?

[00:21:54] JP: Absolutely. One of the things that I took my – when I first started off, I didn’t want to make this about me. Because again, at some point, I won’t be able to do all aspects of this. And it became very overwhelming when I thought I had to. So, after I read that book, I said, “Okay, who can – I need a website.” So, it’s like, “Okay, who can build a website?” I went through and looked on a free app, I looked on Fiverr, I looked at all these different platforms, and I just interviewed many different people. They got me the first person and I had a good interaction with that. So okay, how can I get more people? I did trial and error of finding different virtual assistants, finding different contributors. And I came to the point to where I said, okay, I have a basis of people who can web design and develop, and the next step was getting someone who can handle some of my more operational task. So, I hired someone on for that.

And then the next big step that I think, is not only going to help me, but I think is going to help the majority of the community is when I started getting guest writers and guest presenters to come on, and people really enjoyed that. What I start to realize is that many people, they want a platform to present. They want a platform to display what they know, because for one reason or the other, if they don’t have a certain credential, or they don’t have a certain – they didn’t go to a certain school, they may have been overlooked for these presentations, because you only have so many national conferences and ways to present, and people need it for the CV, people need it for their own conference, to be honest. So, I started reaching out and say, and ask some people on Twitter, “Hey, who will be interested in contributing to the platform?” And there’s many ways you can do it. Well, do you like to speak or not?

I noticed that there are certain people who just want to get presentations live. And then I noticed there was a group of people who they wanted to contribute, but they really didn’t want to face shown, they really didn’t want to be heard, they really don’t like their voice. I would say that, a little bit over 60% of my platform can be produced with not any voice, not with video and things of that nature, and people really took hold to that. And now, we’re to the point to where we have a rotation of probably 20 to 30 pharmacists that contribute on a platform. And that’s when things really started to take off. Because I started being more from a managerial and more operational standpoint, and being able to assign work, assign task, and really use my platform to connect with people, versus having to worry about creating the content consistently. And that’s really given me some satisfaction in my personal life. I think I’ve been able to meet more people that I wouldn’t have met if I wouldn’t have reached out to them and be contributors.

[00:24:30] TU: That’s a really important evolution in the business. Because I think that as you’re talking about here, you have 20 to 30 plus contributors, and obviously, your time is a finite resource from your sanity, as well as just hours that are in the day. But I would also argue and I think your point about, “Hey, this can’t just be about Jimmy is a really important one.” Because if you’re solving a problem and filling a need that’s out there in the market, your time was eventually going to become a rate limiting step to what you were going to be able to do in terms of the value you were going to provide to the community.

So, I think as you now building out this infrastructure of contributors, obviously, you’re able to begin to expand the work and the reach of that. Let me ask a follow up to that, and I think maybe some folks might be uncomfortable with that span and control. Yes, I get excited about the mission, and the work can move forward, and I’m not always writing them. But am I losing the potentially the quality or the span and control? How do I oversee all this? So, has that been a challenge for you? Or what have been some systems that you built to help with that?

[00:25:32] JP: Absolutely. One of the things that happened initially, I was getting some work done, and I got medical writers that can help with creating some of this content, and I noticed that it just wasn’t up to par from the advanced practitioner. And I noticed a big difference when a pharmacist create my information versus someone who wasn’t necessarily within pharmacy, or I would say, wasn’t an acute care pharmacy. And I noticed that as I’m getting ready to review this information, it was so much that I had to change and I noticed I need someone who gets it. And it’s someone who understands that and maybe the next limiting step was me editing that material.

So, one of the aspects of how I added on, I say, okay, I’m going to have to contributor who make the content, but also have a contributor who’s my editor, who edit this stuff before I see it and get it cleaner, and go back and forth from that standpoint. And that really helped quite a bit because it made me feel more comfortable with that content moving forward, versus me thinking, I had to change that, and I’m already making content as well. So, that was the big step. But it did make me feel a little uncomfortable again, because some of the things that was important to other people, other editors, wasn’t necessarily as important to me. But I realized it may be important to my audience. And that’s where it really became more prevalent that I needed to make sure I empower my editors, I empower my contributors. Because, again, they’re going to be the ones that build this platform to really be something that’s much bigger than what it currently is now.

[00:27:01] TU: So, as I hear you talk about this journey, and the work and the systems and the processes that you’re building now, I think a natural question is, Jimmy, how are you doing this? So, you’re working full time, you’re working in a large academic medical center, you mentioned a teaching component, which anyone who’s been in a shared faculty role, you know that that in and of itself can feel like more than one job. You’re teaching trainees, I suspect, medical residents, pharmacy residents, pharmacy students, medical students. So, how have you been able to balance this or maybe balance isn’t even a thing, as you’re getting it off the ground. But tell us more about the strategies that you’ve employed, to be able to work on this and move the mission forward. But also, make sure that you’re keeping yourself well throughout the journey?

[00:27:43] JP: I think one of the biggest things that came up was, I had some advice to make sure you make systems for everything. And I didn’t necessarily know what that meant, until I started building this. Because again, when you’re by yourself, you’re the system. But when you start to train other people to do a task, and you realize that you have to give very detailed instructions, or you’re going to spend more time revising things. So, I started using, again, everyone has their own productivity manager, I use the platform Click Up, and that’s where I basically have everything lived. So, everything has his own bucket. And within there, everything has their own sub tasks and different checklists to get a single task done, and I’ve worked with my assistant to where some of the more difficult tasks, I would have her go through it, but then create instructions on each step. Pictures and do think different things like that.

So, when I assign this task with someone else, they can go through and pretty easily get those things done. And once I built up a big base of that, I started using it for everything. So, even for, in my role within my course, every class have a certain lesson plan, every class have a certain setup, a certain thing that need to happen. I have made templates for emails I’m going to send. I’ve made templates for – on top of the discussions that I have. So, all these things have their own system now. And now, it’s been a couple of years where most of the – if I’ve done it two or three times, I just spend a little extra time making the system out of it, and I just use that over and over again. So now, it takes to where I can focus my time on creating new platforms and creating new systems, and all the ones I’ve done in the past, I just reuse that. It’s been phenomenal for me in saving time. And again, almost everything that I do now from the production of a podcast, from creating the conference, I’ve done it now more than once, and it’s easier for me to be able to put those things on autopilot, so to say.

[00:29:39] TU: I love that, Jimmy. I did an episode recently, 265 where we talked about – we’ll link to that in the show notes, 10 lessons learned from employed entrepreneur. And that was one of the things that I talked about, because it’s so important as you think about, again, how can this continue to grow and evolve and the question I encourage folks to think about that are beginning as a solopreneur and looking to build out some of the systems is, if you were to walk away for a month, you’re to take a break, something were to happen that you needed a month off, would the business be able to continue to go on and ideally grow in your absence? That question really forces the – okay, what are all the hats that I’m wearing, and are things documented in a manner that someone else can be trained up? And ideally, over time, people are able to take on those roles so that you can continue to move forward and grow the business.

Two books I would recommend on this concept that Jimmy is talking about here, we’ll link to these in the show notes E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. Great book that talks about the concept that that Jimmy just outlined, and then Procrastinate on Purpose by Rory Vaden talks a little bit about this concept as well that I think folks may find helpful.

Jimmy, my last question for you is, given this as a financial podcast, one of the big upsides I see as a side hustle or a business, especially as people are working full time, is it allows them to supercharge and accelerate their financial goals, whether that be debt repayment, saving for the future, having some extra cash on hand, whatever be the case. So, my question is, how has developing PACU, how has that helped you reach or advance your, your financial goals that you’re working on?

[00:31:14] JP: Absolutely. I think one of the big things is during this same timeframe reading and develop myself for this, I’ve learned where it’s the best to place money and how to have money work for you. And the biggest things as additional income start come again, I realized that, okay, I could really look to something to where it can not only supplement income, but potentially with greater success, being able to kind of take over part of that. So, it’s really helped me – the ideal of retirement has completely changed my mind. It used to be an age, but now it’s a number.

So, when I talk to my family, and I talk to everyone around me, there’s a certain number that I had to get to per month, to where I feel that I’ll be comfortable enough to not be full time anymore. I know what that number is, for part time. I know what that number is for 0.75 FTE, and it’s really changed my mindset. So, the biggest benefit to me is understanding that not only can money work for me in other aspects that will benefit from PACU, but it also, is going to allow me more time to spend time with family, to travel, do things of that nature. So, it’s actually given me a different approach to what retirement looks like, and really, to feel comfortable in that space. So, that’s the big thing for me, is spending more time with family, and change the mindset from when to and what that number looks like.

[00:32:35] TU: It’s great stuff, and I think as you talk about, it’s a number, not an age. We’ve talked about that on the show, and one, it gets me excited for your journey is not only is it about being able to spend more time with your family and friends and enjoy the experiences you want, but also connecting to our conversation just a moment ago, because you’re building the systems and processes on where it will go, the mission of what you’re working on, because you’re going to have other folks that are involved. And so, as you’re spending more time with family and friends, and enjoying those experiences, the company, the mission, the work, can still advance, even in your absence. So, this has been awesome. So excited for you, Jimmy and what you have a future in your community. We’ll link again to the PACU website. Where is the best place that listeners can go to find you and to follow your journey?

[00:33:20] JP: I think Twitter is going to be the best place to catch me, where I’m the most active, @PharmD_intheED. That’s where I spend a decent amount of my time. Again, if you’re interested in the PACU platform, we have platforms on all the social media, so LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, all those things we have platforms there. So again, I’ll be aware of any information that’s coming into those platforms, and Twitter is probably the easiest place to catch me. Again, @PharmD_intheED.

[00:33:47] TU: Awesome. Thank you so much, Jimmy for taking time to come on the show. I appreciate it.

[00:33:51] JP: Tim, it has been an absolute pleasure. Again, we follow you guys for a while and this is something that again, it’s really, I’m looking forward to.

[00:33:57] TU: Thank you

[OUTRO]

[00:33:58] 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 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 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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