Maximizing Income / Podcast

YFP 233: Tax Moves to Consider Before 2022

Posted on December 9, 2021November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

Tax Moves to Consider Before 2022

On this episode, sponsored by APhA, Paul Eikenberg, YFP CFO and Director of YFP Tax, discusses how pharmacists can optimize their tax strategy.

Episode Summary

As we approach the end of the year and will soon enough find ourselves amid tax filing season, it’s a great time to revisit end-of-year tax strategies and considerations to optimize your tax situation. Today on the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast, host Tim Ulbrich sits down with IRS enrolled agent and our own Director of YFP Tax, Paul Eikenberg, to discuss how pharmacists can optimize their tax strategy. Paul has supported hundreds of pharmacists in tax filing and tax planning to maximize their deductions and avoid overpaying. Today he kicks us off with the important distinction between tax planning and preparation, as well as why it’s worthwhile to understand key numbers such as marginal tax rates and AGI. You’ll hear him describe common tax blunders he sees pharmacists making and how to avoid them, including realizing an unexpected balance due on April 15. We cover some of the factors that contribute to that making non-qualified IRA or 401(k), 403(b) contributions and missing key deductions in credits, and the listener gets a look into the two exciting tax services we have on offer to help pharmacists looking for a tax preparation and/or tax strategy and planning solution. To top it off, we’ve even got a comprehensive tax checklist for you to get the absolute maximum out of your tax benefits. This is one conversation you don’t want to miss.

Key Points From This Episode

Paul and Tim catch us up with some exciting happenings in the YFP tax team.
Understanding the important difference between tax preparation and tax planning.
Differentiating your marginal tax rate and effective tax rate as a decision-making tool.
Paul explains the implications of AGI and how to arrive at that number.
Touching on the complicated system of student loans and pursuing loan forgiveness.
Some common tax blunders that you should look out for!
Key credits and deductions that you might not be taking advantage of.
What is going to be available moving forward with child-care and dependent care.
Explaining donor-advised funds and a potential strategy around bunching.
Two exciting tax services: reporting only and year-round planning and reporting

Highlights

“Make sure your tax exposure and your tax strategy line up with your financial goals. The biggest thing that tax planning really does is provide some peace of mind that you’re not making mistakes and that you’re making good decisions.” — Paul Eikenberg [0:08:05]

“Our best practices with YFP is to advise people to, instead of putting the money in the [retirement] funds during the course of the year, put it into an investment account.” — Paul Eikenberg [0:23:26]

“The rules on business expenses are, they have to be business-related, ordinary, necessary, and not extravagant. Ordinary is, if someone else is doing the same type of business, they’re going to have the same type of expenses necessary.” — Paul Eikenberg [0:25:09]

“The donor-advised fund makes it easy to [maximize tax benefits]. Then, you can spread that money out and make the donations from the fund you control. It’s like having your own foundation.” — Paul Eikenberg [0:34:36]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

End of Year Tax Checklist

Project your income, taxes, and withholding
Maximize your HSA contribution
Know your FSA carryover limits and spend accordingly
Consider 529 account contributions
Document side business expenses – Mileage Logs**
Have and execute a charitable contribution strategy
Correct any over contributions to 401K/403B/IRAs
Manage your capital gains
Look for IRS Letter 6419 Advanced Child Credit & Notice 1444-C
Have a system for organizing your tax documents
Select & engage your tax preparation method

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 chance to sit down with YFP Director of Tax and CFO, Paul Eikenberg to discuss how pharmacists can optimize their tax strategy. Paul’s an IRS enrolled agent and has supported hundreds of pharmacists in both tax filing and tax planning to maximize their deductions and avoid overpaying. As we approach the end of the year and will soon enough find ourselves in the midst of tax filing season, it’s a great time to revisit end-of-year strategies and considerations to optimize your tax situation.

Some of the highlights from my interview with Paul include him explaining the important distinction between tax planning and preparation, why it’s important to understand key numbers such as marginal tax rates and AGI. Hearing him describe common tax blunders he sees pharmacists making and how to avoid them. Some of these blunders include realizing an unexpected balance due on April 15, and some of the factors that contribute to that making non-qualified IRA or 401(k), 403(b) contributions, and missing key deductions in credits. Finally, hearing Paul’s end of the year to-do list, your notes already prepared and ready to go for you to take action.

Before we hear from today’s sponsor and then jump into the show, at YFP, we know that filing your taxes and figuring out how to optimize your tax strategy can be overwhelming and stressful. That’s why YFP Tax has opened up its tax filing services to 125 additional pharmacist households this year. Unlike other firms, YFP tax isn’t focused on just completing your tax return. Instead, they provide value care and attention to you and your taxes. Because they work specifically with pharmacists, they’re familiar with aspects of your financial plan to have an impact on your taxes like student loans, benefit packages, side hustles and more. You can visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/tax to learn more and to put your name on the waitlist. Again, that’s yourfinancialpharmacist.com/tax.

Okay. Let’s hear from today’s sponsor and then we’ll jump into my interview with Paul Eikenberg.

Today’s episode of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast is brought to you by the American Pharmacists Association. APhA has partnered with Your Financial Pharmacist to deliver personalized financial education benefits for APhA members. Throughout the year, APhA will be hosting a number of exclusive webinars covering topics like student loan debt payoff strategies, home buying, investing, insurance needs and much more. Join APhA now to gain premier access to these educational resources and to receive discounts on YFP products and services. You can join APhA at a 25% discount by visiting pharmacist.com/join and using the coupon code, YFP. Again, that’s pharmacist.com/join using the coupon code, YFP.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:02:54] TU: Paul, glad to have you back on the show.

[00:02:57] PE: Hey, Tim. Good to be here.

[00:02:59] TU: Question, are you ready for another tax season? Feels like we – you, really, and the team just wrapped up things from last year. It’s been a busy year, right?

[00:03:07] PE: That’s how it feels too. We just finished October 15th, the last of our extensions and are trying to build the capacity this year to do all our internal returns and 125 more.

[00:03:22] TU: That’s exciting stuff. In addition to the work that you’re doing as the director of tax and leading that initiative at YFP, the team is also growing. We’ve got some folks that are coming on board. Tell us about those exciting developments.

[00:03:34] PE: Aurielle was coming on board full time this year. She worked with us last year as a contractor and I’ve worked with her in a previous business venture. Really excited to have her come on board, and help smooth out the processes and build capacity to do more returns. Then Ryan Griffin, who’s a pharmacist and loves to do taxes on the side is coming back this year and working with us again. We’ll be adding some – one or two other contractors that we’ve talked to this year are interested in joining our team. It should be a good group to increase the capacity and help us do a better job for more people.

[00:04:23] TU: I know. Tim and I are super grateful for your contributions to what has made the service that it is today for the other folks you mentioned, Arielle and Ryan. We really believe that tax for obvious reasons, we’re going to talk about much that on the show today is such an important thread of the financial plan. That tax planning and preparation is really best if we embed that into the financial plan and can consider that, both looking back in the filing as we’ll talk about, but also in more the planning, and look ahead and the strategy side of it.

That’s the theme for today’s show, how to optimize your tax situation. Great time, as I mentioned in the introduction, end of the calendar year. Some opportunities to wrap some things up, get some momentum in the new year. We’re going to talk through some of the differences of tax planning and prep, key numbers and terms to understand, some commonly made blunders. We’re certainly not going to address all of these. Some strategies and then a checklist of things to do before the end of the year.

Paul, kick us off. I think, really, with this first part which is the theme, as we think of the others, and this really highlights the intentionality of thinking about taxes. Not only looking backwards, and doing the filing, and the preparation, but also more of the proactive planning. Tell us about the difference between tax planning, tax preparation and why that difference is so important.

[00:05:44] PE: Tim, the way I like to look at it, tax preparation is just historically recording what happened last year. We as tax preparers take your information, prepare a return. There’s not much of an opportunity to have an impact on your tax liability. There may be a couple of things we can do when preparing your taxes that you can adjust before April 15th. But it’s really difficult to have much impact on the tax liability during that period of time. You have to understand that when you’re dealing with tax preparation, it’s really deadline driven. When we get into February, March, and April, we’re working every hour trying to complete returns, chase down information, review and file.

There’s not as much time to pay attention to what could have been done, look at future strategies and really think through how to improve the situation. One of the frustrating things on our end is, when you’re preparing a tax return, that’s the time a lot of problems pop up, and are discovered and it’s too late to fix a lot of times there.

You contrast that to thinking about tax planning’s forward focus. For our clients, we do a lot of tax projections in the middle of the year or towards the end of the year. That’s a great time to look for things that can have more impact on tax liability. It’s just like financial planning. If you’re making the right decisions, they compound over the course of years. Tax savings builds, it helps put more money in your investment and savings accounts. It can help you leverage the income you have if you’re making the right tax choices. The best time to do that is not during the tax filing season.

From planning, we help people avoid common mistakes. Make sure your tax exposure and your tax strategy lines up with your financial goals. The biggest thing that tax planning really does is provide some peace of mind that you’re not making mistakes and that you’re making good decisions about how you’re approaching all t he tools you have to mitigate your taxes.

[00:08:27] TU: Yeah. I think our community will appreciate working and living in the healthcare environment, where we see the importance and value of preventative health care versus that that’s more reactive. We think about tax preparation, got to do it, it’s required, right? Or else the IRS is going to come knocking on the door. The tax planning may not have that same priority in terms of that requirement, but so important in terms of that strategy and what that can mean to the rest of the financial plan. As well as Paul mentioned, the peace of mind.

Paul, as we think about key numbers that folks need to know, certainly there’s a lot that we could talk about here. But I think starting off with differentiating marginal tax rate and effective tax rate is really important because these are terms that we throw around. We’ll talk about AGI here in a moment, adjusted gross income. But I think when people are hearing about certain strategies and benefits, or maybe they’ve been told by a preparer before about what their tax rates are, may not have a full understanding of what that term means. And then what the implications are of how to use that or how helpful it is or is not as a decision-making tool. Define for us marginal tax rate versus effective tax rate, and specifically why that marginal rate is an important decision-making tool.

[00:09:40] PE: Well, let’s start with marginal rate. The marginal tax rate, think of it about as the percentage of tax you’re paying on the last dollar you earned and the next dollar you earned. There’s a lot of misconceptions on how the tax brackets work. Most pharmacists are in the 24% or 32% tax bracket. That doesn’t mean you pay 24% on all your income. You’re being taxed at 10% for some, 12% for the next layer, 22% for another layer and then you’re paying 24%. They average out to what’s commonly known as an effective tax rate. Think of effective as the average tax rate.

But the marginal rates, really the number when I talk to people, that’s the number I want them to remember. What is your marginal tax rate? Because that’s your decision-making number. If you want to make a charitable contribution, if you’re in a 24% federal tax bracket, $100, that’s deductible to a charity, you’re going to save $24 in tax. It helps make decisions on traditional versus Roth contributions. You’ll understand what the tax ramifications are.

Today, HSA contributions would save you in taxes. Just having that marginal tax rate, knowing what it is helps make a lot of decisions on earning more money, or how the deduction is going to affect you. When I talk to our clients, that’s one of the most important numbers I want them to remember is where they fall in that marginal tax rate.

[00:11:33] TU: In ballpark numbers, Paul, knowing that, of course, it’s dependent upon one situation, whether or not they live in a state where there is tax or is not. Ballpark numbers, what do you see in terms of many of the clients from a tax perspective of the marginal rate and the effective tax rate?

[00:11:52] PE: When we looked at federal alone, a high percentage of our clients are in the 24% marginal tax rate and see their effective rate in the 17%, 18% area. State taxes, you can live in Florida, Tennessee, Texas and you have zero income tax. California, you see people 9%, 10%. Maryland, when you add in the local tax, you’re up to eight. It’s everywhere between 0% and 10% for the states. You need to calculate that in with the federal for really what your marginal rates are going to be.

[00:12:40] TU: I think the other key number for folks to make sure we’re defining and thinking about the implications would be AGI. When I think of AGI, everyone has likely heard of whether it’s considerations around student loan payments, or phase-outs for certain credits or deductions. Often, those are referenced according to someone’s AGI and the phase-outs based on AGI or adjusted gross income. Paul, tell us what is the AGI. How does that connect to one’s income and what’s subtracted from the income to come up with the AGI and then some of the reasons why that AGI number is so important?

[00:13:18] PE: Let’s talk about what the income is. Gross income, you add all your wages, dividends, interest, if you have capital gains, side business income, any money you’re bringing in, typically gross income. They’re what’s known as above-the-line deductions. The most common things we see are HSA contributions, 401(k), 403(b) contributions. They reduce your AGI. Reduce that gross income, gives you the adjusted gross income. Teachers will see some educator expenses. Residents will see student loan interest that can come off of there. But those are commonly referred to as above-the-line reductions and affect the AGI. You take all that income, reduce them by the above-the-line deductions and you get your AGI.

Now, where we see that really come into effect are student loans, where payments are based on income and will also lower AGI, lowers your payments. Lower payments increase the value of the forgiveness program. They do have a big effect on a lot of pharmacists. It’s a number that we work with people to manage as best they can. Make sure they’re using all their tools to take advantage of those programs.

The other thing you’ll hear a lot are phase-outs. This year, the child credits get reduced when a married filing joint couple’s AGI is above $150,000. You start to phase out there. Child care credits, start phasing out or phasing down. They don’t phase out at $125,000 AGI.

There are a lot of things we see our clients are affected by AGI. There are cases where contributing a little bit more to an HSA or make more into a retirement program can not only affect that marginal rate you’re paying, but can substantially affect some of the credits that would be available to you. The other thing that AGI is a factor in, is your long-term capital gain rates. It’s an important number to manage and work into your tax strategy.

[00:16:03] TU: Yeah. Paul, a couple of things I want to highlight that you said that are really important. Your comment just a moment ago about depending on where you’re at with AGI and some of the phase-outs, it might be helpful to make an HSA contribution, 401(k), 403(b). Obviously, depends on someone’s personal situation. But that highlights what we just talked about a few moments ago of really the differentiation between the preparation and the planning.

If we’re simply going through that preparation and we realize what’s been – and perhaps it’s too late, maybe we make an adjustment for the future. But if we’re planning and proactively looking ahead, we have an opportunity to project where those rates are going to be. And then what are some of those levers that we could pull to really maximize that situation.

The other thing I want to mention to make sure we don’t gloss over, and I think we’ve done so much of this at clients at YFP Planning that perhaps we take it for granted, is that student loans for good reasons, they’re very complicated. Unfortunately, the system is probably more complicated than it needs to be. Tax preparers and accountants may not necessarily be really well versed in student loan repayment strategies, and the intersection of the student loan repayment strategy and tax planning and preparation. We’ve gotten that feedback so many times, of folks that may have talked with someone else and didn’t understand the student loans or got conflicting advice. I think, really making sure for folks specifically that are pursuing loan forgiveness, that you’re really considering how that tax strategy is interfacing with that student loan repayment. Because there are some situations that, filing separately versus filing jointly, that may not be intuitive from a traditional tax planning preparation standpoint, do make sense when it comes to loan forgiveness.

[00:17:41] PE: Yeah. It will almost always cost you more in taxes to file separate. But there are so many cases that we deal with the savings and the benefits on a student loan, just more than make up for it. Substantially more than make up for it in some cases.

[00:18:00] TU: Next thing. Paul. I want to pick your brain on was, some common tax blunders that you’ve seen and things that folks may be on the lookout for. We’re not going to go through an exhaustive list or we’d be here for a long time. But a few things I want to highlight, probably one of the more common things I think we see, and perhaps leads to some headaches for those that are going through the filing phase, is realizing that they were under withholding. Tell us about that, Paul, and why that may be and some of the things that folks can be thinking about to prevent that.

[00:18:33] PE: Yeah. It’s one of the more painful things for both the tax preparer, and the client is when you say, “I know you’ve got a $5,000 refund last year, but this year, you owe $5,000 in taxes.” We see big swings when maybe you got married this year, and your W-2 is now filled out, married, filing joint and it’s not filled out in a way that your employer takes into account your spouse’s income. If you switch jobs in the middle of the year, sometimes the W-4 just don’t match up and you’re under withheld. If you’re working side jobs, if you’re not completing that tax withholding form correctly, you’re employed, both your employers are not taking into account the wages you’re earning at that secondary job.

Multiple jobs, spouse’s earnings not being calculated in are common things. The other items that kind of cause and contribute to that is, maybe you have self-employment earnings and you’re not only got income tax on that, but you’ll have the self-employment tax. If you had capital gains or stock options, sometimes those are going to sneak up and cause a tax liability you weren’t thinking about. This year, you’ve really got to be prepared in thinking about, if you receive the advanced child credits since July, and your AGI is over that phase out, some of that money or all of that money is going to have to be repaid. There’s a chance you weren’t eligible for any of that. You really need to be prepared if you’re getting it and you know your income, your AGI is going to be over $150,000. You should be thinking through whether that might be causing you a problem.

[00:20:36] TU: We’re running out of time, Paul, for folks to opt-out of any of those payments, have they been receiving them.

[00:20:41] PE: December is the only one you can opt-out now, and I believe it’s November 29 that you have to do it by. Just be aware of that one hit. That could cause some unexpected problems.

[00:20:56] TU: Better to find out in November, December than March or April.

[00:20:59] PE: Yeah. That’s what we always say is, if we can identify the issue in October, November, we have six months to be ready for the tax bill. If you find out in March, we’ve got to be ready to pay it right then and there.

[00:21:16] TU: That being a common blunder, unexpected balance due on April 15 as you mentioned, less than ideal for both the preparer and the client. The other bucket here would be non-qualified IRA or 401(k), 403(b) contribution. So tell us more about how this happens and some of the headaches this can create.

[00:21:32] PE: Switching jobs or having multiple jobs is where we’ll see the 401(k), 403(b) contributions go over that 19-5 maximum. A lot of people just put the percentage in. If you work for the same employer all year, they usually stop at the maximum. But if you’ve got multiple employers, they are unaware of what amount the other one has put into it.

Usually, if you discover this before December 31, it’s not that difficult to have the funds given back. But W-2s can be adjusted properly and you avoid some of the more difficult and time-consuming ways to correct it, if you don’t discover it till the end of following season. Knowing that it’s a problem before the end of the year and getting it corrected can save penalties and save you from having to go through the amended returns.

With IRAs, with pharmacists, the phase-outs, it’s more than likely you’re phasing out on your ability to do traditional IRAs. There are limitations on SEP IRAs. There’s a misunderstanding of what the rules are on them. Especially the SEPs, you really don’t know until you do your tax return. How much you can contribute to a SEP is very common. We see people contribute to traditional IRAs. SEPs that are over what they can contribute. Roths as well, and there’s a lot of hoops to jump through to correct it after the fact, where it’s better – our best practices with YFP is to advise people to, instead of putting the money in the funds during the course of the year, put it into an investment account. When we get an exact number, which you qualify for, you’re able to put those in the IRAs up till April 15th and we can deal with actual numbers rather than guessing what you qualify for.

[00:23:53] TU: Then having to correct it later, potentially.

[00:23:55] PE: Yeah. We’ve had people that have had to file two, three years of abundant returns to correct over contributions to IRAs.

[00:24:06] TU: The third bucket of potential blunders would be missing deductions and credits, of course, that may be applicable to folks. There’s lots of deductions and credits to consider, whether that’s childcare credits, adoption credits, tuition deductions, property taxes, charitable contribution. We’re not going to go through all of those. But Paul, are there some of these that jump out of common ones that we see folks overlooking or not taking advantage of?

[00:24:31] PE: Yeah, refis in home purchases. A lot of times when you’re purchasing a home, you’re paying your property taxes in advance and that gets overlooked frequently. Are the property taxes paid at the time of settlement? If you did refi or have a home purchase, you want to have that settlement sheet available to go through and see if it helps with itemized deduction. Side business expenses, if you have a side hustle, document everything you think is a legitimate expense.

The rules on business expenses are, they have to be business-related, ordinary, necessary, and not extravagant. Ordinary is, if someone else is doing the same type of business, they’re going to have the same type of expenses necessary. If you think of it as anything you are spending to get customers or grow how much business they do with you, there’s the argument that that’s a legitimate business expense. Their cell phone, internet cost, some of your continuing education, are all things that can legitimately be switched to a schedule C business. Not all of it, but a percentage of it that you can make a case or business expenses.

Then, one of the things, if you’re not maxing out your HSA, you should be matching out your HSA. People leave dollars on the table with the HSA contributions.

[00:26:15] TU: I think it’s just a good reminder, Paul, as you mentioned, side hustle expenses and the guidelines in the IRS that they have to be business-related, ordinary, necessary, not extravagant. We’re seeing more and more clients at YFP Planning, more folks in the YFP community that are pursuing side hustles or generating additional income from the W-2 income. Certainly, something to be thinking about and planning for, again, hopefully proactively. Which is a good segue into talking about some strategies to optimize one’s tax situation. You’ve already mentioned a couple and we’ve talked about some of these at length on other episodes.

You mentioned HSAs as low-hanging fruit. We’ve talked before about HSAs in the podcast. We’ll link to that in the show notes. You mentioned the side hustle expenses, and we talked briefly about the child tax credit. A couple others that I would like to focus on, Paul, starting with the child care credit, since this was an increase that we saw in 2021 and may be applicable for many that are listening. Tell us about that child care credit and the changes that we’ve seen this year.

[00:27:15] PE: Yeah. This was part of the recovery program. Right now, it’s only been increased for 2021. But you know, we expect that the next legislation that comes through is going – this is going to be a prime factor in it. Child care costs in 2020, you were able to take a credit for up to $3,000 for one child, $6,000 for two or more children. Most pharmacists qualified for 20% credit on those. Two kids, you are qualified to get up to a $1,200 credit. 2021, the amount that the credit is based on it is now $8,000 for one child, or $16,000 for two or more. Maximum credit is $3,200 for most pharmacists this year. For the child care credit, in 2021, you’re going to be looking at probably a 20% credit on $16,000 of expenses, $3,200 hours. Most pharmacists with two children or more. That’s what’s going to be available.

It’s a substantial increase in the amount of credit that’s available and it reflects – it better reflects the actual cost of childcare that we see, then that $3,000 and $6,000 power plant. That’s going to be a good benefit to a lot of the clients we work with. The other thing to look at is the dependent care FSA. That’s a great benefit that we see available to pharmacists that a lot of them are taking advantage of. But you can shift. The limit was $5,000. It was increased to a maximum of $10,500 that can be taken out of your wages and reimburse you for the child care expenses. The advantage of doing it this way, over taking the credit is, if you’re in a higher marginal tax rate, then the 20%. It’s better to have it in the dependent care FSA.

The other big advantage there, two advantages is, it reduces your AGI. The money that is withheld from the W-2 is not subject to the FICA tax. You could save another 7.65% there. It’s a great program if your employer offers it. Not all employers have increased the limit to $10,500. You really need to check what’s available to you through your employer. But if you have it, and you’re paying child care expenses, take advantage of it.

[00:30:09] TU: I’ve heard you say before, Paul, this is one of the more underutilized benefits that we see. Obviously, for those listening that have children, between the childcare credit, the dependent care FSA changes and the child tax credit, lots to consider here. And making sure we’re taking advantage of some of those opportunities.

[00:30:24] PE: Definitely.

[00:30:25] TU: The other thing too, and we won’t go into detail on today’s show, because we’ve talked about it several different times in the podcast related to 529s. But again, on the theme here of children and the context of college savings, that’s another optimization strategy to consider. Obviously, taking advantage of some of the state tax considerations and benefits there. We’ll link to previous content and 529 in the show notes.

Paul, I do want to wrap up this section on benefits talking about a topic that we have not talked about in detail on this show. Tim Baker and I did a question on ask YFP CFP on donor-advised funds, but we didn’t get into the strategy of bunching and some of the nuances of the donor-advised fund. For those that are looking at charitable giving opportunities, tell us more about what is a donor-advised fund and what is the potential strategy around bunching versus not bunching.

[00:31:19] PE: Donor-advised fund is an account you can set up, [inaudible 0:31:26] have an account. There’s a lot of faith-based organizations that have donor-advised funds available. But basically, you make your charitable contribution to that fund. Then you’re the one that controls how it is distributed from there, and it can be distributed over a period of years. It’s tax-deductible in the year you put money in. But it’s an opportunity, it gives you some tax advantages and gives you an opportunity to be more strategic about how you give.

One of the things that it does is, it makes donating appreciated assets easy. I have a fun setup and I can donate stock that I’ve had a significant gain on. When I do that, I’m not paying capital gains tax on the stock I’m donating. Let’s say I paid $5,000 for a stock that’s now worth $10,000. I get a $10,000 charitable deduction when I switch that over. I don’t pay $5,000 capital gain tax. It is one of the best ways to maximize the power of your donations to do more with less.

Donor-advised funds makes that easy and all that money is deductible when it goes in there. Now, that becomes a big advantage when you start talking about a bunching strategy. A lot of people, when the 2018 tax change came in and the standard deduction was raised, are kind of on the edge of being able to itemize or not itemize. When we talk about a bunching strategy, it’s, let’s say bunching charitable contributions in odd years. Instead of making a $5,000 contribution in 2021 and 2022, I’ll make a $10,000 contribution to the donor-advised fund in 2021. I get all of that $10,000 deductible in that 2021 year. That may put me $5,000 over the itemized deduction limit. The next year I take a standard deduction.

It is possible, without changing the amount of money donated in those two years, that I get an additional $5,000 worth of the standard and itemized deduction added together for the two years. Could be as much as $5,000 more than if I donate the money $5,000 one year and $5,000 the next.

[00:34:28] TU: Just by grouping those together, the dollar amount didn’t change, but putting them together maximizes the tax benefits.

[00:34:35] PE: Yeah. The donor-advised fund makes it easy to do that. Then, you can spread that money out and make the donations from the fund you control. It’s like having your own foundation. There are a lot of different options out there. There’s different investment opportunities with the money in it. There can be minimums, some different costs. But you put money in there, the capital gains on money left in there grow without tax. We see people who have stock options that have gone through the roof, can really do an amount of good, and wind up 50 cents on a $1, sometimes, of being able to increase the value of their contributions by that much.

[00:35:29] TU: My hope, Paul as we’re hitting the surface on several different optimization strategies is that folks aren’t feeling overwhelmed, but hopefully an opportunity to say, “Wow! How can I better strategize my tax situation?” I think this again, comes full circle and highlights the benefit of really more of the strategy side of the tax binding in addition to making sure we get that preparation taken care of.

We’ve got a checklist of things that we think you should be thinking about before the end of the year. We’re going to link to these in the show notes. These include much of what we talked about on the show around HSAs, and thinking about FSA carryover limits, 529 contributions, side business expenses, capital gains, preparing for the tax preparation phase, organizing documents. We’re going to put that list in the show notes, which will hopefully help wrap up the year and head into the new year with some confidence. I think that’s a good segue, Paul into what we are offering at YFP tax as two different options to help pharmacists that are looking for a tax preparation, and/or tax strategy and planning solution.

Paul, tell us more about our two options, the reporting only, and the year-round planning and reporting, and what folks can expect from that service and where one or the other may be a good fit.

[00:36:47] PE: We kind of talked about in the beginning, the tax preparation reporting only is just doing your historical tax return and meeting with you and just talking about is there anything you can do that may change the tax situation for the year. The reporting only is good for, if all your income is coming from W-2, if you don’t have a business or planning on having one soon, don’t have real estate income or any substantial retirement or investment accounts, at this point, all your income comes from inside the country, that may be a good fit for you. You’re really not getting the expert advice, you’re getting preparation and kind of basic information on what happened last year and not so much of the future. That’s a fee. We’ll have a base fee, and if you require additional schedules, there may be additional cost if you move from one state to another, maybe some additional costs. It’s more flat lay transaction, we prepare your taxes.

What we’re introducing this year is a year-round planning, which, if you’re self-employed, if you’re thinking about starting a business, have that side business, if you get K-1s from partnerships or LLC, real estate holdings, if your investments have grown and your retirement accounts are nearing that $100,000 mark, maybe there’s things that you’ll have options that somebody else may not. Multiple streams of income, income from outside the US, these are all things that probably point you in the direction of needing a year-round planner.

The expert advice will have a bigger effect on your situation, and having a long-term partner to help you reach your goals. That’s kind of what we’re positioning to work with you on a continuous basis. When we do this, we’ll meet with you, do the taxes and the tax review. We’ll talk about the upcoming years as well as last year. We’ll meet with you during the course of the year to do a projection of where you are and talk about things that we can do in the third quarter, fourth quarter to prepare and make sure we’re ready for the following year. With that, we’ll have a team available when you have questions during the course of the year to answer those questions. That is where we’re geared to have the most impact for clients and pharmacists that want to work with us. I think that we’re well situated and prepared to be a long-term partner and that’s what we’re looking to do.

[00:39:54] TU: Again, two options we have, as Paul outlined, the reporting only and the year-round planning and reporting. More information about both, you can find at yourfinancilpharmacist.com/tax. We’re excited to be opening up the tax services to 125 pharmacist households. First come first serve. Many may already be aware that we do tax planning preparation for those that are clients of YFP planning. We’re going to be opening up these 125 spots to those that are not currently clients as we’ll be doing that work already for those that are clients. Process works and go to yourfinancialpharmacist.com/tax to learn more information. You can join the waitlist.

Early January, we’ll be sending out an engagement letter. You can then upload your documents, complete a questionnaire. We are a paperless tax processing and system. Then from there, there’ll be a completion of a preliminary return and then an opportunity to review that information, sign it and then e-file it.

More information in yourfinancialpharmacist.com/tax. Paul, grateful for your time, expertise contributions on the show and looking forward to the upcoming tax season.

[00:41:02] PE: Thanks, Tim.

[OUTRO]

[00:41:03] TU: Before we wrap up today’s episode of Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast, I want to again thank our sponsor, the American Pharmacists Association. APhA is every pharmacist ally advocating on your behalf to address the issues that are affecting you most, such as PBM, and payment reform, value over volume and provider status. Make sure to join a boulder APhA to gain premier access to financial educational resources and to receive discounts on YFP products and services. You can join APhA at a 25% discount by visiting pharmacist.com/join and using the coupon code, YFP. Again, that’s pharmacist.com/join, using the coupon code, YFP.

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

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

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

[END]

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

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

Why This New Practitioner Decided to Start His Own Business

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

About Today’s Guest

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

Episode Summary

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

Key Points From This Episode

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

Highlights

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

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

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

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

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[INTERVIEW]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[OUTRO]

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

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

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

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

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YFP 226: How and Why this Entrepreneur Left a Successful Pharmacy Career to Start a Business

Posted on October 21, 2021November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

How and Why this Entrepreneur Left a Successful Pharmacy Career to Start a Business

On this episode, sponsored by Thoughtful Wills, Tim Ulbrich sits down with pharmacy entrepreneur, Dr. Christine Manukyan to discuss her why for leaving her career in hospital pharmacy administration, her passion for building a business around functional medicine, growing pains she has experienced in her first year of business, and setting a bold goal of growing her business to $1M in revenue per year by age 42.

About Today’s Guest

Dr. Christine Manukyan is the founder of the Functional Medicine Business Academy™, best-selling author, STORRIE™ podcast host, and an international speaker. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, she spent 13 years in corporate America. In the midst of a global pandemic, she made the wild decision to leave her reputable job as a Clinical Pharmacist to start her virtual practice. She is now disrupting the way clinicians are able to make an impact by coaching and mentoring them through the foundational steps of holistic practices and entrepreneurship. Dr. Christine created the world’s first Functional Medicine Certification Program which is a business incubator for clinicians to launch and scale their Functional Medicine Practice as they become Certified Functional Medicine Specialist™. Her mission is to pave the way for other burned-out medical professionals struggling to balance family, career, and their health to take control of their freedom and create their Functional Medicine Legacy.

Summary

This week, Tim Ulbrich takes some time to sit down with fellow pharmacy entrepreneur and all-around rockstar Dr. Christine Manukyan. Christine is the founder of Functional Medicine Business Academy™, best-selling author, STORRIE™ podcast host, and an international speaker.

Christine talks about her reasoning and motivation for leaving her successful career in hospital pharmacy administration. She shares her passion for building a business around functional medicine and how it aligns with her personal and progressional goals. As we know, when a business experiences rapid growth, there can be growing pains. Christine details some of her challenges during her first year of business and how coaching and professional guidance helped her overcome those difficulties.

There are no signs of her slowing down either! Christine talks about setting a bold goal of growing her business to $1 million in revenue per year by age 45 and why she recently decided to go bigger, moving that goal up by three years to the age of 42.

For Christine, mindset is critical for success! She encourages pharmacists and entrepreneurs alike to visualize what success and an ideal life look like and act upon that visualization by becoming all of the things you set your mind to become.

Mentioned on the Show

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich: Christine, welcome to the show.

Christine Manukyan: Thank you for having me. I’m so excited. Thank you.

Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely. I’ve been looking forward to this interview. We crossed paths after I heard the tail end of your session at the Pharmfluencer Summit that was hosted by Dr. Kimber Booth, and I heard a little bit of your story and said, “Hey, I need to learn more, and we have to share more with our YFP community.” And our listeners know that I have a passion for featuring various pharmacy entrepreneurs with the hopes of highlighting the many different paths that one may take with a PharmD. You know, I believe that the PharmD is a ticket, it’s a starting point, it’s certainly not the end. And I think your story, Christine, highlights just that. We also share a Buckeye connection, and we’ll get to that here in a moment, but before we jump into the entrepreneurial journey, dig into the business, the work that you’re doing now, Christine, give our listeners some background on your pharmacy journey, how you got into the path of pharmacy, where you went to school, some of your post-graduate training, and the work that you did prior to the business.

Christine Manukyan: Absolutely. Well again, thank you for having me on your podcast. This has been such a fun connection, as you were sharing like with the Buckeye connection too. Years later, who knew we are doing a podcast exchange here. This is called coming full circle, right? Well, thanks for giving me the opportunity to share my story. Well, Tim, my story kind of goes back a little bit behind my life, what happened before coming to here in the United States because I was actually brought up in Armenia, and I came to the United States when I was 16 years old. And back home, we go to school for 10 years. So after 10th grade, and you graduate school at age 16, you are actually prepping for college. So for me to graduate, my last year of school to step into like I was going to go to medical school because I wanted to do something with medicine. And coming to the States, realizing that hmm, I’ve got two more years to figure out exactly what I want to do and really kind of gave me the opportunity to understand what I really want as somebody who just came to the States, is not speaking the language, just reinventing herself as a teenager. And what I realized at that time was medicine was not a good fit for me. And I wanted to be a mom, I wanted to be a full-time mom. I was still wanting to do something with medical field and healthcare, but I decided not to go into medicine. I wanted to be a plastic surgeon back home. And here, I’m like, no, that’s not a lifestyle I would be going into. So I literally just started doing what everyone else does, just asking people what they love about their job in the healthcare space and just kind of to narrow down my choices. And I was stuck between optometrist and pharmacist. And I realized I’m a talker. I like to talk to people. And those few minute conversation in the optometry space was not going to give me a whole lot of that connection, so I decided to go into pharmacy space. And started my undergrad — and so back then, we didn’t really have to have bachelor’s to get into pharmacy schools. And I remember, you know, applying to pharmacy schools. And I was actually put on hold on a wait list here in California at USC and also at Western, which is here in Pomona. And literally, deciding to — like maybe this is not my time. And they’re not calling me, it’s already end of July, schools are already starting. And my family decided to move to Florida, a better life and housing prices at that time. And my brother being in real estate, we decided to actually move across from California to Florida. And I remember like over the weekend, making that decision to move my entire family. On Monday morning, I get a phone call from here, from Western, saying, “Congratulations. You’ve been accepted to pharmacy school.”

Tim Ulbrich: Oh, gees.

Christine: Manukyan: And this is like what? I literally yesterday moved across from California to Florida. And I’m going to apply to become a resident here in Florida so I can go to school here. But you know, everything happens for a reason. And so the experiences that I gained becoming a graduate from the (inaudible) gave me a whole new opportunities of taking this profession to a whole new level because I was surrounded by people who did not have my background. And the reason I’m sharing this because here in California, there’s a lot of Armenians. And people know each other’s cultures, and a lot of us don’t have that voice to educate the rest of us what we do and what we’re passionate about because there’s just so many of us, right? This is not the first time they’re going to hear your story. But being in Florida and being actually class president too, it gave me the opportunity to share my story of who I am and the struggles I went through because I was the only person in my class, in the whole school, to come from where I came from. And the reason I’m sharing this is because there was a lot of learning and unlearning that happened during that process, and I had to let go of the mindset of like, everybody knows who I am to a mindset of like, nobody knows who I am and really using your voice and your experience to become that hope and inspiration for other people who may be similar like you are, but you’ve never met them before. And long story short, I had a great experience in Florida, and so I decided to continue my education in hospital setting working in undergrad and pharmacy school and retail pharmacies. I decided this is not the career path for me. I decided to run away from retail pharmacy, and I committed to a two-year residency at Ohio State at the health system pharmacy administration. And it was such an incredible experience being in Midwest, which was my first time, and experiencing that cultural shock. I’m like, whoa, this is whole new world that I stepped into. And literally being there for two years and learning so much. And I just remember like graduating, saying like, “I have so many opportunities to go anywhere I want and do so many different things,” but I really have to find something that was aligned with my passion and my soul, which was not only leadership but also making an impact that hasn’t been tapped into in the past. And I was looking for creative positions. I was looking for — the titles didn’t really matter to me. It was more about what I will get to do in the position that I’m hired to do, you know? And that questioning kind of brought me back to California again at that time. And I was hired as a regulatory compliance officer at Cedar Sinai, which was a brand new position that was created literally during my interview, I’m not kidding. It was created literally during my interview because they saw the passion that I have like creating new projects, and I was given this opportunity to do that. So — and that’s how my journey came from becoming, you know, here an immigrant starting to learn the language going to pharmacy school and residencies and landing to my one and only job that I had for 12 years at Cedar Sinai in different leadership roles, working as a clinical pharmacist and also different roles in the hospital before I left.

Tim Ulbrich: Such a cool story. And we’re going to talk about that journey out and why you made that shift, but you know, just to reflect for a moment, you mentioned being waitlisted at a couple pharmacy programs to then entering, of course I have a bias being connected to that program as well, but then entering into one of the top health system administration programs, highly selective programs, and then a job being created for you during your interview. So talk about making things happen, right? I mean, just an awesome example of that. So 2009 to 2020-ish or so, you’re in that position at Cedar Sinai, very stable career. You know, I think it’s a position many would look at in the profession and say, “Hey, I want a job like that. I want to do what Christine is doing.” You certainly invested a lot of time and money to be in a position like that, but as you noted in an article that was recently published on Yahoo — and we’ll link to that in the show notes — you noted in August, on August 13, 2019, you said, “I wrote a letter to myself manifesting how I will retire at 40. I had no plan how it will happen. I had no clue what would I do if and when I retire from corporate. I just had a huge why.” So what was that why, Christine? Why make that transition out and ultimately become what you’ve mentioned before of really being a corporate dropout?

Christine Manukyan: Oh my gosh, thank you, Tim. You’re bringing me back incredible moments of creating and manifesting. But when I wrote that letter, Tim, I was stuck. And I know a lot of us go through school, we land in this fancy jobs, our dream job, it’s happening, we’re making the income that we want, but I just knew deep inside I was not happy. You know, from outside, I had everything figured out. I was making the money, I was healthy at that time, and it was just — I was broke inside. And I just did not feel like — like why did I work so hard? Like is this it? Is this what I signed up for? I was just really like finding ways to get out of where I was stuck in. And I just didn’t know what it was going to look like or what it was going to be, as you’re mentioning. But my why was I was just so tired of choosing between family and career. Having two kids and back-to-back, and my husband also being in a hospital setting in the pharmacy administration, like we literally spent less than an hour or two at home together as a family. And I keep asking myself, why are we making all this money? Like for who? For whose dreams we are creating and building? And when I say I was broke inside, I was like, I was not happy. I would come home, I remember, and I would be so tired and so stressed out and you know, just physically exhausting as well as driving two hours every single day, sitting in my car. So I would come home and the kids like, of course they’re excited to see us, but I was not a happy person, you know? Because I was bringing that frustration, that stress from work, to home. And here I am, looking at myself saying like, I’m not a good parent. Like I’m providing the physical stuff, you know, we have a house, we’re so blessed to have a car and all these things that a lot of people would love to have, but I was not the parent who was fully present. I was not the parent who had the energy to like hey, let’s go out for a bike ride like at 7 p.m., you know, before it gets too dark, right? I was just not there, and my why was like, I need to become a full-time mom. I need to become a mom who is present and is no longer choosing between family and career. And I want to create a lifestyle that I get to choose how I spend my day, I get to choose who I spend the day with. And yes, I did not have anything figured out, but I just manifested and I wrote that letter to myself on Aug. 13, and just saying like, it will happen. It will happen. And I’ve been manifesting to kind of having an exit strategy for my 40th birthday, which was like literally a year later, and just focusing on who I want to become. And this kind of ties into like one of my favorite quotes, and I write about this quote in my book as well too. It’s by Paul Coelho. And it says, “Maybe the journey is not so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about unbecoming everything that isn’t really you so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.” And I remember reading that quote, and I said, you know what, I’ve been working so hard to become this person, to have this title, to have this impact in this pharma space. But I’m like, I’m not happy. My passion is in holistic health, which is like a couple — technically opposite of what I’m even doing as my job — and just really giving myself permission to say, it is OK to unbecome who I was thinking I was going to become so I can actually step into this space and create this identity, this new identity of who I am supposed to be becoming in the first place. So that was my why, like literally figuring it out, how I’m going to have an exit strategy, creating my own legacy, creating my own lifestyle so I can live my day the way I want to and I no longer have to come home and bring the frustration and stress to my house, to my kids. They didn’t deserve to have a mom like that. They did not deserve to be, you know, having somebody in the house who was like always like impatient and you know, not really having this deep down conversations, like taking the time and really enjoying parenthood because time was going by fast. And I did not realize how my son was going to be — my oldest was going to be 10 years old. And I’m like, oh my gosh, I’ve been a part-time parent for a decade. Like what the heck? What the heck? This is enough.

Tim Ulbrich: And I think in the experience I’ve had just getting to know you and I’ve read this in the Yahoo article as well, you talked about the importance of manifesting and visualizing the next big goal. What I love about what you did on Aug. 13, 2019, is you didn’t have the path figured out, right? But you knew there was a strong why. And you know, we talk about that often on the show about how the why becomes the compass of where you’re going. And that why and I’m guessing that step of writing that letter and the visualization that came from that really probably helped inspire so much that would come over the next year. So one year later, Aug. 13, 2020, you turned in your two-week notice. So tell us about what the plan was. You had a whole year to kind of reflect on, OK, I know the why of where I’m going but how I’m going to get there, you know, somewhat TBD. You turn in that two-week notice a year later, what is the path and the work that you’re going to be doing? And tell us more specifically about some of the passion behind holistic medicine and functional medicine.

Christine Manukyan: Oh my gosh, yes. So you know, when you put your ideas and your energy out to the universe, the right people will show up. And I remember as soon as I wrote that letter and started manifesting that, the first thing I did, Tim, I don’t think I’ve shared this a lot of places, but I changed all my passwords and everything around me to say that I retired at my 40th birthday. Like I was claiming that.

Tim Ulbrich: Oh, that’s cool.

Christine Manukyan: I retired at 40. I am retired. I am 40 and free. Like anything that was around the mindset of like my 40th birthday, which you know, was like a year later, like I am free. Like I’m finally free. And I’m creating this lifestyle. And as more I was saying that, typing those passwords every single day, and the right people came into my life. And that’s when like a complete stranger became my first business coach that I ended up hiring January of 2020 to learn all about functional medicine entrepreneurship in general. How do I take my knowledge that I’ve already created all these years into getting monetized for what I want to do? And this is where my passion is aligned. And around the same time too, January of 2020, I committed to becoming the biggest fan of Tony Robbins and really invested in his coaching, in his training with one of his mentor — one of his coaches, Chris Akutchez, KK, and really being in this mindset of like, I am going to create something that has never been created in the past because I’m going to stick through this process, I’m going to focus on my why, and the how will come. It was just the process. It was a process. And I remember, you know, getting ready to go to Tony Robbins’ event in March, and the event was canceled. And I was so looking forward for that event because I needed that breakthrough. I needed to be walking on the fire and just having the guts to like just go all in. And of course with the pandemic, everything got canceled, and I was like, maybe this is not my time. And again, we kind of hold back again because you’re looking forward for an event for this breakthrough and it’s being taken away from you. But I love Tony Robbins and what he’s done, and he’s such a visionary. And what he ended up doing was he actually created his event virtually, which he’s never done before. And between March and July, he created this online space. He built his own platform to deliver Zoom to 25,000 people. And I was one of those 25,000 people for the first time ever be on his virtual event, “Unleash the Power Within,” which was end of July of 2020. And coming out of that event, I did not walk on fire, but I did break a wood. I became a wood breaker and like really breaking through the fear of failure because, again, I was mentally stepping into the space of like, I’m going to retire. I’m going to get out. My birthday is coming up. It’s going to happen. It’s going to happen. And physically breaking that wood and really passing through that fear of like what can go wrong and focusing on what can go right and really coming out of that event, I said, “This is it. I’m going to be looking at my calendar. Sometime in July or August to pick a date that I’m going to tell my boss when my last day is going to be.” And as I’m like literally like, I swear to God, like literally staring in my calendar, right, and I’m like, which day will make more sense? Do I give a three- week notice? Do I give a four-week notice? Do I give a two-week notice? Because I’ve been there for so long, and I don’t want to just like leave people hanging. And I was highly trained. People didn’t have the job that I had. And I had to train people to come into this role. And as I’m like literally staring at my schedule, staring at my boss’ schedule, and literally at the same time, I get a pop-up message saying like, “You’re scheduled for your annual performance review on Aug. 13 of 2020.”

Tim Ulbrich: Oh my goodness.

Christina Manukyan: Tim, I saw that come through my inbox and I like literally like froze. And I was like, oh my gosh, what? Here it is, universe deliver — like helped me to make that choice of not overthinking what’s the right way to do it. And I was like, this is it. This is the date. And I keep asking myself, why is this date so familiar? Like what happened? And found my notebook and I saw the letter that I wrote. I was like, oh my gosh, it has to be on this date. And I remember just sitting going into the review — of course I didn’t say anything, and we start having conversations. And like a few minutes into the conversation, I said, “This is not going to be a performance review meeting as we thought. This is actually my two-week notice to turn in,” and because this is the legacy that I’m creating, this is where my heart and passion is aligned. And again, my why was like, I want to be home with my kids. I want to be home as a parent who is still making an impact and the income that she loves and deserves, but I’m also a full-time mom. I’m also present. And it was one of the hardest decisions to do. It was one of the scariest decisions to make. But I just knew that I knew that I knew I will figure it out. I will figure it out. And I said, “This is the time. This is the time for me to create. This is the time for me to step into this new identity that I always talk about,” reinventing yourself and aligning your passion to your purpose and bringing greatness to the world. So that was my story of how I turned in my two-week notice during my performance review. And that became my exit strategy because I had a plan, but again, I did not have everything figured out. I couldn’t wait any longer, and I’m going to say this too because there’s so many people who are probably listening to this and saying like, “Well, that was easy, like you just left your job.” So I wonder if she really made enough income on the side doing her side gig. And the answer is no, Tim. I did not have everything figured out because it was really hard to create this legacy on a full-time basis if I was still working full-time, miserable, in a job that I had. I could not physically and mentally create the legacy that I could have created if I did not have the job. You know? So no, I did not match my income. When I left, I left my job making less than $1,000 on the side. But I just knew I can make things happen because now I’m like 100% in, I’m all in, and my energy is flowing in the direction of creating and nothing can stop me. I am unstoppable. That’s my thing.

Tim Ulbrich: I think it’s a great reminder, Christine, too — I was actually listening to something this morning reminding me of Tim Ferriss’ work when he talks about really leaning into the fear, right? So you’re talking about giving a two-week notice and what does that mean, you know, in terms of not only next steps for the business, but you know, as you mentioned, it’s not like you had everything fully fleshed out, what does this mean for the family. But you know, folks might be listening that whether it’s a jump to another job, whether it’s making a decision to go part-time, whether it’s another fear that they may have, is that the thoughts that we have around that fear can quickly seem as if they’re reality. And we need to just sometimes lean into that a little bit. And I encourage like as you’re weighing a big decision like this and you feel like that fear is taking over, like literally think of the worst case scenario and start writing it down. Right? Because I think once we start to make it a little bit more objective and get it out of our head a little bit, I think we can start to at least begin to wrap our arms around it and process it and not be paralyzed by that fear. So it’s just such a great example of that. So tell us more about the work that you’re doing right now. We’re going to link to the website, of course, DrChristineManukyan.com, we’ll link to that in the show notes. Tell us more about the work that you’re doing with the business, the why behind that work, the problems that you’re trying to solve, and ultimately the products and services that do that.

Christina Manukyan: Absolutely. So I am a huge believer in giving people opportunities and choices. OK? And going into pharmacy space, like we were not really being given choices. It was just like, this is the protocol, this is how you treat stuff, and this is what we do, right? There’s no like, let’s try this, let’s try that. No. We were just given a recipe, we just go with that. Right? And when I was going through my own health transformation too, I realized like I was craving having choices in life. I wanted to have other options so I can weigh in and make that decision of like, how do I want to lead and treat my health? Right? And so that choice was given to me, which was functional medicine, which was holistic health, and really understanding like, let’s dig in deeper and get to the root cause of what’s making you sick. Again, part of my health transformation was at age 35, I was told by my primary care physician I was going to have a heart attack and I was going to die by my 40th birthday in the next five years because I was morbidly obese, I had extremely cholesterol, I was extremely burnt out. The stress was killing me. And I was told I need to take a pill. I was given a prescription for Lipitor, saying, “Go take this pill, try to lose some weight,” some weight — nothing about nutrition, right — and if you don’t do all these things, you are going to die. You are going to die. And this was not something that I wanted to receive. And I said, “Lord, there has to be a better way. There has to be something else that I can do that is going to save my life.” Not change my life but save my life. And that was holistic health and functional medicine. And when I incorporated that and started doing the cleanses, started bringing adaptogen into my life and really feeling like a new person and as a result, I lost over 100 pounds. As a result, I became a bodybuilding fitness athlete. And as a result, I ran the LA Marathon March 8 of 2020.

Tim Ulbrich: Awesome.

Christine Manukyan: I mean, this was how I was stepping into my 40th birthday of being like healthy and fit and physically and mentally and emotionally and I was not broke anymore. You know what I mean? And when I saw this is a missing tool that a lot of us clinicians feel like there is a huge maybe stigma associated to like why would you recommend an herb versus a proven medication that has all these studies to that? Right? And I became the voice for other clinicians who are literally struggling themselves too to take care of their own health because burnout is legit. It’s happening to all of us. And they want to get healthy, but again, they just don’t know what else is out there. They may have heard about holistic health and functional medicine, but they have themselves not tried it because their mind has not been opened to learning what else is out there because we have not been given this education training. We can’t blame anybody else other than our education. Like that’s happening right now. And creating that space to train other clinicians, No. 1, taking care of your own health, utilizing functional medicine, but also as a result, as you’re working on your own health transformation, I’m going to show you how you can turn this into a business model that you can get paid for the same services that you’re applying for yourself for other people because there is always somebody out there that is praying for someone just like you with your own zone of genius to come into their life to save their life. So it becomes this process of like take care of your own health first, understand functional medicine is a tool for you, become your own transformation story, so now you can become a mentor for someone else. And that’s how the academy, the Functional Medicine Business Academy was born. It’s more than business coaching. It’s also reinventing yourself, who you are as a human being. And all of my clients and our clinicians and we are not only creating business models but we’re also transforming our own health because if we’re not healthy, we cannot serve everyone else, especially nowadays when there’s just so many moving parts and so much stress associated with life in general, so much uncertainty. And what we’re trying to create is like focusing on our own health. You’re not being selfish. You’re learning as you’re going, and you’re also creating your own functional medicine legacy so you can one day have an exit strategy if you choose to do that. And that’s how the academy has been growing and constantly adding new things into that. Collectively, we are all going to be writing a book that’s going to be published very soon, “Unleash the Story Within,” scheduled to be released on Nov. 9. And these are all clinicians who are telling their own transformation journeys, how they went from traditional medicine to functional medicine, and what their own health transformation with functional medicine and holistic health looks like. I’m a storyteller, so it’s all about getting your voice out there because there’s always somebody out there that is literally praying for someone just like you to come into their life to save their life. And really creating this tribe and starting the functional medicine revolution and giving our profession an upgrade, I’m going to say. Maybe not the right word to use, but really telling the world like, we are clinicians. Yes, we are pharmacists, we didn’t learn this in school, but we have tools to become certified functional medicine specialists through my program and really use our knowledge and experiences but not become a specialist in functional medicine space. So upgrading your PharmD to a specialist of functional medicine because this is an opportunity that was not given to us from any ways and now I’m becoming the voice for our profession to say, “You can do this too.” And the Board of Pharmacy will not show you how to do that because it’s not written there yet.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s right.

Christine Manukyan: Yet. It will one day. Yes. It’s all about starting the revolution and really giving us that platform to practice what we’ve already learned but also blend in and integrate functional medicine into our practice so we can give people options and give them choices, you know?

Tim Ulbrich: And we will link to the website, again, DrChristineManukyan.com, you can learn more about the academy, the Functional Medicine Business Academy, as well as an upcoming free master class on Oct. 25-29. And we’ll talk more about that here at the end. Christine, you know, I was thinking recently that I have lots of conversations with folks where they may have an idea and I think some of those ideas stay just as that, as an idea, a small percentage of those end up with some action of those that people take action, sometimes folks see results and then a lower percentage of those you actually see results where folks can replicate that, scale that, grow that to where they’ve got an actual thriving business. So as you reflect back on your journey from ‘I have an idea,’ and you mentioned leaving your position where you hadn’t yet fully fleshed that idea out to where you are today now and the business really growing and scaling. Was there a specific moment in that journey where you realized that this idea that you had was really an idea that had legs and one that could be sustainable as a business?

Christina Manukyan: Ooo. This is such a huge question, Tim. I’m going to say yes. And this all also is connected with who I am as an individual when I make decisions. And those of you who have not done human design, I would highly recommend all of you to do that because it also dictates how you make decisions and how you see yourself in this world. And I make my decisions, Tim, based on my gut. And that’s how I am the visionary who executes it, even though if I’m 80% sure, I will execute it to the finish. And that’s how I was humanly designed to make decisions. This is not for everyone because a lot of people don’t make decisions with their gut. They are actually thinking it, right? I have to feel it. So we’re all designed differently, and if you’re listening to me and you’re like, wow, I would never do that because that’s fine. Find the way that you can actually execute it based on your own human design. So do that thing, and there’s a website you can actually go and it’s completely free, will tell you who you are. But for me, it was knowing like I don’t have another choice. Because I can continue doing this, I can continue living my life, or I can take this other path of creating something that has never been done before. And this may be part of my process of coming to the United States and being an immigrant. I was not given a lot of choices when I was here as an immigrant. And I had to figure things out. I had to learn things that I have never seen or heard in the past. I gave myself permission to not be scared because your body cannot tell if you’re scared or excited. It’s the same neurotransmitter that you’re experiencing that. So instead of saying like, “I’m afraid to make this decision and execute,” I’m going to say, “I’m excited about the opportunities that are to come.” So really put that into excitement versus fear. But most people are stuck in the fear and not executing. And again, I wanted to have — I’m one of those people who likes to try new things and not being afraid of failure because that is just not an example of how you can learn and grow but also want to become a voice for my kids, Tim, because being an immigrant coming here, I watched my mom work like three jobs to provide for us. And I said, “This was hard.” And her sacrificing her own health to provide for our family is actually causing her have three autoimmune diseases, like here like 20 years later. You know? And I don’t want anybody to sacrifice their health because they’re trying to create the wealth that they need. I want everyone to have choices, and I want my kids to grow up saying like, “Mommy and Daddy made this decision,” and we are creating generational wealth. We’re not just taking care of ourselves now. I’m creating a generational wealth so my kids are growing up and they’re saying, “Mommy made this decision, you know, like when she was 40. And she created this legacy because now I get to do this.” So and it all starts with, again, going back to the simple things of understanding your why and why you want to do that, and everything else will fall into place. And just follow what makes you happy. And go back to asking yourself, what do you desire? Like I was desiring to be a full-time mom first. I wanted to be — I was desiring to be a somebody who was happy not for the world to see but I was happy inside. And I was not broke anymore. And I was living a fulfilled life, not for social media to see the highlights, but I was really, really like living that happy lifestyle that I know I can inspire someone else saying like, “You know what? Enough is enough. This is my time to rewrite my story,” and they can connect and make that transformation journey themselves and really step into the new identity that they should deserve and they’re part of it. So.

Tim Ulbrich: Christine, I am. I am. You said that if you’re inspired in any way — and I’m taking, again, this from the Yahoo article — if you’re inspired in any way, write a vision-casting letter to yourself and use the “I am” statement when you’re describing your life a year from now. And you say, “I challenge you to have this everywhere. I had it on my screensaver. I had it as my passwords that I was typing every day. I mean, it was everywhere. I was saying it until it became real.” Tell us more about that “I am” statement.

Christine Manukyan: There’s something about this like psychology and that again, I didn’t learn about this, but again, hiring a lot of mentors and business coaches and mindset coaching like and understanding your mind is capable of doing so much, and I decided to claim I am corporate dropout. Also I am Wonderwoman. And those of you who haven’t seen my Wonderwoman transformation as a fitness athlete on stage and really owning like having that mindset that goes with the image that I’m creating. Like who am I? Right? And Wonderwoman was actually my nickname in my fraternity, Phi Delta Chi, and I was like, who is Wonderwoman? I’ve never heard of her name, right? And when I was given that name back in pharmacy school, I literally had to Google like Wonderwoman because again, I have never seen her or heard of her, right? And I was like, this is somebody I want to be. And I think just even having that name that was given to me back then, like I was — I am Wonderwoman in my fraternity Phi Delta Chi. And what that allowed me to do is to become like a Ro Chi. It allowed me to become the class president and FSHP president and Phi Lambda Sigma president, right? Because I was stepping into this like who I am. My name might be Christine Manukyan, but I am Wonderwoman. I am unstoppable. And really claiming that and more excited — I’m not going to say scared — more excited you are when you’re saying those words and you’re owning it, psychologically and physically, you are going to become. OK? You’re going to become. And I have been, the last couple of months, I have been claiming of really having a million-dollar business in my business by age 45. But I’m actually, after attending this event the last couple of days, I am going to challenge it and change it to by 42nd birthday, so by next year, because I’m really pushing myself to the next statement of like who I am and also honoring the transformation that I’m going through myself. It’s not just like saying it, like “I am Wonderwoman.” Well, what does that mean to you? What does that mean to feel things and how do you show up? How do you talk? How do you dress? Who are you surrounded with? How do you spend your time? How do you spend your money? What relationships do you have? Right? Like who is that person that you’re stepping into? And when it actually happens, you’re like, ‘Of course it was going to happen.’ It’s like you’ve already done the rehearsal. You’ve already created that space. And you know, I talk a lot about this during my master class too, Tim — and thanks for mentioning that — understanding like the ideal life you want to create for yourself and why you want to create that. It sounds so simple, it sounds so cliche, but I want you all to actually physically experience like what would it mean if you say like, ‘I want to let’s say retire in xyz years,’ or ‘I want to actually wake up one day and not have migraine headaches anymore,’ right? Whatever it is that you’re desiring, whatever your ideal life looks like, I want you all to actually experience that right now. It’s like running a drill. It’s like running a drill, right? Like you practice it now so when the day comes when it’s the right time to show up in your life, you are able to receive that information, you are able to see the transformation that the universe will deliver to you because you’re focusing your energy and your mind in that direction.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, no, that’s great stuff. And I want to share, you know, as we feature more pharmacy entrepreneurs on this show, you know, I think that for folks that have an idea in mind and they hear someone who is taking some calculated risks, has taken that step, has had some success in that, they can get excited, right, about that and start to hopefully visualize and dream that if that’s something that they’re passionate about as well. But it’s also important that we talk about the growing pains, we talk about what we do when we feel overwhelmed or unfocused. You know, it’s not always rainbow and butterflies. You and I know this from firsthand. And so when we share these stories and we talk about some of the positive outcomes of these dreams and visions that we’re also talking about the reality of what it means to be running a business. So Christine, as you reflect on what has been a very short period of time and the success you’ve had thus far, as you’ve gone from idea to validation of that idea and now the business really growing, you mentioned $1 million business goal that you have by your 42nd birthday, I suspect there has been some growing pains as you’ve had some success, right? I know you and I talked a little bit about things like corporation structures, right, and tax situations, and other things that can feel overwhelming at times as a solopreneur. So tell me about some of the growing pains that you’ve experienced thus far.

Christine Manukyan: Oh my gosh, yes, Tim, we were talking a lot about that. And again, sometimes you just don’t know what you don’t know.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s right.

Christine Manukyan: And for me, I have made a lot of bad decisions hiring people. OK? And this is huge because we always say, you know, when you have business growing, you need to hire help. Well, that’s great. But who do I hire? How do I know they’re the right fit? How much do I pay them? Are they a contractor or are they — just so many things. And I have made really bad decisions the last few months because I was desperately looking for someone that my unicorn, and I was like, OK, I will train them. I’ll give them this opportunity, but they were not the right fit for my company. They were not seeing the vision that I want to go. Like I’m creating, I’m revolutionizing how our system and how people are going to learn about holistic and functional medicine and creating legacies. Like there’s nothing has been done the way — the scale that I’m going. And the people I was bringing on board, they didn’t see the long vision. And they were just focusing on the tasks that I was giving them at this moment, so I’ve spent a lot of money, close to like $20,000, let’s just put it out there. It’s a lot of money because I just didn’t know, and I was go-go-go mode. I was like really working off of my masculine energy and just go-go-get things done and not slowing down and saying like, let me reflect who I want to bring into my company. Anybody wants to take a job right now. Like right? And they want to work with you, but did I really give myself permission to really ask like who I want to work with? I know they want to work with me, but do I really want to work with them?

Tim Ulbrich: Right.

Christine Manukyan: But it was coming from the mindset of desperation because I was like, I’m growing so fast. I need help. And I was like literally hiring people left and right. Like literally had no structure in place, I had no SOPs in place.

Tim Ulbrich: And you have an administrative management background, right?

Christine Manukyan: Yes. But again, that was structured for Corporate America, Tim.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s different. Yeah.

Christine Manukyan: It was structured for Corporate America. I cannot go get an MBA to have an online practice running. An MBA is not teaching you what to do. It’s not. And the minute I started asking myself like, why is it that I’m bringing more help but I’m even more stressed out right now? Here I am working like 12-hour days. I went from like 8 to 10 12 now. And what is going on? And I asked this to my business coach, Kelly Roach and her program “Unstoppable Entrepreneur,” and she was like, “Christine, have you put systems in place when you’re onboarding? What does your onboarding process look like?” I’m like, “Kelly, I don’t have an onboarding process. What do you mean? You don’t just hop on on Zoom and tell them what to do and where to look for information when they need your help?” They’re like, no. I’m like, oh my gosh. So I’ve spent a lot of time, which is, again, my most valuable asset that we have, bringing people on board who are not a right fit for my company. But I was doing what people told me to do, go hire some help. So I did. I went and hired some help versus asking, education — like smarter questions like what does the process look like? Explain it. Because I’ve never hired someone before. So understand that just because somebody’s telling you to go do something, like stop and say like, can you explain what that looks like? Can you tell me what would be a better fit for me and for my company? Ask those questions, and it’s OK to ask questions. You may sound like, oh my gosh, that’s such a dumb question to ask, but let me tell you, those dumb questions you feel like there’s — No. 1, there’s no dumb questions to ask. Those questions can not only save you time but money and education because you’re learning. And running a business, especially if you’re scaling and you’re creating something that hasn’t been done before, like there’s not a lot of people to like go study for you to create. You just have to go with it and put it in place and pivot when needed. And I know a lot of people say like, ‘I have the best product I’m bringing to market. And this is it. It’s going to be a game-changer.’ Well, honey, I’m sorry to tell you that, but you might have to learn how to pivot and how to make changes.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s right.

Christine Manukyan: If you feel like your ego is getting into your way to really create the product, the services that everyone needs and loves and become your biggest fans, like you have to grow and you have to pivot when it’s the right time. But a lot of people say, ‘No, I can’t do that. Like I already spent so much time and money on this.’ Well, if it’s not working, please change. It is working, keep going.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and I think that’s a great example — and I have one in our business where, you know, and I think ego can be such a barrier. But we had a service that we launched that we thought was going to be a home run, and the key as I reflected on that is, you know, that was very much framed by what we thought was going to be needed by our audience and by the community not necessarily by exactly what that group was telling us what they needed. And once we could get over the ego, we’re able to move forward and cut those losses. But it’s easy to hang onto those losses, say, ‘Hey, I spent a lot of time, I spent a lot of money developing this,’ but at the end of the day, you’ve got to pivot. I think that’s a good lesson. Last question I have for you, Christine, you mentioned in this time where you’ve hired folks and sometimes that hasn’t necessarily been the right fit, probably you spent more time than it would have been without having some of those people on board, I suspect times, you’ve felt maybe overwhelmed or unfocused. What do you do in those moments? You know, as an entrepreneur, you find yourself in a period of time where it’s stressful, you’re overwhelmed, you feel like you’re unfocused, perhaps a little bit separated from the core mission of what you want to be doing in terms of spending your time and working on, what do you practically do in those moments where you’re feeling that?

Christine Manukyan: First, take a deep breath and remind myself that I am fortunate to have this type of stress in my life because sometimes, we forget this was a choice and this is an opportunity for me to overcome those barriers and recreate what I want to do, right? So first, celebrating that this was a choice. I am alive. And I get to stress about things like this, OK? But just kind of going back to like really go back to the basics. OK? And I’m such a huge like a checklist person. If you see my to-do list, you probably would have a heart attack. But it’s long. It’s very like detailed, right? But that’s also psychologically, it’s overwhelming. And what I learned was I need to break it down to like literally like maximum three decisions I have to make today. What’s the next right thing for me to do today? Maximum three things to get me closer to the next place. It may be going down the checklist, maybe re-evaluating my checklist, maybe learning how to delegate some of this to-do list to other people on my team and elevating them and training them. OK? But really asking yourself like, going back to the basics and really asking myself like what are the top three choices, decisions I need to make today, to get me a step closer? What’s the next right thing for me to do? The next one. And then like one at a time. One at a time. And that’s it. Versus getting overwhelmed with a large to-do list and it’s just too much and just you will — like you will have those days when you’re going to ask yourself like, what the heck did I get myself into? And I want you all to celebrate that feeling because again, you’re feeling stuck, but I want you to celebrate that feeling because you’re going through a transformation. And instead of getting stuck in that like oh my gosh, like what the heck did I just get myself into, just saying like, ‘Who can I call to help me just to talk?’ and maybe the one decision you need to make that day is for you to get rest, for you to have the time out, for you to create time on your schedule to create content, to create lifestyle, whatever you want to do. Like give yourself permission to block off time on your calendar to create. And you have to create that time in your schedule because we all have the same 24 hours, OK? You don’t have to do anything. Everything you do in life is based on your choices you make and decisions you make. So you don’t have to do anything. So create that time for you to like slow down and really ask yourself, what is it the maximum three decisions I need to make today that’s going to make me closer, get closer? And that decision, one of them can be like, you know what? Today, I’m taking a day off. I am just not even going to do anything because physically, my body needs to rest. And that’s OK. And that’s perfectly fine.

Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely. This has been fantastic, Christine. I really appreciate you joining and sharing your story with the YFP community. We’ve only scratched the surface. We didn’t talk about the book that you’ve co-authored along with 17 other female entrepreneurs and business owners, “Pivot with Purpose.” We’re going to link to that in the show notes. I hope folks will check that out. And as I mentioned earlier, Christine has an upcoming free master class Oct. 25-29. You can learn more at DrChristineManukyan.com. We’re going to link to that in the show notes. And this master class is really meant to help folks learn how to blend the years of education, the professional experience you have, folks that are passionate about holistic health and ultimately how to create your own functional medicine practice. And it’s going to be on Zoom Oct. 25-29. Five days learning how to identify your why, handpicking your dream clients, taking the center stage as personal branding, looking at your definition of wealth and success, and then finally redefining your scope and practice. And so much of, Christine, what I’ve heard in this interview is a lot about mindset and really thinking about how your personal mindset is going to have a positive impact on the future growth and hopefully realizing what’s possible within yourself. So Christine, thank you so much for joining us and looking forward to watching what you do in your business over the coming year.

Christine Manukyan: Thank you so much for having me, and I’m so grateful for your time as well too because you added so much value in my community a couple weeks ago, and I’m just so grateful for our relationship, our friendship and collaboration. It is definitely making this world a better place when you have amazing partners next to you. And we all share so much and I just cannot wait to see what’s next and yes, we can always, always connect with me and share your biggest takeaways because like you said, Tim, life is all about making connections and really getting to knowing people who are going to change your life. And this conversation that we had can probably change someone’s life. And I want to hear from you.

Tim Ulbrich: Awesome. Thanks again, DrChristineManukyan.com, you can also connect with her on LinkedIn and as always, we thank you for joining for this week’s episode and look forward to having you again back here next week. Have a great rest of your week.

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YFP 225: How to Navigate Open Enrollment and Employer Benefits

Posted on October 14, 2021November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

How to Navigate Open Enrollment and Employer Benefits

On this episode, sponsored by GoodRx, Tim Baker, YFP Co-founder and YFP Planning Director of Financial Planning, joins Tim Ulbrich to talk about open enrollment and evaluating employer benefits. Tim and Tim dig into:

Considerations for choosing a health insurance plan
How to determine whether or not your employer-provided life and disability insurance is sufficient (one of the most common questions we get)
Understanding the differences between an FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and HSA
What to be looking for when putting money into your employer-sponsored retirement plan.

Summary

This week on the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast, Tim Ulbrich sits down with YFP co-owner and Director of Financial Planning, Tim Baker, to discuss open enrollment and the process of evaluating employer benefits. As you go into making your benefit selections for 2022, Tim and Tim share some considerations for choosing a health insurance plan and how to determine whether or not your employer-provided life and disability insurance are sufficient. Tim and Tim provide a general overview into understanding the differences between an FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and HSA and what to be looking for when putting money into your employer-sponsored retirement plan.

Whether you are reviewing your benefits for the first time or are a seasoned professional with open enrollment, there are many factors to consider. Pharmacists may not think to consult with their financial planners when it comes to open enrollment or the process of evaluating employer benefits, but these decisions affect the financial plan. When choosing a plan for the coming year, pharmacists should consider future life events or changes impacting money spent on medical expenses such as a child being born, marriage or divorce, coverage for a significant other, or a child aging out of medical coverage. The open enrollment period is a time to review history in medical spending, how much is spent out of pocket, and how to optimize benefits and cost savings based on those findings.

Tim Baker touches on life insurance and disability insurance, how to calculate your total need, transferability issues to consider when deciding whether or not to purchase a policy outside of your employer policy, and tax considerations.

Tim Ulbrich closes out by breaking down the differences between an FSA, DCFSA, and HSA. He also touches on retirement savings accounts in conjunction with open enrollment and the opportunity to re-evaluate investing and savings goals and how each fits in with the financial plan.

Mentioned on the Show

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich: Tim, glad to have you back on the show.

Tim Baker: Yeah, good to be here, Tim. Looking forward to getting into open enrollment discussion. ‘Tis the season. So yeah, I’m ready for it.

Tim Ulbrich: ‘Tis the season indeed. Fall is in the air officially here in Ohio, which does mean it’s almost time for open enrollment and ensuring that we’re taking the time to understand and maximize employer benefits. And I think whether someone is reviewing their benefits for the first time, whether that’s accepting a new position, going through another round of open enrollment, a lot to consider here, including insurance, retirement accounts and HSAs, FSAs, to name a few. So Tim, our team at YFP Planning includes employer benefits as a part of the planning process, perhaps an area that folks don’t necessarily associate working with their financial planner on. So how does this part, employer benefits, factor into the financial plan? And why is it so important that we’re looking at it in the planning process?

Tim Baker: Yeah, I think this is another area, Tim, where like when we say, “comprehensive,” we mean comprehensive. And it’s just like kind of the same conversation with things like home purchase. Most financial advisors are not going to kind of walk you through kind of the A-Z of buying a home because most of the time, a financial advisor is working with people in their 50s, 60s, 70s, right? And the reason for that is because those are the people that have assets, and that’s how they charge their fee. We have many, many, many clients that are in their 20s and 30s. And things like home purchase is really important and is often a big step in their financial journey and their financial plan. So we kind of take the time to go through that based on, I know you’ve said it, I’ve said it, we’ve messed those transactions up in the past, and we just don’t want to see our clients do the same thing. So open enrollment is kind of the same thing. A lot of financial advisors don’t really talk about this stuff because if you’re working with people in their 50s, 60s, like they’ve done it dozens of times, right? So they’ve gone through this. And a lot of our clients haven’t. You know, it’s not something that is kind of what we understand. And so to define open enrollment, open enrollment is the period of time where you can purchase or apply for health insurance for the upcoming year without a qualifying event. And usually a qualifying event is something like a marriage or a divorce or a birth of a child. So it’s typically very centered on the health insurance plan because that’s the big piece of the benefits. But then what the employer does is kind of have you opt out of other benefits that they might offer, which might be life insurance, disability, I’ve even seen things like pet insurance and things like that. You know, some things that are not insurance-related could be like a legal benefit. So that’s what this is is open enrollment. And it’s important because your employer benefits are a major component of your compensation package. And you know, this is kind of the conversation that goes back to things like salary negotiation is I’ve seen clients, they’ll say, “Hey, I’m making $110,000,” and they get an offer for $120,000 but they take a major step back with regard to their total compensation because of the benefits that are associated with that. I think it’s really important to understand what the employer benefits are and how to assess that. So that’s really what’s at stake here is really understanding that piece. And we know this, Tim, because when we plan to hire someone, we know that it’s not just about the salary pay. We apply a multiple on top of that because we know that the benefits that we’re going to provide for the employee are going to be above and beyond that. So that total cost or what I would say is an investment in that person is really beyond the salary. So this is what is really that bell to that. We’re trying to assess an an employee to say, OK, how can I best optimize this part of my compensation. And I would say that there is a lot, you know, a lot of people that don’t necessarily fully optimize this part of their financial plan or give it the attention that it needs because it sneaks up on us or bad information or what have you. So that’s really kind of the overall picture here of what it is and why it’s important.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and Tim, I think when you say sneaks up on us, bad information, it’s important I think for folks, basic stuff before we jump into individual benefits, you know, know your dates, obviously what’s the time span. You know, a lot of employers, depending on how they organize this, will do informational sessions, open Q&As, one-on-ones, group, and some of that might be automated, depending on the system and the platform they’re using. But making sure, understanding the dates, you know, simple things, how much time do you have if you’re going to be on vacation, things like that, making sure you can coordinate with HR. And then also, you know, just taking a look at your pay stub and your benefits. What do you currently have? And really taking a pulse on — and I think just a chance to go back and what’s gross pay, what’s net pay, what’s coming out in benefits, and taking this time that comes around every year as a chance to revisit some of these things that we want to be looking at often. And then of course, just thinking about upcoming changes, right, that might be happening. You know, I think of things like children that might be beneficiaries on the healthcare side, aging out if you think about 26 or folks that might be expecting or perhaps getting married, things that might have an impact on their benefits, considering those things as you’re in the benefits selection. And then of course just refreshing and updating the evaluation of who are the beneficiaries that are listed on certain policies. Tim, I want to start with health insurance. You know, I think it’s the one that typically carries the biggest price tag as we think about it relative to the other insurance and typically carries more options than things like dental and vision and life and disability, which I think for many employers it’s more of a one-way type of option. So the big question here is how do I determine which one to get? And of course, all plans are created differently but when folks are looking at these and you’re evaluating the deductibles and maximum out-of-pockets and premiums and copays and coinsurance, unfortunately, it’s a system that even though our audience is comfortable with all of those numbers because they live in it in the job that they’ve done or have been trained in it previously, there’s just a lot to consider. And if you look at plans, let’s consider a three-tiered plan where you’ve got like a bronze, silver, gold option, you know, you’re looking at OK, less out of pocket, more out of pocket, better coverage, but perhaps I could have lower out of pocket and I could use that money elsewhere. Like general framework, how do you begin to help clients think through this decision and not just look at it in a silo but also consider it in the context of the rest of the plan?

Tim Baker: Yeah, so I think it’s — you know, everyone can say it with me — it depends, right? So you know, I think a lot of it depends on past history or — you know, you mentioned a few things like what’s kind of on the horizon? Is it getting married or having kids? And some of those will allow you to kind of elect insurance outside of the open enrollment period. But those are typically qualifying events. But you know, an example is when we had Liam, when Shea was pregnant with Liam, we opted out of the bronze package, you know, the HSA plan to more of a gold package because we knew that the doctor bills and the hospital bills were going to be there. Our thought process was, you know, although in most cases we’re not going to the doctor a lot, you know, during a normal year, well, electing to a higher deductible plan, which means less coming out of our paycheck but then when we do go to the doctor, there’s going to be potentially more coming out of our pocket. So we did that to get in front of it a little bit. And you know, that’s really important from a planning perspective and kind of mitigating as much of the costs — and we probably saved ourselves if we did the math $1,000 by doing that. So that’s an important part of the plan. Now, sometimes things are going to come up and you’re just not going to — you know, it’s kind of like that emergency fund. You’re just not going to know for the future. But I would say is it’s a little bit of an exercise in looking at your past history, so looking at how often you’re going to the doctor and how often you’re reaching into your pocket to pay for things like copays and things like that. But then also projecting it forward, so that’s kind of where the conversation starts is that, you know, if you’re a younger, healthy professional and you’re not really going to the doctor, then you probably should really consider kind of a bronze, high-deductible, HDHP plan and couple that with the HSA, which we’ve said is a great forum to stash dollars. If you’re looking at regular doctor visits because of a chronic issue or something like that, that’s not going to be for you, regardless of your age. You just know that you’re going to be in and out of the doctor’s office. So I think it’s really looking at, again, kind of the budget and seeing what money has been spent on healthcare costs in the past and then what you think, project those going forward. And like I said, like this is not — it’s important, but these are taking it like snapshots one year at a time. So you can — like after Liam was born and the medical expenses were gone, then we went back to the high-deductible plan with the HSA. So I think it’s really important to kind of take stock of kind of your history, your medical history, your spending on healthcare, to form the baseline of your decision in that realm. The other comment I would make, Tim, is not all 401k’s are created equal. And as many of us know, not all health plans are created equal. So some are really, really great, and some are really, really terrible. And sometimes, that has to do with the size of the organization, sometimes the economies to scale, the bigger that you are, the less that each participant pays, whether that’s the 401k or the health insurance plan. So you kind of have to work with the sandbox, you know, that you’re playing in, so to speak, and something that can be very much out of your control.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and I think, Tim, your example of Liam is a great reminder of not putting open enrollment on auto pilot.

Tim Baker: Yeah.

Tim Ulbrich: And I think that’s what we’re trying to stress here is like, using this as a chance to re-evaluate each year, you know, what happened last year? What worked last year may or may not be what makes sense for this year for a variety of reasons. And I think this is certainly a place where we want to be evaluating what does the cash position look like? What does the reserves look like? And how do we feel about that? Especially if we’re going to be opting into a high-deductible health plan, you know, thinking worst case scenario — hopefully never happens — looking at those out-of-pocket maxes and really asking yourself, how comfortable are we with that happening? How does that make us feel? And could we weather that storm if it were to come?

Tim Baker: Yeah, and you know, and we’ve had some tough conversations with clients that are deep in credit card debt and they really need as much of their income to kind of like right the ship and get going, so sometimes it means sacrificing or being uncomfortable here. You know, one of the things I look at is like if we look at all the debts that are out there, medical debt is not necessarily a bad debt in terms of like they reformed a lot of things with it hurting your credit because it’s kind of been a nightmare, you’re typically not gouged with higher interest rates and things like that. So typically more forgiven. I would even say push back on a lot of medical debt because it’s wrong. I think Tim, you had a story about that when one of your sons was born. So there’s a little bit more give I would say than some of these other ones that goes like right to collections and you’re in a lot of trouble. So it’s kind of — this is all about like mitigating the risk and trying to understand where can we give a little bit so we’re OK.

Tim Ulbrich: I want to shift gears, Tim, to life and disability. Probably one of the most common questions that we get is, do I need to purchase additional life and disability insurance beyond what my employer covers? And of course the answer is it depends on a large part of the individual’s situation and what they have going on and what they’re trying to do with those policies and so forth. But you know, general thoughts and discussion on how one goes about making this decision in terms of understanding what coverage is there from an employer standpoint, determining what total coverage may be needed, and some of the gap and differences between an employer plan and if they purchased a policy out on the open market.

Tim Baker: I think if we look at most pharmacists out there, you know, professionals that are making a six-figure salary, I think there’s going to come a time when there probably is a need to purchase policies outside of what the employer provides. Now, the problem with the financial services industry is that a lot of “financial advisors” are trying to push those policies on a young professional when they probably don’t need them. That’s when you’re a pharmacist that has maybe six figures of debt that’s going to be forgiven if you die or are disabled with no dependents and really, you know, not much on your balance sheet. So there’s kind of like this gap of do I really need this? Or can I just make do with what my employer provides? I’ll say this about the employer-provided policies: Outside of health insurance, which is a health plan, I would say that things like life and disability insurance are not plans. They’re really perks. So they’re meant to supplement or meant to provide some type of benefit that will help the employee but also it’s a way to kind of retain you and things like that. So I really view these as perks and not necessarily plans. I would say, to your point, Tim, I think it’s really looking at the individual and say OK, does it make sense to buy a policy outside of that? Most employers will provide some type of life insurance benefit, whether it’s something like $50,000 or one or two times income, which you can then elect to either increase your coverage or not. I think the downside of that is, you know, if you’re working for an employer as a 30-year-old and you have all of your eggs in that basket and you’re saying, “Hey, I have $1 million” or a lot of times, they’re capped. Most times, pharmacists need a lot more than what their employer can provide. So that’s one of the drawbacks. But if you’re working with that company for 40 years and then you leave to go to another organization, which maybe that isn’t provided or it’s a lot less of a benefit, you have a gap, then you’re going out in the market 10 years older where you’re paying a lot more for that particular policy. So that’s one of the things that — sometimes they’re portable, meaning that you can take them with you, and sometimes they’re not. So for both the life and disability, you know, it’s really looking at your own situation. Just like open enrollment itself, this is one of the things that often overlooked, just insurance. And I know we’ve probably done a podcast in the past about what’s proper life and disability and things like that.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

Tim Baker: For the disability, the coverage is typically going to be a percentage of your income. And again, it could be capped, and some employers will offer both long-term and short-term disability. You know, both are great. But you know, oftentimes, because of one reason or another, there’s going to be a gap in the coverage either because of taxes or just that a pharmacist, what they make and what most professionals will say that you need to kind of cover down and typically, that can be anywhere from 50-80% of what your income is, that there is a need to go out onto the open market and buy individual policies. But from an open enrollment perspective, I think if you don’t have those policies, it’s really important to understand, you know, what is there for you? And what can at least tide you over until you get those policies in place? And again, it’s one of those things where it’s like, it’s not important to you until it’s important to you. And it’s really hard to kind of, to show that to clients unless they’ve experienced that pain themselves or a close family member.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah.

Tim Baker: But it’s going to be a really important piece of protecting the overall financial plan, which is — this is really what this is all about is, you know, insurance is really protecting the financial plan from a catastrophic event and ensuring that you can continue to build wealth and survive into the future.

Tim Ulbrich: Episode 044, Tim, How to Determine Life Insurance Needs, 045, How to Determine Disability Insurance Needs, two that we’ll link to in the show notes. We’ve got more information on the website as well, YourFinancialPharmacist.com. Tim, I think one of the common mistakes I see made here just relating to that discussion on gap in coverage is not digging into the policies to really understand, you know, life insurance is maybe the most obvious example where if you have a policy — if you have a need for life insurance and you have a term policy that’s offered for $50,000 or $100,000 or one times salary or two times salary, typically, those have a cap on them. For many folks, there’s going to be a gap and a shortage. And I think this is where, you know, sitting down one-on-one with someone to really calculate the total need, think about the transferability issues that you mentioned and what does it mean if you pick up employment, tax considerations, and really getting into the weeds of some of the nuances of the policies and things like own occupation, we’ve talked about that before and its importance. And again, thinking about how this fits in with the rest of the plan. And just a shoutout here to our fee-only financial planning team at YFP Planning, this is really where I think the value of fee-only comes in in that really sitting down with someone to determine what is their true need in their best interests. Not too much coverage that there’s dollars being spent that could be put elsewhere in the financial plan, but making sure we’re also not exposing the plan to unnecessary risk.

Tim Baker: Yeah, I mean, you know, this — what we’re talking about here are products. Like insurance is a product. So any time that you talk about dispensing a device, “Hey, Tim, you need life insurance,” and you say, “OK, great. Like where do I get it?” Like we can sell you this product. There’s going to be a conflict of interest. So having someone that is a fee-only fiduciary that is not further enriched by the advice that they’re giving, you know, strips away a lot of that, well, am I being advised in my best interests or in the advisor’s best interests, the one that’s advising me. So that’s I think the beauty of fee-only.

Tim Ulbrich: One example I just want to give here, I just pulled up, Tim, our long-term disability coverage that we added recently for the YFP team.

Tim Baker: Yeah.

Tim Ulbrich: And you know, if you look at it on kind of the main benefits platform, it says, “60% monthly income up to $6,000.” But this is an example where digging deeper is so valuable. You know, you get into things like what is the definition of earnings? So our policy, it’s base wage. So how you’re compensated could have an impact here.

Tim Baker: Yep.

Tim Ulbrich: What’s the elimination period or the timeframe from when the disability happens to when the benefit starts to pay out? Here, it’s 90 days. But if it’s shorter than that, perhaps longer than that, what’s the game plan to fund. Does it have own occupation coverage? We’ve talked about the importance of that before. What’s the maximum benefit? Our policy goes up to age 65. And then things like coverage restrictions, other incentives. So really, just a reminder of this time period and using this point here to really dig into this information and read the policies.

Tim Baker: Yeah, you know, and again, going back to those episodes you mentioned there, that’s where we kind of talk about the nitty-gritty, but I think the beautiful thing about this is like when we’re reviewing this and we kind of look at the — kind of go through the open enrollment optimization stuff is like as a planner, I’m looking at your balance sheet. So I’m like, alright, does it make sense to bolster — you know, because a lot of these, you can opt in. So like our policy doesn’t do this, but a lot of policies, they’ll say, “The employer pays for a 60% benefit of your earnings.” But then you can opt in to get that up to 80%. So you pay an additional — you pay out of pocket out of your paycheck for that additional 20%. If I’m looking at your balance sheet, Tim, and I’m saying, “Man, you have plenty of cash,” I would say, “Let’s not opt into that.” Or we might say, “Let’s do it,” because we know because the employer is going to pay for it, that that benefit’s going to be taxed.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

Tim Baker: If the employer pays for the benefit, it’s going to be taxed. That’s the gap. You know, so the idea is looking at your situation and overlaying what’s out there. I think the open enrollment, what I say is we want to look at the things that you’re paying for and say, does it make sense for you to be paying for it? I see a lot of AD&D insurance, and I kind of look at this as like — and again, this is not advice — but I kind of look at those as like when you buy something at Best Buy and they ask you about the warranty. You know, most of the time, you say no because it’s just not worth the money. Some of these things in open enrollment, it’s the same thing. It’s like AD&D, for those to pay out is very rare. So even if it’s $2 per pay period, I’m like, I just don’t think it’s worth it. So we’re trying to make sure that you’re not paying for things that don’t necessarily provide you much benefit, much utility. But then you are paying for things that do. And you know, kind of finding that Venn diagram of sorts to make sure that, again, we’re fully optimized with regard to this part of your compensation package.

Tim Ulbrich: AD&D, for folks that are wondering, Accidental Death & Dismemberment insurance.

Tim Baker: Oh yeah. Yep.

Tim Ulbrich: Tim Baker dropping some financial lingo here.

Tim Baker: Sorry about that. Yeah.

Tim Ulbrich: Tim, next I want to talk about FSAs, dependent care FSAs, especially since we’ve had some changes that have happened there as well as HSAs. And we’ve talked probably among these to the greatest extent, we’ve talked about HSAs because of the value of what that can provide as well as these other options. And we’ve talked about it on the podcast, we’ve got some blog posts, Episode 165, The Power of a Health Savings Account, also have an article on the blog, which we’ll link to, about really more of the strategic investing side of an HSA if you’re able to do that. So Tim, high level overview, FSA, dependent care FSA, HSA, and some of the differences and considerations for these accounts.

Tim Baker: The very crude way that I remember the difference between FSA and HSA is FSAs are really use-or-lose. So when you fund these with pre-tax dollars, if you don’t use those monies for the purposes of healthcare for an FSA for healthcare or dependent care for a dependent care FSA, you lose it. So it’s F-udge. Like I don’t get — you don’t get to use that money. Whereas the HSA, this is — can potentially be an accrual account, meaning that year over year, you can stack Benjamins and hopefully one day becomes that kind of stealth IRA that we talk about that has that triple tax benefit. So like I said, we’ve talked about the HSA ad nauseum. It has to be paired with a high-deductible health plan. You know, you can put the money in. It has a triple tax benefit, which means it goes in pre-tax, it grows tax-free so you can invest it like an IRA, and then you can distribute it in the near term for approved medical costs or when you reach a certain age, you can use it basically for whatever. So that’s the beauty of the HSA. But you know, again, it only works or you only have access to it when it’s paired with a high-deductible health plan. The FSA for healthcare is similar, but very different. So you’re allowed to use — you’re allowed to fund it with pre-tax dollars, meaning if you make $100,000 and you put $1,000 in there, you’re taxed on as if $99,000. So I think the limits for FSA for 2021, I think it’s like $2,750.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s right. Yep.

Tim Baker: Yeah. So the idea is that what you’re trying to do here — it’s a little bit of a game of chicken. So what you’re trying to do is really, again, see into the future and say, “OK, what do I know is a baseline that I’m going to use on my out-of-pocket healthcare expenses?” And if you know for sure that you’re going to spending $2,000 on that, then you should fund it with $2,000. And typically, there is a little bit of give at the end of the year where you can either carry some over or you have some time into the New Year to use it on.

Tim Ulbrich: Two months or —

Tim Baker: Yeah. And every plan is going to be different in its design. So you might be loading up on kind of some of the over-the-counter stuff. I’ve had a client buy a bunch of stuff for like contacts and things like that. So it’s going to be really important to kind of — again, this goes back to the spending plan, the budget, to understand what have you been spending in the past? Is that going to be indicative of what you will spend in the future? And then fund that with at least that baseline amount so you don’t lose it. The same thing can be said for the dependent care FSA. So this is a pre-tax account that you can fund that is used for care for your child who is age 13, for before- and after-school care, babysitting, nanny expenses, daycare, nursery school, preschool, summer day camp, and then also care for a spouse or a relative who is physically or mentally unable to care for themselves and lives in your home. So this money — this has actually been amended under the American Rescue Plan Act. So I think for single and married filing jointly couples, the pre-tax contribution limit went from where you could $5,000 a year, now it’s I think $10,500.

Tim Ulbrich: Significant jump. Yep.

Tim Baker: Yeah, very significant. So the higher limits apply to the plan year beginning Dec. 31, 2020 and before Jan. 1, 2022. So it is a temporary thing, but it allows you to park some dollars that you would otherwise — so if you’re in a 25% tax bracket, it’s as if you’re saving 25%, kind of thinking about it that way. So that’s what really — and for the FSAs, unlike the HSA, the FSA is — it has to be provided by the employer. I think we had a question on the Ask a YFP CFP about the HSA. And you don’t have to necessarily go through your employer. Sometimes, the employer doesn’t offer it. So you can go out and set up your own HSA. The FSA has to be provided by the employer for you to have access to it. So that’s really important. Again, these are all going to be — when you elect it, it’s going to take money out of your paycheck and basically fund these accounts for the appropriate purpose.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and this to me is where when we’ve talked with Paul Eikenberg, our director of tax, and working with our clients, one of the things he talks about here is these being untapped areas of potential.

Tim Baker: Totally.

Tim Ulbrich: And so I think there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit in the financial plan. And I think really evaluating these and perhaps the dollars of any one don’t jump out as being super significant, but I think as we start to add these up with other strategies, there certainly is value. And Tim, you had mentioned we did tackle a question recently on Ask a YFP CFP 084. The question was about fees on an HSA account, but we did talk about the opportunity to access an HSA account independent of the employer. So we’ve talked about health insurance, we’ve talked about life and disability, we’ve talked about FSAs and HSAs and dependent care FSAs. I want to wrap up our discussion by retirement saving options. And I think, again, this is an opportunity to take a step back, look at the overall progress on the investing part of the plan, overall goals, perhaps gap between the goals and where you’re currently at, and then to evaluate where does investing fit in with the rest of the financial plan. And so when we think about, Tim, employer-sponsored retirement accounts, two main buckets we have, which are those that are Roth contributions and those that are traditional. So define for us the difference between those two for folks that are — maybe have some outstanding questions about those or unsure as well as the limits of what we’re able to do in 2021.

Tim Baker: Yeah, so — and I’ll preface this by saying that most of — you know, open enrollment is a good time to check in on your retirement savings options. You’re not necessarily bound to that because you can go in —

Tim Ulbrich: Correct.

Tim Baker: — really at any time and say, “Hey, I was putting in 5%. I talked to a YFP planner, and they said I should put in 8%. That’ll put me on track to get my $5 million nest egg, so that’s what I want to do.” I can really do that at any time. Or I can say, “I want less Roth and more traditional,” or whatever the case is. So it’s just a good opportunity, it’s a good checkpoint to say, OK, where am I at and should I make any tweaks? So — and one of the things that they often do here is they allow you to put in an escalator. So you know — and you can do this any time too, but it’s a good thing to do in open enrollment so every year, you can increase that by 1% or 2% or whatever that looks like. So to answer your question, Tim, the Roth v. traditional, so most employers will offer a 401k or a 403b or if you work for the government, a TSP. So when you elect your retirement options here, a lot of them will now — you’ll have a traditional — so think of two buckets. You’ll have a traditional 401k and a Roth 401k.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

Tim Baker: And they’re all under the same plan, but they segregate the monies because for a traditional, these are pre-tax dollars. So that example I gave you is if you put in $1,000 into your 401k and you make $100,00 — your traditional 401k — and you make $100,000, you’re taxed as if you made $99,000. For a Roth, it’s after-tax. So same example, if you put $1,000 into your Roth 401k and you make $100,000, you are taxed as if you made $100,000 because you’re not getting that pre-tax deduction. So for these dollars, the money is either taxed going in or coming out. So for a traditional, you’re not taxed going in, but then it grows tax-free inside of that account, and then you’re taxed when it is distributed, hopefully in retirement. For the Roth 401k, you’re taxed going in, so you don’t get that deduction, but then it grows tax-free and when it comes out, it’s not taxed because it’s already been taxed going in. So a lot of people will say Roth, Roth, Roth. And again, it’s going to depend on your plan. It’s going to depend on what you’re trying to achieve. And a lot of people get this wrong as well. So this is another good check on it to make sure that you’re putting the dollars in the right spot. Your match that your employer provides, if there is a match, is always going to go into a traditional account.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

Tim Baker: So if there is a match, you’re going to have — some people get it twisted like, I’m 100% in my Roth 401k, but I see money in my traditional, like what gives? And I’m like, well, this is the money that your employer is matching. It’s going to go there, you know, regardless. So it’s really important, you know — so to kind of give you some numbers with 2021, to max out a 401k, a 403b, it’s $19,500. So you can put that in regardless of how much money you make. So that’s really going to be the limit for the 401k. IRAs are a completely different animal. They’re $6,000, this completely separate accounting mechanism. And that’s going to be dependent on your income whether you can put it in directly into a Roth or a traditional IRA and if you get the deduction. And I know we’ve had podcasts on that as well. But the point of this, Tim, is that the open enrollment exercise is a great opportunity to kind of just do a once-over for your retirement savings options and just make sure that one, you’re in the proper allocation but then it’s also in the Roth v. traditional, and then just making sure that you don’t get stuck in that hey, my employer matches 3%, so for 10 years, I’ve just been putting in 3%. You don’t want to do that because more often than not, it’s not going to be enough for you to retire comfortably. So this is another way to kind of check those things and push the envelope a little bit.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and I point folks back to Episode 074, when we talked about evaluating your 401k plan, also more recently, Episode 208, when we talked about why minimizing fees on your investments is so important. Certainly relevant here as we talk about employer-sponsored retirement plans where we can see a lot of variabilities in those investment options and in the fees. As we’ve said a couple times now throughout the show, open enrollment is such a great time to take a step back and evaluate the financial plan. And for folks that are going through this process and think, you know, I really see the value in working with someone one-on-one to look at the financial plan holistically, to determine how to prioritize the goals, make some of these decisions around open enrollment, could be debt repayment, investing, tax evaluation, and so forth. We’d love to have a chance to talk with you about the YFP Planning comprehensive financial planning services that we conduct on a one-on-one basis. And you can learn more about those services as well as schedule a free discovery call by going to YFPPlanning.com. As always, thank you so much for listening. We hope you have a great rest of your week and look forward to having you join us again next week.

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YFP 219: How to Negotiate Your Salary and Benefits as a Pharmacist

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

How to Negotiate Your Salary and Benefits as a Pharmacist

Alex Barker talks about why pharmacists should negotiate their salary and benefits, benefits of negotiation, and two practical negotiation tips.

About Today’s Guest

Alex Barker helps pharmacists create fulfilling careers and lives. For a time, he was a burned-out clinical pharmacy specialist. Now, he is the Founder and Head Coach at TheHappyPharmD.com where, alongside his team, he creates classes to help over 750 pharmacists find and create new career paths. The Happy PharmD’s goal is to help 500 pharmacists transition into new jobs by January 1st, 2022.

He recently published the book Indispensable: The Prescription for a Fulfilling Pharmacy Career. When he’s not working with pharmacists, he spends time with his wife, Megan, and two lovely girls, Izzie and Addie.

Summary

Alex Barker, the Founder of The Happy PharmD, is back on the show discussing salary and benefits negotiation. He talks about why pharmacists should negotiate their salary and benefits, the benefits of negotiation, and two specific tips that you can use when having those difficult conversations with your supervisor. Alex also shares some insight from his e-book, “A Pharmacist’s Guide to Salary and Benefit Negotiation.”

Through the discussion, Alex breaks down the four benefits of negotiating. Your salary determines your future. Your salary can control, to some extent, when you retire. Your benefits depend on negotiation. Lastly, your salary now affects salary negotiations at future jobs.

Alex walks through some of the eight steps for negotiating salary and benefits listed in the guide. Pharmacists should do their research and document it. Research salary and benefits internally, externally, regionally, and for specific skills. Alex also suggests that pharmacists discuss compensation after the offer is made, and once you receive the offer, you do not have to act right away. Alex shares a typical response for negotiating a higher salary. In his example, the candidate expresses thanks to the hiring manager for the offer then takes some time to reflect. With some time to evaluate, you will be better able to discuss salary and benefits that you feel you are worth, based on your experience and the value that you add to the company.

In closing, Tim Ulbrich shares two real-life examples from the YFP Facebook Group, and Alex provides his advice and guidance for each.

Mentioned on the Show

YFP Planning: Financial Planning for Pharmacists
Book a free Discovery Call with YFP Planning
Get Your Free Copy of A Pharmacist’s Guide to Salary and Benefit Negotiation by Email: [email protected]
YFP 205: Current State of the Pharmacy Job Market
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook: Pharmacists
Join the YFP Facebook Group
The Happy PharmD
Glassdoor
Indeed
Mercer Salary Surveys & Pay Data
Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It by Chris Voss
YFP 166: Why Negotiation is an Important Part of Your Financial Plan

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich: Alex, welcome back to the show.

Alex Barker: Tim, it’s always a joy being with you, buddy. Thanks for having me again.

Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely. Glad to have you back as this time, we’re going to dig into salary, negotiation, as well as other things to negotiate beyond salary. But this is a good segue from our last conversation on Episode 205, not that long ago, where we talked about the pharmacy job market and considering the current state of the market, which we’ve talked about before, Alex, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projecting a decrease of about 10,000 pharmacist positions between 2019-2029. Some folks may hear that data point, may have listened to our previous conversation and be thinking, negotiation? What negotiation? Is that even possible? So let’s start there, Alex. Why should someone listening, you know, resist the urge to throw their hands up and say, ‘Not worth trying,’ right, considering the supply and demand changes that we’ve been seeing over the last several years. Is this even a relevant topic?

Alex Barker: I think it is. We put a post the other — a few months ago now on LinkedIn asking, ‘Do you feel comfortable negotiating your role, salary, or benefits?’ And obviously it was just geared at pharmacists. Vast majority of people said, ‘Absolutely not. No way.’ And I don’t think I blame them. You know, I’m actually working on as of this recording, we’re working on our Quarter 2 job market report. And things have kind of taken a downward turn, and I think it’s because of the COVID pandemic kind of wrapping up the hiring sequence as I think we all were predicting. And I think the tone of the market, particularly with newer grads and students is, ‘I’ll just take anything. Please just give me anything.’ And you know, you’ve been at a couple of universities, you’ve taught at different places. I don’t believe salary negotiation is taught.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s correct.

Alex Barker: Yeah. And there’s also this mindset of a residency is a major career pathway. And that role is non-negotiable in most cases. Most people I think enter the market now with this expectation of the market’s tough, so I’m just going to take whatever I can get. And whatever it is, I’m going to be happy because I’ll be able to pay off my loans, I’ll not be indebted, I don’t have to claim bankruptcy, you know, whatever the worst possible case scenario people go through in their minds. Why is negotiating important? It’s because you have value. And the pharmacy market is — yes, it’s in flux. But you have a doctorate or the equivalent of a doctorate for those BS pharms listening. And you are going to provide a lot of value to a company when you are offered a job. And you should be able to negotiate for the things that you want. And recognize as well that this is a long-term game. This is not, ‘I need to demand for the things that I want.’ Having this discussion in the beginning when you’re offered a position is laying the seeds for the things that you want for your career in the future.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s right. That’s right. Alex, I think that’s spot-on, right? You’re laying the seeds for what lies ahead, you’re initiating some of this conversation, the expectations. And we’re going to talk about other reasons and benefits to negotiation. Alex, I remember — I’m going to date myself a little bit here but 2008, graduated from pharmacy school, took a residency position, which as you mentioned, was non-negotiable, for a whopping $31,000. And thankfully, salaries have come up a little bit since then in residency, although not a whole lot. And then took that first position for an even $100,000. And it’s interesting, you know, here, we’re talking about 2021. You mentioned the Q2 report coming out here soon, which is showing that continued trend. Well, this was a different market in 2009. And I did have leverage to negotiate. But I didn’t know that. I wasn’t comfortable with that. I didn’t have the school, I didn’t have the skills, I didn’t have the tools, I didn’t have the mentorship, right? And I was excited. It was the first offer. The answer is yes. But as we’ll talk about here in a moment, remember, this is the starting point. And this is so important. It’s not just about the dollars. It could be benefits, it could be some of the confidence, the self-worth, the positioning, the value that you’re bringing to the organization. So some of these I think are very tangible monetary benefits and some of them may not be tangible monetary but very important, in some cases more important. Alex, you mentioned the LinkedIn post, right, and the answer was, ‘No, like I’m not comfortable.’ And I think this topic is one that folks either say, ‘You know what, I’m not comfortable.’ Maybe it makes folks a little bit uneasy. Maybe they squirm when they think about that conversation with their supervisor. It could be awkward, it could be overwhelming. Why is that the case? Is this unique to pharmacy? Or is this just something overall? Like we’re not comfortable, fear of rejection, lack of self-confidence, like what’s the why behind that?

Alex Barker: All of the above, I think. In pharmacy in particular, if you were to do an analysis of our personality as a profession, we would be the people that like avoiding conflict. We would like to be the people who everyone’s on the same team, we’re all working together towards the same goal. And so conflict is not something we’re typically taught in our education, conflict resolution, conflict management. But by and large, I think in most western societies, honestly, our value is placed on a dollar amount. And getting told that you make a certain amount is a reflection of self-worth and to change that, to think about negotiating for that self-worth when you may not feel like you are worth that, is a problem. So if you don’t feel confident in your ability to do that, then you’re probably not going to take actions towards that end. In fact, there’s quite a bit of growing research on this concept called professional identity in pharmacy in that pharmacists have a weak professional identity, which essentially means that we don’t tie ourselves strongly to the identity of a pharmacist. This has all sorts of consequences for our profession. One of the main ones — don’t want to deviate too much on this — but is the fact that our role is changing. You know, pharmacy, we’re trying to change our perception of who we are and what we do. And unfortunately, this just creates confusion for us as pharmacists. What do we do? What is our value? Are we just dispensing automatons? Or are we prescribers? We don’t know. And because we don’t know, that creates a lack of confidence in what we do. And that lack of confidence translates into, again, what we kind of talked about earlier, we’ll just take whatever we can get. I can relate to your story, by the way. I did the same exact thing. I remember the phone call. I was working a clinic, they gave me the call, and they said, “We’d like to offer you the position.” “Oh! Well, OK. Great.”

Tim Ulbrich: Yes.

Alex Barker: Yeah, tell me more. “Well, it’s $115,000 a year.” And dead silence on my end. “Oh, yeah. Of course.” You know? I’ll take three times my salary. OK, what’s next?

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah.

Alex Barker: It’s so foolish, but if you’re not informed, if you’re not trained to kind of handle that situation, why wouldn’t you take that?

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and I think, you know, one of the thoughts that comes to mind, Alex, as you were just talking about — of course we’re overgeneralizing — but when we talk about some of the personality of a pharmacist or folks that may not be comfortable negotiating, I would have put myself in that bucket, especially early in my career. I think we need to be careful that we’re not pursuing an outcome of avoiding conflict or avoiding an uncomfortable conversation because while that may feel OK in the moment that you don’t have to be in that uncomfortable conversation, if it leads to resentment down the road or you feel like you’re undervalued, that can have significant ramifications, right? We’re not just talking anymore about dollars and am I making a fair market value? But do I feel valued as a part of this organization and do I feel like I’m advocating for myself? I think that’s a part of negotiation that often gets overlooked for a variety of reasons of which we probably all individually struggle with for different reasons of which is a different discussion but I think is important that we really, honestly evaluate and reflect of why might we be avoiding this conversation? What’s behind that, right? Let’s peel back the layers of the onion a little bit to inquire further. Alex, so your guide, “A Pharmacist’s Guide to Salary and Benefit Negotiation,” and folks that are interested in receiving that guide, 29-page e-guide that you put together, great resource — we’re going to hit some of the high points here on this episode, certainly not go into the full details of that — folks can get a copy of that for free by sending an email to [email protected]. Again, that’s [email protected]. Let him know you listened to this episode, get a copy of that. One of the things you start out with, Alex, is four benefits of negotiating. I think some of these are obvious but some maybe not as obvious. And we’ve alluded to a couple of these. But talk to us about what are these benefits of negotiating, laying the groundwork for why we think this is important before we get into the strategy.

Alex Barker: Yeah. You’re going to love them because you’re Mr. Money Man. So your salary, it determines future raises. Right?

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

Alex Barker: If you start off at $100,000 versus $110,000, every raise you get thereafter will be more if you are at $110,000. This is obvious. But over time —

Tim Ulbrich: Compound effects.

Alex Barker: Exactly.

Tim Ulbrich: Compound effect of that.

Alex Barker: Yeah. It’s huge. You know, I remember starting that job at $115,000. And I think the year before I quit, it rose to $127,000. Now I worked at a very bureaucratic, very rule-driven, union-driven organization. So this may not be as negotiable in terms of salary as other organizations. But whatever you start with often determines the future. So if you’re thinking about a career transition, if it’s your first job, you need to understand you have to negotiate — you should negotiate because it’s going to determine what you get paid in the future. Depending on whatever strategy you take, the next reason is that your salary often determines when you retire. You know, I know you’ve talked about different retirement strategies on your podcast a lot. I’m in your community on Facebook and I see a few people wanting to follow the FIRE movement. So this may not be relevant, depending on how I guess driven you are to retire early versus later. But obviously a higher salary, if you decide early on in your career to save the majority of that, can help you retire earlier if you choose to. And one of the things that I think most people look at — because when you think about I guess like the salary aspect of pharmacy, there’s a lot of hullabaloo about it. I polled 500 people on LinkedIn, and over 76% I think said that they think salaries are decreasing. Now the data is actually contrary to that. The data actually suggests there’s a very small increase, if not over time flattening, of our salary. But the rumors obviously are more popular than data. A lot of people focus on it, but benefits matter too. If you don’t negotiate for those benefits, you could be missing out on some really just life-changing and lifestyle things. One of the best things I ever did during my pharmacist career working as a clinician was getting the change to the four-day work week.

Tim Ulbrich: I remember you doing that.

Alex Barker: Yeah, back when you and I both were working day jobs.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, I couldn’t believe you pulled that off, actually, because you know, within the organization — that’s challenging if there’s not precedent for it.

Alex Barker: Absolutely. Yeah, so just full disclosure, I used to work at the Veteran Affairs. I don’t represent them obviously now. Never did, really, before online. But I loved the three-day work week. And it just felt like even though the days were longer, yes, and I did miss out on quality time in the evening with my kids, that three-day weekend was just so perfect. It’s so wonderful. Negotiating for your benefits can just make a huge lifestyle difference. And I know for me personally, when I had that, it made me significantly happier about what I was doing at my day job. And then lastly, the main reason why you want to do this is that this job that you take, whatever it is, it will probably not be your last and final job. All trends right now point to people changing jobs more frequently than ever before.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s right.

Alex Barker: And whatever salary you end up taking at this next job likely will influence the next job salary that you take because you want to use that, whatever your previous salary was, as evidence for your value, the contributions you make at your company, and you can use that as fodder for your next salary negotiation.

Tim Ulbrich: And Alex, so good. So you talked about four different things there: your salary determines your future, your salary determines when you retire, your benefits can depend on it, and then it affects salary negotiations at future jobs. And you know, I’m not going to get out the nerdy investment calculator, but I’ve talked about on the show before just one really tangible example beyond what this means for the income that’s coming into your bank account after taxes and all that. You know, take a simple employer match on a retirement account, right? If you’re making $110,000 because you’ve gone through a negotiation or $120,000 instead of $100,000 or $105,000, whatever that difference would be, it may not seem large. But that additional match on that benefit, you know, is going to have a compound — significant compound effect over time. And that doesn’t even account for your point, which is a really good one, you know, if you’re going to be changing jobs, which likely you’re going to be doing many times throughout your career, often your current position is the jumping point for that next position. And you’ve got typically pretty good leverage there if that organization really wants you in that role. And I’ve got a really tangible example of this when I made the transition from Northeast Ohio Medical University to my faculty role to The Ohio State University College of Pharmacy and overseeing the Master’s program in health systems pharmacy administration. At that time, I really was enjoying my role at NEOMed. I loved what I was doing. Interesting opportunity came up at Ohio State, love that institution, the people that work there. The opportunity was there, but there wasn’t really that pressing need to make that move. And you know, that’s probably one of the better strategies of negotiation is if there’s a recruitment that’s happening and you don’t necessarily have that need, obviously you’ve got some leverage. But using current position and salary obviously becomes — for me, it was and it becomes for many people — that jumping point to that new role. So it’s not just the first offer that you take that has the implications. For those that are listening, maybe they started a position five, six, seven years ago and have seen marginal increases in their salary that probably haven’t kept up with inflation, if they’re thinking ahead to that next jump, like it’s not just at the job offer. You can also negotiate while you’re along the way. And you should be having those conversations, right?

Alex Barker: Absolutely. You know, just on a quick point there, one of the reasons why I feel like a lot of people can’t negotiate or feel like they can’t is something you said previously. When they offer you the job, they want you. It means that they don’t want other people. They’ve made decisions collectively as an organization to give you the job, not someone else. This may not be true for every organization. You know, there may be some devious nature to some offers, which I know there are those kind of practices. But in general, major organizations in particular, when they give you that offer, when they say, “We want to offer you the position doing this and it’s for this much,” that means this is an offer to you, and this is where a lot of your practice negotiation strategy will come into play where you’re able to wrestle with that, hopefully it’s an offer that you love so there’s not a lot of conflict. But if you’re negotiating and what you’re asking for is reasonable, they’re going to work with you because they’ve already made the decision to commit to you. I have not heard horror stories nor actually does any research indicate that negotiation for the offer more often than not ends in the person’s offer being terminated. What happens actually more often is that offers are made to pharmacists and for whatever reason, budgetary restraints most commonly happen where the job is let through. It is not because of negotiations.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, I agree. And I’ve been on the other side of these conversations, Alex, in several instances. And even if, even if there’s not a huge gap in preference between candidate 1 and 2, what often happens is when that offer goes out, that organization starts to envision that person in that role and what they bring to the table, right? So they’re starting to affirm the strengths that person is bringing, the opportunities that they’re bringing, and they’re starting to see that person in that role. And there’s a risk to the organization — so if I’m offering you a position, Alex, I’m waiting for you to hear back and let’s say you try to negotiate. And if I’m the employer and I’m like, “No, no, no, we’re going to make an offer to the second person. Just we can’t budget-wise do it,” like unless that number is way out in left field, like there’s a risk I now lose both of my candidates as the employer end. So flip the script. I think this is sometimes where we’ve got a lot of self-confidence challenge and issues and obviously this is a very individualized, you know, assessment and hopefully where some good mentorship can provide value, what do you bring to the table, why are you unique for that position, how are you different from other candidates, but really great advice there. Alex, in the guide, I think it’s in Chapter 3, you start off by talking about mindset and the connection between mindset and negotiating. And you write that your strategy doesn’t just start at the negotiation table. It starts with your mindset right now. What do you mean by that?

Alex Barker: Well I think the quote that I put at the beginning of the chapter fits it perfectly. If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail. You know, a lot of people think the biggest struggle in the process of getting a new job is the application, the interview. And most people put the majority of their effort when looking for a new career in those things. And the idea of success, the idea of getting an offer and negotiations often doesn’t even come into play when making this consideration. And so in most cases from what we’ve learned from talking with thousands of pharmacists is they don’t even plan for this. There’s a lot of pessimism about our job market, there’s a lot of pretty negative analysis and posts about it, and so why would you plan for success? In their mind, I think. And if that’s the case, you know, whether you think you’re right or wrong, you’re probably right. I was thinking as you were talking about this guide, when I first made it, I did a ton of research. Not only did I help people increase their offers by thousands of dollars, but I spoke with negotiation experts. I interviewed them. I talked with hiring managers, executives, I talked to them about this issue, and I talked with them about what the best practices were, and I gathered up all this research and information. And I thought, this is really valuable, this guide. And I remember thinking, OK, well, I’m looking to see what other businesspeople are doing out there about negotiation courses, books. And I thought, I could sell this. I could legitimately sell it. And it did make a few sales but nothing near where what I had hoped. And I just learned that after talking with people and presenting this, people were like, why would I pay for this? I’m not going to be able to negotiate anything. So I was like, what? Like, there’s such a low level of mindset around this issue that people aren’t even believing that this is possible.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

Alex Barker: So now we just, hey, we just give it away for free because we have multiple reports of people using this guide, following the steps, and getting thousands of dollars more from the initial offer, which of course compounds over time. But this is why I feel like mindset is so important, it’s why I’m hoping that people kind of see the stories that we’ve posted online to social media and say, “OK, other people are doing it. Maybe it’s possible for me.”

Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely. And I think you do a nice job, Alex, in the resource, which is really valuable and I hope people will take a look at it, where you give some tangible strategies, eight steps to negotiate your salary and benefits. And we’re not going to talk through all eight of those. I want to hit just a few of them that I think folks can walk away with some very specific ideas and perhaps skills that they can take to those conversations that they’re going to have with their supervisors. So let’s walk through a few of these. First, Alex, is document your salary and benefit research. Tell us more about this one.

Alex Barker: Absolutely. So if you don’t know what’s going on in the salary world in pharmacy, you’ve got to get up. We’ve got a guide on our website, it’s very thorough. I recommend you check it out. But you should be doing your research in really three main areas. Internal research, meaning looking at what your company is paying people, what published information they have. External research, seeing what other companies are paying. Specific skill research, so if you have something specific to your career, residency, certification. Those are easy examples. You should understand what value that trans — how that translates into into the market. The reason why you want to document these things is because when negotiating, you want hard evidence, proof of the value of what you’re going to do for that company. Because you can’t just say in the negotiation, “We want to give you” — let’s say the hiring manager says, “We want to hire you as a clinical pharmacy specialist managing this HIV clinic. And we want to pay you $115,000.” You could just say, “Absolutely. Yes. I’ll take anything. Just give me the job.” Or what you could do is do your research. So look in the city and state and look to see what is the average pharmacist pay for that kind of job? There are of course information on our website, TheHappyPharmD.com, but there’s plenty of other resources as well like GlassDoor, Indeed, Mercer Job Salary Report.

Tim Ulbrich: Some state associations do some of this too. Not all.

Alex Barker: Absolutely.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

Alex Barker: Yeah. And with that, you’ll be able to tell easily like what is an average. What’s the median? What could you expect even before you are offered the position because it’s becoming less and less common now for job postings to say — particularly for professionals — what is the salary reach. You want to have that evidence so that when the offer comes, you’re able to gauge whether or not this is something that you would want. Also, if salary isn’t the thing for you, like let’s say $115,000 a year is an acceptable salary for what your life expectations are and let’s say that you know that on average, this position gets paid $120,000, well that’s $5,000 difference. You could negotiate for that. But you could also negotiate for other benefits. “Well, because I’m not getting what the average is, and the average is this, here’s what I would like to ask for in return.” This research is so critical because it can lay a solid foundation on what is true because the company cannot dispute these external resources.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s right.

Alex Barker: I mean, they can certainly say no. But they can’t dispute what evidence is collected.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, it’s not Alex’s made-up numbers, right? This is data. Yeah. I think too, Alex, the other thing I think about here is if I’m in a position let’s say I’m getting an offer for say $110,000 and I really think because of my research and because of x, y, and z, I really think that should be let’s say $118,000, right? And the answer is no. Now there’s some strategies for how you navigate that conversation and there’s very specific techniques that you talk about in the guide. “Never Split the Difference” is another great book that talks about some of those techniques where you’re really trying to get to that yes and it’s not just that initial no and how do you approach that. But let’s just say for the sake of this example the answer is no but you’re really interested in that position, you think it’s a good fit. I think one of the thoughts I have here is if I’m that candidate, my next follow-up is remember, we’re laying the foundation. You talked about that earlier. What can I do? Like what can I do over the next 6-12 months to get to $118,000, right? What are some of the goals that I can work towards? What are some of the opportunities? Because if I’m a hiring manager and I really like a candidate and they say, “What can I do to get to whatever that number is?” like that starts to really become the road map of the objectives for that individual and perhaps some even opportunities, depends on the organization of course, the company you work for, of what are some things that they might be able to do that either is or is not in their job description to be able to earn up to that income.

Alex Barker: Absolutely. Hopefully by that point, when the offer is given to you, you’ve asked the right questions in the interview to have a really good understanding of what the position is and where the company or the department, pharmacy department is going in particular. This is a great place for you to provide even more value during the negotiation process. One example that comes to mind was a client we worked with who was wanting to get into academia — no prior experience, no residency — and wanted to run a clinic, something that this person hadn’t done before. The offer came, and what was offered was a lot lower. And they based this on the idea that ‘Hey, you don’t have a residency, you’ve never done a position before.’ It was quite a pay cut for this person. So what this client did was brilliant. They knew that what this college was struggling with was getting new sites. This was a relatively newer school, and they were struggling with that aspect. And obviously, if you don’t have the number of rotations, you can’t get always accredited. It’s a huge problem. You can’t market your school as well, which is becoming increasingly important for colleges. So what this person was able to do was twofold. Because the offer came in, they were actually able to renegotiate their position to where they were doing more of the kind of work that this person enjoyed, which was doing more experiential education management and getting more involved in that department, talking with more people, getting more sites on board, with certain guarantees that they were able to negotiate for. And in turn, this meant less clinic time, which this person still loved. But she was a kind of pharmacist who enjoyed a large variety of tasks. So being able to negotiate in the moment, knowing the company’s priorities, being able to get more of what you want — and ultimately, she was able to negotiate a salary change as well — is a brilliant strategy. Don’t think that no means no.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

Alex Barker: In this case. In this case alone.

Tim Ulbrich: Alex, that too is a good example of like understand your environment. You know, I believe negotiation can apply to everyone, but understand your environment and where you may have more flexibility and leverage. So that example, an experiential education individual, there is not seven of those at a college, right? There’s typically a director of experiential education. So if I’m the department chair, I’m the dean, and I working with that person, I have some more flexibility of which is true just in that environment overall. But through things like administrative stipends, through how we split time, through other things that I’m not as concerned with like I’ve got 10 people that are in the same role and I have to have them all within this range, right? Because obviously that’s something that an employer might be thinking about. So I think understanding your environment — and I would even point to that position, that’s a really hard position to both recruit and retain. It’s one of the hardest positions to retain in a college of pharmacy is an experiential director because of the challenges and the stress that can come with it. So an experiential director is listening out there, like you’ve got leverage, right? Understand the leverage that you have. So good stuff. Alex, I want to fast forward to the offer. And again, there’s lots more in the guide. You go through eight specific strategies, but one you talk about is the offer moment, right? So this is what we’ve been waiting for, the offer is on the table, we can react to something. Talk to us about some negotiation tips after receiving an offer that folks can consider employing in their own situation.

Alex Barker: Practice, practice, practice. Practice with your spouse if you’ve got one, practice with your parents, practice with a friend. Role play the event. This is by far the best advice I can give you. It isn’t hard because most people have had a job. Most people have gone through this experience. While probably the majority of your friends and even parents are not managers and have actually done this, you can put yourself in that situation and script your response. You do not need to accept right away would be my first encouragement. You don’t need to say absolutely yes, no, or even negotiate in this moment. For me, I’m a very emotional person and so having — making decision in an emotional state often leads to not the greatest results. Hence, both probably your and my first job offer. Right? “Oh yeah, I’ll take it 3x my salary! Of course! That’s a great thing!” That was a great moment, but making that decision in that moment may not reflect really where you want to take your career. So be willing to say, “Thank you for the offer. I’m so happy to be able to have the opportunity to work with you. But I want to think about this, I want to talk with my spouse, I want to review my research and make an informed decision.” Having another call is not unexpected for people because everything they share with you about the offer — and by the way, get more than just the salary. Make sure that you understand the benefits package, make sure you understand the demands, make sure that you understand what their goals are for you in this role.

Tim Ulbrich: What you’re saying yes to, understand that.

Alex Barker: Absolutely. I think everyone has had an experience where they took on a job and didn’t realize everything that they were going to be asked to do. In fact, every time I talk about the offer with people, I often kind of get that response of, what happens when the unexpected happens? Like they tell me that I’m managing this now and I’m doing this and I’m doing this when that wasn’t a part of the offer. Well, that’s a whole other discussion. And my final recommendation to you is even when the offer is better than what you expected, still hold back your yes and ask yourself, what do I really want? Take that time before and during the offer to really consider is this everything that I want? Or is there something more can I get? Heck, even if it’s just $500 for an education fund. Something as simple as that can just make that much better and it also can create a better relationship with the team that you’re working with.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and I think sometimes, Alex, you know, it’s monetary. Sometimes it’s things that are maybe not in the form of salary but could be professional development-related. It could be carved out time to work on certain initiatives or projects, for some folks it could be an administrative role that are pretty easy to create from the employer side. So you know, those are often, again, you’re setting up future opportunities and leverage and then there’s other areas you can get into like maybe they can’t — because of how that position is classified, maybe there’s limitations on salary for that position, but if you have something else like an administrative position, you’ve opened up like stipends and other things that can be different ways that they classify income. So there’s certainly some strategy here to be thinking about. But great wisdom in that recommendation of take some time to think about it, right? And express the gratitude of the offer. Express, you know, some of the interests that you have in the position. But I think that pause is incredibly important, not only to give yourself space to think about it but again, flip the script, right Alex? So if I’m hiring and I’ve got Alex applying and I’m like, ‘I’m really excited about what Alex can do for this organization,’ I’ve got the offer out there, I’m starting to envision Alex in that role. When Alex says, “Hey, Tim, really excited about the position, the company, the direction what you guys are going. I’m grateful for the offer. I really need 48 hours to think this through and really evaluate how this fits in with my goals and talk this over with my wife, think about it for our family, like now I want you more, right? Now I want you more because you’ve created that space and you’re opening up the door for me to expect a follow-up conversation. And I would encourage folks, like in that follow-up conversation, if there are things that you are genuinely excited about as well as maybe some reservations, concerns, or questions, articulating some of that, giving the space for them to talk, is going to even further open up that door for some of the negotiation. And you talk in the guide, Alex, about some strategies that folks can read up to learn more about the use of silence and mirroring and active listening and again, this is something that you can read and I think apply in practice certainly so that you’re ready for that situation. And Tim Baker and I also talked about this on Episode 166, about why negotiation is an important part of the financial plan. And we talked through some of those strategies as well. So again, folks, check out the guide. We just hit a couple of the high points. You can get a copy of that guide by sending an email to [email protected]. Again, “A Pharmacist’s Guide to Salary and Benefit Negotiation.” Alex, I want to wrap up our time with a couple of comments that we had from the Facebook group, in the YFP Facebook group. And I said, “Hey, I’m going to be recording with Alex, upcoming episode on salary negotiation, give me your thoughts.” And two really that stood out to me, one that I want to get your reaction on based on everything we just talked through, what are you hearing as why that might have been a successful negotiation and then the second one is someone who’s got some questions around some difficulties that they’re having with the negotiation process. So you up for that?

Alex Barker: Hopefully my responses are adequate. Let’s go for it.

Tim Ulbrich: Alright, here’s the first one. And this comes from someone that put in the YFP Facebook group says, “I”m a recent graduate who is hesitant to negotiate, but I’ve been with the same company for 5+ years and knew I owed it to myself to at least counter once I got the job offer to move to full-time staff pharmacist. I was able to get $250 more per hour on top of the initial offer and build a great relationship with my boss to help reach my future goals as a pharmacist. Biggest things I learned throughout this process: No. 1, it’s not offensive to ask for more. Know your worth. No. 2, the company already likes you, so don’t freak out about taking back that offer. You’re now trying to reach an agreement that works for both parties. And No. 3, my biggest selling point was that I would be saving the company time on training for the day-to-day things since I was a pharmacy tech and intern, so not having to reorient, re-onboard somebody in that role.” What are your thoughts to that, Alex?

Alex Barker: Super smart kid. I shouldn’t say kid. But just that simple having that belief that they’re worth that value and demonstrating that through evidence earned this person $5,000 more a year. You know, I don’t know how much prep this person did, and I’m sure it was stressful, as most people think negotiations are. But that little bit of effort earned him $5,000 more dollars that he would not have made had he not made the effort. I love the angle of him deepening that relationship with his manager.

Tim Ulbrich: Yes.

Alex Barker: That’s the thing. As you were talking before this example, I was actually just thinking that this kind of feels like dating all over again or like the phase before dating where you’re like, ‘Ooh, does she like me?’ You know, and your hands touch for the first time. You’re like, oh my gosh, electric jolts go up yourself and you’re like, oh my gosh, this is so, so awesome. But you don’t know if they like you. There’s definitely a misconception of yeah, they like you. They want you. And if you’re able to demonstrate with evidence, with proof, and with a strong agreement commitment to what you’re going to do for them, then they’re more than willing to likely give you what your value is.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah.

Alex Barker: And it would be great to teach that in pharmacy school. It would be great to say, “Here’s the value of what you bring. Here’s what — for example, one pharmacist, here’s what they’re able to produce economically for a business, hospital, community pharmacy, whatever,” so that you have an understanding of it isn’t like the company is just throwing money at you and not getting anything back, right?

Tim Ulbrich: Otherwise that wouldn’t make sense. The position wouldn’t be there.

Alex Barker: Right. And salaries wouldn’t be at where they’re at if a company wasn’t making money.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

Alex Barker: So $5,000 in the grand scheme of things to the company is not a lot of money to keep someone happy and retained because the cost of retention is higher than probably what you think.

Tim Ulbrich: I was just going to say that, Alex. For anyone who’s listening and has worked with an organization for a period of time and know that you’re an awesome employee and ambassador of the organization, go do some research on the cost of retention and I think that will give you a lot of confidence and feeling comfortable of why and employer wants to keep a valued and key employee. It is significant, not only in the cost of time of retraining but what that means for the culture of the organization, the time that’s spent, all of those things. And it can be underestimated, as you mentioned. Alright, next one I have here is a little bit of a hey, help me out here, what should I do? So this comes, again, from the YFP Facebook group. It says, “I don’t negotiate for salary and benefits because my employer doesn’t really discuss compensation at all.”

Alex Barker: Yikes.

Tim Ulbrich: “There have been two times that I have asked for a raise because I had taken on more responsibilities, so someone else who had left, grew metsync, implement of vaccinations, other clinical services, started diabetes prevention program, etc., etc. Both times, the boss essentially said, ‘I’ll look into it.’” And goes on to share another example where boss was paying a company to do something that she had been working on and so asked, “Hey, what can I do to earn that money instead of us using that money to hire somebody externally?” That ended up of her getting some raise, not the full amount, and so the question here is how can one more effectively negotiate with someone who really doesn’t seem interested in wanting to have that conversation?

Alex Barker: Yuck. It sounds like this kind of manager is the person who sweeps problems under the rug and doesn’t want to handle conflict themselves. So that is definitely an uphill battle. I do — I sympathize with you. But here, I would say at the core of all of this, is actually a word that Tim, you used earlier: agreement. Employee is an at-will agreement between yourself and the company. You are not forced to work that job. You have the right, the choice, to make that decision. And agreements change over time. They have to because the market changes, demands change, and clearly, you — I’m assuming everything you’re saying here is true and obviously we only have one side of this story — but I’m assuming that you’ve been providing consistent value over time and you’ve had two attempts without success. So my old ID mentor used to tell me, “Two points don’t make a trend, but three do.” I think a third conversation is warranted. And I think you need to say with great certainty what your value is, what you’ve produced for the company, and what your expectations are moving forward, letting them know what you’re willing to decide if a decision isn’t made. You know, the whole ‘Let me think about it,’ or ‘Let me work on it,’ response kind of — it reminds me of my children asking me to play with them throughout the day as I work from home, you know? Like, “Dad, we want to play! Let’s play! Let’s play!” “Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ll do it later. We’ll do it later.”

Tim Ulbrich: “We will. We will.” Yeah.

Alex Barker: And it pacifies them knowing that I’ll eventually get to it. And I do. At the end of the day, I do. I fulfill on my promise. I play with them. This person hasn’t fulfilled. And they’ve done that now twice. That’s evidence for you. Now, you need to be willing to come to a decision about what it is that you’re going to be doing should they not give you a raise. And this is hard because, you know, one of those decisions obviously is ‘I’m not going to work for you,’ or ‘I’m going to work less,’ or ‘I’m going to look for a new position.’ And you’re well within your rights to negotiate for that. There is nothing forcing you to continue working for this company. And you can point out very clearly that they have not fulfilled the request that you made previously for negotiating your salary. Hold yourself to that high standard and elevate them along with you. You know, this shouldn’t be a us v. them, right, kind of battle. It should be about hey, you’re on my side. And this is what’s happened. Here’s the value of what I think I’m worth. And how can we move forward? Before you start suggesting or demanding what your actions are, try to understand what the limitations are. Maybe they did look into it and they ran into a roadblock and they’re too afraid to tell you of what that roadblock is.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep. Yeah, and I think the lack of communication here probably — you know, we don’t know the full story — but probably can lead to resentment, just like it does in any relationship.

Alex Barker: Oh, sure.

Tim Ulbrich: Right? So I think, you know, even if the outcome isn’t desired, I think the conversation can be really valuable. This also feels — and Alex, I might be wrong — but as I look at this question again, this feels like maybe an independent environment when somebody talks about what they’ve done to grow programs, some MedSync, diabetes prevention, stepping in for another pharmacist. So back to my comment earlier about leverage, if I’m an independent owner and I have a key employee of which probably not only developed these programs but probably of which these programs depend upon to run and maybe the owner doesn’t even necessarily know how to continue them and they’ve had a good impact on the pharmacy for both patient care and bottom line, like understand the leverage, you know, that you have in this situation, not to abuse that but to understand what you have as you’re coming into the conversation to really show and communicate the value. Alex, great stuff, as always. Appreciate having you on the show again. I look forward to these episodes that we do every so often. And this one certainly didn’t disappoint for me. So thank you so much for taking the time. And again, to the listeners, make sure you get a free copy of “A Pharmacist’s Guide to Salary and Benefit Negotiation.” And you can get that by sending an email to [email protected]. Alex, thanks again.

Alex Barker: Thanks for having me.

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YFP 205: Current State of the Pharmacy Job Market

Posted on May 27, 2021November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

Current State of the Pharmacy Job Market

On this episode, sponsored by Insuring Income, Tim Ulbrich welcomes back to the show, Alex Barker, the founder of The Happy PharmD. They talk about the current state of the pharmacy job market, considerations for those looking for their first position or switching jobs, and the intersection between your career and your financial plan.

About Today’s Guest

Alex Barker is a pharmacist, entrepreneur, author, and creator of The Happy PharmD and the Happy PharmD Summit.

Summary

Alex Barker, pharmacist and founder of The Happy PharmD, joins Tim Ulbrich to discuss the current state of the pharmacy job market. With many new pharmacists graduating around this time, looking for new positions, and still others looking to change positions, it is a perfect time to touch on the pharmacy job market, its current state, how that differs from previous years, and what the future looks like for recent graduates.

Alex shares some interesting data on the state of the pharmacy industry that includes the number of open positions currently, the percentage of full and part-time jobs, and the percentage and number of positions available in the undefined category. Without information as to whether undefined jobs are full or part-time, applicants should consider reaching out to the hiring department for more information, creating a new connection at the same time.

Alex explains that much like tackling financial goals, career goals should be approached with the end in mind. Without much change to a pharmacist’s salary throughout their career, a side hustle can provide opportunity in the form of personal satisfaction as it relates to the pharmacy career as well as a pathway to financial goals, ultimately leading to financial freedom.

Mentioned on the Show

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich: Alex, happy to have you back on the show.

Alex Barker: Thanks for having me back. I think it’s a good sign that I’m back, right?

Tim Ulbrich: It is. You are a frequent guest and certainly a friend of YFP, and appreciate the contributions that you make on the show. We had you on last on Episode 192, so this was way back when, February, where we talked about the findings from the 2021 Pharmacist Salary Guide. And today, I’m excited. We’re going to have you on to dig into the current state of the pharmacist job market, including financial considerations for those that are starting their first position and those that are looking to make a move to another position. So before we jump in, Alex, I don’t want to assume that all of our listeners know who you are. But give us a quick intro to Alex Barker and The Happy PharmD.

Alex Barker: Oh, I’m just some goofy pharmacist —

Tim Ulbrich: True, true.

Alex Barker: — that figured out entrepreneurship. I’m Alex Barker. I founded The Happy PharmD in 2017 I think. And since then, we’ve helped about 700 pharmacists transition into new and better jobs. We do career and business coaching. And we focus a lot on helping people find that spark again with their career, help them create an indispensable career rather than feeling like eh, dreading what I do or I feel like my company’s going to get rid of me. So that’s my main focus. I do a lot of other fun stuff like hanging out with Tim Ulbrich in a podcast. I love Thai food and anime. And that’s — oh, and Dungeons and Dragons. That’s me in a nutshell.

Tim Ulbrich: Of course Dungeons and Dragons. Yes. You know, Alex, I’ve never asked you this question, but I’m going to put you on the spot here for a moment. When you talk about 700+ jobs or pharmacists that you have impacted to help them find a better job, more fulfilling career, however we want to word it, have you stopped and reflected on that? Like the significance of that. I know you run at a pace that is fast — we’ll call it that. But I mean, have you paused — I’m fascinated by the topic of legacy. And I think you’re just getting warmed up. But you know, what makes people tick, why do they do what they do, and when I think about the work that you do and obviously the team at The Happy PharmD are doing and the impact that has on those individuals, the profession at large, but then I even think about pharmacists being in a more fulfilling job, you know, as I think about myself being a parent of four boys and obviously my relationship with my wife Jess, like we know that home and work are so interconnected and the joys and challenges of work, we often bring home or vice versa. And so even folks that are in a more fulfilling position, the positive impact that has on their families, their households, like have you reflected on that?

Alex Barker: No. I have to admit, I don’t know how to even think about it.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah.

Alex Barker: It’s a lot of people. And on top of that, it’s their spouses, their partners, and then it’s their kids, their community. It’s a big ripple effect. And I don’t know how to take that in. On top of it, I think you and I share this that we’re pretty driven people, and so as soon as we accomplish something, we’ve forgotten it and then we question our value like the next day. Like oh, what am I doing? Am I really achieving everything I want in life? Because I have this new goal now, and it’s not accomplished yet. But truthfully, no. And I –admittedly, I actually have a coach now, and this is one of my areas of improvement is reflecting on the things that I have accomplished because I think it’s very easy to get addicted to success. And I am working on it. So that’s my answer is no, and I’m trying.

Tim Ulbrich: Well, and it wasn’t in my notes for the episode, but when you led with that intro — and the reason I asked you it, besides just to make you a little bit uncomfortable because that’s kind of fun every once in awhile — is the reason I asked you that is I, too, am being challenged by a coach of stop, enjoy the moment, like reflect on what’s happened before you’re off and running into the next thing. And so I think that’s a valuable thing for us to talk about. But perhaps for even folks that are listening, I think many pharmacists are achievers by nature, and I think it can be easy to get caught into the strive, strive, strive without stopping along the way to enjoy it. So onward we go. This episode, you know, as I mentioned, really talking about what I see as the intersection between one’s career plan and their financial plan. And really good timing for this episode, many pharmacists graduating right now, others I suspect that are looking to make a job change. And with that, comes navigating a lot of new things, you know, whether it’s finding that position, perhaps some that are choosing or changing their career path, how does this look for me for the next 5, 10, 15 years? What about managing your finances during this transition? What about those student loans, budgeting, other financial goals? And really figuring out how to set themselves up for long-term success both professionally and financially. And we’re going to touch on several of those things throughout the episode. So Alex, let’s talk about something that every graduate is faced with right out of the gate: finding a job, choosing a career path, as much as some may enjoy being a student, at some point, we’ve got to make that decision. So you recently held the webinar about the Q1 review of the pharmacy job market where you dug into the supply and demand of pharmacy jobs. And I’m going to go there for a few minutes. And one of the questions I have to hear to start us out with is, what did we take away from Q1 in terms of the number of jobs that are out there, what types of positions are out there, and really the current state of the pharmacy job market?

Alex Barker: Yeah. So let’s just do high overview. And I know I’m going to be saying a lot of numbers. And if you’re like me, it’s hard to comprehend numbers when you’re listening to something. So some of these numbers are on our website, you can always check them out later if you want, or we have a presentation where we go over them. And I want to just take a moment to pause and ask, Tim, I know you already know the answer, but if you had to guess how many jobs were created in Quarter 1 of 2021, pharmacist jobs, how many would you think?

My answer was I thought maybe 15,000-20,000, somewhere in that range. Did you have an idea?

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, no, my question here was are these — are you talking about open positions or like newly created positions?

Alex Barker: Open, newly created positions.

Tim Ulbrich: OK. Yeah, I would have — I don’t even know if I would have said that high, although when I think about kind of the nationwide reach and some of the roles that are expanding, some of the states that are doing some creative things, yeah, that sounds about right.

Alex Barker: So that’s what our past kind of has indicated. There is a report out there. I believe it’s called the Pharmacy Demand Index or Pharmacy Job Index. It changes names, I feel like, every other year.

Tim Ulbrich: It used to be the PDI. I don’t know if it still is.

Alex Barker: Yes.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

Alex Barker: Yes, I don’t think it is that name any longer. But they predicted — or they reported I think in Quarter 4 of last year that there was like somewhere between 5,000-10,000 jobs created. Well, at The Happy PharmD, we’ve recently strategically partnered with JobRx, which is a job board. And they collected all of this data, and this is data from company websites where a company posts a job, and they take that information and document it. And in Quarter 1, they reported 50,000 jobs were created, just over 50,000 jobs.

Tim Ulbrich: Wow.

Alex Barker: When I heard that, I thought that was insane. At first, I thought, that’s COVID. But then I thought, no, most of these companies did the majority of their hiring in 2020. So that — it blew me away. I just couldn’t believe it.

Tim Ulbrich: That was my thought too, Alex. When you said that number, I started to think about, you know, I remember seeing some of those offers for part-time vaccine help that some of the chains and others were doing. So I think here, the interesting question is like, peel back the onion a little bit, right. Of those 50,000, because I think many of our listeners, we’ve kind of fallen into this script of like, the job market is what it is in pharmacy right now. But that number might be shocking, so give us the details behind that. What’s going on?

Alex Barker: I think we have to because I think this is totally different than what is suspected or talked about online. The vast majority of these jobs are community jobs, about 73%. And then another 25% were health systems, which includes long-term care and home infusion. So probably no surprise there. I know that there’s a big push in careers to do nontraditional things. But vast majority of open and available jobs are community and health system. The majority of those jobs were just straight pharmacist jobs because when an employer posts a job online, you know, a lot of people want to use the word “clinical pharmacist,” but the word “clinical pharmacist” only was about 6%, a little over 6%, of the jobs that were available.

Tim Ulbrich: That makes sense.

Alex Barker: And then another 12% were management jobs. However — and you actually kind of alluded to this earlier — the majority of these jobs were part-time, part-time jobs. So let me — I’ll break this down in a minute, but 40%, so you think, that’s not the majority, well, 40% were part-time, 28% were full-time jobs. Not even a third of the jobs. But 28% of these jobs were not defined, meaning that when a company posts a job online, they put it on their website, they don’t say whether it is full-time or part-time. And I think practically every jobseeker has seen that happen where you look at a job and you’re like, is this 20 hours a week? Is this full-time? You’re not quite sure. Well, unfortunately, it’s common practice for that to be happening. So 28%, another almost third of the jobs, didn’t say whether they were part-time or full-time.

Tim Ulbrich: One of the things, Alex, when I hear this — and just to recap those numbers for those that are listening and may not be audio learners — is, so about 28% full-time, about 40% part-time, and about 28% that were undefined. So that 40% that’s part-time, you know, when I think about the financial implications, great to hear about the number of jobs that are created. And then I dampen that question a little bit, right, when I start to see the part-time. And let’s call it out right up front is that there are many folks that may opt in and want a part-time position for very good reasons. And that’s not what I’m referring to here. I’m referring to folks that may want full-time work and aren’t able to find it, which obviously has significant financial implications. What are we defining as part-time? Can we pin that down? I know one of the trends I’ve seen is 30 or 32 has become the new 40, right? So what used to be let’s just say for example base salary of, I don’t know, $110,000 in Columbus, Ohio, for a pharmacist working on average 40 hours per week in community pharmacy, you know, now, they might be guaranteed 30-32 hours, sometimes a little bit less, sometimes a little bit more, and maybe that $110,000 now looks like $85,000 or $90,000. And certainly in some of those cases, opportunities to get additional hours but they’re “guaranteeing” some base that’s a little bit lower than 40. So are we talking 15 hours? 20-25? Like what is the threshold here? Or is it a ‘it depends’?

Alex Barker: It’s of course ‘it depends.’ It’s always up to the company what they define, right, on that limit. And I’m no law expert because every state is different in how they define a little bit on this. I think with a decent rule of thumb, you can say it is less than 32, 30 hours a week. But to your point, I think there’s even more danger here because everyone’s probably heard a horror story or two that you get hired on part-time, you were told we’ll guarantee this amount, and it turns out they only need you once every other week. There’s a huge financial consideration for anyone going for a part-time position. And career-wise, there are benefits and pros and cons for doing something like that because on the one hand, it’s nice to get a part-time job. It could give you some flexibility, and it could help pay your way while looking for your next job. But on the other hand, if you just want a job to do the job and make some extra money, pay some bills, and you’re expecting 30 hours, I would encourage you, do not think that that is a guarantee, no matter what management said because we have heard this in community, in hospital, in nontraditional jobs as well. So I think the days are leaving us behind where we trust a company in telling us how much are we working and how much are we getting in return.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and I think it’s just a good reminder — and I’m not saying this to be negative to companies as a business owner myself, I’m just saying it as reality of like, nothing is guaranteed, right? I mean, outside of some folks that are listening that have contracts, that have some guarantees that are associated, those are probably few are far between. But when we’re thinking about our financial plan and depending on our income, hopefully we’re not thinking about our future income as if it’s guaranteed and going to be able to fund things that we’re spending money on now. So you know, obviously, some of that can be fluid. Hopefully it’s not, but it can be. Alex, the other thing I think about here is as our listeners know very well, for many folks, their healthcare benefits, their retirement opportunities, a lot of that is tied to their employment, right? So when I — and often tied to full-time employment. So my mind is going down the path of, 401k benefits, 403b benefits, access to HSAs, healthcare benefits, dental, vision, other benefits that come from your employer. And not any one of those may seem very significant or potentially catastrophic in the moment — maybe outside of healthcare — but you know, something like a 401k, let’s just use that as an example. If you’re making $100,000 a year, and your employer is offering you a 3% match dollar-for-dollar and now you’re working part-time where not only is the salary and the hours reduced, but you’re not getting that, in that example, $3,000 per year. In that year, that may not seem catastrophic, but $3,000 a year compounded over time, especially for pharmacists that are just getting started, is very significant. So I would encourage folks to be thinking about — as we’ve talked about the intersection between the career and the financial plan — not just the salary, the sticker price, but also what other benefits may be afforded. And even for those that are working full-time and looking at other positions, that’s where you often will start to see some of the differences and nuances between one position and another and some of the benefits that can come. Alex, competition. You know, the other thing I’m thinking about here is it’s great we see 50,000 jobs, as you mentioned, not so great that many of these may be part-time. But we also have the reality of, you know, new graduates that are coming out into the market. We obviously have many that are listening to this episode. What is that looking like in terms of expected number of new graduates that are coming out into the market? And how is that impacting the competition for these positions?

Alex Barker: It’s fierce. It’s fierce. This year, in 2021, we’re graduating just over 15,000 students. And based on last year’s NAPLEX, we should probably expect at least another 14,000 and a few hundred who pass the NAPLEX because as we all know, the NAPLEX passing rates for most colleges of pharmacy has gone down significantly. And that number, the number of grads, the number of new grads every year from what we can tell, as far as I know, AACP hasn’t published information since 2019. I could be wrong about that when this goes live, but that’s the latest data that we have. The number of grads is going down steadily. By 2023, we’re looking at just under 13,000 entering the market. So we’ve got a significant group of students, probably about a third of those are going straight into residencies. And then we’ve got another two-thirds that are going into the job market. But we also have some very interesting information from AACP, they do a workforce survey every five years. And they change a little bit of the topics, but they always do ask things about your jobs. And in this group, those that were likely or very likely to be looking for a job was — it was around 34%. So again, a third.

Tim Ulbrich: Wow.

Alex Barker: And there was over 5,000 people who did this survey. And something I’ve learned in survey design is that when you get a population that big, you can start extrapolating out quite well to a larger population of similar demographics. And in our case, if we were to extrapolate that to the 300,000+ pharmacists in the United States that have an active license, we’re talking about over 100,000 pharmacists at any given time likely or very likely to be looking for their next job. So right now, in this very moment, we’ve got 100,000 people looking and now we’re adding another potentially 10,000 — I mean, many of these students probably have jobs lined up or have interviews lined up and they’re going to be hired very soon. From what we can tell, it does seem like the vast — at least the majority of students by this time have something lined up. But they’re coming into an overcrowded market. And so it isn’t looking very positive. There are some interesting things, though, happening in pharmacy that I think could be drawing attention, but that’s not obviously what we’re focusing on for this. These are just the straight facts.

Tim Ulbrich: And Alex, did I hear you correctly — and I’m guessing you’re pulling this data from the enrollment data that’s published by AACP. And we’ll link to some of this in the show notes, including the AACP workforce survey that you mentioned every five years and also some of the enrollment data — but did I hear you correctly that the projected number of graduates is going down? And I’m assuming you’re pulling that from like the current number of P1s, 2s, and 3s and then projecting that out to see what the number of graduates would be?

Alex Barker: Yes.

Tim Ulbrich: OK.

Alex Barker: Yep. So we look at numbers from NABP, AACP, ASHP, APhA, and they help kind of provide a holistic picture of what’s happening. The most data we have on this stuff is obviously students.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah.

Alex Barker: Once we enter the workforce, the numbers are a lot more variable. We rely on the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is always changing. Some people may know this, that they are predicting negative job growth right now for pharmacy. And so it is a tight, very tight market and likely we’ll be seeing oversupply for quite some time. But I’m positive. I think I’m more positive about the future of pharmacy. I do think opportunities are opening up, and I think that eventually, things will correct themselves because we’re already seeing a huge disinterest in the general public in pharmacy as a career option. And that’s evident by the number of applications that colleges are getting. And so at some point in the near future, we will see an evening out. As any good capitalist would believe in, the market fixes itself at some point.

Tim Ulbrich: I think the other thing that I’m thinking about, Alex, and I don’t think we have a data point to draw any conclusions, but if you think about 15,000 new graduates coming into the market in 2021, and you mentioned over 330,000 licenses in the United States active, so that’s about 4-5% of new positions coming in relative to the whole workforce. So the question is, short of new job creation, which we just talked about a little bit — and there will be some of that — short of new job creation, like are pharmacists leaving the profession? And the other thing I’m thinking about is in the midst of coming out of the pandemic and the uncertainty, what impact did this last year and a half have on folks that were near retirement and might that be delaying, might it be expediting, you know, folks are I’m ready to be done? So that’s a big factor, right, the number of positions that come open, assuming, assuming that those positions remain and then get filled. You know, but that’s a data point that I don’t often see and probably is hard to capture. But obviously we know the front end, but it’s a little bit harder to assess what’s happening on the back end.

Alex Barker: Yeah, and I don’t know how — I was just trying to think — how would you capture that? It would probably have something to do with an active license, right? But that could mean that they’re retiring. I’d imagine state boards perhaps are capturing this. So I think you’re kind of spurring on a new research project for me to pursue.

Tim Ulbrich: Well, you can hold the license but be retired.

Alex Barker: True. Right, you can.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah.

Alex Barker: Absolutely. And in fact, one study we looked at about retirement, it was like I think 40% of people still practiced on the side after age 65. So even if you do retire, you’re still taking up jobs, you’re still practicing and I guess potentially taking that opportunity from someone else. But it’s only part-time, typically. I don’t think there is a data point to suggest it, but I think it would be interesting to track it. We have anecdotally helped people transition into different things outside of pharmacy. But the majority of people we work with stay within pharmacy, 95-97%. And I’m not sure how to get into it, but I think you’ve found a new niche.

Tim Ulbrich: Next project. Yeah.

Alex Barker: Yeah.

Tim Ulbrich: We can talk about the data all day, and it’s important to get the context. The question is, what can I actually do about this data? So you know, you mentioned roughly a third of folks, according to that workforce survey, that might be out there in the market looking. We’ve got new grads that are coming into the market, some of them that have — many of them have already secured a position, but those that are going on to residency, they’re going to be in the job search either a year or two years from now if they’re doing a PGY1 or PGY2 or for those with fellowships, same type of thing. So the question is, you know, what do you do? The reality is you need a job. Income, as we say at YFP, is the lifeblood of a financial plan, right? You need it to pay down debt, and you need it to grow your assets and ultimately achieve your financial goals. So in the webinar, Alex, you mentioned that you have to have a good strategy when it comes to targeting your career path. What do you mean by that? And bigger question than we have time to likely go into in a whole lot of detail, but you know, some tangible, practical things that folks listening can take away when it comes to designing what you call a good career strategy.

Alex Barker: Well, it starts with kind of the same steps that you guys take with when you help someone create that financial plan. It’s knowing where you want to go. It’s having an idea of where you want to end up. Everyone probably has this understanding or belief that they want to retire someday. And they very likely want to retire from a job that treated them well, that created a great work environment, that will be maybe a bittersweet finish. We know some of the feelings and the things that we want, but how do we build that? We start by the end in mind. And so typically when we work with people, we like to think big picture, where do you want to be, even just five or three years? Because thinking about your career 30 years from now is practically impossible. I mean, think about even your career, Tim. You know, I would classify you as someone who’s indispensable. You probably wouldn’t have —

Tim Ulbrich: Appreciate that.

Alex Barker: Yeah, think about your career. You have built something that has led you to building a business now. And it’s something that you absolutely love. You probably never thought about that when you graduated pharmacy school.

Tim Ulbrich: Correct. Yep.

Alex Barker: Same here. In fact, I was turned off to business when I graduated. I thought no way. There’s no way I want to do something like that. And so we tend to think smaller picture versus something like a financial plan because what we find over and over again is that as indispensable people come into their own into their careers, they typically have opportunities being presented to them frequently, often. And it can lead them in very different trajectories. You and I talked a little bit before this, when we hit the record button, about trajectories. Pharmacy, in general, not leadership, excluding leadership positions, is a very low financial career trajectory. The difference between someone who just starts a pharmacy career and someone who has like 20+ years is about $12,000 a year. And that’s unheard of in most professions.

Tim Ulbrich: And give us the details on that. So as we talk about obviously the dollars here and you know, again, income is the lifeblood of the financial plan, right, income is a tool. We’ve got to have it to be able to move forward with the goals we want to achieve. So what did you find — and we touch on some of this when we talked previously about the 2021 Pharmacist Salary Guide, and folks can download that, again, at TheHappyPharmD.com/YFP. But tell us exactly, you mentioned trajectory, not so much generally speaking, outside of admin/management positions. Give us the numbers. What are we seeing in terms of data around salary? And then how that does or does not change significantly with experience?

Alex Barker: So there was only one resource in our salary guide that looks at years of experience. And that was payscale.com. Not a lot of data points, but what they did find is that less than a year, your annual average wage was about $113,000. And if you had over 20+ years experience, it’s $125,000. That’s where that $12,000 difference came from. And what we’ve found when working with pharmacists, when building that strategy, we typically do include money because money is a major reason why we do the work we do. But what we found is that with financial trajectory, getting into something you actually enjoy doing usually presents new and exciting opportunities where you can get paid more, where there are promotions, where there are bonuses again, where there are financial incentives for performing well because if there’s one thing that pharmacy is plagued by it’s that we’re not paid for performance. I wasn’t paid any better than the person who was the best on our team and the worst on our team. I was paid because that was my pay grade. And that creates kind of I would say stagnation in our profession. So by understanding someone’s financial future, what they want to be making, it can actually help us narrow down a few things. It also helps kind of motivate typically younger people to create a business because what I’ve found, including myself, is people want lifestyle freedom over even making more money sometimes or just the ability to travel the world and live off of — I mean, heck, some people, no one I think we’ve worked with, but I know people in this industry who live off of $40,000 a year and they are some of the happiest people I know in the world. But there’s simply too much opportunity out there to make even more money than that, but it’s all about really what you want from your work, your career, and your life.

Tim Ulbrich: And I love that while we’re talking here about salary, that connects full circle to me about what you said just a few minutes ago is starting with the vision, right? Maybe it’s not 30 years out for the reasons you mentioned. Maybe it’s 5, 6, 7, what do you want? And getting clear on that. And I would argue — you probably do this in coaching all the time and do it well, like put aside the objections for a moment, right? Put aside the fears or am I qualified or am I capable? But what am I really passionate about? Or what are the moments that are happening where I feel energized, right? I always tell folks, I can think back to moments at work where I could have spent one hour on something, but if it wasn’t something that I enjoyed nor necessarily an area of strength, like I felt emotionally exhausted. And it could have been a one-hour workday, right? And there are other days — you know this from your business — you could spend working on a project for 10 or 12 hours and you get lost in it, and you feel like you could come home and do some more work because you’re just energized by what you’re doing. So I think the vision and the plan, you know, is so important. And we see the similarities here to the financial plan as somebody is thinking about, what does that next step look like? Whether it’s a first step for a graduate — and I would encourage those new graduates listening like not to fall into the trap that your first step is the only step, right? To the comment you made, Alex, it feels like that, though. You remember that feeling. I remember looking at residencies, looking at jobs, and you think, OK, this is the path, as if there’s a singular path. Like what is that all about? I mean, there is so many different paths and on the path, there’s different stops and different routes and things to get there. So excited about what you all are doing to help pharmacists and coach them in this area. Trajectory of pay. You know, this, to me, from a financial planning perspective, this to me is a big concern. Now, I will say, a pharmacist’s income, while we’re seeing the changes we’re seeing, is still a good income. And you know, it still provides us a great tool. The risk I see, Alex — and I want to flip the script here and have you play financial coach for moment — the risk I see here is if I’m somebody who’s graduating, let’s say I’m in my late 20s, early 30s, I’ve got a doctorate degree, I’m making a great income, and that’s not going to go up significantly, just by fact of inflation, just by reality of life tends to get more expensive usually as things goes on, with exceptions, of course. But whether that be because of family or other expenses or the desires and needs that we have, wants that drive up those expenses, so if income is not going to bump up like we might see in other careers or fields, like there’s somewhat of this potential like a negative effect on the financial plan, right? And so what can a new graduate, what should a new graduate be thinking about? Or even those that are looking at a job switch or position change to put themselves in a position where the stress of the salary and the finances isn’t going to be crippling to them as they think about what this means from a career perspective?

Alex Barker: I think traditional wisdom says it’s give and take. You can either get paid really, really well and you know what jobs typically pay really well, and you can suffer for a few years and potentially not really enjoy it. We all know what those jobs are. And in exchange for that misery, you give away a few years of your life, you make a decent salary, you can pay off your debts faster if that’s one of your goals, you can save up for a down payment on a really nice house. You know, you can do what you want with that. I think of — I can’t think of his name, but the pharmacist who got very famous for retiring early, saving up his millions.

Tim Ulbrich: Jason Long?

Alex Barker: Yeah. Yeah, and he retired early. And that’s great. That’s fantastic. And I think that plan or that traditional wisdom is based on financial success, wanting to achieve your financial goals over a career goal. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Absolutely nothing wrong. I would not personally pursue that path because I would encourage people to pursue the things that expand or create abundance versus thinking that this is a scarcity thing. I just talked with a student yesterday who took a job at a major retailer because he was afraid of his loans, he wanted to pay those off, and he missed out on an opportunity because you know, it didn’t pay as well. And when I say didn’t pay as well, we’re talking not a lot of money. We’re talking like $15,000 a year, which yeah, it may sound like a lot —

Tim Ulbrich: That’s significant.

Alex Barker: Yeah, for sure. It’s definitely $1,000 a month — less than that after taxes.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

Alex Barker: But it isn’t a huge change. The thing that I would encourage everyone to consider is choosing abundance over scarcity because this world has so many opportunities. And you as a pharmacist have an expert knowledge that is valuable in the right marketplace. And so if you feel like your job isn’t paying you enough or that you’d want to get a job that pays more, or you want to create financial freedom for yourself, then why not do something on the side? I know that that comes with some baggage that people may not be wanting to do if you’re a parent, I don’t want to give up 10 hours a week, 15 hours a week or whatever it takes.

Tim Ulbrich: Sure.
Alex Barker: But I am someone who believed in that dream, that is my personal philosophy, paid off my house 27 years early because of hustling on the side. Like if I can do it, I know you can do it because we’re all pharmacists. I’m pretty sure you only have pharmacists listening to this podcast. So if you’re listening —

Tim Ulbrich: I think so, yeah. Maybe my mom or dad occasionally?

Alex Barker: Oh, nice. Hey, Mom or Dad. Nice to see you. If you’re a pharmacist, you’re insanely capable, insanely intelligent. And you can create something that makes $1,000 extra a month. And you can hire a team to help you to fulfill on whatever those things are. And that can create your financial freedom for the future. It’s what I’ve done, it’s what I’ve helped other people do, it’s what people are doing now. And I think personally, I have my own theories about Gen Z. I really think that this next generation doesn’t care two flips about making six figures in order to — and to give up 6+ years of my life to get this job. That’s not at all what they care about.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s right.

Alex Barker: And I think that’s what the application trend shows as well. So I think it’s all about pursuing an abundant freedom through business, personally. That’s what I would find.

Tim Ulbrich: And I want to add, Alex, one of the things I think we don’t talk enough about — you know, side hustles are widely discussed — is it’s not just about the money, right? I mean, the money is a factor, of course it is as we talk about the financial plan. But one of the greatest joys I still have to do this day and had when I was at the very beginning of the journey of YFP was the creative outlet and that feeling of you’re creating something, you’re providing value, right, you’re leaning into a strength. Like it’s energizing. And I would have and did it for nothing, right? I mean, when you’re kind of getting everything going. So what value does that provide in terms of if you’re in a position where it may not be as fulfilling as you would hope, like that may be an outlet for you to think about. And we have tried on this show — and we’re going to do more of this — of featuring pharmacists that are doing different things in this area, not so that somebody can hear any one of those and say, “Oh, I’m going to do that,” maybe that’s the case, but more so of hey, that’s a cool idea and I hadn’t thought about it and hopefully beginning to let the creative juices flow in different areas. So we’ve had several folks on talking about different areas. I can think of Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks, Episode 126, we talked about her income from medical writing, Blair Thielemeier, of course, the Pharmapreneur Academy, had her on recently, 197, Brent Rollins we had back on 112 talking about expert witness and several others. So I think this is an area for many folks to consider for a variety of reasons, and Alex, you did a good job of articulating those. As always, love having you on the show. We’re going to be doing it again as I bring you back to give us an update on what’s going on in the job market and what our community needs to be up-to-speed with. Where’s the best place for our listeners to go, Alex, to stay connected with you and to stay connected with the work that you’re doing at The Happy PharmD?

Alex Barker: Oh, we’ve got a website. It’s super slick looking. You can check it out if you want.

Tim Ulbrich: It is nice.

Alex Barker: TheHappyPharmD.com. But I am the most active on LinkedIn. You can check me out there, Alex Barker. And happy to connect with you there and have a conversation with you. I try to talk to everyone that connects with me. If I miss you, I’m sorry. But feel free to send me a message, happy to connect on there.

Tim Ulbrich: Alex, appreciate having you on the show. And to our listeners, thank you for joining us for this week’s episode. If you liked what you heard, please do us a favor, leave us a rating and review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts each and every week. We appreciate your feedback, love to hear your ideas on the show. And as always, we thank you for listening to this week’s episode of the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

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YFP 202: How to Teach Your Kids About Money and Investing

Posted on May 6, 2021November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

How to Teach Your Kids About Money and Investing

On this episode, sponsored by Insuring Income, Tim Ulbrich welcomes Dylin Redling and Allison Tom, creators of Retireby45.com and authors of two books, Start Your F.I.R.E. (Financial Independence Retire Early): A Modern Guide to Early Retirement and Investing for Kids: How to Save, Invest and Grow Money to the show. Dylin and Allison talk about their FIRE journey and share practical advice and meaningful activities to teach kids about money and investing.

About Today’s Guests

Dylin Redling and Allison Tom are a married couple living in Oakland, California. After working for 17 years in the tech industry in San Francisco, they left the workforce in January 2015 and never went back.

They own and operate the website RetireBy45.com, which provides inspiration, tips, and resources for achieving FIRE (Financial Independence/Retiring Early) and making the most of the FIRE lifestyle. In 2020, they wrote and published two books: “Start Your FIRE: A Modern Guide to Early Retirement” and the best-selling “Investing for Kids.”

They love food, fitness, and travel. Their goal of “60 by 60” is to visit 60 countries by the age of 60. They are halfway to their goal with another 10 years to go!

Summary

Dylin Redling and Allison Tom, creators of Retireby45.com and authors of Start Your F.I.R.E. (Financial Independence Retire Early): A Modern Guide to Early Retirement and Investing for Kids: How to Save, Invest and Grow Money, join Tim Ulbrich on this week’s podcast episode. In this interview, focused on their book, Investing for Kids, Dylin and Allison share their creative process and some of the practical and meaningful activities that can be found in the book.

Allison digs into some of the motivations behind Investing for Kids and talks about why they choose to have superhero protagonists. She explains that she and Dylin not only wanted to make the book educational for kids, walking them through basic concepts of personal finance, but also wanted the activities in the book to be fun and exciting for kids to participate in rather than having those activities feel like more homework.

Dylin and Allison also share their own experiences, growing up with different financial knowledge and money lessons, and how those experiences plus a series of calculated financial decisions brought them to be able to retire in their early 40s. Dylin and Allison remark on their time as retirees and the freedom that they have been afforded because of it. Their goal of “60 by 60” is to visit 60 countries by the age of 60. They are already halfway to their goal!

Mentioned on the Show

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich: Dylin and Allison, welcome to the show.

Allison Tom: Thanks for having us.

Dylin Redling: Thank you very much. Great to be here.

Tim Ulbrich: I’ve very much been looking forward to this interview to talk more about your story achieving financial independence and early retirement and more specifically, the work that the two of you did in writing “Investing for Kids: How to Save, Invest, and Grow Money.” And Dylin, let’s start with you only because we share an Ohio State connection since you’re an alum so go Bucks. Why write a book specifically designed for kids about investing? What was the motivation behind your work?

Dylin Redling: Yeah, well, first of all, go Buckeyes. Yes, a great connection there. It’s interesting because I’ll start off with the interesting fact that Allison and I actually don’t have kids. And so you would think that the impetus would have been we had our own kids and we taught them financial literacy and it inspired us to teach more kids. But in fact, we sort of stumbled into this book. This is our second book. Our first book is called, “Start Your FIRE: A Modern Guide to Early Retirement.” And it’s all about early retirement and financial independence, which that book just poured right out of us because it’s something that we live and we know very well. And what happened was the publisher who we worked with on that book came back to us a couple months after that book was published and said, “Hey, we have an idea for this other book. And it’s investing for kids ages 8-12. And what do you guys think because you know about investing and financial concepts, and we think you guys might be able to pull this off.” And we thought, wow, we don’t have kids, we’re not teachers, we don’t hang out with kids. We have a few friends with kids, but we don’t spend a lot of time with them. And so we thought, man, this sounds really challenging and daunting. But it was during the 2020 year of COVID, so we had a lot of time on our hands. So we thought, let’s just go for it. And we dove into it, and it was very challenging because we wanted it to be interesting for kids and informative and fun but somehow, we put our heads together and we had a really good editing team that helped us with some of the concepts to relate to kids. And that’s — and we just dove into it and we just made it happen.

Tim Ulbrich: And I think you guys did an awesome job. You know, one of the things that stood out to me as my wife and I were looking through this book as parents of four young kids trying to teach this topic of money is that’s it’s very hands-on, it’s relatable, it’s digestible, lots of activities, really cool ideas. You know, I often find myself, especially writing, talking about this topic regularly, presenting on this topic, you take for granted how you learned some of this information along the way. You know, I often think, OK, take a concept like compound interest or, you know, mutual funds or index funds or ultimately trying to determine what your retirement savings goals, any of those concepts, and it’s very easy to get lost in the weeds. And I think it’s often hard to figure out, how am I going to break this down and teach this with my children and really work through this? And so I found myself looking through this, not only learning myself of oh, that’s a really neat way to teach a different concept or a very visual way or a nice activity to apply that information. So I think as I looked through this, whether someone is more advanced in their own knowledge and understanding of personal finance or whether they feel like they could also learn from these concepts, either one I think this book could be a really good guide for them alongside of working with their child. So great work in the work that you put together with the book. And Allison, knowing your background is a technical project manager, I’m curious, I mean, how and why did you catch FIRE — pun intended here — with this topic, not only as an individual pursuit for financial independence but also in wanting to help guide others to the work that you’re doing with RetireBy45.com and with the book “Investing for Kids.” Where does the interest come from?

Allison Tom: Part of it is that my college degree is actually psychology and education. So I had all these grand ideas of becoming a teacher, an elementary school teacher, after I graduated from college. But you know, after a couple of years, it dawned on me that frankly, our teachers are woefully underpaid. And there was pretty much there was no clear financial path for me to continue being a teacher making the salary I was making, so I was living in Boston at the time and I moved back to New York where we eventually met waiting tables, of all things. And we came out to San Francisco on a whim, we were on vacation, we were in our mid-20s, we thought, alright, let’s check out San Francisco. And so I bounced around from career to career and ended up on a consulting company that eventually brought me into the technical world of the Bay Area. But you know, so being a project manager is basically being a glorified teacher. So it’s dropping people, wrangling people to do things that you want them to do but do it in a way that makes them want to be — work as a team and learn from each other. So in a way, it was being a project manager was — it had very similar tendencies as it was being a teacher. And so we had always thought, oh, it would be great to retire early, but we didn’t really know what retiring early meant. We thought, oh, 55, that seems like a really good age to retire. It’s earlier than 65, but it seems so far in the future. And living in the Bay Area, our expenses were so high that we were like, there’s no way, even if we’re making decent salaries between the two of us that we’re ever going to retire. But about 11 years or so ago, Dylin came down with double pneumonia and was in the ICU for about 10 days and in the hospital altogether for almost two weeks. And that for us was a light bulb moment because he was within a 50/50 chance that he would make it. And so you know, after that, we kind of thought, OK, do we really want to keep working for the next 25 years or so? And so we kind of like made it our goal to get out of the rat race as soon as we could. And so we kind of fell into by accident. We can talk about that later, but it just — it kind of was a natural progression from all of the things that we’ve been doing over time.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, that makes sense. And I appreciate you sharing some of the background and story. We’ll come back to how you got to that point of early retirement, obviously as I mentioned in the introduction, early 40s to be able to accomplish that goal, and we’ll talk a little bit about how you got to that path, why that was possible as well. And so let’s first dig into some of the book of “Investing for Kids.” Let’s start with the main characters of the book, the Dollar Duo: Mr. Finance and Investing Woman. Allison, tell us more about these two characters, how you came up with the idea, why it was important to the overall text, and how those characters can really help the learner, again, 8- to 12-year-old is the target group here, engage with the material throughout the book.

Allison Tom: Well, first of all, it was kind of funny, today is actually Superheroes Day, so —

Tim Ulbrich: There we go.

Allison Tom: It’s a perfect segue into the topic. We were actually taking a walk one day as we were writing the book, and we were talking about politics, of all things. And we were trying to figure out in the administration, whichever administration, whoever won the presidency, what each president could do to make their administration better. And so we kind of were talking and talking about of all things, the Justice League of America and who we would think would be a good fit for making this country a better country. And so the whole idea of the Justice League, kind of thought, we thought, oh, superheroes. Kids love superheroes. Let’s talk to our publisher about bringing in some superheroes. And we were like, well, I don’t know if they’ll go for that, there’s some extra graphics involved and it could be expensive, but we felt that it would really be a good way for kids to relate to finances. And so we kind of pushed hard for this idea of having superheroes teach kids finance.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and that stood out to me in addition to how visual it is. This does not — especially for a topic like investing, right, can be weighty at times, it can be overwhelming, I often find myself when I’m giving a talk on this topic, starts with excitement often when we think about what the — and then you get into the weeds and you see the eyes gloss over, right, and other things. And this does not read like a textbook in any way, shape, or form. And I’m grateful for that. So thank you for the illustrations, the activities, the superheroes, but I think it very much reads like an interactive, applicable, nuts-and-bolts, important information, but how do I actually apply it and hopefully get excited about this information. Again, we’re thinking about an 8- to 12-year-old of wanting to really hopefully empower them to be excited with this for the rest of their own financial journey. And I very much read this book, as I mentioned, being a father of four boys who also lives and breathes personal finance, I really do often find myself in conversation with my boys about money. And honestly, I struggle at times with making the topic of money tangible and meaningful. And it can feel abstract, especially when I find myself trying to say and teach a principle that I very much understand but it feels more abstract as I talk it out loud and especially when you start to view it through the lens of a child. And so I like how you start the book with Chapter 1 on Money 101. You cover important topics like money doesn’t grow on trees, ways to earn money, a little bit of entrepreneurship in there, which is really cool, the history of money, where to keep money. And so Dylin, here’s the challenge that I’m seeing with my boys. In the age of credit cards, debit cards, direct deposit, online banking, digital currency, electronic payment methods, it can feel difficult to teach a child about money when you don’t see it. Right? There’s very little actual, physical cash and therefore, it can be hard to connect work and I think the opportunities from work with earning money and therefore, the opportunity to then save and see it grow. So what are some tips and strategies as you put this book together as well as the other teaching you’ve done on this topic about how can we teach kids about money in a way that it can be relatable, it can be tangible, and then hopefully it becomes memorable for them.

Dylin Redling: Yeah, you know, that’s a really good point about money being very digital in this day and age. I remember when I was a kid, one of the coolest things was my grandmother would give me and my cousins 50 single dollars for Christmas and for our birthdays. They would come in a little box just big enough to hold those 50 $1 bills.

Tim Ulbrich: I love that.

Dylin Redling: And — yeah, it was really cool. And you know, $50 back then for a kid was a lot of money. And those 50 $1 bills would last a really long time. I would take them into the arcade, into the pizza parlor, whatever. And so maybe one way to do it is to actually bring back physical money. And I don’t think the amount really matters that much. But like you said, I mean, being able to tangibly feel it, see it, and understand it, it helps a lot more if you’re using physical money. And I’ll actually give an example of that we used on our blog and in actually “Start Your FIRE” book. I don’t think we mentioned it in “Investing for Kids,” but it’s a little story I like to tell about a money lesson that I actually learned from Allison when we were waiting tables in New York. So we met in a big restaurant in Times Square, and Allison grew up with a little bit of a better financial education in her household than I did. My single mother was wonderful, but it was all paycheck-to-paycheck, there wasn’t a lot of saving or investing. So I came into our initial relationship not very good at dealing with money. So anyway, we were waiting tables. So all of our money pretty much was in tips. So we would have tons of cash. And I remember just putting the money — I would wad it up into balls, I would stuff it into all four of my pockets because I was busy. And then we would go out afterwards and Allison saw how I was treating my money, and she was like, “What are you doing? How do you even keep track of that? That’s awful.” And so she taught me this little lesson. And she doesn’t even remember this because this was 25 years ago, but it stuck out in my head. And basically, I call it the Wallet Lesson. When you take all of your bills and you put them nicely, neatly in order from small to big or big to small, whatever works, fold it neatly into your wallet. And it’s really simple, but the reason it was impactful for me is because it just got me to think about how to respect and treat money. You know, you work really hard for money —

Tim Ulbrich: That’s right.

Dylin Redling: And if you don’t treat it well, you don’t respect it, you know, that $50 might not seem like a big deal. But when it gets to $100,000 or $500,000 and you don’t have that same respect and feel for what that money represents and how hard it was to earn it, you’re not going to put it and treat it and save it and protect it as well as you could.

Tim Ulbrich: Such a good example of a behavioral move, right? The number of dollars didn’t change, but how you treated them, how you respected them, how you viewed them, and I think many of our listeners, we talk on this show often that I believe personal finance, it’s about the math and it’s about the behavior, and both of those are very important and some of those types of moves or here, teaching kids in that way, I think can be very powerful as well. Allison, Chapter 2, save your money, you have an activity titled “Be an Interest Rate Detective.” I love this. I thought this was a really cool interactive activity where you challenge the reader to work with an adult to research interest rates for a local bank savings account, a CD, so a Certificate of Deposit, and an online savings account. So again, this was just one of many example activities you have throughout the book, but why is an activity like this so important in terms of someone being an interest rate detective to experience and go through as they begin their journey of understanding some of the basics of investing?

Allison Tom: So part of it is we wanted all the activities to be something that kids could do with the adult in their life. And we didn’t assume that every child has a parent because we know in this modern day and age that families are different nowadays, and you might have two moms or two dads or a grandmother or grandfather or a guardian of some sort. So we wanted something that people could do together with — kids could do together with someone else. And we thought, oh, it’s going to be interesting because banks are closed during COVID. When we were writing the book, it was right in the heart of shelter in place. But we thought, well, you know, kids have access to — most kids have access to a computer, they can at least walk around to a local bank and banks always have their advertisements on their windows with their interest rates. But we thought it would be an interesting way for kids to see what is in their environment and practice some good behaviors like oh, what does interest rate mean? What is APR? Those are, they’re jumbled letters and so you actually learn what the acronym stands for. And so we want to make sure that kids could kind of connect their physical world to their these abstract ideas about money. So all these activities are kind of a way to get kids to start thinking about it, and we were like, oh, kids aren’t really going to want to do activities, it’s extra homework. So we tried to make them fun and things that they could actually do and feel like they were learning something.

Tim Ulbrich: And I think this was a good example where the activity really, to me, is a rabbit hole of other learning, right? So if you go to the bank and do this activity, just like you suggested, Allison, it leads to other conversations and questions like, what is the federal reserve? And what is an insured account? What does that mean? You talk about that in the book, you know, how do you explain the federal reserve? What is compound interest? Why is that so important? What is principle? What’s interest? What do terms mean? And I think it, again, leads to further conversations, which obviously hopefully spark some motivation and curiosity to learn more on this topic. Dylin, in Chapter 3, Introduction to Investing, you cover very important topics, you know, why to invest, risk v. reward — and I love the Risk-o-meter throughout the book, that was really neat — liquidity, the importance of conducting research, and connecting back to my previous comment about the difficulties teaching a child about money when it may not be tangible, you can’t see it, can’t feel it type of a mindset, I think this is another area where parents may feel challenged to teach a child the importance of investing when again, it might feel somewhat abstract and here, we’re talking about delayed gratification, right? So not spending money on something today that has an instant reward. I think back to my childhood, it was driving to the corner store, buying baseball cards, buying candy, you earn the money, you spent the money, you saw the reward instantly. So here, the activity on investing, which I thought helped to really drive this concept further, you talk about an activity of picking a stock and really going through that process of understanding what’s involved there. So talk us through that type of an activity, what’s involved in that, and why that’s important to help a child relate to the concepts of investing.

Dylin Redling: Yeah, sure. It’s interesting because I can also relate it to how Allison and I do our own investing. And most of what we do, to be honest, are buying mutual funds and index funds. We don’t do a lot of single stock buying. However, there are some advantages to just helping a child or anybody, really, think about, well, if you were to buy a single stock, what would the thought process be when you do that? We actually just wrote an interesting post on our blog just about a week ago where we had $10,000 that we wanted to experiment with. And what we did is we selected five different stocks to invest that $10,000. So $2,000 per stock. And I went through the process in that blog post of why we would do this. And it wasn’t to get rich quick or to see what would happen in a week or a month. This particular blog post talked about a one-year time frame. And it’s the same with the activity for the child. I think we used a shorter — a relatively short time frame so they could at least measure their success. At the end of the day, investing, as you know, as your listeners know, it’s very much a long-term process where you’re investing over years and decades. But again, to get the child to think about some of the things that you might want to think about with whether you’re investing in stocks or any sort of investment, what are the things that go into that thought process? And so getting back to that blog post I wrote, some of the stocks that I suggested that we test out, one was a blockchain ETF. So now that bitcoin and other coin-based just went public, those are things that we wouldn’t necessarily invest in directly. But a blockchain ETF is an example of a way you could dip your toe into that technology. So that was the thought process there. Another example was a cruise company, NCL, Norwegian Cruise Line. Now that COVID is starting to disappear and everyone’s getting vaccinated, people, there’s this pent-up demand to start traveling again. So we thought, hey, in the next year, NCL may actually start to do really good. And they even have a program where if you have 100 shares, you get extra bonus points. And so the idea is to think about all the different aspects to that investment, like how does it relate to what’s going on in the world right now? And what other pros and cons are there to that investment?

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and I think we share your philosophy. What I heard there is our planning team often says a good investing plan should probably be as about boring as watching paint dry.

Dylin Redling: Right.

Tim Ulbrich: At the end of the day, it’s about a long-term play. But I like this activity as a concept. You know, I remember I had a great Econ101 teacher that had us do a similar activity. And it’s very memorable because it also leads to many other conversations like well, what type of influence does my marketing have? Or I thought this was going to go this way, and it didn’t go this way. Maybe I had some overconfidence in my selection of things. So why is diversification important? So I think, again, reading it and doing it, two very, very different things. And I think people experiencing this firsthand, especially you think of an 8- to 12-year-old, a very kinesthetic learner, right, hands-on experience that moment, be able to learn through that experience. Allison, as I went through the book, many times I thought to myself, man, what if I would have had some of this information earlier? What if I would have had this in middle school or high school or perhaps even earlier? And shoutout to my parents, who did an awesome job of the foundations, grew up in a small business, felt like I had a little bit of a head start. But outside of some K-12 programs and in higher education, I would say it’s largely absent, maybe some elective courses or some opportunities. And so I can’t help but think like, why aren’t we doing more of this? Why aren’t we covering more of this in a K-12 education? I mean, this type of book, this type of experience, these types of activities would be a home run in teaching kids about money. Here, we’re taking 8-12 investing, but obviously we all know it’s broader than that as well. So question here, I’m not asking you to solve the personal finance educational system woes, but why do you think this is not more foundational to our educational system in terms of personal finance education?

Allison Tom: Right. So I think part of it is that our generation didn’t really learn this either. And so as the educators come up with their curriculum, I think honestly, a lot of adults are really intimidated by personal finance. And so it’s something that seems easy enough for them to cut out of the education system as an elective because well, if they don’t understand it, then kids aren’t going to understand it. And if they’re intimidated by it, then kids are definitely going to not understand it and be intimidated by it, so let’s not even talk about it, which actually is one of the reasons why we thought it was important to write the book. We didn’t get this education when we were growing up. I know my parents are second-generation immigrants. And so the money lessons that they learned were from their parents, who grew up during the Great Depression. And as immigrants coming over to this country, they just pooled their money and they saved and they saved and they worked 20 hours a day to make money and then they would maybe invest it in the bank, although plenty of my relatives didn’t even bother with that. So my lessons growing up were save and save and save and save. I had a little piggy bank, and I would put all my coins in from the piggy bank, but that was the only thing that I learned. And so it wasn’t until I got to college, and then I had my first credit card that I just — oof. It was bad. I did not understand the concept of paying credit cards and interest rates and late fees and minimum payments. And so, you know, I got in trouble with credit cards after I graduated. And it wasn’t until after that that I thought, oh, I really need to learn more about what’s going on here. And so I started watching some shows on PBS, but by then, you know, I’m in my early 20s at that point. My learning took a lot longer for the habits to become engrained in me. So you know, I really do think that if kids could see this stuff earlier, it would be so much more impactful. You know, I’ve talked to a girlfriend of mine, her daughter is 17 and she read the book and she was like, “Yeah, you know, I’m going to start doing the savings plan when I get a job.” My friend was laughing because she’s like, my daughter doesn’t have a job. But she was just like, she got inspired by it, and I thought, oh, if we could just get kids to learn this stuff sooner —

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah.

Allison Tom: All the great things we could do with them. So hopefully. Hopefully.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and I love that, to that point, Allison. I think it was early in the book, you have the reader go through an activity where they identify problems, things that could be improved upon, right? And one of the things I often say is that any business is a solution to a problem, and that solution is one that people care about and are willing to pay for. And you know, I love that because I think for a child, like if they can think about, what are some things that could be done better? You know, one of them you proposed in the book, which was really cool because we recently just bought this — or actually we got it as a gift for our kids from our family — is you mention like chess. Really hard game for kids to play, kids to learn. Why isn’t there a solution out there that can make chess easier to play? Sure enough, there is. There’s a card game where you draw cards, you learn the basic moves of chess. So things like that, I think you’re inspiring some of the creative thinking, the problem solving, and laying some of the seeds of entrepreneurship or even for those that don’t own their own company, which would be the vast majority of folks, intrepreneurship, how can you be a problem solver within your organization? And how can you create solutions that make you a valuable asset within that organization? I want to shift gears a bit to connect some of the work that you have in “Investing for Kids” with what you cover in your site, Retireby45.com. You mentioned your other FIRE book as well. And I got the impression that you both, you believe that everyone could put together — especially an 8- to 12-year-old reading the “Investing for Kids” book — put together a plan for FIRE, again Financial Independence Retire Early — by the age of 45. So Dylin, our listeners know firsthand that time in the market equals success, and that compound interest, as you mentioned in the book, is the eighth wonder of the world. So we know the math is possible if someone starts at an early age. But why do you think it’s important that someone plans for FIRE by the age of 45?

Dylin Redling: Whether you’re able to retire in your 40s or your 50s or you do a traditional retirement in your 60s or even beyond, Allison’s dad, for example, is 70 now — or slightly older — and has no intentions of stopping working even though Allison suggests that he stop and enjoy life. But he’s got a job that he really loves. And so there’s a lot of people out there that are like that. So we love our FIRE lifestyle and the fact that we left our W2 jobs in our 40s, but we know it’s not for everybody. But what we do also know is that the concepts of Financial Independence are good for anybody, no matter when you might want to retire. And those concepts are really about doing the right thing with your money. So it starts with saving, it starts with being somewhat frugal — and when we say frugal, we don’t mean living a spartan lifestyle. We just mean not going crazy with money with spending on things that you don’t want or that you don’t need or you feel like you have to keep up with the Joneses and get a brand new SUV every two years. So there’s that, and of course investing wisely. And you know, we have another story that we write out on our blog, which kind of I think can be somewhat inspiring to people who are in their 20s and maybe haven’t really done anything with their finances yet. We, as Allison alluded to earlier, kind of our story is we met in New York and then we moved to San Francisco. And we were in our mid-20s at the time. And we still hadn’t invested a dollar yet. And it wasn’t until our late 20s that we got “real jobs” with a 401k plan and that sort of thing. And so it wasn’t until our late 20s that we really started investing. And our entire investment life cycle, if you will, was about 17 years from our late 20s to our early 40s. And in that time, we just were so diligent about dollar cost averaging, we did — we invested into both our 401k, our IRA, and a taxable account once we got some extra income literally on a weekly basis for years and years and years, no matter what the market was doing. Through the 2001 .com crash because we’re both working in that industry and of course through the ‘08-’09 recession. Never stopped. And so those kind of habits, again, are good for anybody no matter what your retirement goals are, just really those financial habits are going to put you in a great position.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and I’m glad you shared that, Dylin. One of the questions I had for you was I read your story of not really late 20s, early 30s getting serious about investing, but retired or achieving FIRE by 43, 44, so short window of time, right? We tend to think of a very long trajectory of savings. You mentioned 17 years. So my question was what was the secret sauce? And if I heard you correctly, it was tax-advantaged accounts, 401k’s, IRAs, some taxable accounts and dollar cost averaging and being consistent. Is that fair?

Dylin Redling: Yeah. You know, a couple other things we did — we did the phrase “side hustle” is really popular now. But when we did it, we just called it a side business. This was in the mid-2000s. I came up with an affiliate marketing business that I ran on the weekends. And it ended up being a third income for us. So there’s things like maximizing your income. And then another concept — I’ll shoot it over to Allison to talk about — is geographic arbitrage. And that helped us kind of move about nine years ahead of schedule. Do you want to talk about how we did that?

Allison Tom: Sure. So geographic arbitrage has a lot of different meanings in the — for people. And the gist of it is that you leverage your current salary and move to a lower cost location. And so most people think that is oh, I’m going to make my United States salary and move to Thailand or Costa Rica, where the cost of living is exceedingly low. We did it by moving from San Francisco to Oakland, California, which geographically is a 10-mile difference but at the time, we were able to save about 50% on our housing costs.

Tim Ulbrich: Wow.

Allison Tom: So yeah, it was pretty insane. For being 10 miles away, two or three train stops away on our BART system, we were able to pay off our condo in Oakland in cash by selling our place in San Francisco, which alleviated all the mortgage payments, the increase in property payments and our insurance went down as well. So that, Dylin calculated later, saved us probably about nine years of working because our mortgage in San Francisco was so astronomical that just cutting 50% off just pushed us into the financial independence sphere that much sooner. So it’s things like that. Obviously not everybody is going to be able to save 50% of their housing by moving 10 miles away, but there are other ways to do it. You can do things like house hacking where if you have space on your property, you could build an extra unit and rent it out or if you have an extra bedroom, you could rent it out and have a roommate or Airbnb it. So there are ways tod do it without going through the extreme example that we had. So there are plenty of ways to cut costs in your life that are relatively painless, that we’ve talked about all the time, so there are just different ways to do it to achieve FIRE. And some people don’t even choose to do the early retiring like my father is the example. So retirement is really more of the optional part. We’re not saying you have to retire, you have to leave your job and just sit around drinking mojitos all day long, although it’s certainly not a bad lifestyle. But you know, the retiring part is up to the individual.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, I’m glad you said that, Allison, because I know many of our listeners love what they’re doing as pharmacists and they worked hard, and they got a doctorate degree and they have student loan debt and they invested in that education. And so my read is that many pharmacists are captivated by the idea and the power of financial independence. And you know, I believe that’s a goal we all should strive for for a variety of reasons with RE, Retire Early, being one of those perhaps reasons, but other things as well in terms of why that financial independence may be important. So nine years, nine years was estimated from that one decision, which I’m coming full-circle, Allison, about what you shared at the beginning of Dylin being in the hospital with double pneumonia. And when you start to think about the value of time, I mean, nine years and doing some of those calculations and what does that mean for one’s personal situation, I think that’s a really powerful example of taking something that can be mathematical or objective and looking at it in a different mindset. If we were to make this move or this move, what does that mean for us in terms of timeline to retirement, working part-time, pursuing another opportunity, what does that mean for one’s goals towards financial independence? I’m glad you discussed geographic arbitrage because one of the things we see in our profession in pharmacy is that unfortunately, a pharmacist’s income usually does not translate with cost of living. So here I am in the Midwest and that income for a pharmacist in the Bay Area might be a little bit more for a similar role but nowhere near the cost of living difference between Columbus, Ohio and San Francisco, California. So I think this is a move, especially for many of our listeners that might be saying, you know, ‘I’m making a decent income, but I’ve got a lot of work to do on student loans, I want to invest, I want to buy a home, I want to do this or that. And at the end of the day, there’s only so much income.’ So is a move, whether it’s near, within 10 miles, or something a little bit more significant, is that an option that somebody may be able to pursue? Allison, what have you guys been doing since achieving FIRE? You know, what’s been the goals, what’s been the priority, how have you been spending time? I think that’s one of the other common objections that comes up is like, if I retire at 45, like I don’t even know what I would do with my time. Tell us a little bit about that journey since you guys have achieve FIRE.

Allison Tom: So it’s funny, we — so we FIREd quite by accident. We were both working in tech startups, and Dylin got laid off and then I got laid off about five weeks afterwards. And so we kind of took the time after we were both laid off to travel a little bit. That was one of the things that two people who are working can’t always schedule, coordinate their schedules, to take some time off. And so we thought, alright, this is the perfect time. We went to Europe for two weeks and did a cruise around the Mediterranean and had a blast and then came back and thought, alright, we’ve got to get back to work. So we went about — we went on interviews and we just saw just how miserable people were at their jobs. Just so stressed out, and I interviewed with this one guy who was like, “You need to tell me who said this about us so I can go talk to them.” I’m like, I don’t want to work for you. You’re scary. And so you know, the three months turned into six months and then nine months and then Dylin figured out kind of like back of the envelope math, figured out that we could actually retire without having to go back to work anymore. He stumbled into the 4% Rule, which we still hadn’t at that point heard the term FIRE before. You know, the first few years we did a fair amount of traveling domestically. Like we would go back to visit his mother and my father, who both live on the East Coast, which is one of the things you just don’t get time to do when you’re working is spending time with family. And so you know, if we would go back East, we would maybe spend two days with each parent because they don’t live that close to each other. And now, we can actually go and spend a week with each parental unit. And that makes a big difference because, you know, they’re getting older and living across the country, it’s harder to connect with them. So we do a lot more slow travel where we don’t have to feel rushed between people. And then it’s funny because we — our retirement has changed as time goes by. So for people who are concerned that oh, what am I going to do with my time? Your time is yours. You can now make your own schedule. And that, to me, is the beauty of not just financial independence, it’s financial freedom because you can choose what you want to do. And so you know, the first two years were traveling domestically, the second two years were more about traveling internationally. And we had two cats that passed away at 19. So for us, they were like our kids. And so we did not do a lot of traveling away from them until they passed on. And so once they did, we’re like, alright, we’re going to go crazy and go travel around the globe. And so the last — and then the last two years have been focused on writing books and going to financial conferences and kind of learning from others and then applying that and communicating out to audiences like yours. That’s the beauty of the time being yours is you can make it whatever you want to do. We also do a lot more work with our community that we never had time to do when we were working. So we’re a lot more invested in our neighborhood, and we spend more time working with businesses in our neighborhood to bring in more business. So having that luxury of time means you can go explore whatever interests pop up. So you know, did we ever think that we would be working with small businesses two years ago? Probably not. But now we are, and we’re advocates for small businesses in our neighborhood, and that’s something we would never have thought we would have done when we first retired.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s very cool. And I read as well your goal of 60 by 60. Sixty countries to visit by the age of 60. If I understand it, you’re about halfway through. Looking forward to following your journey. I’m hopeful you’ll be blogging about it along the way as well. Dylin, I’m going to throw the last question I have over for you. And one of the things I think about when it comes to early retirement and achieving financial independence or the FIRE movement is that it really does require delayed gratification and at times, you mentioned the word frugality earlier. And that frugality can be at various levels. As you mentioned, we’re not necessarily talking spartan type of frugality. My question here though is how do we strike the balance? You know, whether it’s for ourselves or teaching our kids about saving and investing to take care of our future selves but also valuing and making sure we understand that it’s important that we enjoy some of the money along the way as well. I find myself often struggling with this individually of, OK, I know I need to take care of my future self and probably sometimes I do that at the expense of the experiences and the enjoyment today. And I think striking this balance is really important. What are your thoughts on that?

Dylin Redling: You know, I’ll actually plug a couple of other books besides ours that I really like. One is “A Simple Path to Wealth” by Janelle Collins, which I highly recommend. And another one is actually one of Allison’s favorites. It has a funny title, it’s “I Will Teach You to Be Rich” by —

Allison Tom: Ramit Sethi.

Dylin Redling: Ramit Sethi. And we saw him speak. He was a keynote speaker at FinCon a couple years ago. And one of the things that he said, which really resonated with me and it goes to your question, is spend liberally on things that you enjoy. But hold back aggressively on things that are not important to you. And it’s a very simple concept. But again, it goes directly to your question, and it’s really — maybe you or your kids or whoever’s thinking about this makes a list. Here are the things I’m passionate about. Here are the things that I really enjoy. I love travel, I like eating out at restaurants, I like entertainment, sports, whatever it is. And I’m going to set my budget to focus on those things. I’m going to be OK — maybe I’ll go to a World Series game because I’m a huge baseball fan. Or I’m going to set a goal to go to every baseball park in America. You know, whatever that goal might be. Conversely, think about the things that aren’t that important to you like maybe a brand new car is not important to you, so you drive your car for 10-20 years and you really just never focus on spending a lot of money on that. And so those are the concepts that I think are something to really think about. And for us, that’s what we’ve always done. When people look at our lifestyle from the outside or even some of our friends, you know, they may think, wow, we’ve always lived in pretty expensive apartments — or condos or houses, so they might think, wow, they spend a lot of money. But if you look a little deeper, like we had a car for almost 20 years. We had a Volkswagen Jetta. We just recently got a new-to-us couple years old Toyota Corolla. So there’s an example where we just — you know, having a brand new car wasn’t that important to us. But again, we have the 60 by 60 goal. So travel is really important to us. And we have no problem spending that extra money to go travel for a few months and really try to see the world because that’s something that we’re passionate about. That being said, when we do travel, we try to — we don’t stay at four-star hotels because part of our kind of nature is to also find some deals here and there and to just spend consciously, to just spend our money kind of wisely.

Allison Tom: We prefer to spend money on the experiences rather than the hotel room that we’re putting our suitcase in.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah. And I was at that keynote that you were at, and with Ramit, and I’ll never forget it. I mean, the concept that he talks about in “I Will Teach You to Be Rich,” money dials, right, is find the things that are of value to you and dial it up. And find the things that are not and dial them down. And you know, I remember hearing that, and I was like, heck yeah. It just makes so much sense. And you know, to the comment of experiences and even the literature really showing happiness related to money, it’s experience and giving typically are the areas where we see that biggest connection. So Allison and Dylin, I really appreciate you guys taking time to come on the show. Kudos on the work here with “Investing for Kids,” I really enjoyed it, as well as the work that you’re doing at Retireby45.com and your other book, “Start Your FIRE: A Modern Guide to Early Retirement.” As it relates to the book “Investing for Kids,” I hope our audience will pick up a copy of this, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, many other online vendors as well. I really did find it engaging, it was rich with relevant information, practical exercises to apply the information, as I mentioned, certainly does not look, feel, or read like a textbook. And so I think many in our community are going to find it helpful. What’s the best place for our audience to go to follow the work that the two of you are doing?

Dylin Redling: Well, our — I’ll plug our website, and I’ll have Allison plug our Instagram account. Retireby45.com is our website, and we blog there on a once or twice a month with a fresh new blog post, and we have a bunch of stuff on there, courses and other things. And then Allison’s been working on really putting together a pretty cool Instagram account.

Allison Tom: So we have Instagram and Twitter both @retire_by_45. Yeah, it’s been an interesting challenge trying to get into the social media, the social media space.

Tim Ulbrich: Very good. We will link to both of those in the show notes as well as the Retireby45.com as well as the books that we’ve mentioned, not only your books but the others that you referenced as well. So the two of you, thank you again very much for your time. I really appreciate it.

Allison Tom: Thanks, Tim. It’s great.

Dylin Redling: Thanks.

Allison Tom: O-H

Dylin Redling: I-O

Tim Ulbrich: I-O!

Dylin Redling: Thanks, Tim. Great talking to you.

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YFP 201: How and Why Trey Made the Transition from a Six-Figure to Resident Salary

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

How and Why Trey Made the Transition from a Six-Figure to Resident Salary

On this episode, Tim Ulbrich talks with Trey Lowery about his experiences taking a non-traditional path towards residency training. They discuss why Trey decided to go back to complete residency training, how he and his wife were able to make the transition from a six-figure to a resident salary, and financial tips for those going back to do residency or making a job transition.

About Today’s Guest

Trey Lowery is a clinical outpatient pharmacist at the Iowa City VA Health Care System. He attended pharmacy school at Mercer University College of Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia and moved to Iowa City, Iowa with his wife, who attends graduate school at the University of Iowa. He began his pharmacy career as a staff pharmacist for Hy-Vee Pharmacy following graduation in 2018. He then matched to the Iowa City VA’s PGY1 pharmacy residency program in 2019 and continued there in his current position upon completion. In the few years following pharmacy school graduation, Trey experienced the transition from student to the seemingly never-ending job search, to full-time salaried pharmacist, to resident, and back to pharmacist salary again. He is excited to share his experiences with other pharmacists in hopes it will encourage them to not allow potential decreases in pay to prevent them from pursuing their dream job as a pharmacist.

how to Summary

On this episode, Tim Ulbrich welcomes Trey Lowery to the show to discuss his experiences with his non-traditional plan towards residency and the many adjustments that came along with it. Trey shares some of the challenges he and his wife worked through along his journey to residency and how both compromise and financial savvy helped them through the transition.

Some of the best tips and advice that Trey shares in this episode include making sure that you have a solid budget and financial plan ahead of time. Trey shares his long history with budgeting and how he views it as a tool for success rather than something limiting. Tim and Trey go over Trey’s very practical advice on budgeting during residency, including a formula for building your residency budget even when you are not sure of your salary and specifics.

Additional advice includes building your emergency fund up to be able to fund at least 3-6 months of expenses. The reasoning for this is simple, with a 6-figure salary, unexpected expenses and events are much easier to manage, but with a resident salary, those same unexpected expenses and events can be a bigger problem.

Trey closes with a little motivational push and encourages anyone who is looking to take a non-traditional path to residency to do so.

Mentioned on the Show

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich: Trey, welcome to the show.

Trey Lowery: Thanks, Tim. Appreciate you having me.

Tim Ulbrich: Appreciate you taking time to come onto the podcast and really share your story and pearls of wisdom for transitioning from a student pharmacist to a pharmacist with a six-figure income to a resident salary and what that meant for you, for your personal situation, and how you were able to financially plan for that transition. And so let’s start with your pharmacy background and give our listeners a little bit more of a picture of where you went to pharmacy school, when did you graduate, and then the route that you took through residency to your current role.

Trey Lowery: Sure thing. So I grew up in the state of Georgia and then went to pharmacy school at Mercer University College of Pharmacy, which is in Atlanta. I then got married after school and my wife decided she wanted to pursue a PhD program. And she chose to do so at the University of Iowa, so then we made the transition and moved from Georgia halfway across the country to the great state of Iowa. And when I got here, I didn’t really have many connections, I wasn’t licensed yet, so I had to figure out how to transition into passing all the different licensing exams and attempting to find a job without a license and without any knowledge of anyone in the area. So thankfully, I was able to do so after a couple of months. And I ended up working at Hyvee pharmacy. It was about an hour away from where I lived, so the job search was certainly expanded. And then after about 9-10 months of working at Hyvee, I applied to the several different residency programs and ended up matching at the Iowa City VA, where I completed my PGY1 and then after finishing it, I was happy to continue on in my current position as a clinical outpatient pharmacist there at the Iowa City VA as well.

Tim Ulbrich: And I’m excited to share your story with others as I suspect there may be many pharmacists out there listening that for whatever reason, you know, didn’t complete residency training right out of school, which may have been Plan A for them in their mind or perhaps they discovered later on that they wanted to do residency training. And that could either be a financial decision, that could be a family situation, a move that’s going on, it could be a match situation, lots of reasons why folks may not necessarily complete residency right out of school. But there may be an interest to go back and complete a later program at a later time. And I think one of the common barriers is wow, this is a big financial change to be considering, right? Going from student income to finally you’ve got that pharmacist six-figure income and then taking a step back at least financially in terms of that resident income. And so we’re going to dig into that in more detail here in a little bit, but I want to give our listeners more perspective on your Plan A and then obviously your work that you ended up doing at Hyvee. But my understanding is your goal was if possible to do residency right after your P4 year and because of the timing, because of the move, you weren’t able to enter Phase 1 of the match, didn’t yet know where you were going to be because of location with your wife’s PhD programs and the options and then at that point were able to move into Phase 2 — for all that have been through this process know how difficult Phase 2 of the match can be in terms of the number of applicants that are out there relative to the position. So talk to us through about that experience. How challenging was that in terms of that being up in the air, unknown, as well as having to make that decision that this is Plan A but I’m going to put that on the back burner because of this move. And if it works out in Phase 2, great. If not, then you’ll pursue something else.

Trey Lowery: Sure, I think that’s one of the interesting parts of my story is that I went into pharmacy school thinking I didn’t want to do a residency because I had worked originally as an intern and as a technician for a company called Kroger, which is very similar to Hyvee, back in Georgia. And I thought that that was the path I wanted to do. I was thinking retail pharmacy, maybe some type of independent or ownership later on. But it wasn’t really until my fourth year rotations when I actually got experience in the clinical and hospital side of pharmacy that I really decided, you know what? I actually really like the idea of the work that I’m doing here, so much so that it was basically around September when I decided OK, I definitely want to pursue a residency. But then the applications were due in December. So that was also part of the speeding up process that I had at the time. So I did what I could in those couple of months, tried to get some research experience, doing some more experience in the clinical areas and bolster my CV as much as I could. But yeah, the unknown of having to wait for Phase 2 was certainly challenging I suppose would be the word. I mean, we didn’t know where we were going to move, we didn’t know how we were going to financially survive after the move because if I didn’t match, then I wouldn’t have a job already lined up in the area. So it was certainly a challenging time. And it was one of those things to where we basically had to decide which of our careers would help the other one, sort of. So my wife was willing to take a year off if that meant that I could pursue a PGY1 anywhere in the country. But ultimately, we decided to go with — stick with the plan of her going ahead and going into school because it was going to take significantly longer and then my ability as a pharmacist to find a job would likely be a little bit easier than hers just coming out of undergrad.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and I’m glad, Trey, that you guys were able to work through that and come to that decision as a family because obviously now you guys are in a great position at the Iowa City VA, your wife’s continuing on in her PhD degree, so it all worked out, but I’m sure that was incredibly stressful in the moment as you guys were evaluating the options that were in front of you. And so you make this move, you obviously get into Phase 2, limited options, lots of applicants, and ultimately weren’t able to land a position in Phase 2. So now you’re at the point of getting a job, right? So you land a position with Hyvee pharmacy, and my question here is once you were in that role, obviously I’m sure in the back of your mind you’re still thinking about residency as a path that you may be interested in, some of your career goals that you identified here in the fourth year that were of interest to you, but you’re making a good income. And I think this can be a hard thing to really objectively say, “I want to go back and pursue this training pathway,” knowing that it’s going to reduce my income by a half, certainly probably even more than that for some positions. And so talk to us about that decision-making process, you know, how you were able to really objectively evaluate, you know what, this path of residency is best for me, even if it means taking a pay cut to go back and do that.

Trey Lowery: Well, for me, Tim, it really stemmed from thinking about what my long-term career goals were as well as my wife’s — you know, obviously that was certainly a sacrifice for both of us in doing that. So when I got to thinking about what I wanted to do over the course of my career for the next 40+ years, I really just didn’t think that my current position was something that I was comfortable with thinking about in the long term. I really thought that I wanted to get more involved in the actual act of patient care, being able to handle some of the decisions instead of being more reactive by when they just come to the pharmacy and drop off prescriptions, it’s hard to really make a lot of interventions in that setting. And depending on when my wife finishes her PhD, we don’t exactly know what’s going to happen there. So it may involve another move, it probably — it will likely involve another job search. And I figured that if I could do anything to bolster my ability to be more marketable in that area by having residency training, then I’d also improve my chances of finding a job in the future and then hopefully being able to land something that I really enjoy like I have right now.

Tim Ulbrich: Well, and good call on the VA. You know, obviously we have many, many VA pharmacists that listen to this show that we work with as clients. And we know how much they enjoy the VA from a scope of practice, from obviously the quality of employment, the benefits, but also from the ability to transition. You know, one of the benefits of the VAs, if you guys have to pick up and move across the country, if you’re able to locate with another VA, you know, that minimizes a lot of the licensure concerns and other things of transferring your practice. So what a great opportunity that you have there. What about the experiences at Hyvee? You know, one of the things I’ve noticed as a residency program director and previous experiences is I have found that those that have some work experience, so graduate from pharmacy school, go out and work for a year or two years, however long that be, and then come back and do residency, seem to be a little bit better prepared to take on the demands, the challenges, the rigor of residency. Are there specific experiences that you had at Hyvee or skills that you obtained through that year that you felt like really benefited you during the residency year?

Trey Lowery: Yeah, and I think that’s an important point for those seeking to go back to do residency is using that to your advantage rather than saying, you know, I’m actually multiple years out of school, I’m well into one specific area, how can I go into a residency program that’s going to require well-rounded, maybe things that I haven’t done before? But I think like you mentioned that that is actually something to use to your advantage because one thing you’ll have over the other candidates that are applying that are still in school is that you’ve actually made that transition into I am an independent practitioner, I have ownership over my practice, when I scan the barcode to verify my prescription, that’s the last check. It’s completely up to my abilities as to whether or not the patient is getting the right thing, and I’m now the one responsible. So I think between that, you also gain some supervisory experience because you’ll actually have technicians that it will be just you in the pharmacy, you have to do a little bit of kind of management of time and management of people in that area. And then for me, it was just kind of the relationships that I really was able to develop with my patients. You know, actually seeing that your work is having an impact on them really makes you want to take more ownership of that. And so then going back into residency, I’d already seen the effects that I could have as a pharmacist on my patients. And so I think that made me care about it a little bit more knowing the sacrifices that I was making to be there.

Tim Ulbrich: Trey, one of the things I think about besides the financial transition, which we’ll get to in more detail here in a few moments, you know, just having a year I guess off — not necessarily off, you obviously were practicing, using skills, but you know, it’s a different pace from happy clinical rotations where you’re being evaluated and you’re expected to do so many interventions and have a certain autonomy of practice. So being, having that transitionary year and even just schedule differences, you know, I think about the pace typically of a residency probably were in more of a normal, not going to say not stressful, but normal schedule, so you finally graduate from school, you get to somewhat of a normal scheduled routine, and then you say, “You know what, I’m going to raise my hand to make a lot less money, to work a lot more, to be able to develop these skills further.” So money aside, just talk to us about the transition of a year off, not using some of those skills perhaps that you obtained in your final year of school or throughout your PharmD as well as just the schedule differences and how you were able to get back into the flow and the rhythm when you started residency.

Trey Lowery: It was definitely a transition, to say the least. For the first couple of months when you’re getting licensed and studying for your board exams, it still feels a little bit like school because I was taking most days of the week to study for that and for job searching purposes and that kind of thing. So for the first couple of months, I didn’t feel like I could just completely relax and not have to worry about the scheduling part. But you’re right, once I got into the position I was in, it was very much I go to work and then I come home and then I don’t necessarily have a bunch of projects or schoolwork or studying to do. And it is definitely easy to get caught up in that position. So when making the transition back, I’ll be completely honest, it was difficult the first couple months. I really felt like I had to do some extra reviewing so that I knew the topics I really hadn’t used in a year or plus, since my rotations when I’m actually going through my rotations in residency. And the scheduling, it was very much a team aspect in our household. My wife definitely helped so much with figuring out ways that we could be able to make sure that we spent time together, that we were — that I had time to focus on my residency projects and had ample time to be at work when I needed to. And it was certainly not easy. But after the first couple of months of residency, I suppose you kind of get used to it. You know what you have to do at that point, but yeah. Certainly a big difference from how it was before then.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah. So let’s transition to talk about some of the financial tips that you shared with us prior to the interview that I think would be really helpful for folks that are considering a similar pathway, you know, student, practicing pharmacist going back to residency or folks that may be transitioning jobs or careers. I can think of situations where someone’s salary might be reduced or they’re looking to go part-time or they’re making a transition to another position that doesn’t have the same salary and just general financial principles that I think are helpful for individuals that find themselves in a similar situation. And the first one that you mentioned, Trey, is to make sure you have a solid budget and solid habits around budgeting before you get started. So tell me about budgeting, how you and your wife created good budgeting habits and effectively budgeted prior to making this transition back into the residency position. What did this look like?

Trey Lowery: So I am thankful that both of my parents are very financially savvy and both of my wife’s parents are the same. So I actually started my first budget when I got my first job at age 16 because for me, I looked at budgeting not as something that was limiting what I got to spend and where I got to spend the money that I was earning, but I felt very relieved in that I could actually allocate where certain parts of my income was going and then it was OK for it to go to those areas. So when I — when we got married, that was very important to me. I had listened to plenty of examples from different financial advisors throughout the country and from YFP as well to where I knew that money can certainly become an issue in marriage. And so we really wanted to focus on that at the beginning to make sure we were on the same page and go ahead and knock that out. So I use primarily Mint.com and then a couple of other different spreadsheets to track the budgets that we make. And it certainly took a couple of months for that to really become an effective tool. It took some balancing in certain areas and making sure that we were on the same page of all the different categories and that kind of thing. But the reason I say that that’s such an important aspect is because if you don’t have that going into residency, you’re not going to be able to create it while you’re there. You’re not going to have enough time, probably not enough energy, and then if you do have a family, it’s going to be very difficult to get everyone on the same page in the chaos that is residency. So that’s why I recommend if you can, go ahead and — I mean, useful budgeting, good budgeting habits are beneficial for anyone at any time I believe. But if you can make sure that you have those working effectively beforehand, it will only benefit you once you actually enter the reduced salary stage.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s great advice, Trey. And I think sometimes it’s easy, you know, P4s that are listening that are going to be starting a residency, starting a job, folks that are in a position such as yours that might be making a transition where there’s a salary change, sometimes it’s easy to say, “I’m just going to wait until I see what that actual pay stub and take-home pay is,” but I think you can get close enough, right? You can estimate close enough, work through the budget. It won’t be perfect, but the point is you’re being intentional, you’re being prepared with the transition, and then you can fine tune and refine it once you actually get that first pay stub and begin to move forward there knowing that you’ve been intentional and been prepared. Yeah, we have a budget template for folks that are looking to get started with a budget. If you go to YourFinancialPharmacist.com/budget, we have an Excel template that you can download, work through that. We use a zero-based budgeting method and system, and then you can take that information and plug it into a tool like Mint.com, like YNAB, or any other budgeting tool or software or good ol’ pen and paper or Excel if that works best for you as well. So that’s No. 1 around budgeting. No. 2 here is increase your emergency fund if you don’t already have 3-6 months of expenses saved. So why, Trey, did you decide to focus on building emergency fund prior to residency? How did you guys practically do this? And did you end up having to use that fund at all during residency?

Trey Lowery: So this is something that we did initially upon finishing school. That was kind of our first major goal. And it was fun because it gave us something to work towards together that wasn’t high-risk, high-reward, that kind of thing. It was something that we knew that once we got there that would just be a nice cushion for us to have going forward. So the reason that I would recommend increasing your emergency fund or at least having the usual is kind of 3-6 months’ expenses is the recommended is because obviously if you’re decreasing your salary that much, a $1,000 home repair or a car expense or some kind of unexpected family emergency happens, when you’re on a six-figure salary, that isn’t that big of a deal. You just say, “OK, I’ll just move around this part of the budget, and we’ll cover it.” But when you’re in a residency salary, you know, let’s say you bought a house, you have a family, it’s going to be very difficult to make that unexpected expense be able to be covered. And then that could lead to things like putting it on a credit card and then that will only amplify and amplify as things continue to happen. So when you’re in residency, the last thing you want to be concerned I think is some kind of unexpected financial emergency. You’ve got plenty enough on your mind already. So if you can already have a good-sized emergency fund going into it, I think that will just help everything going forward.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s great stuff. And this third one, you know, really caught me off guard the first time I read it. I had to reread it, and then I got to what you were saying exactly. And it’s really a great, great piece of advice. And that is look for salaries at prospective residency options, pick the lowest salary option — say what? — pick the lowest salary option, create a new budget using that salary. Depending on the results of your new budget, you may need to make adjustments. I think this tip is bold. Trey, tell us about what you mean by this, why you took this approach, and why this can be so valuable.

Trey Lowery: Like you mentioned, you may not exactly know the dollar amount that you’re going to have in your paycheck in order to create a full budget around. So for us, because we knew we were going to be located in the Iowa City area, I knew I was going to be applying for residencies within, you know, a 30-minute, hour range and not too much further. So I went on the forecast website and they have actually all the information regarding the salaries and some of the benefits of each of the programs that you’re applying for. And so when you match, you’re very much committed to that program that you match with. So if you have a bunch of different salary options, if you’re looking all over the U.S., it certainly I’m sure varies. If you can create your budget around the lowest one such that if you happen to match to the lowest salary option, which I actually did, so it ended up working out well. I didn’t have to change any of my budgeting once I actually started residency from that perspective. But if you can pick the lowest one, that will be your most strict option for your budget. And if you end up matching with a program that’s anything above that, then at that point, you’ll have extra to put towards other goals or other discretionary expenses, that kind of thing when you’re going into residency. But for me, it was just a way of not getting caught off guard when you had such a massive decrease in income all at once.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s great advice, especially considering the separation you can see of resident salaries, depending on where they’re located, types of roles and things like that. So that can be a big difference if you’re looking at, I don’t know, $48,000 versus $40,000 for example. That can be a significant impact on that year and during that year as well. No. 4 is have a plan for your student loans during residency. What would it be in terms of a YFP podcast if we didn’t mention or talk about student loans? So let’s go there for a minute. How did you decide to handle your student loans during your first year working and then also in residency? Talk to us about the plan, the approach, the strategy you’ve taken, and how you ultimately have gotten to that decision that that is the best repayment plan and option for you.

Trey Lowery: So when I first figured out that I was going to be using student loans to get through graduate school, I had to figure out basically what was going to be my approach to either whether I’m going to pay them off or attempt to go for forgiveness, that kind of thing. When I first started pharmacy school, I really didn’t know that there was such a thing as forgiveness. And my dad always told me, “You know what, you’ll make enough, you’ll be able to pay it off. It’ll be good in the long run. Just go ahead and take them out. You’re going to need to because we couldn’t afford to send you all the way through graduate school.” So I went through pretty much all the way through school thinking that that was going to be my plan, that I was going to pay them off. And then in my fourth year of school, I actually went to a financial advisory meeting led by one Tim Ulbrich from Your Financial Pharmacist. And that is where I discovered that there actually were forgiveness options available, which I had not realized at the time. I feel like I might have already been somewhat committed because the financial gurus that I followed were like Dave Ramsey and some others, which are very much you took out the debt, you need to attack the debt and tackle it in order to make your own financial goals become a thing. But like I said, I hadn’t considered that there were actually other options. So ultimately after looking at the numbers and weighing how we felt about our debt, I did decide to go for the pay-it-off method, which I’m currently doing now, although granted the 0% interest and no payments are certainly a benefit in that.

Tim Ulbrich: Right.

Trey Lowery: With them being federal. But that was what we ultimately decided, and additionally, because I was at first at Hyvee and I wasn’t at one of the accredited organizations that would qualify for PSLF, I really didn’t know if I was ever even going to be in a position to do that.

Tim Ulbrich: Right.

Trey Lowery: So I did use my first year to do some paying off of the debt then as well.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, I think that’s great, Trey. And you know, as I shared with you before we hit record, as I’ve said many times on this podcast before, this really is an individual situation. And you know, I think at the end of the day, it’s about having a plan, that you understand the options that are out there, and you feel confident in evaluating those options and knowing that when you apply those options on top of your personal situation that you’ve gotten down the path of the best repayment option or strategy for you personally as an individual. And I think for folks that are listening, you know, this can be a topic that obviously can be overwhelming, there’s lots of options, there’s forgiveness, there’s nonforgiveness, there’s federal, there’s private, the list goes on and on, and it can feel overwhelming. It can become paralyzing. And I think really digging in to understand the options is important and a great piece of advice here for those that are — really for anyone with student loans, but especially for those that are going back into a residency position or going through residency training to make sure that you’re using this time to evaluate those options. So I would recommend to our listeners, Tim Church wrote an awesome book on student loans for us, “The Pharmacist’s Guide to Conquering Student Loans,” really an A-Z guide of all things student loans, customized to the pharmacy professional, really meant to go through all of those options and help you apply that to your personal situation. You can learn more about that at PharmDLoans.com. Trey, this has been outstanding. I think for those that are currently in training, going to pursue training, whether it’s right from pharmacy school, going back, I think they’re going to find a lot of value in your advice and there’s a lot of wisdom here. Any other advice that you have, financial tips, wisdom to share with those that are listening that are going back into a residency position or going right into a residency position, making this transition? Any tips or advice that you would have for them as they go through that transition?

Trey Lowery: Well just like with finances, I think this is really a personal decision, and it depends on what your career goals are. Personally, I feel that if you are someone that is committed to pursuing your residency and you know that that’s the path that you want to take, you’re going to be able to figure out the finance part and make it work if you’re committed enough to following that path. So I think just taking some time to figure out what your career goals are and what steps you’re going to need to take to get there are probably the most important. And when I look back on my time during residency, obviously I’m not 40 years down the road at the moment, but I can say even nine months out that I really, really absolutely feel that it was worth it. And I think that in the long term, having a position that I really enjoy, that I feel like I gain a lot out of and I’m really able to make an impact on my patients’ lives the way that I think I would like to, no matter what, that’s going to be worth the $60,000, $80,000, however much you’re giving up for just one year. And if you were to develop good budgeting habits before that time ever comes, then that actually may end up benefiting you financially even more in the long run than not doing a residency in the first place. So I think there may be multiple benefits to pursuing that. But like I said, for me it’s really just depending on the individual.

Tim Ulbrich: You beat me to it, Trey. One of the things I believe — I have no evidence to support this, you know — but one of the things I believe is that a benefit of that year, if you take full advantage, or two years perhaps, is that it really does force you on some level to build some of the behaviors that can have a very long-term benefit throughout your career. So I think one way of looking it at is ‘Oh man, I’m not going to make much money at all.’ Another way of looking at it is, ‘Hey, maybe there’s an opportunity to learn some things throughout this year, whether it’s goal-setting, budgeting, being intentional in other parts of the financial plan, that can have a benefit well beyond those training years.’ So Trey, again, thank you for your time. And appreciate you and your willingness to come on the show to share your story.

Trey Lowery: Thank you so much, Tim. I’d like to say if anybody is in the YFP community on Facebook, feel free to reach out. I’d be happy to continue to share any other points that I might have. If this is something that you’re pursuing, definitely consider it because you definitely can do it. Thank you, Tim.

Tim Ulbrich: Thank you, Trey.

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YFP 199: Introducing the YFP Real Estate Investing Podcast

Posted on April 15, 2021November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

Introducing the YFP Real Estate Investing Podcast

On this episode, Tim Ulbrich welcomes Nate Hedrick and David Bright, co-hosts of the brand new YFP Real Estate Investing Podcast that is launching on Saturday, April 17, 2021. Tim, Nate, and David talk about the mission and why for the show, who the podcast is for, the content that will be covered, and the guests that will be featured on the show. They also discuss the newest guide developed by Nate and David, The Pharmacist’s Guide to Real Estate Investing, which details a step-by-step plan on how to get started in real estate investing.

About Today’s Guests

David Bright, PharmD

David Bright is a pharmacist with a heart for teaching. He’s been a full-time professor since 2009 with a passion for implementing and improving pharmacy services. Themes of “implementing and improving” in the pharmacy space are quite similar to themes of “building and fixing” in real estate, which has been a growing hobby for David and his wife, Heather, who bought their first house more than ten years ago. That fixer-upper house became a live-in house flip, which they sold a few years later, only to repeat the process with their next house. When David and Heather got sick of perpetually living in a construction zone, they pivoted to fixing up rental properties in West Michigan, where they now live.

David invests in real estate as a way to bring greater diversity to financial planning and to fund memorable life experiences with family and friends.

Nate Hedrick, PharmD

Nate Hedrick is a full-time pharmacist by day, husband and father by evening and weekend, and real estate agent, investor, and blogger by late night and early morning. He has a passion for staying uncomfortable and is always on the lookout for a new challenge or a project. He found real estate investing in 2016 after his $300,000+ student loan debt led him to read Rich Dad Poor Dad. This book opened his mind to the possibilities of financial freedom and he has been obsessed ever since. After earning his real estate license in 2017, Nate founded Real Estate RPH as a source for real estate education designed with pharmacists in mind. Since then, he has helped dozens of pharmacists around the country realize their dream of owning a home or starting their investing journey. Nate resides in Cleveland, Ohio with his wife, Kristen, his two daughters Molly and Lucy, and his rescue dog Lexi.

Summary

On this episode, Nate Hedrick and David Bright, cohosts of the brand new YFP Real Estate Investing Podcast join Tim Ulbrich to discuss the podcast launch, the why and mission for the show, the target audience for the show as well as the guests and content.

Nate and David also share some of the steps from their guide, The Pharmacist’s Guide to Real Estate Investing. Here are some of the highlights:

Get your financial plan together: Taking stock of your own finances and financial picture will help you to better understand which investment and financing strategies may work best for you.
Time to study up: Learn about and do your research on which real estate opportunities will best match your personal skill set.
Location is everything: Choose where you are going to invest, taking into consideration factors that will impact your investment such as rent to income ratios, population growth, and more.
Choose a strategy: Choose which strategy of investment you plan to implement of the many options, including house hacking, flipping, long-term or short-term rentals, or BRRR.
Build your team: Build your team of professionals around you, specific to your investing needs. This likely will include a realtor who is familiar with real estate investing, a lawyer, an accountant, contractors, and property managers among others.
Double check the math: If you do the math wrong with real estate, it can be a bad experience. If you do your math correctly, with the use of some tools and resources, you can get familiar with the numbers and more easily find a deal where you are comfortable in making a decision.
Make an offer: Keep emotion out of the decision and realize that not every property is going to work out. Stick to the plan and research you’ve conducted in steps 1 through 6 and make your offer.

Mentioned on the Show

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich: Hey, what’s up, everybody? Welcome to this week’s episode of the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast. And today’s show is a special one, not just because it’s Episode 199 — hard to believe that we’re almost to Episode 200 — but special because we have something exciting to announce that we’ve mentioned on the podcast and in the YFP Facebook group over the last couple weeks and something that really has been in the works for much longer than that. On Saturday, this Saturday, April 17, we’re launching a brand new podcast through the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast channel called the YFP Real Estate Investing Podcast. Now, as much as I love the new podcast and the focus on real estate investing, I’m excited that the hosts of the YFP Real Estate Investing Podcast are two pharmacists, real estate investors, and friends that I have known for awhile, two guys that I have a great amount of respect for in the work that they do as pharmacists and the integrity in which they approach their business and their investing and the heart that they have for educating others and who have both been on the show before. And that is Nate Hedrick, the Real Estate RPh, and David Bright. Nate and David, welcome back to the show.

Nate Hedrick: Thanks so much for having us.

David Bright: Thank you.

Tim Ulbrich: So I know you both have been on the show before. Nate, you’ve joined us many times on the YFP podcast. And David, we had you on not too long ago, Episode 167 where we talked about must-know real estate terminology. But I don’t want to assume that our audience knows your background and really important information that they get to know you as we get ready to launch the Real Estate Investing podcast of which you two will be serving as the co-hosts. So David, let’s start with you. Tell us a little bit about your career, how you got started in real estate investing, and your why behind pursuing real estate investing while keeping your pharmacy career.

David Bright: Absolutely. Yeah, I started in pharmacy at 16 working in the drug store and went from there where pharmacy school, community pharmacy residency, and really just loved that outpatient community pharmacy drug store opportunity that was there. A lot of the implementing and improving of non-dispensing clinical services really got me excited about that outpatient space. And then later as well with academia, that implementing and improving also mirrors hobby of real estate, the building and fixing of real estate. And so that was something that my wife and I had enjoyed too. We bought our first house as a short sale. It need a lot of work, so that kind of live-in flip was a way that we could diversify our financial plan, also just create some extra money for those memory-making experiences with the family. And so we’ve just enjoyed kind of doing that over time. At some point, we decided we didn’t enjoy living in a construction zone anymore, so we started enjoying doing that in other properties. But that’s just been a fun hobby along the way and part of our why behind real estate.

Tim Ulbrich: Great stuff, David. And I know you and I have had this conversation before, but we’ve known each other dating back to community pharmacy residency all the way back in 2008-2009. And I like the connection you’ve made before about really some of the challenges around developing, implementing, evaluating patient care services in the community pharmacy setting and really the connection between some of the interests and passions that you have in real estate as well. So excited to have you experience, your perspective, on the show, really to be sharing that information with the community but also what I have always taken away is really your passion to help other pharmacists and really lead with education, really teach some of these principles, and help folks understand how they might be able to apply that to their own personal situation. So Nate, as I alluded to, we’ve had you on the show many times. I think now officially the most frequent guest on the YFP podcast. So starting way back on Episode 040 and 041 where we had a two-part series talking about 10 things every pharmacist should know about home buying and then most recently on Episode 193, building v. buying a home, what to consider. And that was in early March of 2021, and I think many of our listeners know you as the Real Estate RPh. So for those that haven’t caught one of your several — I think at least five or six at this point — episodes on the YFP podcast, Nate, tell us about your background, pharmacy career, and how you ultimately ended up as a realtor and real estate investor.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, and I expect the trophy for most frequent guest to be arriving.

Tim Ulbrich: It’s on the way. It’s on the way.

Nate Hedrick: Alright, good. Yeah, no. So I started off full clinical track. I did a residency right after graduating from Ohio Northern back in 2013 and really fell in love with the pain and palliative care space. And was a hospice consultant for a long time and really just, I loved that role. And then as time went on, I kind of moved into more of a sales-y type track where I was working with outside clients and really kind of touting what the other pharmacists were doing rather than doing that work myself. And as all that was happening, I was getting this interest in real estate and real estate investing. I think the story I tell all the time was I read “Rich Dad Poor Dad,” and my mindset just completely shifted. So when I should have been going out and getting my BCPS or some sort of additional certification in pharmacy, I told my wife I was going to get my real estate license. And she looked at me like I was crazy at first, but we’ve really fell in love with where that stake in our career and the opportunities that I have. And so back in 2017, I took that same idea and launched Real Estate RPh, a website all about educating pharmacists about home buying and home selling and real estate investing. And really just have been growing that ever since. And so really excited that we are able to launch this podcast today. I feel like it’s the culmination of a lot of that stuff coming together, that idea of education and connection really in the purest form. So I’m really excited about this.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and this really has been in the works for I would say a couple years. I mean, it started with the idea of hey, we were seeing a growing interest of real estate investing, wanting to learn more among the community, how can we help provide some education, some awareness, how can we connect pharmacists with other pharmacists, and all of that really led to hey, let’s start with a podcast, let’s start with the education, I think something we’re all passionate about. And then let’s see where it goes from there into the future. So let’s dig into the new podcast launching this Saturday, April 17, on the YFP podcast channel. Nate, what’s the mission and the why of the show?

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, the mission is actually pretty simple. It’s to empower pharmacists to leverage real estate as part of their financial plan. We realized that not everyone’s listening to this podcast trying to take over a real estate empire, right? And really, when David and I sat down and started thinking about what kind of philosophy are we going to have behind the show and what kind of guests are we going to have on the show and all that, we really sat back and said, we don’t need to replicate what’s already out there. There are some fantastic resources in the real estate space, Bigger Pockets being kind of the most obvious one with excellent podcasts and books and all these things that I think really promote the idea of real estate investing. But what we felt like was missing was this idea of how do you couple a really fulfilling career, i.e. pharmacy, and real estate investing? How do you do both? And so our whole idea with this show is that we’re going to show you how to not just leave pharmacy but stay in pharmacy while also investing in real estate. And so that’s really the overarching philosophy behind this program and this show.

Tim Ulbrich: Great stuff. And I think to reiterate that, that really is going to be the focus of the content and the audience that we want to reach. So you know, not to say some folks may get started and eventually build that empire, Nate, that you talked about, but knowing the vast, vast majority of pharmacists that are listening have either not gotten started yet but have the interest piqued, wanting to learn more, or maybe have taken a step or two, might be saving for that first property, might have bought a property or two, but really looking to take it further from there. And that’s going to be the focus of this show. So David, with that in mind, you know, what can our listeners expect? The kind of guests, the topics that we’re going to be covering as they listen to this podcast that we’ll be launching each and every Saturday?

David Bright: Yeah, I think the obvious one is we don’t really intend on focusing on pharmacists that have left their career of pharmacy. That’s not really our focus. Again, we’re focused on pharmacists that want to have real estate as a part of their financial plan. So there’s a lot of other, better resources out there for those kind of things. But for those that are looking for tangible and practical tips on getting started, on growing, on getting better at what you’re doing, that’s where we’re focused. We’ve got guests that are on talking about short- and long-term rentals, talking about house flipping, talking about rehabbing, property management, taxes, lending, all those different things go into buying your first or your second or your fifth property. And so focusing, again, on ways that you can jump into that and make that even better.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and our goal is, David, you know, I think one of the things we’ve discussed thus far is that real estate investing can look like a lot of different things. And we’re going to obviously highlight a lot of different stories that will emphasize that. And it’s probably going to take a lot of guests and a lot of episodes to even fully uncover the variety of options that are out there. And so we’re not suggesting that there is a one right path to real estate investing. What we want to do is explore many different areas, feature many different stories, the good, the bad, the ugly, make sure we’re representing all sides of that and then really give folks an opportunity to go learn more and say, ‘Oh, that’s interesting, I think that might fit or might not fit for my personal situation,’ as they evaluate where real estate investing does or does not fit in the context of their financial plan. So Nate, if someone has a question about real estate investing that they would like to be answered or perhaps they have a story that they want to have featured on the show, where can they go?

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, and so as this podcast drops, we’re going to also be launching a new website just to help out with that. And so YFPRealEstate.com will be your go-to source for getting in touch with us, asking questions, you can apply to be a guest on the show, all sorts of stuff. So as this podcast launches and you guys start listening here, you can head over to YFPRealEstate.com. And then we will also have — we’ve already launched, and it’s been running for about a week now, and that’s a Your Financial Pharmacist Real Estate Investing Facebook group. So if you’re looking for community, looking for a place to connect with others, we’ve already seen some great photos posted and people talking about their investments already on there. So definitely check that out.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, I’m glad you mentioned the Facebook group, Nate. One of the goals we had with that group and with this effort overall is to connect other pharmacist investors with one another. And we had a question last week in the group that was in essence like, “Hey, where are you from? Welcome to the group. Where are you from? Tell us a little bit about what you’re hoping to get out of this group. Tell us a little bit about your investing, what you’ve been working on.” And to see pharmacists, “Hey, I’m from Buffalo, New York,” “I’m from Columbus,” “I’m from this part of the country,” I think we’re going to see a lot of that connection start to happen organically. So I hope folks listening will join us in that Facebook group as well, which we’ll link to in the show notes. David, I want to come back to the concept that we don’t feel like real estate investing is something that folks have to choose it’s either that or it’s my pharmacy career. We really feel like folks can be successful in their pharmacy career, still be passionate about what they’re doing and what they’ve spent a lot of time and money to train to do and still pursue and potentially reap some of the benefits that come from real estate investing. So David, tell us, how can one enjoy their profession while also investing in real estate?

David Bright: Yeah, I think it’s the same kind of answer that you think about when it’s how do you get 700 prescriptions and 50 flu shots done in a Monday in a drugstore. It’s you have a team around you that helps you, right? Like this isn’t an individual sport with real estate. Like I know that I am not a realtor, I am not a contractor, I am not a property manager. I’m not a lot of those things. But I can find people who are really good at each of those areas. And so by bringing that team together and by having some direction and leading that team, I can really step back from the day-to-day side of it and let other people that are really good at what they do do what they are good at. And to me, I think that’s how a lot of pharmacists can find real estate investing as a part of their financial plan without it taking over or taking too much time.

Tim Ulbrich: And one of the things that I know I’ve heard both of you talk about and seen you role model as well is that the value that a team can bring to the process and really thinking about how to begin to build your real estate portfolio with both the team and the system in mind. And I think that’s really critical. I suspect many folks listening are not only busy in their full-time career as a pharmacist but they perhaps have family, other commitments, other priorities, other things that they need to be doing, want to be working on, things that they enjoy. And so we need to be able to do this, if we’re going to do it, in a way that is realistic with those other responsibilities and those other roles that one has. So Nate and David, you created a really valuable guide, the Pharmacist’s Guide to Real Estate Investing, that details essentially a step-by-step plan on just that: how to get started in real estate investing. And we’re going to link to this in the show notes, and I’d like to walk through this for a few moments to give our listeners a taste of I think some of the information and the content that they’re going to get on the show. But that guide, the Pharmacist’s Guide to Real Estate Investing, you can download that guide for free by visiting YFPRealEstate.com or you can text REIguide, all one word, again, REIguide, to 44222. And you can download a copy of the guide that way as well. So Step No. 1 of this guide is get your financial plan together. So a topic obviously near and dear to my heart. And Nate, tell us about why this step, getting your financial plan together, is really such an important first step.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, I think a lot of this comes back to the original mission of Your Financial Pharmacist as a whole. I think back to, Tim, when we had our very first meetings years and years ago, and I said, you know, I want to be the real estate side of what you’re trying to create here. And again, it all stemmed from that idea of you’ve got to have a good financial house first before you can move on and do anything else.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah.

Nate Hedrick: Again, as I approached my own real estate investing, we really stepped back and did a lot more time with the education side and the reading side because if you don’t have that financial base, that strong financial base, it becomes very, very difficult to escalate or to be successful in the real estate investing side. So we put that first because, again, it’s really the core philosophy of YFP, but it’s also just absolutely essential if you want to be truly successful I think in the real estate investing side.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and one of the things, Nate, I think you mention this in the guide that I like is if you think about real estate investing being similar to pharmacy school, personal finance is like your pre-reqs, right? Your basic science courses. So before we build upon that, before we get into our therapeutic courses, other more advanced content, we better be sure we’ve got a really good foundation or we’re going to end up in trouble when we get on rotations and we have the preceptor that exposes the lack of that information. So that’s Step No. 1, get your financial plan together. Step No. 2 is time to study up. So I love that you guys write that first, you need to learn the basics and then can decide what real estate investing niche fits your skill set. So David, talk to us about how to approach learning about real estate investing and what resources you have leaned on as you got started in your own journey.

David Bright: Yeah, I think just like you wouldn’t recommend a drug therapy without having any therapeutics courses, you need to have that time to study up. And with setting aside that time is probably the most important thing for the life of a busy pharmacist. And so for me, I found that during my daily commute, it was really easy to plug in podcasts and audiobooks. And so we will — as a part of the show, we have some outro questions where each guest recommends some resources. And so I would encourage you to take notes as we get through there. And we always put those things in the show notes as well. If you’re looking for good books and resources that got each guest started, we’ll have those going as well. So we’ll have several recommendations coming over the next few weeks. ANother thing I think are groups, whether that’s in-person meetups — at some point we can hopefully be doing that again — and then also just gathering with other friends and people that can bring accountability and education and you can share in that with. So carving out that time I think is really important, but I also think that there’s some even a life of a busy pharmacist, you can find 15 minutes here and there to get through an audiobook or podcast slowly.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and David, I’m envisioning a future state, post-COVID perhaps, where we have a real estate meetup of pharmacists at a state or national meeting or other venues, which is really exciting to think about. What is your over-under, David, on the number of times we’re going to hear guests recommend “Rich Dad Poor Dad” in the first 50 episodes?

David Bright: Oh, 48 out of 50 I think is what I’m thinking.

Tim Ulbrich: Yes.

Nate Hedrick: We’re going to have to strike that from the options. You can’t pick that as your favorite. I’m sorry.

Tim Ulbrich: So Step No. 3, location is everything. Nate, you know this, obviously as an agent. So choosing where you’re going to invest in real estate is such an important step. Nate, give us a broad overview of some factors to consider, whether somebody is choosing the location for their first or perhaps their fifth real estate property.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, absolutely. So really it comes down to assessing those locations. I think as we look at investors when they are either starting out or they’re looking at a new market, figuring out where to invest is one of those big steps in terms of OK, well, is it going to be something that I need to have close by? Do I have someone there that’s a part of my team that I can tap into? Do I know anyone there already? And then it gets into the actual macroeconomic factors of that location. So is the city seeing population growth? Job market — is that diversified? What’s the rent-to-income ratio look like? All those things get factored into it. And so there are — you can be successful anywhere at any time. Anybody that tells you, oh, you can’t invest there. The market doesn’t work. It works for something. But what you have to find is a way to pair that location with your strategy and your goals. And so I think figuring that out together can be difficult. So we really try to address that in the guide about here are some factors to consider before you start moving forward.

Tim Ulbrich: And Step No. 4 then is choosing a strategy. So we’ve got our financial house in order, we’ve soaked up lots of real estate investing knowledge, we’ve decided on a location, and David, what comes next when one evaluates the strategies available?

David Bright: I think that as you’re figuring out that strategy, that’s just really important because you think through each potential real estate acquisition through the lens of that strategy in order to make sure that it’s effective. Like you may find this beautiful lakefront property, and if you run the numbers as a long-term buy-and-hold where someone moves in there and lives there for years, it may not work nearly as well as if it was an Airbnb or VRBO kind of vacation rental. The numbers may work much better that way. So figuring out your strategy and the way that you want to invest in real estate can really help you figure out which property is the right acquisition for that plan.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and we’ve talked about a few. I know you mentioned a couple earlier in the show, but we’ve had on guests talking about house hacking, we’ve had Nate on to talk about flipping, we’ve talked about long distance real estate investing, we’ve talked about using the BRRRR strategy. So we’re going to dig into these and others as pharmacists, again, evaluate, OK, what’s out there? And then as I learn more, which of those may fit into my financial plan. So Step No. 5, build your team. Nate, we talked about this briefly already but team, team, team, is so important when we think about real estate investing not only in the long-term success but also being able to make the most of our time and the limited time that we have. So talk to us about this concept of building a team and who we should be thinking about being included on this team.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah. And this applies whether you’re investing locally down the street or whether you’re investing across the country. There are just certain members that you’re going to need to build into that. And we try to one, demystify that process but also make it feel easy. I know every time I heard, “You have to build a team to be successful in real estate,” it just sounded kind of overwhelming. Like I don’t know how to build a team. I don’t know how to do any of that. So we’re trying to break that down and make it a little bit easier. But the idea is that you need to have that real estate agent, you need to have potentially a lawyer or an accountant, a financial planner. You know, there are all these different members that can help you out. And so how do you tap into the good ones? And how do you get to that team more quickly? So the guide helps with that a little bit. And then it also leads to our expansion of the real estate concierge service, which we’ve been doing on the home buying side for years but really this new model is looking at how do we connect you guys with investor-friendly agents? So again, head on over to YFPRealEstate.com. We have access to our real estate concierge service. We can get you connected to a local investor-friendly real estate agent, somebody that can actually help elevate that business wherever you’re trying to invest.

Tim Ulbrich: Very important distinction between agents that, you know, specialize on the primary residence home buying side and those that are familiar with the investing side and ideally maybe even have some experience themselves or have worked with many clients that have gone through that path and know what they may be looking at to be able to advise them. Step No. 6, David, the math. So we’ve got to actually figure out is this a good deal or not? And so Step No. 6 is double or triple check the math. So talk to us about the importance of running the numbers and obviously something we’ll dig into in much more detail as we go throughout the show on individual cases and scenarios. But you know, how is the math run? Why is it so important? Talk to us about this step.

David Bright: Yeah, I think we’re all familiar in the pharmacy space that if you do the math wrong, that can be life-and-death for a patient. And I think the parallel with real estate is if you do the math wrong with real estate, it’s life-or-death of that deal. Right? It can be a really, really bad experience if you do the math wrong. If you do the math right, you check it well, and that ends up being a great investment for you, then that’s also a huge win. So there’s some strategy in doing those numbers correctly. There’s some online calculators and YFP has one, I’m sure we’ll put the link in the show notes today. But those online calculators are just like in the profession of pharmacy where there’s different online calculators for things that we need as well. So just getting familiar with those numbers to the point where it becomes really understandable and simple of how to evaluate those deals makes it just that much easier to find something that you’re comfortable with to break through that analysis paralysis and to jump in.

Tim Ulbrich: And we will link to the YFP rental property calculator that David was alluding to, we’ll link to that in the show notes. And finally, Nate, Step No. 7 is we’re ready to make an offer. So talk to us about really two key points to keep in mind as folks are getting ready to make an offer.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, I think when you get to this point where you’ve done all this background work and you’ve gotten to this point where OK, I think this is a deal that we’re going to go put this offer in, there’s two really important things to keep in mind. And that is that you need to keep emotion out of it. This is an investment. This is not your forever home. And so once you’ve done all that math like David said, don’t ruin it by ignoring the math and making a bad decision. So keep the emotion out of it, walk into that deal with ‘here’s where we’re going to go’ from a numbers standpoint, and we’re not going to vary from that. And then realize that not every good house is going to work out. Even if everything looks great, if you can’t get to that right negotiating spot, it’s worth it to walk away. So I think, again, Step 7 really should be do what you did in steps 1-6 and make sure you stick to it because that’s really what the offer is all about is that you’ve done all this background work to stay in line with what you’ve decided ahead of time.

Tim Ulbrich: Great stuff. So we just scratched the surface on these seven steps that are part of the Pharmacist’s Guide to Real Estate Investing, which you can download at YFPRealEstate.com or you also can text REIguide, again, all one word, REIguide to 44222 to get a copy. So I hope that you will join us for Episode 01 of the YFP Real Estate Investing podcast. It’s going to launch this Saturday, April 17, where Nate and David talk with Tim Baker and I about how real estate investing may fit into a pharmacist’s financial plan. We also talk about considerations for how long someone should be in their personal finance journey, where you should be perhaps with debt repayment, where you should be perhaps with your investing plan before jumping into real estate investing, and then we also talk about how one may balance real estate investing with a busy pharmacy career. So you can listen, again, to the YFP Real Estate Investing podcast right here on the YFP podcast channel. It’s going to launch each and every Saturday. What better way to start the weekend than learning about real estate investing, hearing from other pharmacists that are along this journey as well? So David and Nate, thank you both not only for your time on this episode but I know firsthand the time and effort that goes into putting a podcast together. It’s both exciting and exhausting at times. There’s moments of re-records, there’s moments of that was an episode that went great, but really an awesome opportunity as well to meet other pharmacists and connect with folks all across the country. So I appreciate your passion for this topic, your willingness to teach others, and the time commitment that you’ve made in being able to put this podcast together.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, we appreciate you letting us do it. This has, you know, really been, like you said, months and months in the making. And it’s really fun to get to this point, and David and I have been having a really good time interviewing the initial guests we’ve been working with, and I can’t wait to see where we go from here.

David Bright: Yeah, we’ve got some really inspiring people coming on in the first few shows and so I’m really excited about it and looking forward to it kicking off officially on Saturday.

Tim Ulbrich: Great stuff. So again, this Saturday, April 17, I hope you’ll join us for Episode 01. And as always, we appreciate you joining us on this week’s episode of the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

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YFP 197: How to Leverage What You Know as a Pharmacist to Start Your Own Consulting Business

Posted on April 1, 2021November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

How to Leverage What You Know as a Pharmacist to Start Your Own Consulting Business

On this episode, Blair Thielemier, the creator of the Pharmapreneur Academy and the Elevate Pharmacy Summit, joins Tim Ulbrich to talk about ideas and strategies for how to monetize your clinical expertise, including where to start, how to know if you have a good idea and common barriers that pharmacists often have to face and overcome. Blair and Tim also discuss the upcoming Elevate Pharmacy Summit, where you can learn about building revenue with clinical service contracts so that you can help more patients while generating income along the way.

About Today’s Guest

Blair Thielemier, PharmD, is an MTM and business management consultant pharmacist specializing in pharmacy billing models. She consults on and produces e-learning programs for state and national organizations, pharmacy wholesalers, payers, technology start-ups. She has books and online courses available for individuals looking to leverage their pharmacy knowledge into monetized clinical programs at PharmapreneurAcademy.com She speaks internationally about trends in leveraging pharmacists to improve value-based care.

Blair is passionate about the advancement of the profession of pharmacy and believes the shift to a value-based healthcare model is an opportunity for pharmacy to play a bigger role in the system. She believes this shift will change the face of our profession drastically in the next 20 years and wants to help her colleagues prepare and adapt to those changes.

In 2015, she founded a pharmacy consulting business BT Pharmacy Consulting, LLC and currently helps train and coach other pharmacists looking to start their own consulting businesses through an online e-course and membership site at the PharmapreneurAcademy.com. Part of that business includes presenting at pharmacy conferences and pioneering the use of educational online courses for pharmacists interested in providing enhanced clinical services, such as immunizations, point of care testing, chronic care and transitional care management programs.

In April 2017, she launched the first online pharmacy conference in the industry. The Elevate Pharmacy Virtual Summit featured pharmacists of various backgrounds practicing pharmacy at the peak of the profession. There were over 1,800 pharmacists from across the globe who attended the free event.

In April 2020, the 4th annual Elevate Pharmacy Virtual Summit reached thousands of pharmacists across the globe helping them to identify and act on innovative opportunities. The five-day conference presented by the Pharmapreneur Academy has been leading the way in virtual education and events in the pharmacy industry for the past 4 years.

Blair’s interests include advocating for community pharmacy services that help providers in primary care and post-acute care improve quality measures and patient outcomes. She is dedicated to putting out helpful information about pharmacist billing options and the benefits of pharmacy consulting services.

In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her husband and children, gardening and raising animals on their small farm and traveling abroad. She also enjoys reading personal development books, listening to business podcasts, studying meditation and human potential and learning about investing and personal finance.

Summary

Pharmacist and entrepreneur, Blair Thielemier, joins Tim Ulbrich on this episode to discuss how to leverage your skills as a pharmacist to start your own consulting business or side hustle. Blair touches on common barriers and hurdles to success in the mindset of the entrepreneur and ways to overcome self-limiting beliefs when it comes to your business. Pharmacists have such an impressive breadth of knowledge that can be applied widely. With some soft skills training, sales education, and business basics, that you just can’t get in pharmacy school, you can develop the mindset of an entrepreneur. This mindset shift means thinking about and actively asking about your clients’ and patients’ needs, anticipating those needs, and providing solutions to meet those needs and provide value. Consultation can be monetized in many ways, personalized to the pharmapreneur’s ideas, and applied through various methods whether consulting in an office, in a pharmacy-based setting, entirely independently or virtually.

Through her personal experiences, Blair discovered that she could use and monetize her own pharmacy skills and knowledge of the body to the cellular level, in countless ways to help others, ultimately leading to the creation of the Pharmapreneur Academy, her consulting business, and the creation of the Elevate Pharmacy Virtual Summit. The Elevate Pharmacy Virtual Summit aims to teach pharmacist entrepreneurs the skills necessary for building successful businesses and consulting programs, including methods for increasing revenue, relationship building, and a system for success.

Mentioned on the Show

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich: Blair, welcome back to the show.

Blair Thielemier: Thank you so much for having me again.

Tim Ulbrich: Excited. This is, for the record, your fourth time on the YFP podcast. So we’re excited to have you back. Last time we had you on was Episode 117, all the way back in September 2019 where we talked about three bold predictions for the future of pharmacy. And I want to put you on the spot here for a moment. So we had talked about predictions you had around automation continuing to happen and evolve in community pharmacy practice, the shift that you thought would be happening to appointment-based models, and the third thing that you talked about was the continued shift in focus on pharmacists being embedded in primary care practices. So since September 2019, we obviously have had all that a pandemic has thrown at us, which I feel like for many pharmacists, we’ve been focusing on vaccine distribution, serving our patients the best that we can. What have you seen in your space, your world, in terms of these predictions and where we’re at in 2021?

Blair Thielemier: Yeah, I mean, those predictions, you know, that we were going to be shifting at least diversifying our revenue streams away from just a product-focused business model to now include services, I also kind of saw this opportunity for pharmacists to step in and have an impact on preventive and community population health. So yeah, the COVID pandemic really was a catalyst, I think, in a good way for clinical services led by pharmacists. And it’s something that I’m going to continue to talk about and beat this dead horse that pharmacists need provider status. But we can also do more and help our patients, even right now when we don’t have provider status. So you know, two of those predictions I’m still not reversing my stance on either one of those. And the third one, for us to start becoming embedded in physicians’ offices, especially when we start looking at quality metrics and some of the pay-for-performance models that CMS is really, really focusing in on, there’s going to be a huge opportunity for clinically-trained pharmacists in the future.

Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely. And we’ve seen — shoutout to my Ohio colleagues here have done an awesome job advocating on our behalf. We’ve seen some exciting evolutions here in Ohio with value-based contracts, embedding pharmacists, obviously the evolution of telehealth that’s happening. We’ve still got some work to do on the reimbursement side of that as well, but I think there’s exciting times ahead. And one of the things I often think about, if you think about telehealth as one example of if we could now move a model where you might have depended on a pharmacist being embedded in a clinic to be able to be accessible from a population health standpoint to serve multiple clinics and perhaps those are the highest risk or could improve those metrics to the greatest degree, wow. I mean, talk about really trying to leverage the pharmacist’s expertise. So 2019, we talked about some of that. It’s been exciting to see the movement and certainly more on the horizon. And today, we’re going to talk about ideas and strategies for how folks can perhaps think about some of their clinical expertise, their experiences, how might they turn some of that into a business or a side hustle? How might they monetize some of that? How might they think like an entrepreneur? Or what are some of the barriers, obstacles, case studies, things that you’ve seen from your experience? And so before we get into that conversation, remind our listeners who may not have caught one of the three previous episodes, a little bit about your background since graduating from pharmacy school, and the work that you’re currently doing with the Pharmapreneur Academy.

Blair Thielemier: Yeah, so after I graduated pharmacy school, long story short, went from being a clinical hospital pharmacist to having no job whatsoever. So you know, it was a rough time. I was six months pregnant with my first child. We now have three. And it was a small, rural hospital, declining reimbursements, just couldn’t afford to keep two full-time pharmacists on staff. And so I was really left out in the cold, kind of being six months pregnant and trying to figure it out. So what I did, fell back on my community pharmacy roots, and I went to a couple local independents and just offered my help. And they were like, ‘Well, we have this new clinical thing called an MTM and none of us know how to do it. We were kind of hoping that you might want to do it for us.’ And I did, I went through the first couple cases and worked with those patients and absolutely fell in love with clinical services and I thought, this is my purpose in life. I mean, I don’t mean to sound dramatic. But that was really the feeling that I had was like, this is my future. I don’t know what it’s going to look like. But this is the path I have to follow. So I really just tried to make myself as knowledgeable as possible on these clinical pharmacy services. And in doing so, I was talking about it on my blog and eventually ended up creating a training course in the Pharmapreneur Academy. And you know, now we work with pharmacists and independent pharmacy owner clients that just like you mentioned at the beginning, you want to work with a collaborative provider doing remote telehealth services for maybe three or four providers in your area and seeing 50-100 patients per provider? That’s a full-time position. You know, that’s creating new jobs for pharmacists and being able to really think outside the box and understand some of the nuances of the quality payment programs and pay-for-performance stuff. It really allows pharmacists to what I call think like an entrepreneur, which is to see these gaps in the marketplace and also see opportunities in the marketplace so that we can leverage those skills in new ways to impact our community’s health and also the health of people across the U.S. because with telehealth, I mean, I don’t see that going away.

Tim Ulbrich: Right.

Blair Thielemier: Anytime soon either.

Tim Ulbrich: And so you’ve made this transition obviously from a clinical pharmacist and the role that you had to now really what I see of educating, training, coaching, motivating various pharmacists, which is really interesting, I think is inspiring when you think about impact. And we’ll talk about the business side of it here in a moment. When you think about impact, when you’re able to help people take an idea and help frame, shape that idea, perhaps help them overcome some of the obstacles or barriers that may seem overwhelming to them in the moment and then think about seeing that service develop and hopefully thrive at some point and the impact that that will have on patients, obviously that’s far greater than the impact that you could have had alone. And I see so much of that happening, what you’re doing at the Pharmapreneur Academy. One question I have for you as you think back to your journey, would you have ended up here today doing what you’re doing if it weren’t for that job loss? And I ask that because I feel like when you talk with folks that I think have that entrepreneurial slant, itch, bug, whatever you want to call it, like it comes out eventually, right? I mean, it’s going to come out. You’re either going to get frustrated with the situation you’re in, see an opportunity, see a problem that can be solved. So as you reflect back on the journey, how critical was that situation, that moment, as difficult as it was to where you are today?

Blair Thielemier: I don’t actually know if I’ve ever told you this story, Tim. After I was working as an MTM consultant, like just kind of doing PRN for these local independents, it was probably my daughter was about 6 months old at the time and there became a director of pharmacy position come open at the local regional hospital one county over. So not the place I had been let go from but one county over. And I went there, and I applied for the job, and I got the job, of course. They offered me the job. And after the interview, they were walking me around the pharmacy, they were introducing me to the team, they were showing me my very own computer and all this stuff, and I actually that day was probably worse than the day that I lost my job the first time because I felt like there were like these two paths laid out ahead of me. And one was like the I know what that career path is going to lead to. I’ve been there, I’ve done that. There was more responsibility as the director but also I had what I thought was a pretty secure position at the other hospital. And you know, I just, I thought, how many more years am I going to do this before I finally go after what I really want, which is to own my own business and have the freedom and flexibility and autonomy to work the way that I want? And so I went home that evening and told my husband, I’m like, ‘Well, I got the job. Bad news is I’m not going to take it.’

Tim Ulbrich: But…

Blair Thielemier: Yeah. I got it, and I’m not going to take it. It was kind of one of those moments where my parents were concerned about me, you just spent a ton of money going to school, getting your pharmacist license, and you’re already like I’m going to try this other thing. But I really, I just at that time, I just felt like there wasn’t another option for me. It was really like, if you don’t try this, Blair, you’re going to regret it for the rest of your life. And that was the big turning point for me is like, you can still work your job while you’re trying to build up your side hustle. But there comes a point too to where you really have to decide, am I going to focus on this? Or am I going to focus on this? And that was the point to like just get that started. I think it was — I was originally pushed off that traditional path by when I lost my job. And then I actually chose the other path whenever I decided not to take the director position. So every day, I’m still choosing to show up at the Academy for my clients and to continue to really help them help their patients. That’s what I want to grow. And that’s the impact that I want to have is helping pharmacists leverage the stuff that they’re really good at that I can just support them with some of the business and marketing skills that we didn’t learn in school.

Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely. And let’s go there and discuss that further as I suspect many folks will be listening and saying, “Hey, I’ve got this really cool area of expertise,” or perhaps I have this idea, and I just don’t know exactly what I could do with it. And you know what, I was trained to be a darn good clinical pharmacist. But I don’t know about marketing, developing business plans, and financing my business. And oh, by the way, this is really scary to think about. Maybe I have a young family or I’ve got a stable income. We talk about it sometimes, the golden handcuffs, right, in terms of being able to — or I have $175,000-200,000 of student loan debt that might be getting in the way of what I’m doing, which obviously connects through the work that we do. So someone that has an idea or even knows that they’ve got something that is worthwhile sharing with others, having an impact in the work that they’re doing, where do they start? You know, I think this is the common thing I hear is, I don’t know where to start. And that fear can often come to be quickly where you can convince yourself that I either have to leave what I’m doing altogether to pursue this or I can’t pursue this because I have limited time and I’m working on this full-time, and sometimes we don’t get past the start line, right, to even see what might be potential going forward. So as you coach folks in the Pharmapreneur Academy, I would assume from all walks of where their idea is at from maybe I don’t have one but I know I want to do something to I’ve got something to I’ve validated it to I’m trying to scale it and everything in between, like what advice would you have for folks that are hearing this and thinking, I just don’t know where to start.

Blair Thielemier: You know, we really have a process. Like it’s a step-by-step framework that we — I encourage people to kind of put their blinders on. So think about what you want, think about the program that you want to build, put your blinders on, work towards that, and then test it. If it doesn’t seem to be something that the market is interested in, it’s OK to pivot too. So I think we get so attached to our ideas, when we have one, you know, usually people are like, “I have zero ideas of what I can do as an entrepreneur,” or “I have 50 ideas about what I can do as an entrepreneur.” So both of them I really tell them the same thing, like baby step No. 1: Look at your career and look at your past experience, look at your network, because what you have to offer is very individual. Your past experiences, maybe you know, you’re like me and my undergrad degree, I was studying plant biology because I’ve always been a little bit of a crunchy plant nerd. And I was like, maybe when I go to pharmacy school, I want to go to the Amazon and research novel drug development. And now, like I’m finally kind of seeing this come full circle as I’m getting my Master’s in Ayurvedic medicine. I almost forgot that about myself. Like I forgot that I was really into plants and herbal and like even growing a garden and nutrition. I had kind of forgot that about myself. So we’ve got some places where people can revisit some exercises that they can do to figure out if they don’t have an idea what their idea could be, if they have too many ideas how to scale down and start with just one thing. So that’s what we call our three pharmapreneurial paths, which is essentially are you going to be a consultant in a physician’s office? Are you going to be a consultant in a pharmacy-based setting? Or are you going to try to do kind of completely separate, on-your-own, like a virtual cash-based kind of business? So being able to really hone in, figure out which of those paths I want to take really makes figuring out your offer, so we talk about deciding on your offer, we’re going to talk more on this year’s Elevate Summit about how to scale your business from $1,000-5,000 per month in revenue to upwards of $25,000 per month in revenue using these techniques and things that I have learned throughout the past seven years in the online business industry and figuring out how to apply those things to pharmacy. And the other thing I really work with people a lot on when I coach them is helping them to identify their limiting beliefs. So you know, I know, Tim, you’re a big self-development person. And this idea of the growth mindset versus the fixed mindset, one of the things that I really see people in this static or fixed mindset deal with is imposter syndrome. And they, they might say, “Oh, well I’m not a clinical guru,” or, “I’m just a retail pharmacist.” I hate hearing that. I’m like, you’re not just a retail pharmacist —

Tim Ulbrich: With just a doctorate degree, yeah.

Blair Thielemier: You just have, you know, this amazing breadth of knowledge underneath your belt. You’re trained unlike any other healthcare professional on Earth. I mean, ask a doctor some questions about pharmacokinetics and see what happens. Like your training is so unique. Our knowledge of biochemistry and physiology, down to the cellular level, is what I think really makes for an interesting recipe for a pharmacist to be able to take influence from all these different seemingly unconnected areas of health and even looking into stuff like Ayurvedic medicine and meditation, how that has an impact on our mental health, on chronic stress, on our gut health, like all of these things really play together with the pharmacological interventions, the modern medicine can bless us with.

Tim Ulbrich: And so you mentioned one, Blair, which I would agree with, you know, some of the self-limiting beliefs, imposter syndrome, being a hurdle that folks may have to overcome and doubting whether or not they can do something, perhaps making the mistake of looking at others and you know, making assumptions that may not be true about what others are doing or looking at others and saying, “I’m not sure I can do that,” when in fact those folks may have been doing that for 5, 6, 7 years and they obviously had a place they started, which takes me to the question, like what are other hurdles that you see folks having to overcome? Common barriers of folks that are coming to you in the Academy that are just trying to get started, whether they don’t yet have an idea or they do have an idea, common hurdles that folks need to overcome or work through as they develop this business idea further.

Blair Thielemier: Yeah, so a lot of people come to me and say, “Hey, how do I get a job as an MTM consultant?” I’m like, “Well, it’s not really a position you can apply for, unfortunately, at this time, anyway.” And what I think that maybe we aren’t taught in school is how to talk with someone, how to have like a sales conversation or a collaborative business arrangement with someone. So really, like I kind of teach them — I feel like I’m teaching them the language of business to where they can feel comfortable going out and not feeling like, oh, I’m just going to hand somebody my business card and wait for a call because I don’t want to be pushy or sales-y or whatever. So what I teach them really has to do with building up your selling skills, building up confidence in what you’re talking about. The having conversations with people that don’t feel sleazy or sales-y, we have the four A’s of selling, which what I call first, you start with Asking what challenges they’re dealing with. What have they tried in the past? If you’re talking to a physician maybe like what quality metrics are you reporting on? Or what are some of your biggest medication issues with patients? So asking that question is the first A. The second would be Assessing. What are some things that I’ve heard? I’ve heard Blair talk about chronic care management, I’ve heard other pharmacists talk about pharmacogenomic testing or whatever. So assessing what type of program could I put together that can be customized to this person that can really help them? Because it’s not necessarily what I want to do. Like maybe I went in there thinking, oh, I really, I kind of want to do annual wellness visits for this place, but come to find they’ve already got somebody doing annual wellness visits and they’re happy with that service. But they don’t have somebody doing chronic care management. So you know, you go in with this like kind of a loose plan but then leave it open for —

Tim Ulbrich: That’s right.

Blair Thielemier: Leave it open for changes and pivots. And so being able to assess what their needs are and agreeing on this could be a good thing, would you want me in the office? Or would you want me in my own office? And would you want to do a collaborative practice agreement? Or should we just work under a collaborative business arrangement? And finally, the final piece of that is Accepting, accepting of the program, accepting of you as an employee, signing off on that legal agreement, and really just kind of going through the pilot and implementation phase of any type of new business relationship is going to go through that kind of four-step process. So when people go in and say, “Well, I talked to my physician’s office about it and I handed them a flier and told them that I was available for hire, but I never heard back from them,” I’m like, “Yeah, that’s not really the way I would have tried to get my foot in the door. And here’s what I would recommend to you to do. Go back and have that conversation with them because they may not even understand who you are or why you’re trying to help them or what it is you do. So first things first, just build a relationship and talk to them like they are a person and that you are a person, and you just are looking to see if there’s any opportunities to work together.”

Tim Ulbrich: In that last example you gave is such a good one because I think sales and accepting some of the success and challenge that can come from that is something probably many pharmacists struggle with. And this is an area where I see the community and the network being so valuable inside of the Academy because I know firsthand, this is an area where one of the coaches that I’ve worked with before calls this “head trash.” Right? There’s things that, you know, are barriers that we come to believe are going to happen or the example you gave of I dropped off a flier, I let them know I’m available, reach out to me if you want to, that is not sales. Right? That is a “I want to feel comfortable walking out of this scenario without putting risk for it that I might get a no.” And I think in that example, I would encourage folks to reflect on like, why is that the approach? Because at the end of the day, remember, we’re talking about if you have a business idea, you have a problem that needs to be solved. And if you believe so wholeheartedly in that vision, then the outcome needs to be — if I have a solution to a problem, then I need to make sure we get to that solution because I know I’m going to better serve that physician, better serve the patients that that physician also cares for, and so my primary goal in sales is to be able to further that mission. And in that mindset, which gets back to some of the growth mindset, is a totally different perspective when somebody is thinking about a sales process. But if you’re trying to go about this on an island — and I think this is where an academy and a group can be so helpful, you know, you can talk these things out loud, talk to folks that have different levels of experience, and start to learn through one another and also reflect on those conversations and get some feedback as well. One thing you mentioned, Blair, earlier was think like an entrepreneur. And I know many pharmacists that I’ve talked with, you know, when they may think, hey, I’m a really good clinician, but I don’t consider myself an entrepreneur. And that can feel overwhelming. I think sometimes we glorify the image on an entrepreneur, tech startup, big offerings of companies and so forth, and we often don’t think of what may be realistic in terms of the work that we’re doing. What do you mean by that concept of thinking like an entrepreneur? Break that down a little bit further.

Blair Thielemier: Yeah, so I really think that pharmacy’s origins started with people like my great-grandfather, who owned his own pharmacy in the Chicagoland area in the early ‘40s. And it was that kind of person-to-person service, it was the idea that like if I don’t make an offer to help this person, they may not be able to get the solution to their problems. They may not even know that this option exists for them. So even giving like just a very simple answer, so one of my friends, she was doing like a intermittent fasting, keto-type diet, and so she was mentioning having some issues with muscle aches. And I was like, “Oh, well make sure that you’re drinking a ton of water if you’re going to do one of those diets because you’re losing water. You’re also losing a lot of electrolytes, so you need a really high-quality vitamin supplement.” And you know, she was like, “Oh, I never even considered that if I was going to change my diet that I needed to think about supplementation.” And she was like, “Oh, but I can’t take those big horse pill vitamins.” And I’m like, “Well, they make gummy vitamins. And they make liquid,” like there’s so many options that you can do. But because she had never really thought to ask me about it, I never even thought to talk about the different ways that you could — we haven’t even gotten to compounded medications to where you could really help someone if they do have those types of issues. So even thinking about just basic pharmacy services from an entrepreneurial standpoint, you’re thinking about, OK, well what time of the year is it? What are people needing? What are my patients experiencing right now? It’s hayfever season. We’re going into spring and thinking through like, what are these people’s needs right now? And right now, they’re needing some COVID vaccines, for one. They’re probably also needing some Claritin. So being able to think like that and see the opportunities in the market, the gaps in the market, to have conversations and talk to people about their pain points. You know, Elon Musk didn’t wait for people to come say, “Hey, I really need an electric car.” He was like, this is what the country needs, like even if consumers aren’t screaming that they want an electric car, I’m going to create something because I see this opportunity, and I see it as impacting the highest good. So we’re going to make it, and we’re going to make sure it fits people’s needs and their pain point and also let them feel good about the investment that they’re making in their next vehicle. So same thing, you know, I think when we talk about investing in people’s health, so many pharmacists are like, “Oh, I would feel bad if I charged my patients for a consult on their nutritional supplements or a functional medicine consult or whatever.” I’m like, “Yeah, but people need to have some type of investment in the program or else they’re not going to take your advice.”

Tim Ulbrich: Yep. And value it —

Blair Thielemier: And value it.

Tim Ulbrich: — as such, right? I mean, I think that’s partly why we’re having some of the challenges that we have in the profession that we’ve largely given away what we have for free. Obviously that’s an overgeneralization in some regards. But I think the comfort may not be there of back to where we started the conversation, you know, any good business idea is a problem that warrants a solution, is one that you’re passionate about, and is one that people are willing to pay for. And if you can find that idea of what you’re providing value and providing a solution to a problem and you can obviously generate revenue from it, if that’s deriving value to an individual, it’s OK for them to pay for that, right? And it’s OK for that to be profitable because there’s a willing investment that’s being made as they see the return on the investment. And if we think about how we invest as a consumer, you know, I think that helps reshape our mind of, I invest in a lot of things that may not be a physical product, per se, but I believe has a lot of value and I’m willing to invest both time and money to invest in that solution that is going to provide some of that value. And I think this is a good transition, Blair, to an upcoming summit that you are hosting again, the Elevate Pharmacy Summit, which I’m excited about, April 9 and 10, and as folks are hearing this, thinking about OK, strategies that I might consider to monetize clinical expertise or I’ve got an idea and I want to think about how I might begin to flesh that idea out further or maybe I’ve started something, and you talked about kind of that growth phase from let’s say $1,000 in revenue per month to $5,000, whatever that growth would look like. And I know that some of what you’re going to be discussing on the summit. So tell us about the Elevate Pharmacy Virtual Summit, who it’s for, what folks can expect, and the theme of what you’re trying to accomplish in the summit this year, April 9 and 10.

Blair Thielemier: Yeah, so this year’s summit, we’ll be teaching our entire system over the course of two days. So it’s two days of live trainings, of live presentations that will help you really decide on the services and programs you want to offer. So like you just said, thinking about the solution that you could offer someone, how to put a value on that. So one example is a client that I’ve worked with. She had some issues with fertility and changed up her diet and nutritional supplement regimen and kind of fixed some of those issues with her microbiome and gut health and was able to conceive. And she, because of that experience she had, she really felt called to create a group program for other females that were of childbearing age who were looking to conceive. And you know, she was asking me about pricing and I’m like, “Well, if you help someone who couldn’t have a baby have a baby, what type of return on investment, you know, like what –”

Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely.

Blair Thielemier: Can you imagine how much more enriching that person’s life would be? And there is value in what we can offer. And there is value in our solutions. So you know, she was able to really think about the impact that she wanted to have. And so I really have worked with hundreds of pharmacists to overcome some of these issues from absolutely no idea of what they want to do to OK, now I’m generating $5,000 in revenue each month, you know, I’m thinking about leaving my full-time position, I’m thinking about hiring someone else to help me, you know, scaling to that $25,000 to $50,000 to $100,000 per month in revenue and how that works for someone using some of the processes that I’ve built in to my own business. So some of the automation and some of the marketing and lead gen and social media strategies. That’s exactly why we created the Elevate Pharmacy live this year is so that we can teach those. It’s going to be also a very small-knit group. So there’s only 300 tickets available in our Zoom room so that we can take Q&A, so we’re actually working with them. It’s really a two-day workshop that we’re going to be teaching and talking about and then of course, Tim, you’re going to come on and talk about like kind of your book publishing empire and how you’ve been able to impact so many pharmacists and helping them improve their financial health and then also what to do with it when you do get to that, you know, $25,000, $50,000 to $100,000 in revenue per month. Like that’s a fun conversation to have with the Tims is like, what do I do with all this money? That’s a great place to be. And you can really start thinking about how to have the impact you want and how to structure your services so that you can — if you do choose to leave your job, you can have this as a full-time position and it’s something you can grow and really build out. So that’s pretty much what we’ll be teaching on those two days. It’s our system from taking you to low five-figure revenue to six- and seven-figure revenue as a pharmacist.

Tim Ulbrich: I’m really excited for the event, not only participating as a speaker, as you mentioned, but also that this is available to pharmacists. When you and I talked a couple weeks ago, I was going through the list as you’re talking about marketing, lead gen, social strategy, building processes, I was like, yep, fumbled through that, fumbled through that, fumbled through that.

Blair Thielemier: Me too, Tim.

Tim Ulbrich: And every one of those was an incredible learning experience but, you know, to have other examples and I certainly read lots of books and resources and blogs and podcasts and all those things, which were incredibly helpful to see things outside of the industry as well. But to hear from folks that I can connect with and to begin to develop a community that I can connect with, I certainly know the value of that. So looking forward to the Elevate Pharmacy Virtual Summit, April 9 and 10 coming up. You can learn more about the summit and register and join me at PharmapreneurAcademy.com/YFP. Again, that’s PharmapreneurAcademy.com/YFP. Blair, thank you so much for joining. Appreciate the time, as always. Appreciate the work that you’re doing to better the profession as well as those that have some of these ideas and entrepreneurial dreams. And excited about what this means for them individually but also for the patients that they serve. So thank you very much.

Blair Thielemier: Absolutely. And thank you for having me, and thank you for the work that you’re doing as well, helping pharmacists create this firm financial foundation so that they can really build something amazing on top of it.

Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely. Thank you, Blair.

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