Side Hustle / Podcast

YFP 255: Own Your PharmD, Own Your Career with Ashlee Klevens Hayes and Chris Cozzolino

Posted on May 12, 2022November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

Own Your PharmD, Own Your Career with Ashlee Klevens Hayes and Chris Cozzolino

On this episode, sponsored by Insuring Income, YFP Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, welcomes back to the show Ashlee Klevens Hayes & Chris Cozzolino, two pharmacists and entrepreneurs. Together, they discuss the new book Ashlee and Chris have co-authored: ‘Own Your PharmD, Own Your Career: Real Life Advice from 50+ Pharmacy Leaders and Influencers.’

About Today’s Guests

Ashlee Klevens Hayes

Ashlee Klevens Hayes is a 3rd generation pharmacist who set out on a traditional pharmacy path that turned into so much more. She’s an initiator, a pharmacy entrepreneur, and career strategist. After graduating from The University of Southern California School of Pharmacy she completed a 2-year health system pharmacy administration residency at the University of Kentucky and then took on the position of Associate Director of Central Pharmacy Operations at UK. In 2017, she founded Rx Ashlee, a career development company that focuses on business development, branding, marketing, career pivots, and interview preparation for highly skilled professionals. Shortly after, she launched the Rx Buzz Podcast on the Pharmacy Podcast Network and started with the University of Southern California School of Pharmacy as a career strategist.

Chris Cozzolino

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

Many people who graduate from pharmacy school can feel overwhelmed when entering the sector for the first time. Pharmacists often feel that their training and expectations of the field do not match the real-world pharmacy setting. Imagine if you could speak to some of the top people in the industry for advice and guidance to help you on your journey to a successful career. This goal was the object of today’s guests, Ashlee Klevens Hayes and Chris Cozzolino’s new book Own Your PharmD, Own Your Career: Real Life Advice from 50+ Pharmacy Leaders and Influencers. Their new book offers readers a wealth of information that can only be gained from experience, comprising over 50 interviews with respected and successful pharmacists and industry influencers. In this episode, listeners will learn about Chris and Ashlee, why they decided to write a book on the subject, the importance of interpersonal skills to becoming a successful pharmacist, and common traits that limit peoples’ potential. Chris and Ashlee speak about the gaps in what pharmacy school does not prepare you for, typical expectations of the pharmacy world from new practitioners, and how to adjust and find success in the various seasons of your career as a pharmacist.

Key Points From This Episode

Introduction and a brief background about today’s guests.
The motivation behind Ashlee’s and Chris’s decision to write a book.
What Chris’s and Ashlee’s overall goal of writing a book was.
A brief discussion about the importance of networking to become successful.
Examples of lessons learned while writing and interviewing people for the book.
Importance of soft skills to becoming a successful pharmacist.
How finding measures of success for different seasons of your career is important.
Common traits Chris and Ashlee noticed hold back people from reaching their full potential.
Where limiting thoughts come from for pharmacists.
Strategies that Chris uses to ensure that he is enjoying his current career path.
Where Chris learned how important enjoying the process is.
Ashlee explains the importance of mindset and how you see opportunities.
Chris tells us about his decision to self-publish as opposed to working with a publisher.
What Ashlee has enjoyed the most from the book writing process.

Highlights

“The goal of the book is really to try to bring out those authentic tidbits that you might not be able to get out of somebody unless you’re speaking to them over dinner or casually and not in a professional setting.” — Chris Cozzolino, PharmD [0:08:46]

“We’re in this limbo, in this transition of going from a very traditional marketplace to a very nontraditional marketplace. That is very scary and intimidating to people who are used to doing one plus one equals always two.” — Ashlee Klevens Hayes, PharmD, MHA, CELDC [0:19:49]

“If you’re able to enjoy getting there just as much as that final destination, I think that’s what happiness is.” — Chris Cozzolino, PharmD [0:22:20]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] TU: Hey, everybody. Tim Ulbrich here. 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. What if I told you that you could interview 50 or more influential leaders within our profession? That would be incredible, right? Better yet, what if you could compile the key insights from those interviews for ongoing guidance and inspiration?

Doctors Ashlee Klevens Hayes and Chris Cozzolino have created that resource and Own Your PharmD, Own Your Career: Real Life Advice from 50+ Pharmacy Leaders and Influencers. These two leaders, innovators and entrepreneurs have demonstrated individually, how to own your PharmD, own your career. They have walked the walk, and while sharing their own insights and tips would produce a much needed resource, they decided instead to share the stage with some great minds in our profession.

[00:00:51] TU: Before we jump into the show and I talk with Ashlee and Chris about their book, I recognize that many listeners may not be aware of what the team at YFP Planning does in working one-on-one with more than 240 households in 40 plus states. YFP Planning offers fee only high touch financial planning that is customized for the pharmacy professional. If you’re interested in learning more about how working one-on-one with a certified financial planner may help you achieve your financial goals, you can book a free discovery call at yfpplanning.com.

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

This week’s podcast episode is brought to you by Insuring Income. Insuring Income is your source for all things term, life insurance and own occupation disability insurance. Insuring Income has a relationship with America’s top rated term life insurance and Disability Insurance Company, so pharmacists like you can easily find the best solutions for your personal situation. To better serve you. Insuring Income reviews all applicable carriers in the marketplace for your desired coverage, supports clients in all 50 states and make sure all of your questions get answered.

To get quotes and apply for term life or disability insurance, see sample contract from disability carriers or learn more about these topics. Visit insuringincome.com/yourfinancialpharmacist. Again that’s insuringincome.com/yourfinancialpharmacist.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:02:29] TU: Chris and Ashlee welcome.

[00:02:30] AKH: What’s up?

[00:02:32] CC: Excited to be here.

[00:02:34] TU: Both of you have been in front of the YFP community before, Ashlee way back when on episode 95 of the YFP podcast, Chris more recently on episode 28, but I don’t want to assume that folks know all the great things that you’re working on and who you are. So Chris, let’s start with you. Tell us a little bit more about yourself, your background into pharmacy and the work that you’re currently doing.

[00:02:57] CC: Yeah. My name’s Chris Cozzolino. I’m based in Iowa City, Iowa. I went to the University of Iowa for pharmacy school and graduated in 2020. I’m not currently practicing as a pharmacist, but while I was in pharmacy school in college, I was able to build a social media marketing business that does a lot of work with direct outreach and scheduling sales appointments for sales teams and business development reps. So that’s where my path is right now and really being in the thick of starting conversations with people, meeting people and doing things like this.

[00:03:31] TU: Awesome –

[00:03:33] AKH: You can’t say that you’re not a practicing pharmacist. You are.

[00:03:39] CC: I mean, I’m licensed and everything, so I can go practice at any point of time, but yeah.

[00:03:43] TU: That’s what I always tell Chris, my family and friends when they ask me a pharmacy question. I say, “You need to go talk to your local pharmacy.”

[00:03:51] AKH: Yes. Exactly.

[00:03:53] TU: How about for you? Tell us more about your background and the work that you’re doing now.

[00:03:58] AKH: Sure. I graduated pharmacy school a long time ago now. Then I did, I went to USC, so University State of California then I went to University of Kentucky. I was the first admin resident there. I think, it’s Health System Pharmacy, HSP. I don’t know. We didn’t have the lingo when I was back in residency, so I did that for a couple of years. Then I stayed on as the Operations Director of Bureaucratic Services. Then I transitioned to working for a medical device, pharmaceutical, a blend of a medical device at pharmaceutical company where I got this entrepreneurial mindset of why people are in pharma and they’re not pharmacists. I was confused. I didn’t know that existed. I thought you had to be a clinician to be in healthcare.

I worked for that company as an internal consultant for a couple of years, and then they ended up selling to a large pharmaceutical company and my position was severed in that transition in that purchase. For the first time in my career, I had a six month old daughter. I was the breadwinner. We were moving from Kentucky back to California, and I lost my job. It was a terrible situation, but it was the first time that I had the opportunity to take a step back and ask myself, what did I want to do with my career? What does success mean to me? How can I support my family, but still be around and how can I bring all of my different skillsets into just a different career?

With the blend of my pharmacy background, my business background, my operations background, I started RX Ashlee six years ago as a career strategist, and since then I’ve helped over 5000 pharmacies and mostly pharmacists, I would say 75% pharmacies and 25% health care professionals really thrive in their careers. That entails one-on-one services, keynote speaking engagements, workshops, seminars, webinars, podcast like this and then stuff like the little books that we get to write every once in a while, that Chris and I partnered in. So that’s been my our recent most fun passion project.

[00:06:03] TU: Six years with RX. Ashlee, where’s time gone? That’s wild. Yeah.

[00:06:08] AKH: I know, I mean, the first year or two, was my side hustle. It was definitely more of a let’s dabble in this and see where it goes. Then stuff got real once things started picking up and people were happy and clients are happy and that was happy and my husband was happy, I was like, all right, let’s see where this goes. So now it’s been it’s been amazing and I’m super grateful.

[00:06:29] TU: Why not? I’m sure this both with you before and I wholeheartedly mean, I have a ton of respect for both of you in terms of the work that you’ve done professionally of what I know of you guys personally. I think the value that you’re bringing to the profession of pharmacy is really inspiring to me. I know it’s having an impact on others. So we’re talking here today. Got my copy right here of your book that you guys recently launched, which is Own Your PharmD, Own Your Career: Real Life Advice From 50+ Pharmacy Leaders and Influencers, when Chris and Ashlee get together to collaborate on a book, I’m going to read it. Others should read it. There’s some great advice in here.

My first question here, and Chris I’ll kick it off with you is, you both are busy running your own businesses. Obviously you’ve got personal commitments as well, so why write a book? What inspired and led you to ultimately take on the task of putting this resource together?

[00:07:23] CC: Yeah. I think obviously Ashlee and I both like having our hands in pharmacy and Ashlee is a lot more on the forefront working with pharmacists on a daily basis, whereas I don’t get as much time to do that. Since I knew that I made it a goal of mine to make sure to stay active in the pharmacy community and be able to bring value from what my other passions are with business and entrepreneurship. There’s so many influencers in traditional entrepreneurship that spew the same messages that, if you’re in that ecosystem, you hear them over and over again, but if you’re not, you’ve probably never heard a lot of the even the clichés like, probably the most you’ve heard is your network is your network, which everybody here is it networking conferences.

There’s so many other tidbits from the entrepreneurship world and those influencers that have made my life a lot better to being able to bridge that into pharmacy. I’ve realize that a lot of other people gain value from that. Then on a secondary note, really wanting to tap into the brains of other people and take advantage of my ability as an extrovert to connect with people, have conversations and know that you can’t really pick at somebody’s brain unless you are talking to them or have a more real connection with them.

The goal of the book is really to try to bring out those authentic tidbits that you might not be able to get out of somebody unless you’re speaking to them over dinner or casually and not in a professional setting.

[00:08:59] TU: Yeah, that’s what I love about it. You can read it front to back if you want, and I think have a lot of takeaway, but also can sit on the desk and you can periodically have it as a source of inspiration. I hope, as I wrote as a challenge to folks in the forward to take advantage of the network that is inside of this book, right? Well, one of the things that and I know you guys have experienced this as well, when I talk with student pharmacists and even new practitioners and they’re talking boldly about ideas that they have, and they’re all energized, which is awesome. I said, “Hey, have you talked to so-and-so or have you thought about connecting with so-and-so?” There’s almost this fear that people are untouchable out there, that those are those people doing those things.

I’ve never run across a pharmacist that hasn’t been willing or another individual, especially if a connection can be made that isn’t willing to spend a few moments to share some wisdom advice, encouragement, and to connect you with someone else as well. I hope folks will take the advice that’s here, but also take it as an opportunity to connect with other individuals in the book.

[00:10:00] AKH: We just did that before the call, too. I mean, you guys, Tim, jumped on, said, “Hey, Chris, Ashlee is going to meet this person, you got to meet this person.” Then that is a trail of just amazing connections. You never know where it’s going to take you.

[00:10:13] TU: One of things I love about the way that you guys wrote this is that certainly the individuals that are here, it’s a diverse group of individuals, impressive titles and impressive accomplishments. I think what is most important is the insights into why they’ve been successful.

[00:10:29] AKH: Right.

[00:10:29] TU: I think that we can get hung up in a professional field that is highly credentialed of the number of letters we have after our name, and what titles we have. But what is it individually that has allowed those folks to be successful? As you guys distill the advice of these leaders, the 50+ individuals that are in this book. Chris, I’ll start with you. Did anything surprise you from the responses that came forward?

[00:10:54] CC: Yeah. I think it surprised me, but it makes a lot of sense looking back in hindsight. The biggest thing probably being that so much of the advice is very human advice and not necessarily profession, specific, while there are going to be those professions specific tidbits. It’s much more of the stuff that you don’t get by being a pharmacist. I think as pharmacists, we all go through so much training and that’s your day-to-day and everything. You’re so in the thick of it that being able to hear advice that goes bigger and beyond, just pharmacy as a profession, but more life advice and just profession advice. It’s still relative to healthcare, but has a bigger impact.

[00:11:40] TU: Yeah, there’s a vulnerability in the responses that I saw come through and into your comment earlier. That’s a lot of conversations over coffee to get that type of information that’s really here in one resource, but I was impressed with the vulnerability that came through and the responses and the humility that also came through and the responses. You can tell at least one of the themes I took away was a huge self-awareness among the individuals. So despite the success, despite the accomplishments, there’s great awareness into what has shaped them into the person and the leader that they are, but also what are the areas that they continue to improve upon to get better. I think that humility is really refreshing to read and to see as a team in the book. Ashlee, any significant takeaways for you?

[00:12:24] AKH: Well it’s interesting, because I train people on how to have humility and how to practice self-awareness every single day. When I saw the responses, I was like, “Yes, this is meat and potatoes that I’m trying to get into pharmacy practice.” It wasn’t necessarily surprising to me. It was more on par to what I believe in. It’s just nice that people are talking about it, because when I started blogging, when I started giving keynotes to pharmacists six or seven years ago, it was a very uncomfortable space, I think. People are, “Wow, you’re so brave. We’re talking about this.” It’s like, this is normal stuff. Why aren’t people talking about relationships, about marriages, about how to have a family, how to go through traumas in your life like divorce and still maintain a successful career?

When I started seeing these conversations pop up within some of the dialog and the conversations that we were having with the people who contributed to the book, I was like, “Thank you for just being open and honest and real.” Because I don’t think we – especially coming out of pharmacy school, I think you’re in this little bit of a bubble, not a little bit. You are in a bubble of what’s to be expected in the pharmacy world. Then you get into it and you’re like, “Wait a minute. No one told me about this stuff.”

Then I to say every level comes with a new double, so just because, I gave an example of just a recent grad, but ten years out, 20 years out, 30 years out, 40, 50 years out. Every season comes with a different challenge. A lot of the people that we brought into the book talked about the different seasons.

[00:14:02] TU: Yeah. Ashlee, every level comes with the new dev. I’m going to quote that for here. That’s a good one –

[00:14:07] AKH: I don’t know, if that’s me quote or I’ve learned it from somewhere else. So sorry, if someone else said it, but I just remember, I’ve been saying that a lot lately, because I’m in a different season of my life than I was ten years ago. I think no one told me to prepare for that. I think it’s really important for the readers or for people listening to understand to finding success at different, different seasons in your career is really important.

[00:14:29] TU: 100%. One of the things that really has hit me across the head over the last couple of years, but I would say has been a journey really over the last decade is I’m slowly realizing more and more that my mindset as I think about our business, what we’re working on and trying to transform the financial wellness of the pharmacist workforce. The greatest contribution that I can bring to our business to achieve the vision and the mission that we have is the mindset that I bring to see the potential of who we are and who we can become.

There’s a whole lot and I’m covering that of what are the limitations that someone puts upon themselves, where did those come from? How do we advance through the next level or bust through the next ceiling? Why does that ceiling even exist in the first place? There’s just so much to uncover there, but those are things in pharmacy school you’re not even thinking about and you start to see whether people use mindset, those words or not. That to me came through loud and clear in this book was the development of it. I get to talk with pharmacists everyday.

One of my greatest joys is when I get to talk with an individual that has a spark of an idea or has something creative they want to pursue. They just need a little push or a little bit of nudge, because they have a lot of self-doubts and fears and anxieties and a lot of things that it’s prevented them from moving forward with that idea and they need some challenging encouragement. So my question here related to that is, for many pharmacists to feel like, “Hey, I may not be the living to my full potential, I feel there’s something else that might be there. What did you take away as you compile this as one or two things that are often holding back pharmacies from really living to that full potential?

[00:16:11] CC: Yeah. I think the big one is fear of the unknown, just with the personality types that are in pharmacy and health care. We like structure. We like things that are known. It’s a little bit more difficult for us to push ourselves out of our comfort zones. I think for one, fear of losing a job or letting somebody down in your work, which from my experience, seeing other pharmacists, most pharmacists aren’t even close to the point of letting people down, but they’re still working vigorously to not let anybody down.

I think that so to take that a little bit further, the knowledge that you can always get another job, you can always take a year off and your life is going to be pretty much the same. That’s outside of having financial responsibilities. You need to be able to cover those financial responsibilities. But even if it’s you need to go part time to do some self-discovery, still make the money that you can support yourself, your family, your loved ones, but take the time to explore something else.

I don’t think anybody’s going to regret doing that if they’re able to have the conviction to take a leap of faith to do whatever that thing is or explore whatever that new area is. It doesn’t have to be outside of pharmacy, it could be just another roll in pharmacy or another area of pharmacy that is of interest to you. It’s never too late, which is such a cliche thing. I mean, it’s true.

[00:17:44] AKH: There’s a lot of people that talk about that in the book.

[00:17:46] TU: That fear of not letting other people down. I think you’re on to something there. Not to say thats unique to pharmacists, but I see that a lot inside of our profession like what is that? Where does that come from? Chris, I think your comment is spot on. It’s so far from that, right? But it can be paralyzing and it can be crippling when you’re operating each day with that fear. Not that I’m expecting you guys, but the crystal ball answer on this, but where does that come from? Why is that?

[00:18:15] AKH: Again, similar to what you said Tim, like this isn’t just a pharmacist thing that if I speak to pharmacists and I am a pharmacist and I’ve been around pharmacists, my best friends are pharmacists. I feel like I live, breathe and eat pharmacy, but I feel we think that we had to have it figured out. I feel like a lot of the people I work with have to know precisely what the next step is going to look like similar to what Chris said. I get the sense that we need a checklist, that we need one plus one always equals two. I mean, there’s no other way around it, right? There’s no gray.

In this ecosystem, in this non-traditional career marketplace, this gig economy, this crazy 2022 world, it’s just not as black and white as it used to be. So, my God, I’m a third generation pharmacist. So when my grandfather graduated he opened up a pharmacy and he did well. Then my dad graduated and he opened a pharmacy, but then he also had all these other gigs going on, and he had a pension plan, and he didn’t have student loans. His first car was a Porsche, like life was not terrible for him.

My experience was completely different. I have student loans. I do not have a Porsche. One day I will. My career has been really windy and I’ve been out for ten, 11, 12 years. I’ve had multiple different roles and not, because of anything other than advancing my career, but also wanting to do different things. I have different passions. I have different experiences, I have different skillsets. I think what happened is we’re in this limbo, in this transition of going from a very traditional marketplace to a very non-traditional marketplace. That is very scary and intimidating to people who are used to doing one plus one equals always two.

There’s no specific checklist, and that’s a lot of what the book talks about. That’s a lot of what I work on with my clients of, it takes time, but it actually pans out. It’s going to work out. So I think we’re just scared of that in limbo stage, if not knowing what looks like next.

[00:20:17] TU: Yeah. I was thinking about this a lot recently, Ashlee, and messy and non-linear, the words that keep coming in mind, and that is if we think back to our educational experience, it was clean and linear.

[00:20:26] AKH: Totally.

[00:20:29] TU: Messy and non-linear I think is where the magic happens. It can be painful like –

[00:20:34] AKH: Very painful.

[00:20:35] TU: It can be uncomfortable, but I think that’s where a lot of the self-discovery happens is in the messy and the non-linear. I think that when I read folks responses in the book that you can see that self-discovery, you can see that journey that the folks have been on. It wasn’t what they thought it was going to be at the beginning, typically.

[00:20:54] AKH: No.

[00:20:54] TU: Right.

[00:20:55] AKH: No, no way.

[00:20:55] TU: Which is exciting, I think. I want to give people a flavor of the book, and I’m going to do that by putting you guys on the hot seat with some your own responses. In the book, so each of you have a chapter in the book that you wrote similar to other of the 50+ plus leaders that responded. Chris, for the question where, what one piece of career advice would you give to your younger self? You said the following. “Enjoy the process. If you focus on enjoying the journey to your destination rather than fixating on the goal you will be happier. If you don’t want the process, you may not be on the right path.” Easier said than done, right? My question for you is, what strategies have you employed that you’re not just focused on the outcome that may or may not come into the future and it likely, if it does come, is going to be fleeting, but rather your focus on the day-to- day process and really having enjoyment in that. What strategies have you employed for that?

[00:21:44] CC: I mean, for one, I’m lucky that I’m able to do the things that don’t feel work to me and that spark joy within me. Yeah, that mindset of it, is a little bit of Gary Vaynerchuk and that’s one of the examples of an entrepreneur that a lot of health care and pharmacy people probably haven’t heard of, but spews the same messages that are very relevant. But the concept of enjoying the process and being able to have gratitude for the day-to-day that you’re able to do and you can have lofty goals and have goals that you’re trying to hit. But if you’re able to enjoy getting there just as much as that final destination, I think that’s what happiness is.

Finding a role, finding a position, finding a lifestyle that is conducive of that definitely takes a lot of trial and error. I don’t think anybody ever figures it out 100%, but trying to get closer to that and just doing the things that are enjoyable. I think again, going back to the ability to self-reflect and know what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are, but more so, what you enjoy doing and what you don’t enjoy doing and how that plays into your day-to-day and how you can structure it to do the things that you don’t enjoy doing. Maybe get those out of the way and then put more effort into the things you do enjoy.

[00:23:08] TU: As I hear you say that, there’s a lot of wisdom in that. I admire that as someone who’s pretty darn early on in their career, where does that wisdom come from? Is that experience? Is that mentorship? Where are you able to get some of that, in terms of enjoying the process?

[00:23:27] CC: Yeah. I think I’ve always been one to take risks, which I’m lucky to have that affinity to taking risk, which has allowed me to do an entrepreneurial route and taste a bunch of different things to see what I like and inevitably find the things that I enjoy and don’t enjoy. My parents played a big part in it, encouraging me to try different things and being supportive of that. I think having that support system that’s going to be encouraging to you and a base of people that you’re able to bounce ideas off of and like you were saying earlier, Tim, to some extent was having people that you can bounce ideas off of and let them nudge you in the right direction. It’s probably going to be the direction you’re already headed, but there’s a lot to be said about just somebody giving you that affirmation that it’s okay to do this thing that you’re thinking about. It’s not going to burn down everything that you’ve worked for.

[00:24:25] TU: It’s okay to go down the messy non-linear path, right? It’s okay. It’s okay. Great stuff. I appreciate that. Ashlee, one of the questions that you responded to and what advice would you share with the pharmacy friend who feel stuck in their current role and burntout? You gave several responses, but one of those responses, you said, “Burnout and feeling stuck are not the same thing. Burnout means you need a break, need tighter boundaries, and might need to refocus on your priorities. Feeling stuck is a feeling of a fixed mindset. Change the way you look at opportunities. It will change your life.” If Ashlee says it’s going to change your life, I’m going to listen. So what do you mean by the fixed mindset and what do you mean about changing the way you look at opportunities?

[00:25:08] AKH: Yeah. I like that answer. It’s been a while. I’ve had a whole pregnancy in between my answers and today. I like it. The fixed mindset versus, I can’t recall the stuff in my head, who talked about it. It was Stanford faculty professor who coined this many years ago, a psychiatrist. The fix-mindset versus the growth-mindset is the growth-mindset just loves feedback, loves to change, loves adapting, loves getting constructive support, loves improving. Whereas the fix-mindset is, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on, change is rough. I don’t really want to know about other things. I want to just stay on this path. Someone just needs to tell me how to fix a few things, and then I’m going to do it, and then it’s going to be fixed.

I get the sense that a lot of clients in the past have been down that fixed-mindset and only believe that they are capable of doing very limited things. It’s very challenging for me to convince them, that’s not my job to convince them, but I do try to encourage them with convincing them with data of, listen, you have so many opportunities in front of you, you have to actually believe that what’s capable for yourself. I can’t sit here and tell you what is capable despite the data, despite the facts, despite showing you percentages and just showing you other people’s LinkedIn profiles, other people’s CV’s, it doesn’t matter. You have to actually believe that there’s other opportunities for you.

I think a lot of pharmacies get stuck in that, “No, I have a B or an RPH, and this is just what my life is going to be. I’m going to be counting pills forever.” I’ve never had that, so to some degree, I have a hard time connecting with those people too, because I’m like, “Wait, why do you think there’s so many opportunities here? Go here, go LinkedIn, go look at all these different people, all across the world doing really radical life changing things with the same accolades and the same degrees that we have.

[00:27:04] TU: Yeah. I think to that point, if one can’t visualize what could be and if one can’t affirm themselves in that role or that being possible for them, that’s going to come through and how you approach every day. If you do end up pursuing a career change or a job interview, or you’re going to pursue all of it with that fixed-mindset as you’re describing it.

[00:27:25] AKH: Don’t give me wrong. Self-doubt, it’s definitely, it’s still there.

[00:27:29] TU: 100%.

[00:27:30] AKH: It’s okay to have somewhat limiting beliefs. It’s okay to have, I don’t like to say imposter syndrome, but it’s okay to not feel like you’re good enough. You have to commit to taking steps to get through that mindset. It’s for me it’s taken many, many, many years. I’m still working on it. There’s still things that freak me out that I’m like there’s no way I’m going to do that. There’s no way that people will do that with me either. I think if you have courage and if you have like Chris said, the right people around you and just a tad bit of strategy that I love teaching. I think that’s what matters the most.

[00:28:03] TU: I love it. Great, great stuff, you guys. Chris, for those that are listening that want to publish their own book, it’s something I hear a lot among pharmacists and other health care professionals as a goal that they have. Talk to us more about the process that you guys went through –

[00:28:19] AKH: Me just tagging him.

[00:28:20] TU: Why self-publish versus working with the publisher to tell us more about that journey.

[00:28:25] CC: Yeah. Ashlee, was definitely my guide on this.

[00:28:31] AKH: No, it was just more like, “Chris. I need this. Chris need that.”

[00:28:34] CC: Since she had already gone through the process, she knew the buttons to press, technically to do the publishing. One takeaway is that the actual route of getting words once you have them into book form isn’t that difficult. The hardest part is obviously getting the words there in the first place. If something’s stopping you, because you don’t know how difficult it’s going to be to self-publish that is very achievable. Again, Ashlee did a lot of the legwork on that, but from what I’ve seen and the way that she’s spoken about it, I know that it’s very doable and it was quicker than what I had even expected after we got in the words on the paper. But that was the part of the process that was the most time consuming and then editing and refining and making it tell the narrative that you wanted to tell in the format that you want to do that in.

Which I think goes into, why we wrote the book the way that we did. A big point that Ashlee and I both feel is that we’re stewards of the book since we have our passages, but then there’s also 50+ people that have their passages as well. It’s just as much their book as it is ours, which is for one of the reasons why we’re looking into making partnerships with organizations like AMCP to be able to donate any of the profits from the book to support student pharmacists and use this as not a vector that brings a ton to Ashlee and myself, but more of a way that it can be an evergreen novel and ever-evolving advice that is for the profession of pharmacy and that it’s as simple as that and not for anybody else.

[00:30:27] AKH: Yeah, and just to piggyback off that, Chris and I met four years ago on LinkedIn, I think, or some social media –

[00:30:33] CC: Yeah.

[00:30:34] AKH: We actually got to meet in person at AMCP. I was giving a keynote and Chris was a student. Tim, going back to your question of Chris, how have you become so wise and where does this come from? I plucked him out from the group and I could tell early on that he’s really smart, but also he’s a very, very good heart and really good intentions. Those are my favorite kind of people. So we’ve kept in touch over the years, and I’ve always begged Chris, to do some type of collaboration with me. I was like, “Let’s just do something we both love pharmacy and we both want to give back.”

Finally I told him, I was like, “Chris, I’m pregnant. It is done. We have to do it now or it’s never going to happen.” He promised me that we would do something before that in my pregnancy, and it’s coming, so we did it right in time. It was just the best project, Chris and then I couldn’t have asked for a better, more supportive partner to do this with. It’s been fun.

[00:31:32] TU: I love it, because I think that from my experiences while writing, when you find the right co-author and the right person in your jiving on the same page, it really is a rewarding experience. There’s accountability of course, it comes as a benefit. Ashlee, you’ve been through this before, you authored, Influential Dad, Empowered Daughter. We’ll be waiting for book number three.

[00:31:52] AKH: My goal is to write, once you get writing –

[00:31:55] TU: Fun.

[00:31:55] AKH: Well personally, my personal experience is once you get writing. I blogged for several years before this, so it’s not I’m a new writer-ish. Writing a book is totally different mindset, but once you get the bug, and once you see the impact, and once you see your contribution to the universe, and how people are writing to you from all over the world, and just how much you’ve touched them, how much you’ve challenged them, how much you’ve changed their perspective. Connections, the especial with this book, there’s a lot of people who are reading the book and then going out and connecting with all the different leaders and all different influencers, which is the goal of the book.

It really just for me personally, it motivates me to keep going. So I’m in the process even though Chris and I just published our last book, I don’t know, a couple of weeks ago. I already have a new book in mind. I already – my goal is to write it off open which I’m really, let’s see if that happens. Hold me accountable, Chris. For me, it’s like a bug. It’s like how can I help more people and how can I share my niche and my expertise with more people? Because again, like Chris said, once you write one, you understand the technicalities.

Now going the other route, the publisher getting a book agent doing all that, I’ve never done, but it is on my bucket list, but self-publishing is honestly just it’s for me personally, it’s been really valuable just to get your word into the world.

[00:33:17] TU: I love that. I would encourage both of you, because I feel very strongly that when you’re writing or sharing in another medium in a way that’s having an impact on others, you have a responsibility to keep doing it, if it’s having an impact. So I look forward to continuing to follow both of you in the journey. For folks that want to pick up a copy of Own Your PharmD, Own Your Career: Real Life Advice from 50+ Pharmacy Leaders and Influencers, you can pick it up on Amazon. Chris, Ashlee, thank you both so much for not only putting this together, but also for coming on and having this discussion. I appreciate your time.

[00:33:52] AKH: Yeah. Tim, we didn’t really talk about your foreword. I mean, you wrote a great foreword, too, for us. When Chris and I started working on the book, I was like, “Tim has to be person.” Then you guys officially met and Chris and I were like, “Oh, yeah, Tim’s definitely – ” You have such a great voice in the profession and you’re such an advocate and I mean, you fit right in with all of these other interviewers that we’ve been doing, and we both just really admire your work and appreciate the opportunity to connect with you. Thanks for taking the time to write such a great foreword. It was powerful. Even if you just read the foreword, I thought, I was like, “Oh, my gosh, this is really good.” So it was good.

[00:34:25] TU: Well, thanks for the opportunity. I was humbled to be able to do it, so it’s fun to be a part of it. Again, read it when it all came together. Congratulations to you guys and thanks again for joining.

[00:34:35] AKH: Thank you.

[00:34:35] CC: Thanks for having us.

[OUTRO]

[00:34:36] TU: Before we wrap up today’s show, let’s hear an important message from our sponsor, Insuring Income. If you are in the market to add own occupation disability insurance, term life insurance or both. Insuring Income would love to be a resource. Insuring Income has relationships with all of the high quality disability insurance and life insurance carriers you should be considering and can help you design coverage to best protect you and your family.

Head over to insuringincome.com/yourfinancialpharmacist or click on their link in the show notes to request quotes, ask a question or start down your own path of learning more about this necessary protection.

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 provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information to the podcasts 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 archived newsletters, blog posts and podcasts is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analyses expressed herein are solely those of Your Financial Pharmacist unless otherwise noted, and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward-looking statements 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.

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YFP 252: One Pharmacist’s Journey in Entrepreneurship and Independent Pharmacy

Posted on April 21, 2022November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

One Pharmacist’s Journey in Entrepreneurship and Independent Pharmacy

On this episode, sponsored by Splash Financial, Emlah Tubuo, the owner and pharmacist in charge at Powell Pharmacy & founder of Emlah Naturals, a pharmaceutical-grade supplement line, shares why she decided to start her own business, the challenges she has had to overcome in starting and running a business, and how she defines personal and professional success.

About Today’s Guest

Emlah Tubuo, the owner and pharmacist in charge at Powell Pharmacy, arrived in the United States in August 2003 with $300.00 to her name. Prior to earning her PharmD in 2010 from The Ohio State University College of Pharmacy, Emlah Tubuo earned a BS in Microbiology from the University of Buea Cameroon, and an MS in Molecular Biology from Chicago State University. She has lived and studied in both a developed country and the developing African third world country of Cameroon. Her difficult early life experiences had an immense impact on her life perspective.

Emlah served as an Ambulatory Care Pharmacist for Nationwide Children’s Hospital, and previously, worked as a pharmacist with the Kroger Chain for 8 years. Her quest for work-life balance and her strong desire to be an emotionally available parent to her three children and wife to her husband drive her passion for opening Powell Pharmacy and founding Emlah Naturals. While living and working in her birth country of Cameroon, Emlah suffered from numerous preventable diseases such as Malaria, Typhoid Fever and Dysentery, which kept her out of school several times. This gives her intense respect for disease prevention through immunizations. She led her pharmacy team to immunize hundreds of patients in 2016 and earned national recognition from The Kroger Co. by ranking among the top 1 percent of immunization community pharmacies out of over 2,100 sites. Additionally, Emlah developed her pharmacy team to provide Medication Therapy Management (MTM) and led her pharmacy to rank in the top five pharmacies in Columbus Ohio for MTM claims billed for four consecutive years.

Emlah was featured in the October 2017 edition of the National Chain Drug Review in the “Excellence in Rx” feature. She has earned multiple awards for her efforts as a Kroger pharmacist including Leader in Patient Care in 2016 and Outstanding Mentor in 2017 from the Kroger Columbus Division. She is an active member of the Ohio Pharmacists Association and serves on the Practice Advancement and Innovation committee. In 2016 she received the Preceptor of the Year Award from the OSU College of Pharmacy. Emlah Tubuo is the recipient of the 2018 Ohio Pharmacist Association Distinguished Young Pharmacist Award and the Ohio State University Josephine Sitterle Failer Alumni Award which recognizes an alumnus who has made outstanding contributions to the community or professional service. She serves on the Alumni Board of Governors of the OSU College of Pharmacy.

Her respect for diverse viewpoints, integrity hard work, and resilience make her the passionate pharmacist-owner at Powell Pharmacy and the founder of Emlah Naturals, a pharmaceutical-grade supplement line. The concept of Emlah Naturals® was born out of a desire to not only provide superior quality supplements but more importantly to provide valuable information regarding the intelligent, individualized selection of these supplements. Supplement selection is based on individual needs, careful consideration of the mechanism of action, handling by the body, and any possible drug interactions, and education on drug-induced nutrient depletions.

Episode Summary

Pharmacists are experts in human health, medication, and dispensing medication their patients need. However, sometimes prescriptions merely treat the symptom of an underlying health issue and not the source of the health problem. Pharmacists have a unique skill set and opportunity to educate patients on lifestyle changes they can make in addition to medication to become healthier. Education and health optimizations are the drive and passion of pharmacist and business owner, Emlah Tubuo, who aims to educate the public on the benefits of using natural supplements and lifestyle changes in combination with medication to remedy underlying health issues. Her passion centers around people and providing personalized care and advice to suit their needs. Emlah is the owner and pharmacist in charge at Powell Pharmacy, founder of Emlah Naturals, and is an accomplished and respected pharmacist. Her personal and professional journeys will inspire and motivate the listener. In today’s episode, you will hear why Emlah decided to start her own business, Emlah Naturals. Emlah shares her inspiring path to become a pharmacist, the many challenges she has experienced as a business owner, what she has learned during the pandemic, how she has become an authority in her field and community, and her definition of personal and professional success.

Key Points From This Episode

Emlah’s professional background and training.
How Emlah was able to study abroad to further her career.
The first job Emlah had after graduating and what her role was.
Highlights of Emlah’s approach to pharmacy and health care.
What motivated Emlah to start her own business.
The first steps Emlah took when starting her business.
Tim and Emlah discuss when the best time is to start a business.
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the business and lessons learned.
How Emlah keeps motivated to do her best every day.
We find out more about Emlah’s new business, Emlah Naturals.
Why people should implement lifestyle changes along with taking medication.
What Emlah’s definition of success is, both personally and professionally.

Highlights

“If there’s anything we can do which is beyond prescriptions to take care of them, that’s really my focus and that’s what I encourage my team to do.” — Emlah Tubuo [0:07:39]

“If my worst-case scenario is going back to work at the previous job that I had, that’s fine. Have I impacted people along the way? That is my definition of success. That’s my definition of my life as a pharmacist.” — Emlah Tubuo [0:11:53]

“In this past three years, I have learned more than the past 30 years of my life put together because every day is a different challenge.” — Emlah Tubuo [0:14:22]

“I am always a student, I am always learning and that is what all of us should do. If you are not learning, if you’re not growing, you’re dying.” — Emlah Tubuo [0:17:13]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:00.4] 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 Emlah Tubuo, the owner and pharmacist in charge at Powell Pharmacy and founder of Emlah Naturals, a pharmaceutical grade supplement mind. A few of my favorite moments from the show include, hearing from Emlah of why she decided to make the leap to start her own business after practicing as a community and ambulatory care pharmacist for nearly a decade, the challenges and “failures” she has had to overcome in starting and running a business, the “why” behind her business ventures and how she, despite numerous accolades and recognitions, defines personal and professional success.

Before we hear from today’s sponsor and then jump into the show, I recognize that many listeners may not be aware of what the team at YFP planning does in working one-on-one with more than 240 household in 40 plus states. YFP planning offers fee only, high-touch financial planning that is customized for the pharmacy professional.

If you’re interested in learning more about working one-on-one with a certified financial planner may help you achieve your financial goals, you can book a free discovery call at yfpplanning.com. Whether or not YFP Planning’s financial planning services are a good fit for you, know that we appreciate your support of this podcast and our mission to help pharmacists achieve financial freedom.

Okay, let’s hear from today’s sponsor and then we’ll jump into my interview with Emlah.

[SPONSOR MESSAGE]

This episode of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast is sponsored by Splash Financial. With interest rates on the rise, it’s a good time to evaluate the refinancing of your student loans, if you’ve ever considered refinancing your loans, check your rate now through Splash Financial. If you qualify, refinancing could help you get a lower monthly payment on your student loans or get a lower interest rate.

Splash helps you shop and compare loan refinancing offers across lenders nationwide. Browsing rates through Splash Financial is fast, free and won’t impact your credit until you complete a full application. Now, when you successfully refinance $50,000 or more, Splash Financial will give you an extra $500 in cash bonus, using our link, splashfinancial.com/yfp. So check your rate today and see what you might be able to save at splashfinancial.com/yfp.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:02:17.3] TU: Emlah, welcome to the show.

[0:02:18.7] ET: Thank you Tim, thanks for having me. I am excited to be here.

[0:02:23.3] TU: Well, I am too. I’m excited to dig into your pharmacy career as well as your entrepreneurial journey in the inner section of those two things. We had a chance to connect briefly this past weekend at the OPA, Ohio Pharmacist Association annual meeting, that was such a treat and I’m really excited to introduce you further to the YFP community. Before we jump in to the entrepreneurial journey where I want to spend most of our time, tell us more about what drew you into the profession of pharmacy and where you did your pharmacy training.

[0:02:51.4] ET: You know, I originally hail from Cameron, West Africa and what happened is, I would be, I would volunteer at these WHO clinics and these clinics run by the Baptist Health Center that I live near and we had missionaries come in. We had some ladies who were pharmacists come form North America and I just adored them.

When the physicians or the nurses that work with them at this clinics, when they ask them any question about a medication, they spit the answer right out. And I thought to myself, “How do these ladies know about all those medications?” and this I speak of is like a charitable pharmacy where all the medications are donated with different names from different countries.

These ladies could tell you, “If we don’t have this medication in stock, let’s use this other one” or “This patient, they need this one” and they just amaze me and I started talking with them about how to become a pharmacist and there is no pharmacy school in Cameron. This was when I was in high school going to undergrad and I started researching and thinking of how I could be able to leave Cameron and go study pharmacy in their country.

That’s really what turned it around for me, those missionaries who were pharmacist and just working with their hearts, not just practicing pharmacy but influencing people around them.

[0:04:08.3] TU: That experience through the WHO and those folks that were there, helping to serve, tell us about the connection and we cross paths at the Ohio State University College of Pharmacy where we both have connections, you from your pharmacy training, me from my residency training. You’ve obviously precepted in and stay connected with OSU throughout your degree thus far as well but tell us more than about that connection of, “Okay, I see the role that a pharmacist can play” and then, what work you did ultimately start your undergraduate work and then go onto pharmacy school?

[0:04:38.4] ET: Yeah, it is all about consistency. That’s one word that has carried me on and it’s something that I share with everybody that’s around me. I started applying out, there is no space to take the B-cut in Cameron. So, the only way to come out of Cameron was to apply for a masters program in molecular genetics and that’s how I went to Chicago, did my masters there and during my master’s program, I started applying to colleges or pharmacies around the country. So that’s how I got to Ohio State with basically almost no money to make it out here, drove from Chicago, came to Columbus for the interview, I fell in love with Ohio State.

As soon as I was accepted, this became home for me. Ohio State is my base and I just got the mentors, people embraced me. Being in a foreign place with nobody, no family around, you know nobody. You walk in and the professors, Dr. Hill, Dr. Bracket, Dr. Rodis, they just loved me and took me like their own. This is really what they said, “You know what Emlah? You are in the right space. This is not only about pharmacy, this is about life.”

[0:05:47.5] TU: I love that Emlah and those names resonate with me, Dr. Kent Hill, Dr. Carrie Bracket, Dr. Jen Rodis, folks that have had such a positive impact on my life, I would suspect, if we have any Buckeyes that are listening, those names would resonate as well.

You graduate from OSU, you got some great mentors that are supporting you in this journey. Tell us more about the first job that you had after graduating and the work that you did in that job?

[0:06:11.8] ET: During my time at OSU, I had an absolute, wonderful help from people around to connect with. I worked at Kroger as an intern and so, with Kroger Health, I worked at almost ever Kroger store that existed at Central Columbus, so I turned out to make all those connections partially because I needed money from the overtime and because I was trying to broaden my base. Every time I work with the pharmacist, I work with you and I will make sure that I get your style of working, how you interact with patients.

My time at Kroger was wonderful, it was foundational because I did so much more than dispensing at Kroger, that I found my calling. I said, “You know what? There is a lot more to health than prescriptions” and Kroger was leading the way in immunizations, medication therapy management.

I jumped onto that and I looked at every patient coming to me and I said, “This patient is not just coming to pickup a medication, they need something more” and I worked with my team to become the top immunizing pharmacy in the Kroger Columbus division and that was a beautiful journey. It just brought the team together, changed the culture of the team when there’s so much burnout and stress in the pharmacy world around now.

That’s how my passion grew and connected with other people who are focusing on a lot more than dispensing because I believe dispensing brings people to the pharmacy. Patients come to pick up medications but nobody wakes up and goes, “I love Metformin, I want to go pickup Metformin because I want to take Metformin” They’re coming for health. If there’s anything we can do which is beyond prescriptions to take care of them, that’s really my focus and that’s what I encourage my team to do.

[0:07:46.7] TU: So, you spend about a decade in community pharmacy, some time in the inventory care practice as well and then you make the decision to open up Powell Pharmacy in the Columbus Ohio area. Tell us more about, you know, we talk about that with business owners and I think sometimes it’s hard to remember that big moment, that decision, that leap of faith and so, take us back to that point in time of what led to, “Hey, I want to do my own thing” and then ultimately, what took you across that line to actually get started?

[0:08:15.4] ET: You know, it’s hard to find that one moment that made that decision. Coming from Cameron like I said earlier where there are no chain pharmacies, so my background is, a pharmacist works in a hospital or a pharmacist owns an independent pharmacy. That’s what I knew growing up as a child and all through going through pharmacy school at the Ohio State University, I’m thinking, “You know, it’s kind of different.” When I walk into a chain pharmacy, I go today and they don’t recognize me, I got to next day later on.

Nothing against chain pharmacies because that was me for 10 years and that is – the most wonderful people you will find behind the counter taking care of our health but I just wanted to practice pharmacy a little different. I just wanted to do something beyond dispensing. To be able to take it one step further and I kept – you know, the fear of making a big decision and I started, I said, “You know what Emlah? Maybe I need an MBA to be able to open my own pharmacy.”

I started reading into that. I started looking at about a ton of books, I bought about 30 books and started reading. I started reading and I said, “You know what? With all these student loans, I don’t know, should I add and MBA and get more student loan onto this?” and that fear going back and forth and then, when I transitioned from Kroger and went to Nationwide Children’s Hospital and practicing in the Ambulatory Care space there. A lot of things, including having my own children, I do have three children.

Balancing pharmacy, mom and I said, “I can continue to postpone this and postpone it and there will never be that right moment” but at the back, I just felt that talk to keep going, “You know what? I really want to practice pharmacy the way I saw it growing up” to bring back the old style where I could relate with a patient and have a little bit more time to address all the needs and I said, when I’m most at children’s pharmacy and I say, “This might be the time.” I was working the night shift there and it kind of played with my balance as a mom.

I said, “Maybe this is the time to make that shift” and fear, going back and forth with that decision and I said, “You know what? If I’m going to fail, let me fail fast. Let me just go in and get it done and we will see how it works. If it doesn’t work, I’m going to come back to Kroger or I’m going to come back to Nationwide Children’s Hospital but guess what’s going to happen? I’m going to put in every single effort that I have in this body and it’s going to work” and so, the leap of faith.

[0:10:41.3] TU: I love that, I think a couple of things I heard there, “If I’m going to fail, I’m going to fail fast” right? I’m going to fail forward and really evaluating what is the worst-case scenario and I think for many pharmacists you know, we think about worse case scenario in a way that is unrealistic. There’s not many professionals that you can say, “Hey, my worst case scenario is I go back to a job that pays a six figure salary” that’s a really good worst case scenario, right?

[0:11:05.6] ET: That is. Tim, like you mentioned, a good worst case scenario with the connections because, one of the books I was telling you all these books that I was reading, one of the books that I read that made an impact was the E Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. He said, you know, nobody is interested in a commodity.

People buy failings. People buy relationships, people buy connections and that is in every space, especially in the pharmacy space and I always link it. Nobody wakes up and goes, “I would like to go and buy a medication.” People buy health, people want to feel better, people come to you and I as pharmacists in this space to feel better about themselves to live better.

What can we do as pharmacists to connect that? If my worst case scenario is going back to work at the previous job that I had, that’s fine. Have I impacted people along the way? That is my definition of success.

[0:12:05.3] TU: I love that.

[0:12:05.5] ET: That’s my definition of my life as a pharmacist.

[0:12:09.5] TU: Yes. And the other thing you said that it really resonate with me there is, there may never be “the right moment” right? I think of – you know, it could be student loans, it could be a young family, it could be other prioritizing other financial goal. There’s so many things that can get in the way and kind of reminds me of, I’ve got four boys, you mentioned three children. There’s never a right time to have a baby or to have a child and –

[0:12:33.5] ET: Absolutely Tim, yes.

[0:12:35.1] TU: I think it can be similar with business that if we wait for all the stars to align, we might be looking back at a point in time and wondering, “What if? What if, what would have been?”

[0:12:41.9] ET: Absolutely, should I have done it? Should I have done it at that time or maybe this was the right time to do it or when? You name all those factors, it’s a compounding effect.

[0:12:51.8] TU: Yes.

[0:12:52.3] ET: You put it and then when the baby is here, guess what? We’re going to have to take care of this baby, Tim. We’re going to figure out how to, we have never learned how to change a diaper before, we’re going to change it. This is how I practice pharmacy, I relate it to being a mother and I tell my patients, “I am a great pharmacist because I’m a great mother and I’m a great mother because I’m a great pharmacist” and I’m not saying great because I know how to do the parenting thing right but this is because every day, I put in my 100%. Some days I feel like that 100% is equal to 0% but I put it in regardless.

[0:13:24.8] TU: Yeah, I love it and figure it out mentality and the factor. So April 2019, you opened a business and not even a year later, we’ve got the pandemic that obviously, hits us close. It has had such an impact on small businesses, certainly new businesses, arguably to a greater degree.

Tell us about what impact the pandemic had on the business, on you as a business owner and then, what were some things that you were able to learn through perhaps a difficult time that have allowed you to grow as an individual and a business owner.

[0:13:57.7] ET: Talk about timing, Tim. Talk about timing and I kept reminding myself, I said, “Emlah, it is about the impact that you are going to have for the people around you.” It is about the impact. Once the pandemic hit, I said, “Oh my goodness, I have not figured out what I’m doing” Every day, I learn more, opening the pharmacy. I tell people, the pharmacy has been open for two and a half years now, almost three here and I said, “In this past three years, I have learned more than the past 30 years of my life put together because every day is a different challenge.”

I could either put my head on the pillow and cry or I could face it and I say, you know, the fastest way through a storm is going right through it every single time and this pandemic was a hit in the face. I said, “Oh my goodness, what did I just do?” and such is life, Tim, such is life. To me, as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, as a mother, I’m going through opening a business in the pandemic and navigating how to continue to stay present in the community and I said, refer back to what started, what made you Tim to open Your Financial Pharmacist?

YFP is here and it has impacted so many people. Myself included, I look up to you. The inspiration, are you doing what you set out to do? Are you inspiring the people around you? I keep asking myself that question, every single day, “Emlah, are you making the impact with everybody that you cross paths with? Are their lives better because they crossed paths with you, are their lives better because they came in to Powell Pharmacy? Are their lives better because they came into contact with me or with my business?” That is really the drive. My why, why, why did I start this?

[0:15:35.8] TU: Yeah, and I think as I’ve observed Emlah, you know, the work that you’ve done from a far and being in Central Ohio and hearing through many shared connections that the great work that you’re doing. One of the things I observed is you know, I’m looking at in preparation of this interview, an article that you have in the Columbus Dispatch where you reference, you’ve been in various videos and interviews and media outlets in Columbus throughout the pandemic about vaccine services and other thing you’ve been working on. I feel like it’s a great example of turning some of the challenges into opportunity.

You’ve really positioned yourself as a voice of authority on community pharmacists and the importance of pharmacy in a community here in Central Ohio and so, what a great, great thing as we think about the challenges of small business in the pandemic and obviously, the impact we know pharmacists have had and the positive impact they’ve had throughout the pandemic but to really position yourself as that voice of authority I think was really, a cool thing to watch. Congratulations, I think to you and obviously the team that’s been involved in moving that forward.

[0:16:31.8] ET: Thank you Tim. You say that and you mentioned being that voice but during this space and during this time, those doubts, that difficulty and my message to the YFP community is that when I mentioned earlier that I left Cameron and I came here, my breach to the PharmD program was to do a masters in molecular genetics and all that while I kept telling myself, “Oh my goodness” You know that little voice inside, “Oh, what a waste of your two years, what a waste of your two years”, you know?

My message is, everybody, and I tell this to my children, they’re still little but no time is spent as a waste if I spend this minute with you. I am always a student, I am always learning and that is what all of us should do. If you are not learning, if you’re not growing, you’re dying. That’s what we need to continue to do and I learned so much during this pandemic. I used the time and my knowledge of molecular genetics, who knew that that will come in handy? In fact as to be able to make a video and talk about MRI vaccinations and how because there was so much doubt when the vaccines came out.

I did a video that would inspire people and people would really understand how they work and this new type of vaccines as, “Is it really new, you know? Is it going to hurt, me, is it going to help me?” You see how pharmacy and what I have done during this days, I tell you Tim, if you look at the people that I surround myself with, I surround myself with great pharmacists. I surround myself with like minded pharmacists, I surround myself with people like you.

People who will inspire me to do more and then people said, “Well, Emlah, you’re a wonderful pharmacist, you should see my friends, you should see my team” That’s – I’m just a reflection of them and that’s the beautiful thing about life.

[0:18:13.0] TU: So powerful, I felt that this weekend, you know, at OPA, being around you, being around Adam Martin, Being around folks like Jen Rodis and other people.

[0:18:20.2] ET: Oh my goodness, the energy.

[0:18:22.1] TU: Such a great point. Yeah, the energy, the enthusiasm, the accountability, the challenging, so powerful. Emlah, you talk about some of these doubts, some of these voices and I want to spend a moment here because as a small business owner myself, those are certainly things that I have experienced and have had to work through and have other challenge me and keep me accountable.

I know many other pharmacists business owners are not. They have struggled with similar things as well. So my question here is what do you do practically to kind of get yourself in the right mindset, despite these challenges, despite some of these doubts or voices. You mentioned, you know, surrounding yourself with folks that really challenge you and keep you accountable and help move you forward.

What are some other things that you do practically as a business owner, as a mom, to really bring your best self forward each and every day?

[0:19:08.2] ET: I continue, Tim, every single day to remind myself where I started from and learning how to practically – I love the fact that you used the word practical there because we read all of these things in books each week, there’s a book already written about it. It is in the textbook, we learn about it, burnout, stress, you know making decisions but we are so hard on ourselves and we forget that just the little things will encourage us and encourage the people around us.

What I do is I am truly present every time. Say for example, I have somebody in front of me at the pharmacy. I, in this line of people, I focus on that person. I give my 100% to that person and I just ignore the line behind them because when it is your turn, I am going to be with them and I learned how to forgive myself for the past mistakes. I practice self-acceptance. It was really hard to do at first but I with three children, having to wake up in the morning, get them all ready.

Even when I worked at Kroger, I worked at Children’s, I would have to wake up in the morning like everybody else does, get myself ready, get the kids ready, drive, drop them off and then get to work. To be able to have a great morning routine, which will put me in that mind space and that mindset that will lead me to success throughout the day, it’s a challenge but I make sure that before the kids wake up, I have to have 10 minutes to myself where I refocus my energy.

I refocus my energy into myself and harness what’s inside because there is something inside each and every one of us. You know, to be there for yourself before you’re there for other people because I cannot come to you, everything, the beautiful, it’s amazing, everything is coming from inside of us, you know? You have to be kind to yourself and that’s why my mantra is we all struggle. Choose kindness, always.

You have to be kind to yourself and once you have filled yourself with that inner peace and kindness, it has no choice but to overflow into the spaces around you. Wellness and kindness are multidimensional Tim but this thought inside you, so I am grounded in the morning. I do my meditation and as much as I am distracted by the number of things on my to-do list for the day, I have a time where I say, “You know what bad energy? Get going, get the kids ready and revisit that happy moment.”

I have it with the kids, a happy moment like I was sharing with you during your talk. By the way Tim, what an amazing talk. That was amazing.

[0:21:35.7] TU: Thank you.

[0:21:36.6] ET: It spoke straight to me and just touching those practical things, I said to myself, I need to encourage myself to calm that fear because it will come. Fear will come every day, to calm me every day and to calm before my children and to calm before my team and all my colleagues because my goal is to inspire people to enjoy life. We have invested so much already into this.

Tell me your happy thought for the day, tell me your gratitude thought for the day and let’s keep it moving.

[0:22:00.8] TU: Yeah, it is starting with the state of mind. You know, we talked a little bit about that in the session but when I hear you talk about the morning mindset and the importance of self-care and filling your buckets, you can serve others. You know, whether that be your family, your patients and you have a gift. You talk about the person at your pharmacy regardless of what else is going on, focusing a 100% on them and you have a gift in doing that.

When someone talks with you one-on-one, you are fully invested in them and that is a rare trait and a gift and I can see why that has had such a positive impact on so many, whether that’s patients, whether that’s students that you are reaccepting and teaching, whether that’s folks that you are connecting within in the business community or family, what a gift to be able to share with others.

[0:22:42.8] ET: I am honored Tim. I am honored, thank you.

[0:22:45.0] TU: Yeah, so not only the pharmacy, which we could talk at length about the work that you are doing there, which is really incredible but you’ve also opened a second business, which is Emlah Naturals. So tell us a little bit more about the idea and vision behind that and what you’ve learned thus far through that experience or we’ll link to both Powell Pharmacy and Emlah Naturals in the show notes so folks can learn more.

[0:23:06.2] ET: Yes, so Tim, practicing as a pharmacist I see there is some spaces that we learn some of these things in school but to be able to take it and translate it too again, the what practical comes in. What practical changes, what things can I make? Because when we council patients, somebody comes and picks up their Metformin today, I give them the counseling points that I learned from school and everything.

Prior to saying that at school, we always learned through pharmacy school lifestyle changes, non-pharmacologic options. We mention that at the beginning of every counseling in addition to lifestyle changes, the Metformin is going to reduce your blood sugar and that’s as far as we go. We don’t focus on those lifestyle changes and that is key. That is the long term goal because there is a study that I always tell my students about, a navigator story.

Where they took like two drugs and they measured how much they will reduce people’s blood sugar and then reducing the effects or the long term effects of diabetes and lifestyle changes. Number one, every single time reduce the complications of diabetes more than the medication every time to combine those medications because people want to – nobody wakes up in the morning Tim and goes, “I am going to jeopardize my health today.”

“I am going to wake up and not eat better. I am just going to be mean to my health today” nobody wakes up and makes that decision consciously. We all want to do better. It is all coming from a great space. We all want to do better for our body, so when we come to the pharmacy and we are picking up medications, I have noticed that because my background having lived and studied in a third-world developing country and a developed country here, I bring a unique perspective on life and medicine and wellness to the table.

You know, from the economic challenges that I grew up with, my mom had a garden behind the house and we eat turmeric every day, it’s ginger every day, it’s mint, you know, it’s aloe every day for all the medications and even when I had malaria. I had malaria maybe 30 or 40 or 30 times, it’s you know, stayed out of school several times because of malaria, she would treat malaria. Sometimes we had Chloroquine but now we are doing that with Chloroquine is all the resistance but she would do everything lifestyle changes.

Just hydration, you know, all the herbs that she would do. I have that knowledge in me and then combine it with the clinical knowledge that I learned during my doctoral pharmacy studies at Ohio State. I said, “You know what? I think this is a space I want to encourage people to focus on that lifestyle medication, to eat healthier, feel better, manage stress, exercise more, love more, give more so they can be kind to their body” but we are missing that space.

About 70% of the US people are taking natural supplements already. They are taking supplements and vitamins but we’re buying it from Amazon, from the store. We just go in there and buy it but these medications are interacting with all the medications that we’re taking all these vitamins. People come in and go, “Oh, my girlfriend is taking echinacea and it is really helping her. It is boosting her immune system. She has not had a cold.”

“You know what? I am taking wolf berry right now.” I’m like, “Oh, I’m going to take that echinacea too” but that is a space where the pharmacist is supposed to be forefront and be, “You know what? We run drug interactions” and I say, “I’ve been thinking about this but this is the need that I need to solve with Emlah Naturals.” You know, create a supplement line where education is key and that’s what sets Emlah Naturals apart.

Empowering the pharmacist to be able to recommend these supplements with confidence, run those strong interaction reports and make sure that the supplement that’s good for you, it is not the one that is good for me and then to solve from too. A lot of times you have people going in there, you see the doctor said, “Oh, they run the lab test and they’re anemic. I have to go pick up some iron.” They go to the pharmacy and they pick up this ferrous sulfate, ferrous gluconate.

They came in different forms and they’re like, “Which one should I get? This one is on sale, maybe I should get it” or “This one is the most expensive, it is probably going to work better” yeah, that was me. The point that turned it around for me, I said, I was diagnosed as – my vitamin D was very low when I was pregnant with my first son and I went back straight to work. I worked at Kroger at the time and I looked at the shelf, there were like 20 vitamin Ds.

I said to myself, “Which one am I going to take?” I am a pharmacy student and I don’t even know which one to take, then when I think about my mom, I think about other people who have no knowledge of pharmacy, so that’s really what sparked my interest in opening Emlah Naturals and it has been tremendous, satisfying and, fulfilling. To help encourage people, to educate people, to be able to make this supplement recommendations, and supplement selection with personality in mind.

[0:27:27.7] TU: Again, we’ll link to both of those in the show notes, so emlahnaturals.com and then powellpharmacy.com and of course, if folks find their way in central Ohio, I highly encourage you to stop by Powell Pharmacy. Emlah, as I think as folks hear your story, by any objective measure they would say, “Wow, Emlah has been very successful” and lots of examples of recognition.

A couple you mentioned in terms of what you achieved in your time at Kroger and your store is in the top one percent of the immunization statistics. You are also featured in National Chain Drug Review, many Kroger recognition including leader and patient care outstanding mentor, you have been preceptor of the year at Ohio State, you’ve won the OPA, Ohio Pharmacist Association distinguished young pharmacy award.

So based on those external measures, those objective measures, “Wow, she’s really successful, those awards, she owns two businesses” but your definition of success is what I believe matters, your measuring bar and so my question here is, how would you measure success as you think about what that means for you both personally as well as professionally?

[0:28:37.5] ET: Well Tim, that is a great question. I have always asked myself that question and I make sure to write and answer. I have not always formed it the way you formulate it but I always tell myself, “Emlah, if I cross paths with somebody, if I meet you today Tim, does your life get better because I am in it? Do my children’s life get better because I am in it? Do my girlfriends, my friends, my neighbors, my family, my church, my community, the pharmacists that work with me, the pharmacists that I meet at OP, do their lives get better?”

Everyone who I am honored to cross paths with, does their life better because I am in it. How can I give emotionally, financially, physically just to be there? Have I been able to make their lives better? That to me is the true definition of success in my mind and that’s what keeps me going. If I can make my son happy, if I can make my team member happy, if I can improve their lives, help them in any way possible because health is different for everybody.

That to me is the true definition, you can give me all those awards you mentioned, I mean, they are great to have. They boost my confidence, they help me do more in different ways but I am inspired by people who have gone ahead of me and I reach out to help other people but to be truly successful and to have my head on the pillow at night and feel good about my day and feel good about the day tomorrow and get me to be in a better mindset to perform tomorrow better than I did today. Have I help the people around me to eat healthier, feel better?

You know, manage stress, love more, give more, be kind to my body so that my children can see me being kind to my body and they can emulate, they can be kind to their body. You know, that gets more blood going to the brain, that gets more oxygen going to the brain, that helps me think clearly, that helps me give me more energy so that I can radiate to the people around me. That truly to me is success.

[0:30:38.7] TU: That is beautiful Emlah and I would argue that those awards are simply an external affirmation of all of those things that you just mentioned, right? Your ability to focus on others and look at how can I help you be a better individual to motivate, to inspire, to share your gifts with others, to love more, to empower them and one of the things I’ve heard is you’re talking there is just an incredible gift of presence that you’re giving other people and in those lives throughout the day.

Again, whether that is personal or professional, that is really hard you know from personal experience to say, “I am going to be present in this moment as a business owner, as a boss, as a spouse, as a father or a mother.” To be present in that moment especially you got a couple of businesses, things are busy, there is a lot of I think individual work that has to be done to be able to develop that state of mind and presence, so what a beautiful thing to share with others. Thank you so much.

[0:31:35.3] ET: Thank you. I appreciate you Tim. I share those, it is hard to keep in touch with your money to get embraced that change and challenges that are along their journey because not every day is a 100% day. Some days my self-worth is down, some days it’s up there but my dispensing, I frame it. I tell my team, I say, “We are dispensing wellness. We are dispensing care and kindness, you know it’s beyond the prescription and daily life”, you know? Coming with the goal is to dispense care every single time, to ourselves as well.

[0:32:08.4] TU: Absolutely. I love that. Well, this has been a real treat. Thank you so much for coming on the show, for sharing your story. Let’s do it again. Where can people find more about you? I have mentioned the two websites thus far but if people want to connect with you further and follow your journey.

[0:32:22.1] ET: Well, we are present on Facebook. We are at emlahnaturals.com and we are also on Instagram. Also just Emlah Naturals on Instagram. The goal is to inspire people, just help people remember that there is a lot more to health and prescriptions. So we’re sharing about the information so you’re not just going out to buy a supplement. We just share information about supplements and my long-term goal, God willing, and giving me the energy that I would get from my friends and my mentors is to be able to help people.

Remember just basic things, we’re working on some things here in the future to encourage hydration, which is – yeah, so that is something probably honored to get on the show again and share with the YFP community because yes, so it’s those things that will help us get better. Instagram and Facebook, we’ll share our upcoming events on there and going to be present in the community.

Hydration and helping people to motivate as pharmacists and the work that you are doing is tremendous, it’s tremendous Tim. That financial peace of mind and getting your newsletters. I tell you, I read every single one of your newsletters every single day when it comes in. They are short, they are bite size information and that’s something that I learned from you. Again, being a student of life, when I started my newsletters were long.

I go back and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, what was I thinking?” and I said, “You know what? Your newsletters are the perfect length.” I read them and guess what? Emlah Naturals newsletters are just like that on emlahnaturals.com, you can subscribe at the bottom and you will get bite size information about supplements and about general things, anything that will help contribute to your health, which is not exactly related to prescriptions.

Yes, so that’s what and we will be looking for more to come and hoping that I will be any station I am honored to be on will be helping to motivate people, pharmacists, especially to invest. We’ve invested a lot into this, we need to be happy while doing it and to feel fulfilled.

[0:34:23.5] TU: Absolutely and I am confident whether folks are in a patient care role, in the community inventory care hospital setting, whether they are running a business, whether they’re working to be the best version of themselves as a parent or as a spouse or significant other, I am confident they are going to get a lot out of this episode. So Emlah, again, thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it.

[0:34:43.3] ET: I am honored Tim, thank you very much and thank you for everything that you do too to those in the YFP Community. I love it, this is a fantastic place to be. Thank you Tim. Thanks for having me.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:34:53.0] TU: Before we wrap up today’s episode of Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast, I want to again thank our sponsor, Splash Financial. If you’ve ever considered refinancing your loans, check your rate now through Splash Financial. If you qualify, refinancing could help you get a lower monthly payment on your student loans or get a lower interest rate.

Splash helps you shop and compare loan refinancing offers across lenders nationwide. Browsing rates through Splash Financial is fast, free and won’t impact your credit until you complete a full application and now, when you successfully refinance $50,000 or more, Splash Financial will give you an extra $500 in cash bonus, using our link at splashfinancial.com/yfp. So, check your rate today and see what you might be able to save at splashfinancial.com/yfp.

[DISCLAIMER]

[0:35:38.6] TU: As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and it is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information of the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment.

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

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

[END]

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YFP 246: Why This Pharmacy Entrepreneur is on a Mission to Make Pharmacy Profitable Again

Posted on March 10, 2022November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

Why This Pharmacy Entrepreneur is on a Mission to Make Pharmacy Profitable Again

Dr. Lisa Faast, Founder & CEO of DiversifyRx, discusses her mission to make pharmacy profitable again.

About Today’s Guest

Dr. Lisa Faast is an innovator, experienced business executive, and leader in the independent pharmacy industry. With over 20 years of experience as a pharmacy owner, consultant, compounder, and businesswoman, she is able to bring a unique perspective to the industry’s problems. Her passion is helping independent pharmacy owners thrive by focusing on diversifying and then growing revenue streams. She is currently CEO at DiversifyRx, a consulting and education company, in addition to being a wife and mom of 4.

Episode Summary

Every single independent pharmacy wants to thrive, but the leap from pharmacist to pharmacy owner is a big one for many reasons. Today, Your Financial Pharmacist Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, sits down with Dr. Lisa Faast, founder and CEO of DiversifyRx, to talk about what she learned from this journey and how it became her mission to help make pharmacy profitable again. Dr. Faast begins by talking through her career arc, from her first job out of pharmacy school to opening and ultimately selling her first pharmacy. She shares about launching DiversifyRx, a business that aims to educate and support pharmacy owners through resources, membership, and a ton of free content. Dr. Faast dives into how she’s developed a “figure it out” mentality as an entrepreneur and how failure, or perceived failure, set her up for later success. The conversation also touches on that balancing act most pharmacists know all too well, juggling the financial demands of owning a business and raising a family, something that Lisa jumped into when she opened her first pharmacy while pregnant with her first child. Even if owning your pharmacy is not in the cards right now, this episode holds some fascinating insights into the industry.

Key Points From This Episode

Hear the story of Lisa’s grandmother and how she was drawn into this profession.
The roundabout path from her first job out of pharmacy school to pharmacy ownership.
What gave her the confidence to take a leap of faith and start Faast Pharmacy.
The biggest lessons she learned as an entrepreneur and business owner!
Juggling life as a first-time mom and first-time business owner.
About selling the business and making marketing her best friend.
How she started DiversifyRx and created a profitable buffet table for pharmacy owners.
How pharmacists often have different priorities to business people.
Scaling the business to reach more pharmacists at once.
Hear about Pharmacy Badass University.
About all the free content Lisa puts out and where you can find it.
How characteristics that help you in pharmacy school can hinder you in business.
Tackling ideas of what failure is and how perfectionism impacts business.

Highlights

“That was just one of our mantras: if we can do it, we do it. That’s just the way that we operate.” — Dr. Lisa Faast [0:11:59]

“When you own your pharmacy, marketing needs to be your best friend.” — Dr. Lisa Faast [0:14:23]

“These pharmacy owners can’t afford hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars a month. It’s just so hard these days. Providing a solution that is affordable and cost-effective is really at the core of my offering.” — Dr. Lisa Faast [0:31:32]

“I put so much stuff out there for free because if I can help a pharmacy owner for free, I am A-okay with that and if you get all you need from that, perfect.” — Dr. Lisa Faast [0:36:24]

“You really have to reassess what failure is and what it is not when you are looking and making decisions as the business owner, as the owner of the pharmacy, rather than looking at it as a pharmacist.” — Dr. Lisa Faast [0:41:02]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

This week, I had a chance to sit down with Lisa Faast, founder and CEO of DiversifyRx. During the interview, Lisa and I talked through her career journey, up to launching DiversifyRx, the “Why” behind the business including her mission to make pharmacy profitable again. How she balances the financial demands of owning a business and raising a family, how she’s developed a “figure it out” mentality as an entrepreneur, and how failure or apparent failure set her up for later success.

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

Okay, let’s jump into my interview with Lisa Faast, co-founder and CEO of DiversifyRx.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:01:24.8] TU: Lisa, welcome to the YFP Podcast.

[0:01:26.4] LF: Thank you so much for having me, this is an honor and I’m excited to chat with you.

[0:01:30.5] TU: So happy to connect with you here and to have you on the show. I’d like to start with before we get into your entrepreneurial journey, I’d like to start with some of your pharmacy background, where you went to school, when you graduated and what really drew you to the profession, to begin with?

[0:01:45.1] LF: Yeah, I graduated from UOP, the University of the Pacific over in Northern California, and what had kind of drew me, you’re in high school, you’re kind of trying to decide and I was looking at becoming a doctor. And I realized that 12 years of school didn’t sound really fun at all and I was hoping to take care of my grandma at the time, she was a diabetic and she had pretty much lost all her fine motor control skills and her eyesight was terrible. We were having to go over to her house twice a day to do her insulins and things like that.

That’s kind of what got me on the path to pharmacy and then what really solidified it is, one of those school projects that you’re – you know, handed out to go follow this profession, do a report kind of thing. Me and my best friend at the time, we were like, “I don’t know what we’re going to do.” He’s like “Hey, my mom is dating a pharmacist, let’s just go do that.” I was like, “Okay.” We went and followed his mom’s boyfriend at the time and did all that and I realized, “Hey, this pharmacy thing sounds really interesting.”

Looked into the school and looked into all the different things because chemical engineering was kind of like the other alternative as supposed to medical school and, bam, it just felt right. I applied to one pharmacy school at the very last minute right before the deadline and thank goodness that I got accepted. I guess you could say, the rest is history. I graduated from UOP back in 2001, so a little over 20 years ago now.

[0:03:07.2] TU: We’re going to talk, when I talk, when I think about chemical engineering and I think about pharmacy, it’s very linear, structured pathways typically, right? The degree as well as career. But you have taken, I think, a very unique and somewhat non-traditional pathway throughout your career. But also into the work that you’re doing now with DiversifyRx and leading that mission and company. And we’ll get to that here in a minute.

UOP 2001, you graduate, tell us about your first job out of pharmacy school and what that experience was like?

[0:03:35.8] LF: Yeah, all during pharmacy school, I wanted to be a nuclear pharmacist. I just thought that’s what I was going to go do and I even did one of my rotations in my third year, I did nuclear pharmacy at Syncore, which is kind of the gold standard. And so I graduated, they didn’t have any space in their class because you have to go and get certified and all those kinds of things, and I was kind of like, “Man, what am I going to do?”

I graduated at the time when there were still some pretty good signing bonuses and all of that kind of stuff going on. I had worked for Rite Aid at the time as an intern and I knew I didn’t like that. I didn’t want to go do that and so, I was lucky enough that actually, my mom had worked for Kmart for many years. That was her main job with us growing up and so, I looked into that. Kmart at the time was looking for a pharmacist and it ended up being the best job ever, not just because Kmart was a good corporation to work for.

Of course, now, I don’t even know if they’re still even in business anymore, but the way they treated pharmacy, because it wasn’t their main line of business, I pretty much got to run it like I wanted to. They were pretty hands-off, which actually was really great training for owning your own pharmacy and so, Rite Aid – interned as Rite Aid, went to Kmart, and then my friend, one of my friends came up and said, “Hey, I’m going to be selling my pharmacy, do you want to maybe buy it?” And I was like, “Okay.”

I did all this work and all these business plans, all the things that you can expect of going through the SPA process and it was taking forever. The SPA takes forever, FYI. Yeah, I finally got an approval and I called him and I was like, “I got the approval.” And he’s like, “I signed to sell to Rite Aid yesterday.” And so then, I was left with this big dream and nowhere to go. I just decided to go ahead and open my own and started that path. That’s what eventually became Faast Pharmacy, which was my first pharmacy and I started that from scratch.

Kind of a roundabout way of winding up into pharmacy ownership, never expected it when I was in pharmacy school, might have taken like their joint MBA course and things like that that they offer but that’s kind of how I ended up there.

[0:05:40.4] TU: 2001 you graduate, you take a position with Kmart, you mentioned the way Kmart had run their pharmacies, and I can remember that. Some of my classmates and colleagues worked for Kmart. Very different than a corporate pharmacy position today, probably an experience that you’re able to get that started to be the learning ground for you before ultimately moving to own your own pharmacy in 2006.

I don’t want to overlook that, that’s still a big decision and transition that a lot of folks might have an interest in but aren’t willing to really take that leap of faith and feel confident in themselves to move forward and that step of ownership. Just tell us about your mindset and that transition of what gave you the confidence, what gave you, ultimately, the path? Or that said, “I’m going to go from this stable position, this stable income to really taking that leap of faith and owning my own business.”

[0:06:32.2] LF: Yeah, it feels, looking back, because it’s my own life, it doesn’t feel like a huge leap of faith but even you describing it right now, it really was. It really was a leap of faith and I think there was a couple of things that gave me that confidence.

One, I knew I was a good pharmacist and I was also a nerd, I liked numbers. I understood financials, again, going back to Kmart, I got to see all their financials of the pharmacy. I knew what drugs cost, I know what they got reimbursed and I was able to kind of hone my skills that way. But the thing that I told myself is – and I was in my early 20s at this point, I think I was 25 or something like that. I said, “What’s the worst that can happen?”

I painted a worst-case scenario. Nobody comes to me, I make no money, I go out of business, I go bankrupt and I go back to my $150,000 a year because I was working tons of hours job from now. I guess that’s not such a bad case, worst-case scenario.

I kind of figured that I could live with the downside, and that’s something that I’ve learned, and just decision making as a mature – just kind of saying, “What’s the upside, what’s the downside, and can you live with the downside?” I didn’t really know I was kind of living by that mantra back then. Essentially, that’s what I told myself as like, what’s the worse that can happen, and can I live with that? Can we have a plan for that? We figured out that we did, that we could have a plan for that.

And I just – I really wanted to do pharmacy my way. Kmart gave me a lot of leeway but not total leeway, there was always more than I wanted to do for patients. And I was getting into functional medicine at the time and getting into all these other interests, and I just wanted to offer more. So really, that desire became an obsession to come up with bigger, better, and more awesome services to offer to the community. And it was really, probably that desire just outweighed the fear with owning your own business.

[0:08:18.3] TU: Yeah, that desire for autonomy, right? Being able to be kind of in control of that future, and even pursuit of some things that might not have been traditional or allowed or under your scope of responsibility in that role with Kmart. The ‘worst thing that can happen’ exercise, I hope folks will hear that and apply that. Tim Ferris talks about that in The Four-Hour Workweek, he gives several examples where when you’re facing a decision, you mention, Lisa, using that in the context of decision making. We often tend to over-emphasize in our minds what is truly the worst-case scenario, and I think many pharmacists, even with the challenges we’re seeing in the profession right now, being able to fall back on a six-figure position is a pretty worst-case scenario.

I think sometimes in your profession, perhaps because of the student loan debt which is near and dear to our heart and what we do here at YFP and helping pharmacists or perhaps pharmacists are graduating at a relatively young age and stepping into that great salary, there’s sometimes is that mentality of, the golden handcuffs and not willing to take those risk and sometimes perhaps allowing those fears to be greater than might even be the reality of that situation.

Owning your own pharmacy, tell us about that experience, so April 2006, your pharmacy is open. Tell us about the pharmacy, what your focus was, the skills that you learned throughout that 10 years as you owned that store, give us some more details there.

[0:09:37.7] LF: Yeah, I did just about everything right and everything wrong that I think you can do in a pharmacy and in a business. Because back then, in 2005 and 2006 when I was planning on opening this, Facebook groups weren’t a big thing and I didn’t know any pharmacy owners. I didn’t come from a long line of pharmacists or even pharmacy owners. I was really just figuring it out for myself and so certainly, a lot of things that I did wrong and a lot of things I did get right.

I think the biggest thing that really happened is I understood niching and I understood that I didn’t want to be competing for the same people that the other independents in my town were. The place that I picked was far away from lots of other independents but yet close to chains. I was actually sandwiched between CVS and Walgreens, which ended up being a perfect location.

I wasn’t near any other independent pharmacies, there was kind of a little independent pharmacy desert in my town. And so to me, that became really important, going above and beyond. I just served my patents as the best I could and if it was physically humanly possible, I did it.

I remember very early, I was probably opened a month or two, there was a dermatologist across the street, it was a Saturday, she had a prescription for biaffine, a patient forgot to get it before the appointment kind of thing. And biaffine is like a chemotherapy but it’s also used after laser treatment in dermatology. It was a popular drug back then and I didn’t have it in stock, she hadn’t sent me any of the prescriptions for it, I was only just open but I knew another pharmacy that had it, it was actually my old employer, Kmart.

I knew we had it on our shelf because I had dispensed it at that store and I was able to arrange for the biaffine to get filled, I went and actually picked it up, delivered it to the patient, and all for basically free of charge because I wasn’t the one filling it and – but I went above and beyond and when I started to do that, people started to realize that I was in it for the long haul.

Business is all about relationships and you know, I may not be very good at social relationships but when it comes to business relationships, I know how to go above and beyond and always be the one that provides the extra value. That’s how I started to gain such a loyal following of prescribers and patients because they saw that in me, and then eventually, my staff, as I started to get staffed and started to grow, that was just one of our mantras.

If we can do it, we do it. That’s just the way that we operate and you know, we eventually grew to seven million annual revenues, had 35 employees, I had a really awesome thriving pharmacy and – but still, that was at our core, was just, whatever we could do to serve the patient is what we’re going to do and that paid us back in dividends year after year.

[0:12:23.5] TU: Between opening your own pharmacy in 2006 and we’re going to get here in a few moments about talking about your current efforts and work with DiversifyRx, I know you had several other roles in between there as well. Talk to us more about those positions and ultimately, the additional skills, those help you hone as both the pharmacist and eventually as a business owner.

[0:12:41.6] LF: Yeah, so when I opened the pharmacy, we were – one of the first positions that I added was mom, becoming a mom. I was actually pregnant with my first child when we opened our pharmacy and I bring that up because I think that’s actually a very good skill set. I had my children at my pharmacy for the first year of their lives but I had to learn how to juggle. I’m one of those people that, I don’t believe in such a thing as work-life balance, especially when you’re an entrepreneur and you own your own business.

There is no separation. Calling work-life balance makes it seem like there’s a separation and they’re at different ends of the spectrum. And that’s not the way that I live my life now and I learned not to live my life. When I’m with my kids and I’m present with them, I’m 100% focused on them but when I’m at work, I’m 100% focused at work. It’s a mixture and I learned very quickly that the whole work-life balance really doesn’t exist, that it’s all a mish-mash. And the better that I accepted that and went forward, actually, the more effective I was and the better I was at being both, at being a pharmacy owner and being a mom.

When I sold my pharmacy in 2012, I went to work for Pharmacy Development Services, PDS, which is fairly well-known in the industry, and there, I did just about every job that you can do. I think the only position I never held was like CEO. And you talk about skillsets, you know, having to do all the various coaching and the project planning and project management and new program implementation, and then I went into marketing. And I’ve done all the business development, all the marketing, all the sales, that kind of stuff. It really did give me a well-rounded education if you will on kind of C-suite activities.

It was a lot of the stuff that I did in my own pharmacy because I do believe that when you own your pharmacy, marketing needs to be your best friend. You’ve got to develop certain skillsets because you can’t go around paying for all of it, you know? Just like some things you’re going to have to do for yourself, definitely doing that and also, other entrepreneurs.

I never stopped being an entrepreneur, even if it wasn’t a pharmacy, my husband and I have always owned some other types of businesses. Before we had the pharmacy, we had a used car lot with my brother and then we had the pharmacy and then we opened franchises and then we opened up just other startup businesses. We always had that entrepreneurial thing going, “on the side” type of thing.

I was always constantly going back and forth with my skills and I think that really honed me to that I can accomplish a whole lot in a small amount of time because my desire to spend time and be present with my kids was really strong, and to spend time and do things like be able to take a vacation or to go to a conference or something like that. I had to get the work done.

When you give yourself a finite amount of time, you realize how to get really efficient and really good at things and so really, the experience that all of that gave me was working with a ton of pharmacy owners, I mean, probably thousands of pharmacy owners and I’ve spoken at all the major events, anything that you can think of, I’ve probably spoken at.

Also, being in other institutions or systems or franchises got me a lot of exposure to other ways of doing business as well. I try to bring some of those lessons into the pharmacy world because there isn’t a whole lot of pharmacy business education and training and so, I try to bring a lot of the other industries, the best of the best of what they have to offer and really bring that in and apply it to pharmacies.

[0:16:05.4] TU: As we make the transition here to talk about the work that you’re doing with DiversifyRx, I want to pause for a moment and just reflect on the point you are at now, has been 20 years in the making, right? I think sometimes, especially in a day and age where entrepreneurship is glamorized, right? I think, where we can hear stories and examples and founders and IPOs that are happening and we don’t often see a lot of the skill development, the sweat and the tears and the hard work that go behind it as those stories continue to come forward.

When you shared, not only the experience you had at Kmart, the experience you had in running your own business for six years and even getting into that, having some obstacles to overcome a business that you thought was going to be available for purchase that was not. All that’s involved in skill development of growing your own business. Other franchises you’ve been involved with, used car lots, rolls that you have, chief revenue officer, marketing skills that you gained. All of that that over two decades has allowed you to obviously continue to grow as an individual but also, grow as a business owner. I think that leads to the efforts that you’re doing right now. Tell us about DiversifyRx, what is it, how did it start and what problem are you trying to solve?

[0:17:21.1] LF: Yeah, wow, that’s a fun thing to talk about. DiversifyRx was really just started almost as therapy for myself. When I was deciding to leave PDS in the summer of 2020, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was kind of at that conundrum where I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, you know?

I was looking at a ton of jobs, I had just moved to the Dallas metro area and the economy here is booming and there was all kinds of executive jobs and I was strongly considering leaving pharmacy and going and doing something else and so, the only anxiety that I had about that was I’m not going to be able to help pharmacy owners. I just kept filling this pool and that was the only thing that I was sad about.

I started DiversifyRx really as just a way to have a weekly email and a weekly blog and kind of stay connected to my brethren that I had been in the trenches with for the last 20 years and I was happy with that. That was great, that’s all it was and I took another job, chief revenue officer, within pharma industry and that was great, then I actually ended up getting fired from that job in February of 2021 and you might say, “Fired holy heck.” Yeah, it was the first time I ever got fired but it was a gentle loving firing, we just agreed that we just didn’t – we weren’t having the same vision for the company and so it was very amicable I guess as firings can go.

I was kind of left again with ‘what I want to be when I grow up.’ I was like, just had an “aha moment” with my husband where I turned to him and I said, “I know what I love doing. I am the happiest when I’m talking to pharmacy owners and I help them get “Aha, that’s my favorite”. It’s when I help them become aware of something or achieve a win, that’s when my face lights up and so I was like, “I think we just need to figure out how to do this full-time, I don’t know what it looks like.”

Again, kind of back to that leap of faith, I have no idea what it was going to look like, I had no idea what the plans were but I was like, this is where I’m happy and I need to be happy if I’m going to be a good wife, a good mom and a good person to everybody else in the planet.

Really, was in the beginning of 2021 where I said, all right, I’m going to do full-time diversify, let’s go figure that out and what that is. And really, the whole name comes from my fundamental belief that pharmacy owners need to diversify their revenue streams, you can no longer just be a passive pharmacy that just dispenses whatever prescriptions happen to walk in your door, you’re not going to make it that way. Being average and being normal is not going to keep you in business for long.

Profitable pharmacy strategies do not just fall from the sky. You have to go out there and look at them but gosh, there’s so many bad things out there, there’s so many great things out there. And pharmacy owners, when do you have time to vet, when do you have time to decide, when do you have time to go through all of that and so, essentially, I took all of my skills and all of my industry, contacts, and knowledge and things that I gathered that it’s like, I felt like it was kind of my job to create that pharmacy ownership profitable buffet table if you will.

Where it’s like, “Here is all the opportunities” because I firmly believe that there is more opportunity now to succeed as a pharmacy owner than there has ever been but it’s not in the typical way that it’s always been done in the past. I feel like my mission on earth here is to create that buffet, that smorgasbord of profitable opportunities because what fits for one pharmacy isn’t going to be a fit for another, it’s going to be the perfect fit for somebody else and so, if I can just come up with all of the opportunities and help pharmacy owners decide what’s going to work for them based on their demographics, their own passion, and their insight, then let’s go do that in your pharmacy so you can have a profitable thriving pharmacy.

Really, that’s what DiversifyRx is all about, is helping pharmacy owners diversify and optimize their revenue stream so that every single independent pharmacy that wants to stay open, that wants to thrive, that wants to be a generational business that they can hand down to their children and grandchildren, that they’re able to achieve that dream.

[0:21:20.5] TU: Lisa, I love the mission, I love the passion, love the why behind what you’re doing and I don’t want to lose as well that as folks go on your website, we’ll link it in the show notes and they see all that you’re doing now, it started with the idea and you mentioned a newsletter, right?

That important action step that I think, often folks will look at other pharmacy entrepreneurs, other businesses out there and get paralyzed by seeing the current state. It started in a very different state, right? It has grown over time and you know, I think taking that first step is such an important one and to some degree, put yourself out there in terms of, “Yeah, I have this vision, I have this belief, I see a need in the market and I’m going to be a voice in this space.” And allowing you to sit in that uncomfortable space of, “Is this going to resonate, is this not going to resonate, where is this going to go?” and I love that first step in action that you took.

I want to ask you that when you say there’s more opportunity than ever for independent pharmacies, from an outsider’s perspective, I can’t claim to live in the independent pharmacy space. I have been in the profession for 13 years, largely in the academic world prior to moving full-time with the work that we’re doing at YFP but when I look from the outside looking in and even as you say in your website, the onslaught of DIR fees, abusive PBM audits, low margins, poor cash flow, clawbacks have many owners on the verge of tapping out. I mean Lisa, from the outside looking in, why go into this business?

I mean, how can one even plan when you think about things like DIR fees, PBM audits, clawbacks like even trying to build out a proforma from that seems like a nightmare and it really feels like the deck is stacked not in the favor of the pharmacy or the pharmacist, so give us the compelling argument of, why is this a better opportunity than ever before?

[0:22:57.8] LF: I think the reason why it’s a better opportunity more because pharmacies and pharmacists are more than just dispensing destinations and that really comes from, we do so much more. Yes, our primary function is to dispense, we’re not getting rid of that but to me, where the opportunity comes from is consultation, functional medicine, cash-based services, supplements, compounding.

You know, all kinds of things that really are available and the broad – whether it’s under your “scope of practice” as a pharmacist or it’s completely outside of your scope in the sense that you don’t need to be a certain licensed person to recommend supplements or something, why would somebody go to a GNC and listen to a 19-year-old about supplements when they could come to your pharmacy and get somebody that is far more educated and probably get a higher quality product that’s very specific and tailored to their exact needs, you know?

These people out there are spending cash everywhere. You know, they are spending cash at GNC, they’re spending cash at the gym, they are spending cash at the spa, you know for all of these different kinds of services that really pharmacies should be in my opinion the place that the healthcare that healthcare destination, people kind of use that as kind of a catchy phrase nowadays but what does that really mean?

It’s really, pharmacists are positioned to really help patients to take care of their health in ways like never before. There is more testing available. You know, one of my favorite supplements has a neat little saliva test that you test the patient to even see if they need it, you know? It’s like then you can test them to see if it is working. There is just so many great things out there nowadays that pharmacies can be the conduit for if we’re willing to look up and outside of solely dispensing.

That’s really where that comes from because yes, if you’re just going to bank on patients coming to you and they’re just going to pay their copays and they are going to grab their bags and turn around and leave then yeah, it is going to be a very tough ride being a pharmacy owner.

[0:24:54.2] TU: Yeah and what I love about that vision Lisa and I think this is a healthy discussion for us as a profession, you know I have always felt that arguably, we’re just incredibly well-positioned across the country already having a physical footprint in many, many communities, right?

As we think about the dispensing of medications perhaps becoming a commodity to some degree and we look at the many threats that are there, if we can begin to diversify that and begin to really even look at, perhaps the dispensing of medications is kind of the entry point and at some level though lead generation to other opportunities where pharmacists is well-positioned, just a completely different way of thinking rather than that is the core business model, right?

[0:25:36.0] LF: Exactly, so pharmacy owners generally aren’t business people in the sense of what they’re really truly not thinking about their business from a marketing sales funnel conversion, all of those types of things that lots of other businesses do. I mean, there are so many businesses out there that would kill to have the traffic that independent pharmacy does.

They pay tens of thousands of dollars a month just to get people to come in and yet people are freely walking into pharmacies and it’s just pharmacy owners don’t have the skillset and the knowledge to know what to do with that traffic. And that’s where I feel like I come in like, “Man, that lowest hanging fruit is every single time you have a physical person walking into your pharmacy is an opportunity to sell them something else that they need.”

[0:26:19.5] TU: Talk about warm leads, my goodness.

[0:26:19.8] LF: They need something else, exactly. Yes, you have that traffic and that’s what most pharmacy owners, they don’t even understand the word traffic in the sense of how it applies to marketing. And so that’s where I really get my passion from is teaching them those fundamental business skills that are often taught for other solopreneurs and other types of verticals of businesses but really isn’t taught in pharmacy.

You know, really getting them to understand that that dispensing of a prescription is your front in offer. You know, that might be something that people know you for but where you make your money is on the back end offers and you know it started with drug-induced nutrient depletion. In my final year of pharmacy school when you have to do your big project, you know, I did mine on drug-induced nutrient depletion and that was back in 2001.

Nobody was talking about that then and so it’s like there’s always a way, I truly believe there is always a way for every pharmacy to thrive and survive, you know? We just have to figure out what that thing is and that’s to me the extremely fun part like I get just so much joy. It is like I am a little Sherlock Holmes and everybody’s little pharmacy figuring out what’s going to help work for them and because there is always something that’s going to work.

It doesn’t matter your demographics, it doesn’t matter the income level, there is always something that those patients are paying for, they are spending their hard earn money on and you just have to offer it to them.

[0:27:37.2] TU: Yeah and they are probably spending it elsewhere, right? To your comment about, yeah.

[0:27:40.4] LF: Absolutely, yep. They are spending it, they are spending it somewhere else and you just need to capture that.

[0:27:44.0] TU: Love it. So you are bringing this business mindset and perspective to independent pharmacy owners and you are trying to do it really on a level that I see as being scalable, so not necessary one-on-one. I am working with this pharmacy but really this membership type of model, which gets to the aspect of how you’re monetizing the business, so tell us more about the membership model and why you came up with that approach to be able to provide this solution to independent pharmacies.

[0:28:08.7] LF: Yes, so ultimately the mission that I am on is to save independent pharmacy and I am never going to accomplish that if I have to talk to every single pharmacy owner out there for an hour a month and help them that way and that one-on-one consulting. I have to figure out how do I scale it and to do many to one and frankly, I personally, my zone of genius kind of understanding when you’re a pharmacy owner, whether you’re a solopreneur or running your own PGX business or whatever, you need to understand what you excel in.

I learned early on that I do not actually excel in that one-to-one type of interaction. I excel in the many to one and frankly, it is the only way I am going to ever reach my mission, so I set out. I eventually figured it out, it took me a couple of months after going full-time into Diversify that I wanted to start a digital membership, which you see in lots of other verticals of companies out there but it just didn’t really exists in the way that I wanted to bring it to pharmacy and so, we named it Becoming a Pharmacy Badass, so Pharmacy Badass University.

My podcast and my YouTube channel is kind of like becoming a pharmacy badass and that’s a bold brand and you know there is some people that are like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe you said that” but to me, if you’re going to survive in this world because we do have so many things stacked against us, you can’t be average. You can’t even be good, you have to excel and you have to become something different.

Pharmacy Badass University is our digital membership and you get it all. It’s you log in, you get your membership and it’s like, “Well, what’s included?” it’s like you know, all of those online e-courses, we are constantly creating them. I am creating the initial ones because we’re just going to be launching but how do you manage your inventory, how do you do that? Well, I don’t know. Here, let’s go and let’s just watch this on-demand course that either you can give to your technician, you can give to your pharmacist or if you are a startup, you know maybe do it yourself.

How do you control your cost? Well here, here is how, the method I go through and how I can look at my PNL and how I control my cost and what those costs should be. And so it is going to be on-demand courses, a ton of done-for-you stuff because you know, as easy as Canva is or some other graphic designs, not many pharmacy owners are going to have the time to go do that, so it is like every month, we’re going to be creating those templates and those emails and those things for them.

We’re going to have those office hours because I get calls all the time from pharmacy owners and I’ll end up doing a podcast or something about it. I am sure you kind of get this too, it’s like, “Man, everybody could benefit from that question. That was such a great question and I had such a great discussion with you but I didn’t record it and I can’t share it” and so it’s like we’re going to have those open office hours where everybody gets in that kind of shared knowledge.

Those monthly mastermind calls where I bring in other experts, I bring in sometimes outside of the industry, sometimes within the industry and so it’s really going to be this super low-cost no complications at all, no contracts, no minimums. My golly, if you don’t want to be a member anymore, you know, cancel and we’ll make it happen because I only want to serve people that are truly getting value. I want to be the best value in pharmacy because I know, I am still a pharmacy owner myself now.

I sold my original pharmacy but I got back into pharmacy ownership. I actually have parts of three different pharmacies and I know how tight money and time is for pharmacies. Those are the two tightest things and so we want to help you save time and we want to help you use your money wisely. So we literally we’re trying to be stupid cheap as I say because it’s just you know, these pharmacy owners can’t afford hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars a month. It’s just so hard these days and that’s part of that is providing a solution that is affordable and cost effective is really at the core of my offering.

[0:31:46.1] TU: Well, I love what you’re building Lisa. It reminds me of, for folks who have not read Tribes by Seth Godin, you know what you’re building as, yes, Lisa is the founder of the company. Lisa, you have the idea, you’re obviously growing it from the ground up but you are developing a community of folks that are coming together that are passionate about this topic of making independent pharmacy profitable again, right?

Bringing a business mindset to independent pharmacy and obviously you are building it in a way that you can then scale that going forward. And it’s not about Lisa, it is about Lisa being a facilitator of this community that’s coming together towards this common mission and I think that speaks volumes. I love that business model when you look at memberships, especially when memberships have a community component, where you as the owner, you then move into yes, I am providing some service but I am really a facilitator among this community.

I think that people really resonate with and stick with those groups long-term because they really feel like there’s value in being part of that community.

[0:32:45.3] LF: I could not have said that any better myself. You are absolutely right and that is exactly what I’m going for because I might know a lot about a lot of things but I don’t ever claim to be an expert on everything. There is always going to be somebody else out there that can share some of their wisdom and if we’re all committed to helping independent pharmacy owners thrive, then everybody wins when you share what works and sometimes, what doesn’t work.

Sometimes you learn more from what doesn’t work and so no, you’re absolutely right and along with the membership aspect, we are doing our own live events that are very focused around pharmacy profit, like, I am unabashed and unashamed. We help pharmacies increase their profits and that’s not a bad game.

[0:33:27.8] TU: As you should, it’s a business.

[0:33:28.9] LF: Yeah, it is a business you know? Pharmacy owners are the worst people, you know, the saying that I founded [Long Deer 0:33:34.5] ago, is profit is not a four-letter word. Now granted, can you make profit bad ways? Absolutely, everything comes with the good and the bad side but making a good profit in your pharmacy is not something you should be ashamed of. There is right ways to do it and there are plenty of them out there and it is not a four-letter word and something that should be avoided.

I am unashamed in helping pharmacies improve their profitability. So we have the Pharmacy Profit Summit, which is a two-day event and then we have the Pharmacy Badass University, which is centered around the six pillars of pharmacy profit, so we are unashamed in helping pharmacies improve their profits because that is the only way that they are going to stick around and be able to help and continue to serve their communities.

[0:34:17.0] TU: That’s right and we are going to link to the website and you can get more information by checking that out in the show notes but just to bring that full circle, right? If we’re not profitable as a business, you can’t continue to offer the service, which is providing value to the community, which is why you started doing that in the first place. Amen to what you just said there Lisa.

Let me ask you as a follow up then, you know, I often think about differential advantages for businesses and so when I think about independent owners and other things that are already out there for them, right? I am thinking about organizations like NCPA, I am thinking about state organizations and interest groups within state organizations. I am thinking about buying groups and what they often will offer independent pharmacy.

What is different about what you’re doing and how are you differentiating that from other services that are already out there to serve independent owners?

[0:35:01.2] LF: Yeah, so I look at NCPA and a lot of the state organizations as legislative efforts. I mean, I think that’s all their ultimate goal is to affect things either on state and national levels from a legal standpoint, which I certainly support and I am not doing. Diversify does not do that, not to say that I won’t write my own letters to my congressman or something like that but I am certainly not starting a legislative moment on anything.

I think that is one important distinction there but sometimes when you get into buying groups and things like that, you kind of start to wonder who they’re actually fighting for, who is ultimately the best interest of what they’re recommending because sometimes what they recommend does not make sense when you are looking at it from that financial standpoint. It’s like, “Hmm yeah, buying my products from you is actually costing me money, so how is this better?”

You know, you kind of just maybe start to wonder where their ultimate loyalties lie and so really, what I am doing is I am bringing together that 20 years’ experience, I pretty much know just about everybody in this industry. I know what the companies are doing, a lot of people reach out to me, even startup companies, I often hear about companies that are just getting started a year before they launch for the public and those kinds of things.

I really try to keep my pulse on this industry and a lot of what I do is free. I try to put out a ton of free content, you know just follow my social media, follow the podcast, follow the YouTube, any of those kinds of things. I put so much stuff out there for free because if I can help a pharmacy owner for free, I am A-okay with that and if you get all you need from that, perfect.

If you want to go up to the next level where you kind of want some done for you, you want to be able to ask some questions, you need that little bit more of handholding, that’s where Pharmacy Badass University comes in and we’re less than $200 a month. I mean, we’re talking I am trying to keep it as low as possibly low as it can be and so really, I think that’s how it difference is, is that I am truly here for the success of other pharmacy owners not just to charge them by the hour or something like that in terms of helping them.

Where there’s lots of consultants, some good, some not so good, it’s just a different model because they are doing that one-on-one, well, you can only have 10, 15 maybe pharmacies when you do that one-on-one so you have to charge higher prices and you have to do things because you still got to put food on the table.

We’re a business as well and so my approach of the many-to-one I think not only benefits the industry because I am able to help more pharmacies, but it also benefits the individual owner because the cost for them interacting with me is next to nothing, $200 a month. It’s like, it doesn’t get any cheaper than that.

[0:37:36.1] TU: You know, just another different advantage of outside looking in is you are an owner. You’ve lived it, right? You are in it and I think you can resonate as both the leader of this community as well as somebody who is in the community looking to learn from others. I want to come back just for a second here talking about providing value. For folks that have not listened to Pat Flynn has a site podcast, a resource called Smart Passive Income, we’ll link it in the show notes but was very influential to me early on in my journey of starting YFP.

He often talks about, if you lead with providing value to address a problem that people care about and you have a solution, which is one that they eventually be willing to pay for, lead with value and the business will come. And I think you are demonstrating that very well. You mentioned leading with a lot of free resources and then you’ve got kind of next level opportunities for those that are willing to make that further investment of both time and money.

Lisa, I want to come back, final question for you is this aspect of figuring it out. If I reflect on your past 20 years, I would argue that less than 5% of the work that you are doing today and the success that you’ve had from your career is from what you learned in your training to become a pharmacist.

And you know, I think as I think about folks that are going down the path like you have gone down, there is this hunger to learn and there’s this mentality through all these different roles that you’ve had both as an employee, as an owner of just figuring it out, right? Being willing to learn and to grow and to get better and perhaps making some mistakes along the way. Tell me about that mentality for you and where has that come from? Am I right in reading that as a part of your success?

[0:39:13.7] LF: No, I think you’re spot on. I have a very – you know, I’ve taken probably every personality and skill test out there and I do have a very high figured it out factor partly because that’s the fun part to me. I like problem solving. I always like math in school, I like coming up with the right answer, it gives me my little dopamine hits and so I really do like the figuring it out part but I think what comes in as you mentioned a big thing about fear and we kind of started off with that is the fear of failure.

Even pharmacy owners, you know, I will sometimes get on the phone call with a pharmacy owner and give them 10 different options of what they might want to focus on for the next year or something like that. It is really the only ones, the ones that fail or the ones that don’t succeed or don’t implement are the ones, that – we’re afraid of doing it wrong. And as pharmacists, I think that particularly hinders us because in pharmacy school and in your primary pharmacists job, you want to be perfect.

You strive for perfection, you never ever want to make a mistake on a prescription, which is a perfect mindset for a pharmacist working the bench. However, when you take your bench hat off and you put your pharmacy ownership hat on, you cannot bring that thought process into your pharmacy ownership decision making. It is okay to make mistakes in business. In fact, I’m a big fan of fail fast. If I am going to fail, I want to figure out what’s not going to work as soon as I can so I can move on to what is going to work.

I am very much a subscriber to that belief of failing fast. And you have to understand that business mistakes are not the same as dispensing or pharmacist mistakes. If you try a type of advertising on the radio and you spend $1,500 and it was a raging success, great and if it was a raging failure, well, you lost $1,500 but nobody died, nobody was hurt. You probably did some good, you probably got something out of it even if it wasn’t what you thought.

So you really have to reassess what failure is and what it is not when you are looking and making decisions as the business owner, as the owner of the pharmacy, rather than looking at it as a pharmacist. And I think that is the hardest part for pharmacy owners who also happen to be pharmacists. It is really hard for them to separate themselves and I do a lot of what I’ll call therapy sessions on that in trying to help them figure that out because as you said in the beginning, the first step is just taking that first step, just putting out a newsletter.

I look at my very first newsletter that I sent out and I cringe. I’m like, “How did anybody read that and enjoy it?” but you know what? I got a ton of complements on it, you know? But looking back it’s like, “Oh just remember you’re always your worst critic but you can never succeed if you never try.” And you know, failure in business is to be expected. You know, perfection is not the gold standard and so we just have to understand that that’s different from when we’re working the bench as opposed to working on our business, and I think that’s the biggest lesson that pharmacy owners can learn.

[0:42:04.9] TU: That’s so good really differentiate what failure is and what is not and the difference between that mindset as a business owner versus as a practicing pharmacist and to be fair, you know, if I think back to my PharmD training, Lisa, we’re taught rightfully so, you know, when we are thinking about our roles as a pharmacist and mitigating and preventing medication errors.

That mindset is drilled into us of, failure cannot happen from that standpoint. And that makes sense from the pharmacist-patient perspective but to your point, which is spot on, very different when we think about that as a business owner and how we can learn and grow through that failure. This has been awesome. I am energized from this interview and I think that’s going to go to our community as well and those that are listening, so thank you so much for your time.

Finally, where can our listeners go to learn more about the work that you’re doing at DiversifyRx and to connect with you further?

[0:42:49.7] LF: Yeah, so our website is diversifyrx.com, that’s probably the easiest way. You can send me an email at [email protected]. Feel free to find me on all of the social channels either by the business name, DiversifyRx or my personal, Lisa Faast and then we have a podcast, we have YouTube and you can find all of those resources plus tons of free downloadables all on our website.

We try to make it super easy to help people for free as a primary method, so head over to that website and that is where a great place to get started.

[0:43:22.3] TU: Awesome, thank you so much Lisa. We’ll link to those in the shownotes and I really appreciate your time coming on the show today.

[0:43:26.9] LF: Thank you so much for having me. I greatly appreciate your shows.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:43:29.9] TU: As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and it is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information of the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment.

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 243: A Non-Traditional Pharmacy Path From Pharmacist to Software Engineer to Entrepreneur

Posted on February 17, 2022November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

A Non-Traditional Pharmacy Path From Pharmacist to Software Engineer to Entrepreneur

Derek Borkowski, PharmD, founder and CEO of Cosmas Health and creator of the Pyrls app, talks about how and why he built the Pyrls app, what problem he was trying to solve, and some of the challenges he faced in the early days of being an entrepreneur.

About Today’s Guest

Derek Borkowski, PharmD is the Founder and CEO of Cosmas Health. His background includes experience in community pharmacy, digital health, and the pharmaceutical industry. He is a pharmacist and the software engineer of Pyrls.com, a drug information website and mobile application for clinicians and student-clinicians. Additionally, he continues to practice community pharmacy. Derek is a 2018 Doctor of Pharmacy graduate from the University of Minnesota.

Episode Summary

Community pharmacy and digital health are two spaces that are finally starting to intersect. Here to talk to us about his non-traditional path in pharmacy that provides this double expertise is Derek Borkowski, Founder and CEO of Cosmas Health and Creator of the Pyrls App, a drug information website and mobile application for clinicians and student clinicians. In this episode, Derek shares his pharmacy story and how he found himself in the interesting position of combining his pharmacy degree with technology to better serve the pharmacist community at large. Derek shares how and why he built the Pyrls app, what problem he was trying to solve, and how he was able to see that problem while working as a community pharmacist. You’ll also hear about some of the challenges he has experienced in his early days as a pharmacy entrepreneur. Derek shines a light on useful concepts for pharmacist entrepreneurs, like skills stacking and the regret minimization framework. Derek also has some advice for other would-be entrepreneurs on the need for pharmacists who can embrace programming skills like data analytics as well as opportunities available under the umbrella of digital healthcare. Derek shares the key to staying motivated when things are slow-moving.

Key Points From This Episode

Hear about the incredible support he’s received from the pharmacy community.
Introducing today’s guest, Derek Borkowski, and what drew him into this profession.
Hear about the moment he realized he wanted a more non-traditional path in pharmacy.
The opportunity he found and pursued that pushed him into the tech space.
Skill stacking and what can come out of an intersection of expertise.
Derek shares one of the opportunities available under the umbrella of digital healthcare.
How he first acquired and developed these skills and some advice from his experiences.
How his love of technology sparked his entrepreneurship goals.
About the regret minimization framework and taking the leap to start Cosmas Health.
Some of the struggles he overcame in the first year.
Finding the right lens to market to your audience.
What makes Pyrls really stand out from the crowd as a resource to invest in.

Highlights

“I would just say, anyone who thinks they might be interested in learning some technical skills, it’s just as approachable as any other domain. You’ll find out whether or not that resonates with you.” — Derek Borkowski, PharmD [0:13:06]

“I very much subscribe to the philosophy of double down on your strengths and collaborate for your weaknesses.” — Derek Borkowski, PharmD [0:13:46]

“I’d do anything for my customers. They could call me any time of day. I’ll come pick them up if they are stranded on the highway..” — Derek Borkowski, PharmD [0:29:13]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

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

This week, I had a chance to welcome on to the show Derek Borkowski, Founder and CEO of Cosmas Health and creator of the Pyrls app. His background includes experience in community pharmacy digital health and pharmaceutical industry. He’s a pharmacist and software engineer of Pyrls.com a drug information website and mobile application for clinicians and student clinicians.

Some of my favorite moments from this show include talking with Derek about how and why he built the Pyrls App, what problem he was trying to solve and how he was able to see that while working as a community pharmacist and some of the challenges he has experienced in the early days as a pharmacy entrepreneur.

Now, before we jump in to today’s show, let’s pause to acknowledge that we are in the midst of tax season. Those tax forms are piling up and it’s time to have your tax filing and planning top of mind. Now, tax strategy and planning is an undervalued but very important part of the financial plan and YFP Tax is working hard to help pharmacy professionals optimize their tax situation. YFP Tax is opening up its services to file 2021 taxes for 125 pharmacist households this year. These slots are filling up quickly so don’t wait too long. If you’re interest in working with a team of highly trained tax professionals, head on over to yourfinancialpharmacist.com/tax. Again, that’s yourfinancialpharmacist.com/tax.

Okay, let’s jump into my interview with Derek Borkowski, Founder and CEO of Cosmas Health.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:01:39.0] TU: Derek, thank you so much for coming on the show.

[0:01:40.2] DB: Yeah, I appreciate it and I’m really excited for this chance, Tim, thanks.

[0:01:43.3] TU: I too am excited to have you on, talk about your entrepreneur journey, your business, how and why you got into the tech space of pharmacy, so we’re going to talk through that on this episode. Before we jump in and do that thought, let’s go back to the beginning, where did you go to pharmacy school and what drew you into the profession?

[0:01:58.7] DB: Yes, I think my pharmacy journey actually starts a little earlier than most, even definitively so I can remember back in as early as eight grade saying, “I want to be a pharmacist.” That’s because my mom actually worked at a community pharmacy and so when I would go and visit my parent at work, I was like, “Oh, this seems really cool, the pharmacist you work with were really nice.” I knew I was already getting interested in science and medicine so I remember, as early as 8th grade saying, “I think I want to be a pharmacist.”

Of course, that changes, most people wanted to be something when they’re 8th grade but then they just got interested in new and other things. For me, every step along the way through high school and then undergrad just kept reinforcing my interest in pharmacy and so originally, community pharmacy is what drew me into the profession and so, I went to the University of Minnesota on the Duluth campus and graduated in 2018.

[0:02:46.1] TU: 2018, graduate of University of Minnesota, you mentioned interest in pharmacy since 8th grade. And we’re going to get into throughout this interview, I would say, you’re on a very nontraditional path in pharmacy, based on what you’re doing with running and starting the business, also in more of that tech space of pharmacy. With that initial interest in community pharmacy and the profession, tell me more about when you realized a more non-traditional path as a pharmacy graduate was going to be the path for you.

[0:03:14.3] DB: Yeah, another thing on that point is I would say, if I had nine lives to live simultaneously, I would want to be a community pharmacist in one of them, an AM care pharmacist in another, and then right away, when I started pharmacy school, I remember even first semester seeing all the different things people were doing with their pharmacy degree that you don’t necessarily have exposure to before pharmacy school. So I got really interested in some of the non-traditional opportunity that I saw right away when we had medical science liaisons from pharmaceutical companies come and speak to us, other pharmacists doing unique things with their degrees.

It was actually – I remember one summer, I was between years of pharmacy school, I was reading Steve Jobs biography and maybe like I don’t know, impressionable or naïve as it sounds, I was just blown away by this, I was like, by the story of Apple. “Oh my gosh, they built these revolutionary products that have changed our society. Are people still doing this? Are people still starting technology companies?”

At that point, I had no background or knowledge about startups or technology companies but I was like, “Wow, is there any way that I can combine my pharmacy degree with technology?” Healthcare seems like an area that needs disruption and so, I started, during my third-year pharmacy school, I did an internship at a digital health startup company here in Minneapolis and you know, I can get more into what I did next but that was the kind of the beginning of my interesting technology.

[0:04:33.5] TU: Derek, I want to spend another moment there because I think in my conversation with many – I’m calling specifically the pharmacy students I’ll talk with, they might be interested in a specific area, the profession or perhaps want to pursue something that’s more nontraditional but aren’t exactly sure what step to take to pursue that interest a little bit further and I would argue, pharmacy school is such a great time where you can really put yourself in those scenarios and situations, learn more, often for a condense period of time, obviously not a longer-term commitment.

That internship you mentioned at digital health, tell us more about how you pursued and found that opportunity?

[0:05:08.8] DB: Yeah, I remember, I got really interested in technology and startups. The phrase, Silicon Valley, that didn’t really mean anything to anyone where I’m from, right? I didn’t really know anyone technology growing up but that in particular, I got really interested in so I started just looking up like, are there any startups here in Minneapolis where I was going to be based for the summer and I found this company called MyMeds, which is a digital health startup that’s focused on medication adherence.

I remember I was just coming back from Pittsburg where I was doing an internship over the summer and I drove right to the address that I found on the website for MyMeds. I was like, “Oh, there might be mailing address or maybe it’s an office, I guess I’ll find out.” I drove up there and just went and knocked on the door and there’s a few people in the office and somebody answered and I said, “Hi, I’m Derek, I’m a pharmacy student. I think I’m interested in technology, is there anything I can help with around here?”

Fast forward a few weeks later, the CEO of the company called me and said, “Hey, I heard you stopped by and left your CV. Yeah, I think we could use the help of a pharmacy student, when could you stop in next?” And then it went from there. Some advice I would give and I can go more into this kind of – what we think might be interesting is, Mark Henry and I believe, he was maybe the person who I had heard give this advice first which – he’s a famous Internet entrepreneur who helped invent the web browser.

He talked about this concept of skill stacking, how there’s always something unique to be found at the intersection of two really deep domain expertise. And I think with healthcare, it’s very – healthcare domain expertise as a clinician is very hard to attain because of just the amount of time it makes to become a practiced clinician. Like we as pharmacists, in my mind, even know, a kind of tongue and cheek joke that I’m a five out of 10 pharmacist, and I’m a five out of 10-software engineer and what that allows me to do are things that somebody who is a 10 out of 10 pharmacist but is zero out of 10 software engineer couldn’t do. Or someone who is a 10 out of 10 software engineer but is zero out of 10 pharmacist wouldn’t be able to do.

[0:06:59.8] TU: I love that, and that connects with me, right? Derek, as I think about my career journey in pharmacy, I would maybe give myself a four or a five out of 10 in the pharmacy side as well but I think about combining that with some of the financial education, passion and work that we’re doing. You put those things together and you know, I think that’s a great example of a unique combination and I would add, I love the concept of skill stacking. The thing I also don’t want to overlook and gloss over is just the initiative, right?

I’m reading right now Warren Buffett’s biography and he was famous for stopping by companies, walking in the front door that he was looking at investing and just to talk with people and learn more. The fact that you stopped by that office, introduced yourself and specifically said, “Hey, is there anything I can help with here as a pharmacy student?” That type of initiative, I would argue is certainly not common and I think something that I’d recommend folks consider and making some of those bold moves if they’re looking at trying to get themselves out there about other opportunities that might be there.

Skills, for sure, have to be there, willingness to learn but also, you know, that initiative to seek those opportunities.

[0:08:02.7] TU: Derek, for pharmacists that are listening that maybe they’re considering a career move or practice student pharmacist that are listening, we’ve talked for a moment here about the intersection of healthcare and technology. Can you talk just at a high level about the types of opportunities that may be out there for a pharmacist that is interested in this intersection of healthcare and technology?

[0:08:23.8] DB: Yeah, I would just say, I’ll start by saying that it’s a giant umbrella of different opportunities and one thing I frequently hear is when I’ll meet another pharmacy store or someone at a conference and start to talk about what I’m doing, they’ll be like, “Oh, you’re an informatics pharmacist or you’re an IT pharmacist?” I’m like, “Eh, well, close enough” but truly, what I’m doing right now is I’m sort of a technology entrepreneur, and I do software development but it’s kind of different than, it’s very different than I should say like, typical informatics, which also I guess is another area that needs to be unpacked.

I’ll just speak to one sort of specific area that I have had purview in that I think would be worth pharmacists taking time to learn about, that’s data analytics. I actually do, when it comes to learning programming skills or technology skills, I actually do website and mobile app development which is a little different. But in an area that’s adjacent to it, what I notice a ton of demand for and need in is pharmacists who can embrace programming skills in the areas of data analytics like learning SQL or Python or R, because there’s so much data in healthcare.

There’s so much domain expertise required to understand what’s happening. This is just kind of a micro example to illustrate the issues. I remember hearing about a large analysis that was done on a patient population and technically, Gabapentin is a calcium channel blocker, it’s how it works. In some drug lexicons, it’s a calcium channel blocker.

Anyway, they were doing this study on hypertension patients and you know, the data analyst didn’t have a healthcare background. Basically, everyone on Gabapentin was coded into this hypertension analysis and it’s such a simple thing that a pharmacist with just some data analytics skills would have been able to contribute greatly to.

That was just a small example of – there’s tons of demand in my mind, well, or at least that we in budding demand for pharmacists who understand how to work with data and are willing to interface with that at their current work places or certainly, hopefully there’s going to be more future linear pass towards future opportunities for pharmacists to utilize those skills.

[0:10:24.3] TU: Derek, short of someone pursuing like – I know, there’s informatics residency programs and everything’s out there. In lieu of someone pursuing that formal training opportunity, when I hear you talk about things like SQL and Python which are foreign language to me, and obviously as we’ll get to here in a moment – the work that you’re doing and building your own business. The learning curve of that seems astronomical.

And I can tell you’re obviously a self-initiator, clearly, you have a desire and passion to want to learn but what does that look like in terms of how you’ve been able to acquire and develop these skills, has that all been self-taught, has it been mentors, has it been training programs, tell us more about how you’re able to overcome that learning curve of the work that you are doing now and obviously, the gap that was there from the traditional pharmacy degree.

[0:11:07.5] DB: I’m so glad you asked this because it’s actually one of my favorite. This is one of my favorite things to harp on when I’m allowed to say and it wasn’t intuitive to me at first which yeah, some background on my domains here. It was while I was in pharmacy school. Once I started that internship at MyMeds, a mentor there he said to me, “Hey Derek, you really love giving suggestions on what sorts of features we should be adding into our website and app. You know, if you’re curious, I think one way that you could help our engineers better understand the ideas you’re giving them is that if you were to start learning some programming too so that you could have some of their language under your notes, have some of their vernacular.”

I was like, I thought that seemed preposterous like I don’t have a computer science degree. It’s really funny, I did take his advice and started learning just some really basic website development on the academy was the first website. I started learning them. Software engineering or programming, just the aforementioned skills I mentioned, they’re just like any other domain but I think they seem to us as pharmacists. I think it seems uniquely like opaque of an area to learn.

You know, no one bats an eye at a pharmacist getting a duress doctor degree or an MBA or MPH or all these – that’s perfectly normal. Programming? I was the same way. It’s actually no different and actually, it’s in my mind, it’s easier to learn. As clinicians, one of the main things I was concerned about was you can’t learn to be a clinician without actually going to school for it because you need to be able to see patients and so you need a system that allows you to train your clinical knowledge with patients.

Website development, programming, that takes place on a computer and so, you can start learning on any computer you’re on. That being said, I don’t necessarily think anyone – it’s like any skill where, if it resonates with you, that’s going to help you learn more, just don’t tell anybody Tim or to anybody listening. I actually really don’t like the business aspect of my business.

The books and the bottom, all that stuff, like the MBA knowledge of running this business. I don’t find it very interesting but I love programming. I would just say, anyone who thinks they might be interested in learning some technical skills, it’s just as approachable as any other domain and you’ll find out whether or not that resonates with you.

[0:13:14.2] TU: Yeah and Derek, your differential advantage is obviously the skills you’ve acquired, plus your degree in background as a pharmacist, right? I think about you as a business owner. Sure, as you’re getting started, a lot of that stress and work is going to fall on you but as you grow, that stuff you hire out, you probably already are.

What you bring is your differential advantage as a business and I think naturally, if we fast forward five years, like Derek isn’t in the weeds of any of that because your time spent and the impact you’re going to have on your perspective customers is going to be bringing your unique skillset, right now, worrying about the books and other things.

[0:13:46.5] DB: A 100%, I very much subscribe to the philosophy of double down on your strengths and collaborate for your weaknesses and so yeah, that’s totally how I view this as well.

[0:13:57.0] TU: Were you working as you’re developing, acquiring these skills, and we’re going to bridge that to the work that you’re doing right now on building Cosmas Health. But were you working as a community pharmacist alongside of this journey so you’re essentially side-hustling your way into the beginning of the business, tell me more about that?

[0:14:11.9] DB: Yeah, totally. So that’s another interesting story I think just how – well, I’ll just say, so many, even guest you have in this show, Tim, and yourself, so many of these fall into our current position, backwards, sideways, you know, I have no idea what the – one thing we need to solve is in the pharmacist profession is how to create more linear paths to non-traditional careers. But what happened with my mind is, I would say, I was actually – one thing I remembered doing my first few years of pharmacy school was taking part of the NCPA business plan competition.

Entrepreneurship was something that I think I was interested in actually. My dad and grandfather and uncles and aunts, they own a small business but I was around it, and I wasn’t the kid who is selling candy out of my locker or anything.

Really, it was when I discovered my interest for technology startups that I started to consider, “You know, I think I do want to start my own business someday,” but once that idea hits me is when I’ll start working on it. Yeah, after graduation in 2018, I knew I wanted to work full-time at a startup and so, but MyMeds, it didn’t quite work yet for me to work full-time there.

I started working full-time as a pharmacist at Walgreens and in my nights and weekends, I would still help out at MyMeds as much as I could but then after about six months, I was sort of able to reverse the roles. This is about December after graduation, I was now full-time as a product manager at MyMeds but then I was still a market pharmacist, afloat pharmacist at Walgreens just actually up until this last summer.

Throughout the course of 2019 is when I actually started to – in my nights and weekends program, the concept I had for Pyrls, which is the primary product that our business builds and what I’m working on today and so that was the beginnings of that transition.

[0:15:45.3] TU: That’s one of the reasons why I ask the question there because that’s one of the things I love about pharmacy, is the profession for those that maybe have an idea that they’re itching to pursue – there’s very few jobs out there that you can potentially work PRN and flex that maybe it’s full-time to start, maybe it’s eventually 30, 20, 15 hours, especially if you’re a great pharmacist, you have good relationship with your district manager in your stores, performing all that.

It can be a really good bridge and a darn good paying bridge as you’re looking at exploring other opportunities. You mentioned working full-time in the pharmacy, kind of part time nights and weekends on some of the business ideas and stuff and then obviously over time, they had flips. I think that’s a great example for others to consider.

Now, it’s one thing, Derek, to pursue a non-traditional career path and be willing to take that leap of faith in both learning and belief in yourself and to do that, hopefully as an employee where you earn a good wage. It’s a whole other thing to say I’m going to pursue this non-traditional career path and I’m going to own my own business, right?

I think that hurdle, for many people, it’s a big hurdle to get over for a variety of reasons. Tell us about what happened in 2019 that you said, “Hey, I’m going to start this company” Cosmas Health and how you were able to get over that hurdle to get started?

[0:17:00.9] DB: Yeah, it actually – as I mentioned, I had been sort of learning some programming skills as early as during the middle of pharmacy school but towards the end of pharmacy school, especially in my 4th year, just like learning programming, like website and app element became like an obsession. I remember very vividly going to rotations from seven to three or eight to four, coming home, taking a nap and then like coding for like four hours because it was the most fun thing I could ever think of doing.

By the time I graduated, I was a relatively competent web developer. In 2019, when I was still sort of thinking about ideas for starting my own business, I created Cosmas Health which is, you know, just as in Minnesota LLC, so I could do freelance web development work out of which I know you’ve talked to many other pharmacists on here who started their own. I recommend a new one as soon as you have any sort of thing you may want to do, form a business around it just to get yourself started, if other factors make sense regarding it.

I started, I created my own business that I was doing some freelance work out of but then I started building my own projects within that. Pyrls, which is the primary product that I build today is, it’s essentially like a digital version of those top 400 drug study cards, plus some other features we’re working towards building some sort of next generation drug information reference. Like the ones that we rely on today in practice.

And so the idea for it started, I was thinking about it while I was on fourth year. It was building a better reference for me to use there and so it was one of the projects I just started, just sort of hacking on in my nights and weekends as I mentioned and anyway, I started to get some traction with it to the point where – this was in the fall of 2019, I was pretty much like, “I need to go all in on this.” And so I basically planned where I still kept my position at Walgreens that I was one or two weekends a month, but then I can pick up shifts as needed if available.

In January of 2020, yeah, I just sort of – you know, I had some money saved up but you know, still had some huge student loans and you know big thanks to the support of now wife, kind of jumped out of the airplane without a parachute in January 2020, we had – I’d love to talk about some of the struggles of that especially in that first year with trying to build and grow curls but it was what I sort of use –

Again, anything, any quote that you attribute to anybody, I am sure was said by somebody else too but the person I saw mention this was Jeff Bezos. He talks a lot about this regret minimization framework he has where he is trying to make a decision, he says, “Am I going to regret, on my death bed, what am I going to think of this decision?” And so for me, it was like, “Can I picture myself at age 40 having not yet taken the leap to start my business?”

It’s like, “No, nope. No matter where I’m at with everything, you know I am young right now, I have some money saved up, I have some runway here.” And so in January 2020 is when I said, “All right, let’s do it, I’m going to go full-time on this business.” And so while still, as you mentioned, having the comfort of I am so grateful for the role I was able to have as a pharmacist at Walgreens while I was growing my business towards a place to be sustainable fully full-time.

[0:19:53.1] TU: I’m glad you mentioned, I have never heard that terminology, the regret minimization framework. Tim Ferriss talks about that concept, essentially the essence of that that was really critical for me and my own journey as well. He talks about a lot in terms of yes, what might you think looking backwards but also really trying to objectively call the fears that you have, and through that process you realize that many of the fears that you might have are not rational, right?

That’s really part of the process of really trying to put those onto paper and really looking at them as objective as you can. But Derek, my question is that you still made that leap. You eluded to savings but many pharmacists, even if they have savings, if they are looking at big student loan debt, perhaps there’s a family, you know, “I’ve got safer retirement, I feel all these competing pressures.”

You know, there is this known thing of a good six figure income and there is this unknown thing which has risk but also upside in a business. I want to dig a layer deeper of, even with a little bit of savings, how are you able to lean into that and feel comfortable and as you said, kind of flying out of the plane without a parachute?

[0:20:54.2] DB: Yeah, you know I think that for better and for worse, I’m a major optimist but also I tend to sort of think and plan for my life in really short-term terms. I was, you know, when I started full-time like I said in January 2020, I was like, “Well, we’ll see how this goes and we’ll re-evaluate it in three months and then I can make a decision from there.” And so like I mentioned, this is certainly a very personal decision but for me, there was no better time.

It was only going to get harder to make a riskier decision. The more savings saved up or the more I climbed the corporate ladder, it is was only going to get harder to risk or if they have children, it is only going to get harder to risk that and so that combined with as I mentioned, I was very lucky to be and to have a very supportive partner who actually kind of structured things financially was either through my business and/or working extra pharmacy shifts.

I had to make sure that I could cover half of all of our expenses and if I couldn’t do that, then I need to stop. And so that was sort of the rules of the game or for myself or the bounds of the risk I could take and so having a plan like that I think helps with the decision as well because you all right, have made this decision that we are going to play with these rules and then we’re going act next based upon what happens.

[0:22:10.4] TU: I really like that, having some ground rules, having some structure. My follow up here is you eluded to a struggle in that first year and I think any new business is going to have some growing pains in the first year financially as well as just kind of what you’re trying to build in the operations of the business. But this is an area we don’t talk a whole lot about in entrepreneurship. I think there is so much, maybe overqualification to some degree, of people who make this jump, right?

Other people are like, “Oh man, I want to do that.” But we don’t hear as much and we probably don’t share as much of like it’s really hard to build something not only in terms of the time and the sweat and the energy but also some of the financial struggles and challenges that can come. It takes some real mental fortitude and I think belief in yourself and what you are trying to build to really be able to overcome some of those fears and challenges in the first year.

Tell me more about, for you, Derek, and for Cosmas Health, and perhaps more specifically your primary product and Pyrls, what some of those struggles were in that first year?

[0:23:02.0] DB: Oh my god, I’m just smiling over here as you are saying all of that because yeah, I remember before launching the first version of Pyrls, which again for the reference for the audience, so Pyrls is a drug information tool for pharmacist, for pharmacy students. It is not for patients, it’s for in deck clinicians and so I remember thinking like, “Oh this is going to be so easy.”

Tim, we’re going to launch this and like actually want 10,000 people to pay a $100 a year and that’s a million dollars, you know there is over 300,000 pharmacist so like, that’s just a tiny percentage of them. So I am just going to launch this and then everyone is going to be like, “Wow, this is super cool!” and sign up, and “Wow, you know it is going to go great.” Nobody cares about what you are doing, you know?

That is one of the hardest things to learn with businesses, you can be super excited about what you’re doing but nobody else has to be. And so I remember the first – let’s just go back to January 2020 when I went full-time on this, that is actually when Pyrls was officially launched to the public as well, and I remember getting ready to launch this new feature in February and we had a pretty good Instagram following at the time.

We have an Instagram account where we share medication facts, and so we ended having a few thousand followers at a point and so I remember getting ready to – and we are reasonably sure it was mostly pharmacy students, pharmacist, you know our target audience and so one of the strategies we use for a number of reasons is we have a free tier, which people would just sign up for free.

I remember getting ready to launch this feature and all of the text around the promotion was, “Just sign up for free and check this all out,” And we were launching it on Instagram, you know, we made a post, we made the stories were there, and I am sure we made stories, and I remember 24 hours went by and not a single person even signed up let alone a sale.

[0:24:35.5] TU: You’re like, “It’s free, come on.”

[0:24:37.3] DB: Yeah and I remember just being like, “Wow, this is going to be…” you know? Honestly, I don’t know how I wasn’t more discouraged. I think what I am most happy about nowadays and sorry, I don’t mean to take us in a different direction but I am so happy that two years into this, I am actually more excited about what I am doing now than I was when I started and that’s really important.

You know, I could have found that the business could be doing ten times better than it is now but I wouldn’t be happy if I wasn’t enjoying it, that would be hard. It would be hard to wake up and dread my day. And so, I think that was a really obviously, a really critical part of starting something new when you don’t know if you have traction. You don’t know if the business is going to work, is you’d be loving it, and so I certainly was loving it and yeah, so it was all of 2020 was a slow –

You know, the growth – I don’t know if it is the combination of – I think with any new business, I think there is some – actually you might know Tim, I don’t know if this is – again, this is maybe something I am pulling out of my head, but I remember seeing like a marketing rule of thumb that was, like, people don’t respond to your ad until the sixth time they see something. I don’t know if it is just a factor of being around long enough to start getting the compounding growth and or obviously as you build your business you are going to learn what people actually find valuable and double down on that.

[0:25:46.7] TU: Yeah and Derek to that point, you now there can be a lot of head trash, at least I am speaking for myself and other pharmacy entrepreneurs I’ve talked in a regular basis, that we tend to look at our audience and what they want through our own lens and our passion and how we’re sending content out and marketing materials and other things. And that is not how they’re looking at it, right?

If I think about your avatar client Derek, of what I know of your business, they have a million things going on in the day, right? With their work, with family, with other things and so when they see that Instagram story, they are seeing ad for a free Pyrls app, you’re looking at it through lends of like, “Yeah, this is a home run. I know the value, I’ve built this. I know how it competes with everything out there.”

The same thing with our end on financial services piece of content, whatever it be like that’s one small snippet of their day, it is everything in my day of what I am passionate about and working on. And so I think that we may tend to under promote our content out of fear of like, “Am I being annoying? Am I sending out too much content?” But really seeing some of that data, and Grant Cardone talks about this stuff like you know, most folks from a business standpoint have enough security problem that people don’t know who they are.

They may think that people know who they are and you know, it’s finding that balance of course of what you’re comfortable with but you know I think that resonates with me of what you shared in terms of the number of times that people might have seen something.

[0:27:02.2] DB: I am going to share one more thing in that Tim too. I remember or this is something I will tell, I have one employee now and a few interns and this is something like when I am onboarding people, I will talk to them about how because I learned this for myself. It is such a miracle anytime somebody pays for your product because as I said, a lot of users of Pyrls, they’ll find us on, let’s just say, Instagram is honestly really the place for them to find us.

I was like, all right, picture in, I would say most of our customers are like fourth year pharmacy students or first year new practitioners and so I was like, picture our users. They’re in New York riding the subway to school and they may be looking at Instagram and they see a post Pyrls makes and they click on our profile and then they’re about to go to our website and buy but then they got to their subway stop –

[0:27:43.8] TU: That’s exactly right, yeah.

[0:27:46.2] DB: But let’s say that they even signed up. Okay, and they’re at the checkout page. Say, they even think to themselves, “This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. It costs $40, why would I even pay a $100 for this?” But their dog starts barking and then they forget about it because they have to go take care of their dog. The process of building a business is, there’s so many factors and just putting in the work is ultimately how you get the full cycle going and I just encourage people not to be discouraged by any one little thing.

[0:28:13.6] TU: You are so spot on. I mean, the subway example is so good, right? Because I often say, “Hey man, there are 330,000 pharmacist out there and I am so confident in the solution that we have.” But what you shared is like, I hope we never lose that appreciation and admiration and gratitude for someone that not only follows us and engages with the community but ultimately makes that decision to trust us to provide a service or a product that we offer.

I never want to take that for granted because you know what it takes of 330,000 people to actually get your content out in front of eyes. You are already kind of working down the funnel there, those that then take action on it are able to invest the time to read your content, follow your content and ultimately make that decision approaches and you know to me as a business owner, that is the ultimate vote of confidence in what your doing is to raise their hand and to purchase something, they’d trust you with a product or a service and I am just hopeful as I can tell in your voice and gratitude, I am hopeful to never lose that as a business owner because it is so special, it really is.

[0:29:13.5] DB: I’d do anything for my customers. They could call me any time of day, I’ll come pick them up if they are stranded on the highway. Yes, I share your sentiment of gratitude so deeply.

[0:29:20.8] TU: Derek, I am curious, and we are going to link too in the show notes and I hope folks will check it out if they haven’t already, Derek you have mentioned Cosmas Health, we’ll link to that, cosmashealth.com in the show notes. That really was the LLC that you created to start freelance work, Pyrls, which is pyrls.com, we’ll link to that as well as the Instagram @pyrls.app you mentioned in the show notes so folks can check that out.

As I look at the work that you’re doing, I ask this of any business owner that I talk to, which is, what differentiates your product from what is out there in the market. Now, it’s been some time for me since I’ve been in a pharmacy working with a patient or an inventory cures thing but I think about traditional tools that I trained with, right? Whether that’s Lexicomp, Micromatics, up to date other tools, what really differentiates the Pyrls product and what problem is Pyrls really trying to solve that again, we are hoping to entrust folks support that they invest in this resource among others that are out there?

[0:30:12.3] DB: Yes, so as I mentioned the original idea, you know drug information references, that these has been around since stone tablets I’m sure but the rendition that we are building now, my original inspiration started while I was on rotations. I was, in particular, as a fourth year, interested in a faster reference for counseling points and/or clinical pearls, you know, hence the pun there.

The two or three most common things that differentiates Pyrls are now is number one, the counseling points. You know, we have a custom set of curated counseling points for all medications and that’s by far the most common feature that our users love, is they look up a drug and go check out the counseling points. Whether they are studying or on site, and it actually was really fun in the early days of Pyrls of getting to use, like I’d be at the drive through on the phone with a patient counseling them. In my hand I’d have Pyrls like looking down on it, and yeah, take it with food.

And so the counseling points. And then the next piece is helping decide – we have a really popular section for most medications called place in therapy where “Hey, you are looking at this [Ason Edgar 0:31:10.7]. Well yeah, that’s for hypertension.” But like where does it – when is this used versus another first line [inaudible 0:31:16.4]

We have nice summaries of guidelines for chronic conditions. There is about 2,000 drugs or so that actually matter, and right now Pyrls only covers about 400 of them. And so we covered the – for the most part the most commonly prescribed medications. So that is the area that we’re focused on like if you are an orthopedic surgeon, Pyrls doesn’t have much utility for you now and so how we’re thinking about expanding this.

Whereas traditional references is sort of organized information kind of just like a book would or it’s like a table of contents. We sort of organize information around workflows like counseling of patient or you know, you need to decide prescribing or reviewing, essentially, you need to understand those place and therapy concepts so that’s what differentiates us now as the information for a specific workflows, and where we’re headed is building that out for more drugs and for more workflows.

[0:32:03.2] TU: Love it and I can see as I look at your website, just an opportunity to continue to expand upon the awesome work that you’ve done. Derek, my question for you as I hear you talk about your journey, from idea to obviously getting the product out there that you use yourself when you are working at Walgreens, to now having an employee and obviously having some interns and the growth that you have, the plan going forward is, what support or infrastructure support have you had as a business owner?

Has this been all learn-as-you-go? Obviously beyond the tech side, I am thinking about as I look at your website, there is of course the web design to be able to take purchases, looking at your pricing tiers and structures as a marketing aspect, there is a strategy piece, there is a business development portion, there is an HR piece as you are hiring, are you going at this alone? Do you have a group of entrepreneurs or an incubator or something that is supporting you along the way? Tell us more about the support you have as a business owner.

[0:32:58.4] DB: Yes, so well, you know other people have certainly mentors, like most people, mentors have been just – I can’t even put into words how influential and responsible for any success that Pyrls has had so far. Pretty much everything that you just mentioned, you know, marketing, finding customers, solving problems, learning through the experiences of entrepreneurs who went through it or further along has been so huge for me.

Yeah, Pyrls has been fortunately working in 2021. So we went through an accelerator out in San Francisco over the summer, which connected myself personally with tons of other founders in the technology industry. And so that from the business growing side of things has been very beneficial but honestly the support of the pharmacy community has been probably the main thing for Pyrls success thus far.

The most important thing in my mind is the integrity of our content and I think the trust in the information is probably the most – that is the most important pillar of the house we are building and so talking to other leaders of medical information companies who are entrusted with a similar responsibility of their product has been the most I would say, that’s why I think it was just people.

[0:34:04.6] TU: Yeah, I love it. I love what you’ve built Derek, I love the passion you have behind the work that you are doing. Also just my business partner, Tim Baker and I often talked about like we love the puzzle of business. We just love the challenge opportunity to build products and services that hopefully meet the needs of the community and I can tell you’ve got that passion as well.

I am excited to see where this builds out in the next several years, hopefully we can have you back on the podcast and share some of that growth with the community. We will link to the Pyrls website, the Instagram account. For folks that are already aware, they can check that out and share the good news. Beyond that, Derek, what is the best place that folks can go to learn more about you and to follow the journey?

[0:34:40.2] DB: Yeah, well really any pharmacists who is either interested in a business idea they have or talking to other pharmacists and non-traditional roles or interested in, honestly like I said, if I had nine lives to live most of them would be in a different pharmacy role. So if you are somebody who thinks that we could have something interesting to talk about, please connect with me on LinkedIn.

I am the only Derek Borkowski, PharmD, and so we’d love to connect there as well as, yeah, please if you – to whatever degree of interest anybody has, follow our Instagram, @pyrls.app. And Tim, thank you for everything you are doing bringing voices like mine on your show and all the other inspirational and super important advice and information that Your Financial Pharmacist puts out into the world.

[0:35:21.6] TU: My pleasure, Derek, thank you so much for taking time to come on the show and I am so glad our paths have crossed, so thank you again.

[0:35:26.5] DB: Likewise. Thanks, Tim.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:35:28.2] TU: As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and it is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information of the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment.

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 240: How & Why This Pharmacist Started a Business in the Middle of the Pandemic

Posted on January 27, 2022November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

How & Why This Pharmacist Started a Business in the Middle of the Pandemic

Dr. DeLon Canterbury recounts how early setbacks motivated him to start a business in the middle of a pandemic and how his personal ‘why’ shaped the work he is doing to help solve the problem of mismanaged medications in the senior population.

About Today’s Guest

Dr. DeLon Canterbury is the CEO/Founder of GeriatRx which specializes in Pharmacogenomics, Medication Deprescribing, and Health Cost Savings for providers, caregivers, and patients. DeLon was fired in the height of COVID, and took this opportunity to pursue his passion for patient advocacy and empowerment while battling for health equity by addressing social barriers to care. GeriatRx has saved our patients well over $150,000 within its first year while keeping loved ones from being involuntarily committed into a nursing home!

Episode Summary

The senior population is a group that is often left to the wayside when it comes to healthcare, fraught with duplicate therapies, errors, and cost barrier issues that may be avoided with adequate knowledge and care. Dr. DeLon Canterbury, founder and CEO of GeriatRx, is a pharmacy entrepreneur who has made it his mission to help solve the multibillion-dollar problem of mismanaged medications that lead to preventable deaths in the older population. This week, Tim Ulbrich sits down with DeLon as he recounts his professional setbacks as a new practitioner, how those setbacks motivated him to start and lead a business, and why he decided that the middle of a pandemic was a good time to begin a new business venture. DeLon shares how his personal and professional ‘Why’ has shaped the work that he is doing at GeriatRx plus a few stories that exemplify the need for this type of senior care. You’ll hear how DeLon came to the position of strength financially, able to start his own business, and some apt and inspiring advice for fellow pharmacists who have a seed of an idea but no idea how to move forward with it.

Key Points From This Episode

How DeLon’s love of medicine was inspired by his mother’s expertise in herbology.
What moved him to get his Board Certified Geriatric Pharmacy degree.
The recognizable dark road that almost led him out of the profession.
How the experience of not getting into residency turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
How DeLon’s involvement with community helped him learn to lead by service.
The pivot point that reinvigorated his passion for pharmacy.
The power of patient advocacy and teaching patients to advocate for themselves.
About his work with a local nonprofit for older patients and what services they provide.
Hear about the care GeriatRx provides, from advocacy to deprescribing methods.
DeLon’s moving story of his ‘Why’ and becoming the voice for caregivers and patients.
Some of the groups he works with and their incredible service to underserved people.
A story of being an expert medical witness and the ugly part of families and elderly care.
Getting into the finances; how he got the capital to create this business.
Learning to articulate his value when he was starting out.
DeLon shares some great entrepreneurship advice for his fellow pharmacists out there.

Highlights

“Being in a pharmacy is not just pushing scripts, you’re literally learning how to motivate, energize, drive goals, and bring the best out of others.” — Dr. DeLon Canterbury [0:10:40]

“Truly teaching a culture of how patients can advocate for themselves can honestly improve health outcomes and build their confidence and trust in you, [not just] as a pharmacist but in the system.” — Dr. DeLon Canterbury [0:13:23]

“Our seniors are grossly overmedicated and we waste nearly $528 billion a year on mismanaged medications. That equates to nearly 275,000 people that die each year due to drug-related adverse events. Unfortunately, our seniors are the most susceptible to these numbers.” — Dr. DeLon Canterbury [0:17:44]

“It’s been such a blessing to know that I can be relied on and give a talk or give a presentation and empower people with the knowledge of a pharmacist but also show how versatile our roles can be in this profession.” — Dr. DeLon Canterbury [0:26:40]

“I learned that in business, capital is supposed to be fluid. Yes, you want to put some, pay yourself, put some in the business but your money is meant to help you make more money.” — Dr. DeLon Canterbury [0:38:06]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

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

This week, I had a chance to sit down with Dr. DeLon Canterbury, founder and CEO of GeriatRx. A few of my favorite moments from this episode are hearing DeLon recount his professional setbacks as a new practitioner and how those motivated him in his journey to start and lead a business, why he decided that the middle of a pandemic was a good time to start this business and how his personal and professional “why” has shaped the work that he is doing at GeriatRx and his mission to help solve the multibillion dollar problem of mismanaged medications that lead to preventable deaths in the senior population.

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

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

[INTERVIEW]

[0:01:26.8] TU: DeLon, welcome to the show.

[0:01:28.5] DC: Hey Tim, appreciate you having me on. Thanks so much, how are you doing?

[0:01:32.8] TU: I am well, it’s a great day here in Ohio, I’m excited to have the opportunity to share your story with the YFP community as we continue on this journey of featuring more and more pharmacy entrepreneurs. To highlight the various ways of PharmD can be used, as I’ve said before on the show, the PharmD in my opinion is just the starting point and I hope this story with DeLon is a great example of that and I’m hopeful for those that are listening, it will provide some motivation and inspiration.

DeLon, before we get into the why and what of the work that you’re doing as the CEO and founder of GeriatRx, tell us more about your decision to enter pharmacy school, the profession and what you’ve been up to since graduating from UNC?

[0:02:14.3] DC: Yeah man, I would love to. You know, my family, they’re actually from the Caribbean so my parents are Guyanese and when we grew up in Brooklyn, they came as immigrants in the 80s. You know, a lot of my family members would use herbal products and remedies to treat common colds or constipation and we generally call them bitters and we would just boil a bunch of tea pods and we would feel better even though it tasted gross.

My mom became this master herbologist, I don’t know how she did it but she grew up with all of these plants in our backyard. She got very used to knowing what to use and which plant and what situation, what indication. For the most part, they seemed to work, you know? We lived off of Tiger Balm and Vicks and these bitters that we would drink to purify the blood. That got me super interested in the world of medicine and healing and knowing the science behind these plants that lead to the drugs that we have today.

Try to get that nerdy side of how can I use this ability to understand, you know, the science and chemicals to treat and heal was what grew me to pharmacy. That background I attribute a lot of it to her and then of course, it does help to actually be good at chemistry and some of the math, but what I like the most about pharmacy before I got into UNC was really just the ability to know what all the drugs are doing.

I mean, it’s simple and plain but that was the best part of it, and it affirmed that if I can use this power to heal then this has to be my journey.

[0:03:57.0] TU: You graduate from UNC in 2014, here we are in 2022 and we’re going to talk about the business and the work that you’re doing with GeriatRx but of course, we got that time in between, 2014 and current state. Tell us more about goals when you are leaving pharmacy school and some of the initial work that you were doing as a new practitioner.

[0:04:17.7] DC: For sure, I was heavily interested in becoming an MPH PGY2 to work in the public health sector as a pharmacist and so I was interested in admin residencies, I was interested in being an administrator in a hospital setting. But unfortunately, I did not match. I mean, I had some stellar interviews and it took some final rounds here and there but no, nothing really matched for me and this was while I was working as a grad intern with Walgreens because I worked there for a year prior.

Here I am, literally at Walgreens, filling some scripts on a busy day and I get the email saying, “You did not match on match day” and I’m like, “Oh damn, this is – I’m stuck here, I’ve been trying to escape.” I was mad for a couple of days, got some drinks and realized, “Well, if this is what God has in plan for me then hey, I’m just going to keep doing it.”

Lo and behold, after what, six months of floating all over North Carolina, I was promoted to a pharmacy manager. This was back in 2015, 2014 in a really quick amount of time in Henderson North Carolina. I was there for about two and a half years and was able to move the metrics, was able to drive a team and meet goals but after a while, it got a little bit taxing on my mental state and in particularly in this high volume, high traffic store, it was rural, I had pretty much 50% geriatric patients.

That was some majority population there but in addition to that, you can see some of the health disparities among my Latino black patients, as well as my elderly geriatric patients and they’re the ones that had the most duplicate therapies, errors, cost barrier issues that all could have been avoided with just a switch of a drug and that got me thinking, one, I don’t know a thing about geriatric pharmacy at all. I went back, I said, “All right, let me get this credential because I want to learn more to better serve my patients.” I did that on my own time but –

[0:06:34.7] TU: Was that the CGP or –

[0:06:36.6] DC: Yeah, it was the CGP, Board Certified Geriatric Pharmacy degree. I got that in 2017, took me about two, three years to get it but truth be told man, the retail setting, you kept seeing the same thing day in, day out. Here we are taking care of people for metrics. That really isn’t taking care of people. It’s just what your boss want you to do and it doesn’t align with you and your spirit really as a pharmacist, it’s now what you came to school for.

We’re not here to be glorified cashiers and I’m not condescending anyone in the field, but that’s how we were perceived and unfortunately, you kept seeing the same issues with not just med errors but just the broken healthcare system as a whole. I mean, majority of care is at the urgent care in this small town. It’s like, those are the majority of your scripts and you start wondering, there’s got to be a better way.

If the one family doctor dies in town, half of the people are in turmoil, they’ve seen this one doctor for years and years and they had to rely on other sources, and it becomes a bit of a nightmare. And this is where we had to survive in that store, but lo and behold man, this journey got me down a really dark road. A dark road of not just chronic anxiety but literally just depression as a whole.

I mean, went in, was just super robotic, I would put on a face for my team but deep down, I hated every moment of my life, every second, every day. The one or few times you get that patient that says, “Thank you so much for being here.” It warms your day, it will always warm your day, you’re here for your patients. But it does not compare to the metrics, the pips, the disciplinary actions, the “You missed your flu shot by goal by five, so no pizza for you.” #pizzanotworking.

It doesn’t have to be this way and I felt, as a whole, I lost my soul in the pharmacy profession.

[0:08:34.8] TU: We’re going to come back to that because when you shared that with me DeLon, “I lost my soul in the pharmacy profession,” that idea of falling out of love with the profession, right? We all went into the profession with some aspirations, you know, personally and professionally, but also that love for, how can we better serve our patients and community?

I think for many listening, an opportunity to reinvigorate, reflect upon that love for the profession, it’s a great time to be doing that as we hear your story. I want to go back though, as you reflect back on your journey of not getting into residency and you mentioned potentially of the MPH advance programs, PDUI1 PDUI2 admin master types of program.

These are very intense, well-defined career paths and if you would have gotten into those programs, you know, I think for many, that script is written to director of pharmacy, chief pharmacy officer. And DeLon might be doing something very different and obviously, that didn’t go that path and led to the business opportunity.

As you look back on that journey of not getting into residency, what many students listening might consider their top and most important short-term professional goal? How did that experience – perhaps in the moment, leading to an illusion of failure but how did that experience help shape you as a person and ultimately as a business owner?

[0:09:52.9] DC: Oh my gosh, look, I can easily say, I was pretty darn depressed about that too and I mean, I was so confident. They were like, “Oh my god, here’s my cell, I’ll call you and speak and just ask anything, we want to see you in the future.” It was like, almost intentional how much they were like, “Oh yeah, we’ll see you soon” you know? When people give you that assurance and it was just crickets and it’s like, “Nah, bro, you’re not it.”

That was heartbreaking man, it killed my ego, killed my confidence a little bit, but man, I cannot overstate how much I learned about being an actual manager, being an actual driving force for a team, learning different soft skills and communication, understanding that being in a pharmacy is not just pushing scripts, you’re literally learning how to motivate, energize, drive goals, bring the best out of others even though you feel like complete crap.

I mean, you have to deal with it every day and you really do grow and build relationships with the people next to you. That was an intangible skill that I grossly underestimated while learning during this time in retail. Not only did it provide me a little bit of sustenance, pay off some student debt, we all have that. Also, it just taught me how to be a better DeLon when it came to management.

It put those tools into play. Don’t get me wrong, when I’m in the trenches, you’re not thinking, “Oh man, I’m a great manager.” You don’t care, you just go about your day and live your life and looking back, I had to learn so much about just being a team leader and leading by service. That was part of what helped me grow GeriatRx because I was all about community involvement, I was all about going to middle schools and doing health fairs or career days or drug awareness, like drug abuse awareness programs for the boys and girls club, all the things that I really liked in pharmacy school, I ended up doing in that job and it gave me the power to build some deep connections and just grow.

I subconsciously didn’t realize, I do that now with GeriatRx.

[0:12:11.9] TU: Yeah, when you just shared, you know, it taught me to be a better DeLon, that was why I specifically said the illusion of failure, right? Because I think in those moments, the weight of that is real, you felt it, right? Even in some of those days you reflect back on, in the moment, were you at the bench chain, “Hey, I’m becoming a better DeLon today” Probably not always, right? The compound effect of those experiences and learning, so important and obviously, the application to what you’re doing now.

DeLon, you mentioned leading by service, that’s something that’s been an interest and a passion of yours. When we first met, I was asking more about your career journey, you shared with me your experience volunteering and getting involved in different opportunities. Tell us more about what those opportunities were and how this was a pivot point that reinvigorated your passion and love for pharmacy and the role that a pharmacist can and should play in our broken healthcare system?

[0:13:05.0] DC: Man, for sure. You know, one component of healthcare that I think is grossly underestimated is the power of patient advocacy and of course, we do it when it comes to “Yeah, you should ask about this.” Little things here and there in our clinical settings. But truly teaching a culture of how patients can advocate for themselves can honestly improve health outcomes and build their confidence and trust in you as a pharmacist but in the system.

What I found with this broken system was, we weren’t doing our jobs to fully applicate. I got a little bit, I told you, depressed about that, but I found, thank god, a local nonprofit called Senior Pharmacist. This was while I was still in Henderson, moving on to Durum. They were a team of pharmacists and social workers that strictly helped people 60 and up in Durum County to not only enroll in appropriate Medicare plans, but they were this ship site for the county, needing state health insurance and information program.

They literally understand all the ramifications of Medicare and Medicaid within that state and county which, guess what, we don’t learn that in school, right? I don’t know any of that stuff and even when I hear Medicare, all I know is like coverage and deductible, donut hole, yeah, that’s it. That’s all I got.

This not only forced me to become a certified trained SHIP counselor, that means that I’m legally allowed to basically guide patients on what Medicare plans and Medicaid plans and what options are available for patients who are low income. This just changed my whole perspective of complete patient advocacy because here I am doing brown bags and net reviews and deep prescribing initiatives with this amazing nonprofit that’s not only saving patients on average $400 to $700 a year per person who are on fixed incomes, right? They’re literally making like, 18k a year if not less.

These are 65-year-olds who have already dedicated their lives to their healthcare, to our working force. This team of people saves thousands of dollars. In addition, they have their own prescription copay card. When people hit the gap, they can use a senior pharmacist copay card in addition to their Medicare, build them together and get the price cheaper. Because you and I both know that gap can be detrimental to people.

Again, this was like, complete opposite of Walgreens, I mean, we’re getting people off of drugs, we’re saving them money and the best part is, we are tracking things in real time because they were partnered with Duke University Hospital system.

Any communication was communicated in epic and documented and there was a drug change, there was a PA, we would do it for them, I mean, it was like an all-encompassing service, a concierge service so to speak, for low-income people who otherwise would have been lost to our healthcare system.

My god, that blew my mind and to this day, I still volunteer with them because that’s how much they mean to me and that’s how much I have actually based my business model off of what they do, which is cost of what it’s deep prescribing and patient advocacy. You really don’t know how to advocate if you don’t understand all the intricacies of Medicare and you know, parody levels, like, how low are you, what benefits are out there for you and I tell you, we don’t learn this in school.

It changed the way that I’ve perceived paraenesis and social workers and how the two are both needed to really mesh those barriers and social determinants of care. I love it, it’s been a driving force for why I’m here today.

[0:17:09.8] TU: Great stuff DeLon. We’ll link to Senior PharmAssist in the show notes for folks that want to learn more, whether they’re in the area and perhaps an opportunity for volunteering or folks that just want to see another model and perhaps find something, start something similar in their own area as well.

Let’s take a peek behind the curtain at your business that you started, GeriatRx, we’ll link to the website in the show notes, it’s geriatrix.org. DeLon, what is the problem that you are trying to solve when it comes to the business at GeriatRx?

[0:17:44.3] DC: I firmly believe that our seniors are grossly over-medicated and we waste nearly 528 billion dollars a year on mismanaged medications. That equates to nearly 275,000 people that die each year due to drug related adverse events. Unfortunately, our seniors are the most susceptible to these numbers and that is really the driving force on why I specifically help older adults get off of harmful medications, high-risk medications and not only focus on cost savings but focus on reducing the needs of our healthcare system to respond to mismanaged medications.

We’re directly and indirectly saving money but the key to GeriatRx is providing a holistic concierge, telehealth-based service where we use genetic testing, we’re here with deprescribing methods and of course, we use the patient advocacy piece by not only addressing sole determinants of health by looking for cost savings, food barriers, ability to reach needed services but we communicate things in real time to their doctor. We’re literally closing the loop that’s much needed in our senior population who sadly, I feel have been left to the wayside when it comes to our healthcare system.

[0:19:16.3] TU: Tell us more, DeLon, about your personal “why” specifically as it relates to your experience with your grandmother who is suffering with personal pain from unnecessary prescribing and the influence that that had, on starting the business and the work that you’re doing.

[0:19:29.6] DC: Yeah, I’m glad you asked. Yeah, my grandmother, Mildred, she was actually in the nursing home in New York for most of my college years. This happened when I was a junior/senior in college, thinking about pharmacy school. She was in a nursing home for a minute and we started noticing some changes in her behavior. She just was kind of forgetting her grandkids, my mom was a little nervous about that and it got to the point where in this nursing home, she was given the medication that completely spiraled her dementia out of control.

We at the time had no reason why she was declining so rapidly. The irony is, that very same nursing home kicked her out because she was having behavior issues. My parents are pretty much given the choice to basically invite her back home with them in Georgia and essentially raise another child because they both have full time jobs and now they have to be full time caregivers and balance with their work life schedules how to take care of my mom’s mom. This was a tough time for them.

My mom was a teacher who has to commute and my dad luckily had his own business and he was able to be flexible but for four months, my parents kept seeing her worsen. She was wandering out of the house in the middle of the night, she would snap at my mom, she would literally ring the doorbell at three AM and asked where she is.

Things that our parent’s worst nightmare to see who was once the rock of your family decline mentally. Again, we didn’t know what was going on for months and it got bad that we had to start getting home health services, we had to basically get some round the clock attention for her and put her into another nursing home because my parents couldn’t do it.

Again, more money wasted. Four months into it, luckily, a retail pharmacist, I believe it was Rite Aid, found that she was on Ziprasidone and she was on it quite a while but it had no indication and for those who don’t know, there is an FDA Blackbox indication for any anti-psychotic for dementia behavioral symptoms, which was why it was given to her which is wrong, it’s inappropriate and in fact, harmful.

Not only is there a risk of increased debt but of course, there’s a risk of, guess what? Delirium, dementia, acting out, having behavior issues. It wasn’t until this pharmacist, four months down the road advocated and pretty much demanded the doctor, stop it, who was still the prescriber in New York.

Two weeks later, her symptoms resolved. She remembered who she was, she was calm, she was just fine. Imagine how many families deal with this and don’t even second guess the medications that their loved ones are on. How many people spend tons of money and don’t even think that, “Well, the doctor ordered it so it must be safe.” This conception that patients have is they don’t think twice about the meds.

If they do, they’re afraid to speak up so I said, “You know what? I’m going to be that voice. I am going to be that advocate. I am going to provide a concierge personalized service where I do that for you and you don’t have to worry or have any doubts that it’s the actual litigations.” And that’s why I focus on senior patients even though I can help any older adult who’s medicated, I still do that too but this is such a passion project for me because I don’t want anyone to go through what my parents went through or what Mildred went through, who honestly could have died.

Just to be frank, she died, she lived until 90, which was fantastic but I got a text during my last day of rotation fourth year that she died as I was getting my presentation from my final rotation. You know, I knew she was at peace but she could have easily died during my time in pharmacy school if not earlier because of that pharmacist who saved her life.

[0:23:38.1] TU: Shout out to that pharmacist if they happen to be listening, what a cool testament to pharmacists who are in the frontlines being diligent about identifying some of those and raising the red flag, right? Sometimes in the midst of you’ve talked about the business, the chaos that can be the expectations, it takes time not only to identify but also be willing to kind of address and enter into the messiness that that can be sometimes.

DeLon, you highlighted I think and articulated very well the problem with mismanagement occasions, the need for deeper prescribing, the impact that mismanagement of medications can have on preventable deaths, so then tell us more about from a business standpoint as you’ve built out the work that you’re doing at GeriatRx, who is the customer and what are the products and services that you’re either offering or that you’re working on building out?

[0:24:26.0] DC: Sure, so customers tend to be frankly the caregivers, who are I would say the most neglected person in this loop of health care shenanigans. The caregivers are the ones who have pretty much minimal resources, they’re usually condescended to when it comes to the doctor’s office, they’re not listened to, they don’t have advocates and I figured why not be the clinical advocate for them.

I partner with caregiver support groups, I work with nursing homes, basically anyone who is senior facing. It could be an adult day care center and I give them the ways that they can advocate for themselves and their loved ones. I talk about de-prescribing. I particularly do a good deal of social media marketing. You know, a lot of the caregivers are on Facebook groups so I provide some solace to some of their questions on, “Hey, we’re starting Risperdal. What do you think?” “No, don’t do it.”

I do that a lot just to be a resource and I’ve gotten clients literally from my feedback, so you know, I do consulting and with telehealth. It’s interesting how the reach can be spread but again, there is a fine line on what you can and can’t do but even so, genetic testing has given me some versatility so patients who are interested in getting the best out of their meds who want to understand side effects, their genes, how it works with their bodies, I get a lot of support from the caregiver community.

Being in this space has allowed me to work with the Alzheimer’s Association, the Parkinson’s Association of Carolina, the North Carolina Dementia Support Group, you know I am creating content with Emery and we’ve done some Dementia Black Caregiver Supports with churches with an initiative to inform local churches on signs of dementia because we fail to remember that Blacks and Latinos actually have doubled the risk of dementia.

It usually is more undiagnosed in that population, so again, the social barriers to care play a part and so I have strategic partners across the states. It’s been such a blessing to know that I can be relied on and give a talk or give a presentation and empower people with the knowledge of a pharmacist but also show how versatile our roles can be in this profession.

[0:26:55.6] TU: That’s great stuff DeLon. I love the work that you’re doing, the passion that’s coming through here in the microphone that I’m sensing and I suspect those listening are feeling as well. One other story I want to highlight, you shared with us prior to the interview and this story relates to helping a family not only get off of 36 medications, let me just say that again, 36 medications down to eight but also being able to testify on behalf of the patient and prove that she was suffering from overmedication, which had led to her dramatic decline and behavior cognition attitude and chronic symptoms.

Tell us more about this example and probably how it’s unfortunately too common and obviously, the motivation that that’s provided to you as you continue to focus and grow in the business?

[0:27:40.2] DC: Yeah, I’d love to. That case means so much to me, that was literally my first leap of faith into this business, into GeriatRx, that happened in the middle of COVID like July-August and so, this was me hitting the ground running. I’m putting ads and basically talking everywhere I can on Whatsapp, Group Me, Next Door, Facebook. I’m saying, “Hey, I’m doing this” and believe it or not, this case was actually a referral from a fellow pharmacist.

She wasn’t a geriatric pharmacist but she felt something was off and so when she sent me that med list, I had a heart attack. There are like four antipsychotics, there was a Benzo, there was Dilaudid, why is she on Dilaudid? There was Benadryl, there’s all types of madness going on. I was like, “Oh yeah, we got a case here” so I said, “Hey, let’s just do a med review. Let me see what I can do.”

This is a 70-year-old African-American woman, barely 90 pounds and unfortunately, her caregiver described her as being a walking zombie and this was for months, just depressed, cathartic, irritable and I very much felt that my symptoms my grandma experienced were just like hers. This was going on for a month, I do the med review and I say, “Hey look, we got to create an action plan with the provider to get her off this things safely.”

Not just cold turkey stop but taper as we can and they agreed. They hired me to do the review but in the middle of me doing the review, like literally the week before the court case, which guess what? I didn’t know what’s happening, they’re like, “Hey DeLon, can you appear as a medical expert and give that testimony you gave about your med review to a jury of our peers?” and I was like, “Whoa, uhh, I don’t know. Do I need a lawyer?”

“No, no, just do what you got to do” and so I prayed on it man. I was like, “Okay, fine. I’ll do it” and so they hired me to serve as a medical expert in court and in this moment, I’ll tell you Tim, this was the ugliest litigation I’ve ever seen. I’ve never seen a lawyer try to make this sweet woman look stupid. That was just evil, it was literally seeing someone make her look like, “You can’t even remember your own accounts so of course she need to be put into a nursing home.”

Unfortunately, the family was divided on the perspective of the medications being the problem. The majority of the family wanted to throw her into a nursing home, why? Here’s the ugly part, she had assets. Her husband was wealthy, she had a beautiful home, they wanted to seize her assets, her bank accounts and everything else and throw her into a home so that they can get the resources.

This is the ugly side of senior care because this happens a lot and unfortunately, the daughter who’s the only one who believed that it was the meds was the one who hired me. I did that favor, I played it my case, I gave my review, I talked about anticholinergic toxicities, I talked about sedative properties, I talked about overmedicating. I mean, the statistics of just being on more than five all in front of court, this is like the first time a pharmacists is in court to me.

I mean, I didn’t even know this is a thing. In fact, that could be a whole business model side, that’s for free guys, you can have that yourselves. It’s actually free, you can do that so I did that. The jury just was stunned, they even tried to cross examine me like, “What do you think about this report from the psychologist?” I mean, first of all, this was six months prior. Second of all, what you’re reading is proving my point that she is overmedicated.

Anyway, long story short, but the point is, they tried to be so evil. I was like, “I know it’s their job but I was like, damn dude, you’re making this woman, you are literally asking her to remember a date two years ago if she recalls that. I don’t remember what I ate yesterday, you’re trying to make her look like this woman who just has to be in a home.” Needless to say, I get my case, I talk about the meds.

I give my full report, the jury completely dropped the case. They completely dropped the case and they completely agreed that she was being overmedicated and they were able to keep all their assets and I shed a tear, man. She called me two hours when I got home, “DeLon, we won. We won! We won!” I was like, “Yes! Yo, yes” and that was God’s sign to me of “Yo, this is what you need to do for the rest of your life.”

For the rest of your life, I don’t care what and I was like, “You know what? You’re right because this was the happiest I have been in my career and just in my life, you know?” To have that level of impact, the keeper out of the nursing home and then the best part is a week later, we meet with the doctor, I gave all my recommendations, he’s like, “Okay, this is great, let’s do it” and a months’ time passes, a month and a half, she’s down to eight.

She’s down to eight and her symptoms did resolve, she did get better, less constipation, less irritability, she’s only on eight meds and she’s still going strong. I talked to them last week during the holidays and they’re doing great. Again, it was a blessing and that was my affirmation that taking this leap of faith is what I had to do, it’s my calling.

[0:33:06.4] TU: That’s awesome stuff and it’s inspiring as that example and the story is, it just makes me wonder DeLon, how many more are out there that don’t have DeLon in their corner, that don’t have a pharmacist that is advocating or family member that’s raising the concern that leads to the pharmacists who is recognizing and advocating on their behalf, right? You know, I think it’s just for me individually, it’s just such a great example and I’m inspired by the connection of the work that you’re doing at GeriatRx with your compelling vision and why, right?

I firmly believe that every great business, side hustle, project, whatever you want to call it, non-profit ultimately is solving a problem where there’s real pain, we’ve outlined that and as one that you personally care about and feel conflicted about and you’ve got both of those here, which I think is the recipe for success. Some folks might be wondering why on the YFP podcast are we talking about entrepreneurship. What’s the connection of personal finance?

I think as I think about the intersection of pharmacy and entrepreneurship and I am using entrepreneurship in the broadest sense, you know that could be folks that are internal within an organization that are kind of moving and shaking and identifying the opportunities for change, it could be somebody starting a non-profit, it could be starting your own for profit business but really, there’s a couple of reasons why I think this intersection and conversation that we’re having is so important.

Number one, there’s passion that I have through my own journey that the pharmacists I mentioned earlier really is the starting point I believe to a multitude of different pathways that someone might take. And I often hear from folks that listen to the show that say, “Hey, I feel stuck” or I hear from students that say, “I feel like I just have one or two options that I’m aware of” and so my hope is, is folks here, DeLon’s story, your other stories that some of the door start to open of the ideas of possibility that may be out there.

Then second is, how often have folks come to me and said, “Tim, I have a great idea for a side hustle, for a business, for a non-profit but…” insert lots of financial pain points, right? I have $200,000 of student loan debt, I’ve got this financial stress or I feel like I am behind on retirement saving and you know, this business endeavor is going to take some risk and perhaps, even take some capital contribution. It may certainly have an impact on the financial plan.

The reason I give that background DeLon is, as I reflect on my own experience and talk with other pharmacy entrepreneurs, I come to appreciate the connection between one having a strong personal financial foundation and that laying the ground work for them being able to approach a business idea, with the confidence and the attention that it deserves.

For you individually, tell us more about how you were able to get on solid financial footing such that you felt comfortable and ready to ultimately leave on the table what can be any six figured job that’s out there that would of course, pay the bills plus some but to be able to pursue this passion and interest that you have in the business?

[0:35:58.1] DC: Yeah, I think I’m still trying to find that. No, I’m joking but honestly, I didn’t expect to be fired in the middle of COVID. I stepped down from Walgreens in 20 – gosh, what was the year before COVID? Jeez, it’s been that long, 2019, I stepped down in 2019. I honestly took a pay cut because I wanted to work at the poison control and I would be paid, it was like a $50,000 pay cut.

I was burned out with Walgreens so they let me just step down and do something different, so I worked as a poison control pharmacist for like, I don’t know, $34 an hour and I loved it. I loved it but I ended up working a bit too much overtime because guess what? The poison control fields of the COVID calls and this was like in the beginning of the pandemic, so we didn’t even had any idea really much about COVID but we, a team of 12, ended up fielding the state of North Carolina’s nearly averaging 700, 800 calls a day.

Of course, not normal so that honestly burned me out. I honestly fell asleep at the desk after that period of time of still being exhausted and for that time period of five minutes falling asleep because it was policy, I was fired. And this was in the middle of COVID and because I was fired, I couldn’t file for unemployment so I was even more livid and I was like, “God, again, another step down into a dream job and I get fired. It’s just fantastic.”

I didn’t have as much of a financial plan in that regard for starting a business, however, I did have good financial standing and that was the best part I would say of working with Walgreens was having those buckets in reserve, whether it be savings, your 401(k), mutual funds, stocks, liquid assets, I had those and so, I did have to dip into the funds and guess what? I didn’t feel great about it.

I didn’t like having to rely on the things that I worked so hard to save but I learned that in business, capital is supposed to be fluid. Yes, you want to put some, pay yourself, put some in the business but your money is meant to help you make more money and it always takes money and some assets to make more money. It’s just the truth and I had to learn that the hard way so, I had some stocks that I can just sell and guess what?

I was riding a Tesla wave, it was just I have no footage of disclaimer so this closed but anyway, I rode Tesla and that made money during COVID and I was able to not only save but I was able to put that into the business and so the first thing I did was start getting – of course, I told my financial adviser. If you don’t have a financial adviser by now, talk to them, get your mind right because you got to have one in this game.

You really do because you don’t know it all and we’re not perfect at everything, so get one, but I have a financial adviser. I told him what I was doing. He was like, “Okay, let’s move from this front, let’s do some things here” and that helped me have a little bit of a guiding compass so I’m not sweating bullets to make the next paycheck. I also worked a little bit part-time, independent to help out with COVID shots, so that helped me with some income but guys, have some type of capital.

Have some type of plan for real, like I know it wasn’t as cookie cutter for me and I was forced into starting GeriatRx, which thankfully happened. But I found that having those buckets, the mutual funds, the savings, the stocks, allowed me to have that flexibility not to worry as much and so that gave me room to make mistakes because guess what? You’re going to make mistakes in business that will cost you money.

You’re going to undercharge for your services because you just want to do it and you realized, “Dang! I could have charged 10X that and it would have had the same effect. I would have felt better about it.” I remember one of my first packages, I sold for like what? I was like $1,800, which feels good, right? But it was for six months of service. I was getting paid $300 a month so that was like what? A dollar a day? 10 dollars a day? That’s crazy.

Anyway, I had to learn some things about how to better articulate my value and that takes some time to learn, we have a whole new business model. Again, it was critical that I had those buckets in place. I didn’t want to dip into them but I’ve gotten to a point now where I’m seeing it as what am I loosing if I don’t do this. What’s the cost of inaction? What’s the cost of not making that move, not getting that mentor, not investing in yourself, not growing yourself and your brand in a relatively quick amount of time?

I mean, here I am on your podcast, it’s only been a year and a half since I started GeriatRx, so I think it is part of the plan. It does help to have that financial capital but keep in mind that money is fully, you can make money doing all types of stuff. You could write, you could blog, you could review, I don’t know, charts. You don’t have to feel so confined to that job especially now with the great resignation, COVID has woken up people to doing better for themselves.

This has been a time where some of the most businesses have launched, really in the height of COVID, so don’t feel like you have to be stuck. Well, I had, guess what? I had debt too, are you kidding me? I went to every annuancy out of state so I know I got more debt than all of you all, but jokes, but still, you got to see things as gradual progression, fall forward, fail forward and keep pushing, keep moving and don’t – money is important.

Take care of your bills, take care of your family but know that if you’re investing in some things that you may do for free that the value and return down the road is going to be worth more and that’s something that I did not know. I did not know that at first and it really has grown my business with strategic partners and referrals and ongoing projects to this day.

[0:42:16.6] TU: Great wisdom DeLon, love the mindset that you have and you know, I’ve gotten a chance to know you a little bit here, a year and a half into the business but I would suspect if we would have talked a year and a half ago, you know, that same confidence, that same mindset, that same view and approach on, “Hey, what can I invest in that’s going to help me continue to grow” right? More of that abundance mindset I suspect has been an area of growth for you over the last year and a half.

Lots of takeaway there from the last few minutes and as we talk about so much at YFP, having that strong financial foundation, right? You mentioned savings and capitals, options, options, options, right? You never know what life is going to throw at you. It could be a business idea that you want to pursue, it could be a job, hours get reduced, you get let go, it could be a sick family member, an emergency. It could be an opportunity, right?

Having those options is so important. DeLon, this interview has been fantastic. I’m so excited to get it out to our community. I think it is going to be a great source of inspiration and motivation to many. Where is the best place for our listeners to go to learn more about you and the work that you’re doing with GeriatRx?

[0:43:17.9] DC: Yeah, I am all over social media, so Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, you can just follow me @geriatrx, of course my website is geriatrx.org. You can always get me there, my cellphone is literally on the website, you can email me at [email protected] but I’m most accessible on all of my social media, so I respond in any way, shape or form but LinkedIn has been probably the most easiest way to go and get in touch with me.

[0:43:52.9] TU: Great stuff, we’ll link to all the social, website, email in the show notes. DeLon, again, thank you for your time. I really appreciate it.

[0:43:59.7] DC: Absolute pleasure Tim, have a good one.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:44:02.5] ANNOUNCER: As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and it is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information of the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment.

Thank you again for your support of the YFP Real Estate Investing Podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

[END]

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YFP 238: The Mindset, Habits, and Behaviors of Pharmacy Influencers and Entrepreneurs

Posted on January 13, 2022November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

The Mindset, Habits, and Behaviors of Pharmacy Influencers and Entrepreneurs

CEO of Kay Pharmacy and host of The Business Pharmacy Podcast, Mike Koelzer, joins Tim Ulbrich to discuss the mindset, habits, and behaviors of successful pharmacy influencers and entrepreneurs.

About Today’s Guest

Mike Koelzer is the host of “The Business of Pharmacy” podcast. In addition to hosting the podcast, Mike owns an independent pharmacy in Grand Rapids, Michigan. When not working, Mike enjoys spending time with his wife and 10 children, following the news, and improving his sight-reading at the piano.

Episode Summary

Today, Tim Ulbrich welcomes Mike Koelzer, CEO of Kay Pharmacy and host of The Business of Pharmacy Podcast, to the YFP Podcast to discuss lessons learned from his experiences interviewing pharmacy leaders. Mike has interviewed over 100 well-respected pharmacy influencers and entrepreneurs on his show. Today, he shares his takeaways on the mindset, habits, and behaviors of these individuals as they strive to be the best versions of themselves and create positive change in the profession of pharmacy! Mike shares some common threads his guests have in how they overcome fear and take calculated risks. You’ll get a peek into the daily habits of successful pharmacy influencers and entrepreneurs that lead to a mindset of success and whether those individuals believe that their success is attributed to luck or hard work. Hear him recount his professional pharmacy journey of more than 30 years in a family business and how he manages to balance his time while running a business, hosting a podcast, being a husband, and father to 10 children. This motivational episode is for anyone unsettled with the status quo and itching to take it to the next level personally and professionally.

Key Points From This Episode

How the family business started.
Hear about the creation of The Business of Pharmacy podcast.
Mike’s approach to maximizing his time each day, and how to use lists more efficiently.
What common threads Mike’s guests have, striving to achieve something great.
How focus and goal-setting are like sailing.
The amazing ways we are now able to receive feedback faster and pivot quicker.
Mike shares some actionable advice about how to get started with any new idea.
The general outlook most guests have on the pharmacy profession.
Talking about luck versus hard work.
A common thing that takes people out of just being satisfied with the status quo.
Mike’s strong advice for those who have dreams but are struggling financially.

Highlights

“Start focusing on something. And whether it’s a day later or a week later or a month later, you see that goal changing, [and] change it.” — Mike Koelzer, PharmD [0:13:32]

“You don’t have to monetize something right away for it to be valuable for your career. Sometimes it’s just getting off of TikTok and getting off the couch and putting out valuable content instead of just reading the content.” — Mike Koelzer, PharmD [0:36:19]

“If you’re married, make that relationship the most important thing in the world to you.” — Mike, Koelzer, PharmD [0:40:50]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] TU: Hey, everybody. Tim Ulbrich here. 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 Mike Koelzer, CEO of Kay Pharmacy and host of The Business of Pharmacy Podcast, as Mike has interviewed over 100 well respected Pharmacy Influencers and Entrepreneurs on his show. Today, I asked Mike about the takeaways he has had, from hearing about the mindset habits and behaviors of these individuals as they strive to be the best versions of themselves and leave a positive dent in the profession of pharmacy.

This episode is for anyone, students, residents, seasoned practitioners that are unsettled with the status quo and itching to take it to the next level personally and professionally. A few of my favorite moments from the episode are hearing Mike recount his own professional journey of 30 plus years in a family business, how he manages to balance his time running a business, hosting a podcast and being a husband and father to 10 children and his takeaways from interviewing influential leaders within our profession, on how they overcome fear and take calculated risks. Their daily habits that lead to a mindset of success and how they view how much of their success has been luck versus hard work.

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

[INTERVIEW]

[00:01:57] TU: Mike, welcome to the show.

[00:01:59] MK: Thank you, Tim.

[00:02:00] TU: Really excited to have the opportunity to share your story with the YFP Community, as we continue on this journey of trying to feature more and more pharmacy entrepreneurs on the podcast, to highlight some of the ways that a PharmD can be used. I like to say the PharmD is the starting point. It’s not the finish line and our interview today talking about your career journey and that of other pharmacists that you have interviewed is really a great, great example of that. So Mike, before we get into some of the lessons that you’ve learned from various influencers and entrepreneurs that you’ve interviewed on The Business of Pharmacy Podcast, tell us about your career journey as a pharmacist, including the role that you have currently as CEO of Kay Pharmacy.

[00:02:42] MK: Well, as my dad would say, our business is a family business, but it runs best on having one benevolent dictator. So it’s questionable if I’m that person, but my grandpa started and my dad was there until he passed on there. I’m the only family person to speak of. I have some children that work there, but I was never a fan of going into this with my siblings. That’s part of the reason maybe why I chose pharmacists, because I came from a family of 12 children and I was down at the bottom of the children as far as age goes.

So I maybe subconsciously – once I realized that none of my siblings were going into it, and also that my dad would then be at the age where he would not be around for a long time, because it’s okay to have a partner, but if I don’t need it. And I thought that maybe five or 10 years would be enough and not a 30 year period with him. I went into pharmacy, took a while. Tim, you and I talked on my podcast about bouncing around different things. I finally got my pharmacy degree, which is a five year degree back then, in seven years, I guess. I had done a few different things in there.

So basically, I joined the family business and worked with my dad for a while till he passed away. So I’ve been running the show for the last 20 some years, where I typical corner pharmacy. I suppose that’s what pulled me out of that. Doing some of this stuff, taking advantage of social and podcasts and things to maybe break out more into the world, because I knew that my area of influence, I suppose, was fairly small in my city. I think that’s what broke me out into the internet more with the podcast.

[00:04:29] TU: My time is something I often think about as a father of four. I can’t stack up as your father-of-10. I’ve come to really appreciate with a young family that that time is finite. We all have the same amount of time available each day. I think when you stop and think about that, that we all have the same amount of time available each day. It really at least for me has changed my mindset around, how am I making the most of this day. I think for many, especially me, pharmacists that are more task-oriented, that have developed ways to become more efficient with their time so that they can complete more tasks. But I have found that that often ends up in a spiral of just more and more tasks to complete.

However, I think if there’s finding ways that we can create more time, as Rory Vaden says, and one of my favorite books Procrastinate on Purpose, doing things today that save time tomorrow, and therefore increases our time available. As someone who owns their own business, as someone who’s a father of 10 kids, hostess of a successful podcast, what has been your approach for making the most of each day and ultimately, the limited amount of time that you have?

[00:05:41] MK: Dropping a book in here early, David Allen, Getting Things Done. That was a huge book for me. What I loved about what he teaches is that, the real reason for lists, which are a very important part of my day, a very active do-list. The main reason for that is not to get things done. It’s to know what you’re not getting done exactly when you’re taking that free time to create, and whether that’s creating a podcast or exercising or practicing piano or just screwing off, but you know exactly what you’re not doing. Then when it’s time to come back and get to work, you’re ready to roll.

The do-list for me has never been so much a list of difficult things to get done or monotonous things to get done, but it’s allowed me to have that free time and those goals that I have, go right onto that list. So I have a goal every day, it says practice the piano and do this and do that. Even the fun, relaxing goals are tasks out. Again, the whole thing is not to necessarily get things done. It’s to allow that free space in your head, that creative space to do things, knowing that your important tasks will be waiting for you when you get back.

[00:07:08] TU: Absolutely right. I think there’s freedom in being able to see those things on paper, sometimes giving yourself permission to not do things, but also to make sure you’ve got the right things prioritize as well. I know for me, and it sounds largely for you as well, like getting that out of our head onto paper, so we can start to see it and prioritize it as well.

Mike, as you mentioned, I recently came on your show Business Pharmacy Podcast, we’ll link to that in the show notes, to talk about the ROI of the PharmD. Great discussion. After doing that recording, I was reflecting on all of the movers, shakers and entrepreneurs in pharmacy that you have interviewed and the insights that you must have to share from those conversations, being an aggregator of some great minds. 135 episodes at the time of this recording that you’ve done. So first of all, congratulations, you know that’s no small feat. That’s really awesome. So I’m going to use this episode to pick your brain about the lessons learned from being in the interviewer seat talking with some of the great minds in our profession.

So for those that are familiar with the How I Built This podcast and book by Guy Raz from NPR. I view Mike as the Guy Raz in pharmacy, who has had not only his own experiences to draw from, but a lot of insights that he’s gained from picking the minds of lots of folks that we can certainly all learn from. Some of the individuals you’ve interviewed, Mike, are folks that own their own business. Others don’t, but the thread that I see is folks that are on a mission to achieve something great, that likely aligns with a strong vision that they have and a personal why and motivation for the work that they’re doing.

So one of my passions, is trying to understand what makes folks tick. And today, we’re going to get your viewpoint on that with some of the folks that you have interviewed. So first question out of the gate, since we talked about education on your podcast, in the ROI of the Pharmacy Degree, what threads if any, do you see in the folks that you’ve interviewed? Some of these that we would consider to be movers and shakers, pushing the envelope and the professional pharmacy, threads that you see and their view on education, either the background of getting education formal or even on their philosophy of continuous learning and professional development?

[00:09:20] MK: I guess, I’ve never seen a real strong emphasis on a certain degree or getting a certain amount of education or getting a certain degree. I think the value that I’ve seen from my guests, and a lot of them are PhDs and PharmDs of course and across the board, attorneys and so on. I think, the value I’ve seen in them has been that they are goal-oriented people and that’s what college has done for them. And advanced degrees, that they’re goal-oriented. That shows I think, that’s the, whether it’s the chicken or the egg, but I think when you see that degree, you’ve seen a purposeful goal that they’ve done.

I think the other thing it shows is, besides just a goal, I think it shows that they’re able to niche down to the market and they’re able to focus. I think that’s been very important too and in fact, when I look for guests, so out of the hundred and some guests, my listeners don’t want to hear just about a good pharmacist, even though a good pharmacist is of course, very important. I know the most interesting guest and I know the listeners, and I always think about what am I going to title this show. I can’t just title a show A Good Pharmacist, I have to for the purpose of the show notes or not the show notes, but the title, I have to say, this is what we’re talking about. This is the niche. This is the goal of the show.

I think that all of my guests, and I think the one the guests that I’ve been attracted to, to get on the show have always been in their schooling, in their job, even coming on the show. There’s always been that focus to that niche and to that point and to that goal, and I think that’s probably the overall personality I’ve seen of everybody in the show has been niching down, going for a goal, moving forward, pointing towards a target that target might switch, but it’s pointing towards a target.

[00:11:45] TU: You mentioned focus, Mike which I recently read something from Tim Ferriss, he’s got a great, short PDF document, we’ll link to in the show notes called 17 Questions That Changed My Life or questions that he asked himself at various pivot points in his life. One of those which I like to think about, and I’m going to ask you about, what you maybe have heard from other folks in terms of focus. One of those questions is, if I could only work two hours per week on my business or in some cases within my organization, what would I be doing with that two hours? Now, of course, it’s intentionally dramatic, right? To get us thinking about the most prioritized, focus, valuable use of our time that has a greatest return on investment.

As you mentioned, some of these folks that have a strong ability to focus, what do you think these folks would decide in terms of distilling down the time available and prioritizing the tasks that are most important to them and the work that they’re doing?

[00:12:42] MK: Here’s the problem with focus, Tim, is that when we focus, it’s like it’d be easy for the naysayer to say, “Yeah, but what if you’re making the wrong focus? What if you’re going down the wrong path?” I don’t see it that way. I see that – it may be cliched, but I see it as getting onto a boat, you can sit there on shore forever and say “What if I’m steering in the wrong direction?” It’s like, “Yeah, fair enough.” You might go in the wrong direction if you get on the boat and start steering, but if you don’t, you’re just going to be sitting on the shore forever.

I’m always thinking, get on the boat, push off, show yourself that you know how to sail, show yourself that you’re able to leave the confidence of the shore and start going somewhere. Start focusing on something, and whether it’s a day later or a week later or a month later, you see that goal changing, change it. I’m a big fan of Jordan Peterson, a psychologist online and his rule of thumb is, make a goal and if you find out that you want to switch to that goal, ask yourself this one question, “Am I switching to something easier or maybe to something even more focused and more challenging?”

If it’s something easier, well maybe you just have to rethink the purpose of goal setting and go back and reevaluate why you’re maybe not able to set a goal. But if it’s something more focused and more difficult, that’s probably a good sign. I think the main thing I’ve seen from a lot of my guests is, I think it’d be hard for me to maybe say what do they do for two hours of day that’s very valuable for them. I think more generally, I can say they all seem not only goal focus, but they’re moving and they’re willing to pivot not to something easier but to something harder.

[00:14:37] TU: You’re willing to take action, willing to step into it, right? Willing to have to pivot. I think all of those are great things and when you mentioned get in the boat, right? Get in the boat start sailing. I think that’s just great, great wisdom. I read several years ago at the very beginning of my journey, starting YFP, Start by Jon Acuff and that was the book that really just sent me over the edge of like. I was very much and always been an idea person, but quickly the objections might come in the fears, the risks, what’s this going to look in five years? What about this? It was like, enough. Just get started.

That’s the advice I give to folks often to have an idea, business within the organization side hustle, whatever. What is really the true risk? Let’s evaluate that, let’s put it on the table, let’s call it what it is, typically is not as big as we may build it up to be in our mind. Then let’s take a step forward without getting paralyzed in what this may or may not look like 12 months from now, because you and I both know that I could do my best to predict what YFP is going to look in 12 months in terms of both the challenges and successes. Some of it I have right and a bunch of things I could never predict.

[00:15:42] MK: It’s amazing, Tim. I tell my kids this all the time. It’s amazing the world we’re in right now, because even 20 years ago, if you had a business idea, especially if it was like a retail business idea. I mean, you’ve got maybe a business plan in your head, maybe a dream, but then you have to go rent the brick-and-mortar and buy the cash register and buy the sign and do all this stuff. Then harkening back to Tim Ferriss, in his Four Hour Workweek book, he talks about the beauty of like A/B Testing on Google, for example. You can even do it more easily now on social by just putting out a post, just writing a little article on LinkedIn, and maybe putting two of them out there a week apart in whichever one gets more thumbs up or more comments.

It’s like, “Oh, maybe the world needs more of this.” You focus and things like that and Boy, and as far as the actual technical part of it, you can buy 10 different URLs for a total of $20 for the first year trial or something that, and see which one gain some attraction, just an amazing time. As far as switching goals and pivoting and so on, we’ve never had a time like this in history where you could have those dreams and goals get feedback so easily, and then change direction. I’m not saying you should do it this fast, but you could change direction within 24 hours.

[00:17:14] TU: You’re spot on, Mike. I think the asterisk there is that, we can either look at that half-full, as we live in a time with no greater opportunity to do many of the things that you just mentioned to learn, anything that we want, right? Which wasn’t afforded at the same level and degree generations before us, but also there’s an infinite amount of material of things that we can digest. And to your common a focus that can be overwhelming and paralyzing, if we can’t distill it down and figure out what we’re going to be doing.

So that paralysis by analysis definitely can happen. Social media could be a good example. Mike you mentioned, some of these folks having an ability of what I heard, set goals, certainly an ability to get started on their journey, even if the end is not fully scripted or they’re not aware. You mentioned focus, are there other habits, disciplines that you have noticed in these folks that those listening could draw from of, these are some of the rhythms, these are some of the trends, these are some of the behaviors of these folks that might put them in the right mindset, to then be able to do some of those things of setting big goals and focusing and moving towards your vision?

[00:18:26] MK: I guess, one of the things that I see, and sometimes this can be taken to an extreme of faking it till you make it, but one of the things on the goal setting and what I’ve seen a lot of the guests do, it seems to me is it’s easy now, because we’re all with the internet and with social media. We’re all our own media company right now. So a lot of the people that have the goals, and I say this to my own team at the pharmacy, it’s like we’ve got the idea for this and on a small scale, I’m like, “All right, write up the procedure of what that would look like in real life, if we went down this road?” And quite often looking at it negatively, quite often they might say, “Yeah, we started writing this, we realize how in the hell would we – how can we check this for quality control or how could this happen?” It’s like, “Yeah. Well, I figured that, but I wanted you to see it on your own.”

On the positive note, how easy is it to go in and have this idea for something, whether it’s a business or whether it’s a personal goal of whatever, learning how to play tennis or something like that. But how easy is it to say, “Well, let’s picture this down the road and for the business part, maybe we make a website.” It’s not going to be published, just make it, just see if that works and make a sign up form online, just start picturing what this looks like, what this success would look like. Even before you have to take it to the market and get A/B testing across a real world, just in your own head.

I think the point on that is, it’s okay to have a goal, it’s okay to have thoughts, but move forward even if you’re not moving forward into the world at least move forward on your own damn computer by making a fake web page and making a fake whatever. I think that’s important. Along that same vein would be start writing. Start writing a book, start writing an article, go on LinkedIn, write an article. Anytime you’re doing that and you’re able to take those words out of your head and put them into paper, that’s a great thing.

It’s not great only for the world potentially and rarely it is, because how many of us are going to be, well besides yourself Tim, how many of us are going to be famous, well paid authors. That’s not the point. The point is can you get it onto paper and sometimes that is indicative of whether it’s just a dream up there or it’s something that could actually happen someday.

[00:21:09] TU: Mike, I think that’s really great advice and something that I’ve fallen into, but haven’t thought about as intentionally as you just described there. But whether it’s drafting a webpage, right, beating up a procedure and writing it out, getting some writing on paper, even if you don’t share that. I mean, I would encourage folks to share it, I think it would stimulate good conversation, but as you were talking it made me think of the importance that does in a few areas. One, it helps you to begin to validate the idea, right? Whether you get feedback on that or not but just because you’re going to start to develop it a little bit further.

The other thing is, it’s going to really help you start to beat up the idea that I have found when I do activities like that. I start to continue to think about it all throughout the day, right? To your comment earlier about goal setting, getting things down on paper, we get that out of our head, and we can start to see it for what it is and really take it to the next level to try to figure out, is there something here is there not. And I have found that when I start to do that, one of two things usually happens, either I can’t let the idea go for days, weeks, months, that’s a good sign, right? In terms of some of the energy passion or I put it down and I’m like, “Oh, my gosh. What was I thinking right?” As you start to flesh that out further and giving yourself some space to do that and start to see it, to play out. Love that, great stuff.

[00:22:31] MK: That’s quite often why I’ve heard it said that, as humans, if we were in solitary confinement or not able to see other humans, sometimes it would make you go crazy, literally crazy, because other humans are the way that, when you say something – if I say something crazy and I see someone’s face go into shock, it’s like, “Oh, I went too far in the human race” or “I guess I’m not stepping outside of what it means to be a decent person” and so on. I think that writing can do that too, because maybe you don’t have someone across from you listening to your three hour thesis on your new business, but just getting it down on paper, it forces yourself to get this fake, like another person even though it’s just the paper against yourself, but it forces you to say, I can’t even write anything on this. This must not make sense.

[00:23:24] TU: Then to distill it down, right? I think at least from my experiences, I tend to be very long-winded whether I communicate that externally, only to myself when I put something on paper, and then you start to say, “Okay, what’s the two or three –” taking a play from Steve Jobs, “What are the three things that folks need to take away from this? Have I clearly and succinctly and effectively communicated that?”

[00:23:46] MK: For sure.

[00:23:47] TU: Often I find that I don’t, right? That’s part of that process of doing that.

[00:23:51] MK: Yeah. If you can’t do that in yourself, how is the world going to listen to you through a real quick – social media scroll or a short blip online or something like that.

[00:24:02] TU: Mike, outlook of the profession, I think we’re at a time period – I have only been in the profession, started school in 2002, graduate in 2008. I certainly have seen in my short career, I would say some of the shift in the optimism of the future, the profession and what folks are looking at in terms of 10, 15, 20 years from now, some of the threats, some of the challenges around debt loads and salaries.

So I think we’re at this place where, when I talk with pharmacists, there tends to be a half glass, full half glass, empty feeling. Either that gloom and doom of, it’s inevitable things we talked about in your show Automation Technology, other providers coming into the space, writing’s on the wall, the challenges that we have, especially if we look at certain segments of the profession. Then I’ve been a part of many groups, organizations, associations and conversations with thought leaders that it’s very much they look at this as, “Yeah, those are real challenges, but that means it’s ripe for opportunity, disruption and innovation.” I’m curious from your viewpoint of interviewing some of these folks on your show, what is generally the outlook that they have on the profession of pharmacy?

[00:25:14] MK: Well, of course, Tim. I’m inviting people on that have typically their own goal or individual forward thinking goal inside of the profession. I’m the person that gets to sit on there and gripe about stuff. I don’t want to just have someone on there that just a general griper. As you and I talked a bit on our episode on, when we talked on my podcast, I think that anybody, going into any profession, whether it’s an architect or an attorney or whatever it is, I think anybody should go in saying, “I’ve got this idea that I want to get my degree and then do this novel thing or I want to invent this or I want to conquer the world with this goal.”

Now, is that going to happen? It doesn’t matter, in my mind, it doesn’t matter if that individual goal, but I think it shows somebody coming into a profession especially one that’s a lot of the money in there is paid by a third party where you’ve got someone else like pushing you down with their thumb, but when you go into a profession, when you’re an 18, or 20 year old, you want to go in with the idea that you want to change the world with something that 95% of that profession are not doing. I think what that does is, if that never happens, but at least it shows that you’re going in, that knowing that you’re not just going to be the status quo of the rest of the profession. Also, you do have a dream and if maybe that goal doesn’t work out with that degree, it shows the person you are that you are able to set goals and pivot and things like that.

The actual profession of pharmacy, it’s like, I’m an old guy that seen a lot of negative stuff in the profession, but the people that I’ve talked to, are the ones that are moving forward and doing things with a lot of success. But you’ve got to have that mindset. It’s not just going to come at you. You’ve got to be the person that we talked about from the beginning of this show, with these goals and ideas and fortitude and all that kind of stuff.

[00:27:33] TU: Yeah. I love what you shared there. We talked a little bit on your show as well. That idea of are you entering the profession with the expectation that you’re going to perhaps change, evolve, add something new, different and not entering into the status quo. That is a totally different mindset. Granted, I’ll give myself a little bit of grace, I went into the profession at 18, but as I think about how fast things are changing in our society, but in the profession of pharmacy as well, if you go in, it’s just such great advice, because if you go in with the mindset of entering into something status quo, and you’ve got 60 years to get to that finish line, maybe two more years if there’s additional training, like wow, that’s going to change, right? Even in that short period of time.

[00:28:19] MK: Right.

[00:28:20] TU: Mike, one of Guy Raz’s questions that he asks of every entrepreneur on How I Built This, and I just love hearing the variety of answers and how folks look at this, is how much of your success would you tribute to luck versus hard work? Luck versus hard work? So when you’ve interviewed these folks and I’m not asking if you’ve asked this question specifically, but just your perception of these individuals, the positions that they’ve been in, the success that they’ve had, the momentum, the mindset. How do you think they would respond to that question of how much of their success is luck versus hard work?

[00:28:57] MK: That’s a difficult question, because I think there’s always a sense of false humility in people. I think the natural first answer would be say, “Oh, it’s a lot of luck.” I think that people would say that to look good to cover the bases, then I think they would say, “Have been a hell of a lot of work into this.” Look around, no one else is doing it, I suppose. I look at myself, I think of, I wouldn’t be where I was without my grandpa and dad being in the business. That was luck of the draw. Then I guess what I would say for myself is that’s where the podcast has been a lot of fun for me, because that’s still luck in itself of having social media not having the middleman pushing you down, like the old TV networks, always had that middle person in that.

I guess, I would look around what I’ve done and say, “Oh, yeah. The podcast, maybe after 40 years in the industry.” Oh, yeah. The last year, that’s been hard work that got me above because I look at all my comrades. I said, “No one else did this.” It’s like, “Ah, okay. I’ll take a little bit of that.” I think most of the people that I would interview, I would think that a lot of luck, a lot of family status, how they were born, all those thing probably goes into saying, “Yeah, that helped me get my education and this and that.” I think most of them would probably say, “Yeah, but I did something pretty cool to get this going.” Whether it was, whatever the reason, I think at that point, they would say, that’s maybe where the hard work was, and maybe getting to the status quo was a lot of hard work, but also a lot of luck getting there.

[00:30:45] TU: Yeah. That’s right. Building on the status quo concept, I’m curious of your thoughts, individually in your own career or what you’ve heard from other folks. What takes someone over the edge of just being satisfied with the status quo and playing it safe? I’m thinking about how have these individuals or yourself address their own fears about failure, about not being significant enough, about not being able to achieve a goal and then had made a decision to take some calculated risk that moves beyond the position of status quo? What are your thoughts there?

[00:31:21] MK: I would probably say that almost everybody I have interviewed has built what they have from an area of pain, whether they think it’s their own failed goals in their day to day business or whether they think someone screwed them over. I think that pain has pushed all of these people to where they are. I think there’s a lot of beauty that comes from that pain, because without that pain, you would have probably been at status quo, which might have been okay, but maybe not see the joy in some of these people’s eyes.

I know, for me, if it wasn’t the PBMs and all the problems with stuff and all this, I wouldn’t have done my podcast, let’s say that was a mini goal of mine. I wouldn’t have done that, because I would have been so busy, I would have been content, I would have been all that. I think probably if you look back across history, to all the explorers and everybody who’s either found a country or found a business, it probably started with some pain.

[00:32:19] TU: Mike, speaking of pain. Financial pain is top of mind for me, not only my own journey, but what I see in our community of some of the stress that that can cause and one’s ability to be able to achieve their full potential and the goals that they have. So I think lots listening might get enthused by this conversation, but fairly quickly start to think of the objections to why they, themselves can’t take some calculated risks.

Of course, the one again, I’m interested in here is the financial aspect, but could be met many other objections as well. As I mentioned, on your show a lot of good ideas and dreams die with financial stress. I believe that wholeheartedly. So what would you say to the folks listening that are like, “Mike, I’ve got an idea. I’m excited about something not exactly sure where it’s going to go.” If you’re really passionate about doing X, Y, or Z, “But Mike, I’m behind retirement savings. Mike, I’ve got $200,000 of student loan debt. Mike, I’ve got a young family and all the expenses that come with that. Mike, I’m taking care of my elderly parents while also trying to take care of my children.” How do you reconcile that?

[00:33:27] MK: I would say you’ve got to play both sides of that. You’ve got to go to work from nine to five, come home, have dinner with the family, read to your kids, give him a bath, put him to bed. Then you’ve got from 10 PM until 1 AM, to make that work, as we talked earlier, what a great time. I mean, you can, you’ve got your own production studio at your home and no complaints, because the dog sleeping and the kids are in bed and all that stuff and the wife’s watching Hallmark movies on TV. I mean, that’s your time.

So there’s no better time. I don’t think there’s any excuse to not do that. The better part of it is, we just talked about that. It’s like you don’t want to do what they did in the past of selling everything, so you could buy a brick-and-mortar and open up a shop and buy a sign and all the stuff that goes along with that. You don’t want that, because then you can’t pivot. There’s never been a better time for people to put in their two or three hours, hopefully, it’s something that they would enjoy too, but that can all be done and I think there’s never a better time for that, to try these things out.

[00:34:43] TU: Yeah. Mike, I found personally, when I feel stuck, when I start giving myself excuses as to why I can’t do something when I come up with a list of objections. I usually go back to that means, my ‘why’ envision is not strong enough. It’s not compelling enough or it is but I need to remind myself have that. Maybe that resonates with folks, maybe it doesn’t, but I would encourage folks, if you feel stuck and again I’m not suggesting that everyone should go out and start their own business.

I think, there’s many opportunities to obviously be the best that you can within your position to create to innovate, to move things forward, rather than just showing up and going through the motions. But if you feel stuck, if you feel there’s objections that are coming to the mind, if there’s excuses that are there, is your vision, is your why strong enough? I just think that’s something I try to reflect on often.

[00:35:33] MK: Yeah. I think, there’s a lot of things you can do that you don’t necessarily monetize that can very much help that end goal of your finances down the road. I mean, for example, I haven’t monetized my podcast at this point yet, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a financial value. Because let’s say, God forbid that I lose the store tomorrow or something happens or I choose to go to the store tomorrow.

Now, I’ve talked to 135 people and one of them being you, Tim. Not only have I talked to them, they’ve spent a couple hours with me. I’ve sent emails back and forth and this and that, the same with whether it’s writing an article or doing whatever online. You don’t have to monetize something right away for it to be valuable for your career. Sometimes it’s just getting off of TikTok and getting off the couch and putting out valuable content instead of just reading the content.

[00:36:34] TU: Yeah. Back to your comment earlier, even if it means just opening up a Google doc on your screen and not hitting publish yet. Don’t underestimate the energy that comes from sitting down, getting your thoughts on paper, beating him up and the momentum and compound effect that, that can have over time. Mike, I’m going to put you on the hot seat with some of my favorite questions and rapid fire style from Tim Ferriss book, Tribe of Mentors. You ready for this?

[00:37:00] MK: All set.

[00:37:01] TU: All right.

[00:37:02] MK: Born ready.

[00:37:04] TU: What is the book that you’ve recommended most are given as a gift and why is that the case?

[00:37:11] MK: I already talked about it, Getting Things Done by David Allen. It lets you create the free space in your head. You can be creative and get out of the mundane tasks that would typically overwhelm somebody.

[00:37:25] TU: I want to come back to you, you mentioned Jordan Peterson, is there something specific you like of his work or follow?

[00:37:31] MK: Jordan Peterson, there’s two books I would recommend. One is his, 12 Rules for Life. Then his second book is basically another 12 rules. Jordan spends a lot of time talking about something. He’s a psychologist, psychiatrist. One of the things I love most about Jordan Peterson, he spends a lot of time talking about the division or that step between chaos and order. There’s a beautiful line between chaos and order where I love to live.

You know what it is, it’s either, you’re either bored at work, some people are bored at work or there’s too much to do at work, but there’s this really sweet line in the middle, whether it’s work or hobby or something like that, where you get lost in time a little bit. That’s where it’s just a sweet spot and that’s where we want to live. That’s what I love so much about him, is just that line between order and chaos and sweet line that really makes life interesting. He’s a huge influence of mine or a huge influence to me, I should say.

[00:38:38] TU: Yeah. No, that’s good. Failure is, there’s a specific favorite failure of yours?

[00:38:45] MK: My biggest failure, if I could look back, was saying that I spent too much time worrying, too much anxious time. That doesn’t necessarily go away just by effort. It goes away, maybe by professional help and maybe goes away with medication and it goes away with a lot of reading and things that. So I don’t know if I’d call it a failure, but I’d call it my biggest cross. I think that, I’m turning it into some beautiful things and I still hope to, but I’ve spent too much time in my head and not always enough time present.

[00:39:36] TU: Mike, that’s really reassuring. As a young father, that’s something I’ve identified early in my career is the difficulty I have with presence. I’ve just realized our last five years through talking more of this out loud, reading coaches and others, one being aware of it and then two taking baby steps to move things in a different direction, but really uncovering that and making it a priority. Really appreciate you mentioned in the beauty that you’re turning that into.

[00:40:05] MK: Yeah. That’s not all. I mean, it’s not your fault. I mean, when you’re with your family but away from them mentally, you’ve got a lot of stress on you and you’re basically trading that current time for the future. You’re thinking about how are you going to whatever, feed your family or at least deal with a situation that ultimately is maybe you don’t dealing with someone ultimately, it’s because there may be in the way of taking care of your family and things. It’s not something that you have to beat yourself up over, but it is something that’s been my biggest cross.

[00:40:37] TU: Mike, if you get a gigantic billboard, anywhere, with anything on it, metaphorically speaking, getting a message out to millions or billions of people, what would it say and why?

[00:40:48] MK: I probably say, it would say, if you’re married, make that relationship the most important thing in the world to you. I’ll start there, because a lot of people – if you’re not married, stealing from Jordan Peterson, I would say clean your room. Get your room cleaned up. If you are married, I would say make that relationship the primary thought on your mind at all times, because it’s easy to save the world as you’re stepping over a bunch of crap around your bedroom. You can’t even get that cleaned up. It’s easy to save the world when your wife and or your husband and you are – when that relationship doesn’t mean much to you. I would say, I would say a billboard would say “Work on your marriage.”

[00:41:34] TU: Clean up your room. I love that too. That’s a great plot to be thinking about. Last one here, Mike. When you feel overwhelmed, unfocused, again, you’ve got a lot of different things going on or even have lost your focus temporarily. What are some things that you do to get back on track?

[00:41:48] MK: Probably the biggest thing is always getting everything on my one do-list, computerized do-list. So it doesn’t happen too often, but when things are really flustered, the first thing I do is collect all my thoughts, all my papers, all my whatever, it all goes on the list. Until it’s on the list, then you can start to prioritize, you see what’s important, doesn’t keep going through your head. It’s all in that list and then you can say, all right, my world is right there. Let’s take a look at it. That can happen through, you can have a crazy hour at work, you got to get back to your list. A crazy week got to get back to your list, hopefully not a crazy year, but if you do, you get back to your list. At least look in one spot for everything and then you can go from there.

[00:42:35] TU: We’re going to link, you’ve mentioned it a few times now, Getting Things Done. We’ll link to that book in the show note, as clearly that work by David Allen has had a really important impact on you. Mike, this has been great, really appreciate the conversation, the work that you’re doing at The Business of Pharmacy Podcast, the work that you’re doing for our profession, and really being a microphone to bringing the voice of many different leaders and influencers and making that available to other folks. So number one, thank you. Number two, where is the best place that our listeners can go to learn more about you and the work that you’re doing?

[00:43:06] MK: I would just say on LinkedIn. Just my name on LinkedIn, that’ll take you to my thing. I’ve got stuff on there. I guess the official probably going to my podcast. I have a URL, but basically look up, The Business of Pharmacy Podcast, and I’d be fun to have people join in there too.

[00:43:24] TU: Awesome. We’ll link to your LinkedIn as well as The Business of Pharmacy Podcast in the show notes. Thanks so much again, Mike.

[00:43:30] MK: My pleasure, Tim. Thanks for all you’re doing.

[OUTRO]

[00:43:31] TU: As we conclude this week’s podcast and important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and is not intended 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 archived newsletters, blog posts and podcasts is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analyses expressed herein are solely those of your financial pharmacists unless otherwise noted, and constitute judgments as of the date publish. Such information may contain forward-looking statements that are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements.

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

[END]

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YFP 232: How Mindfulness and Money Intersect with Cynthia Knapp Dlugosz

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

How Mindfulness and Money Intersect with Cynthia Knapp Dlugosz

On this episode, sponsored by Thoughtful Wills, Cynthia Knapp Dlugosz discusses the intersection between mindfulness and money.

About Today’s Guest

Cynthia Knapp Dlugosz is one of the first national board-certified health and wellness coaches in the United States. She received her coaching training through Duke (University) Integrative Medicine and served as an instructor in the advanced certification program. Cynthia offers training and coaching in mindfulness, health, and wellness on a private practice basis through Being in Balance Coaching.

Cynthia speaks frequently on topics related to mindfulness, resiliency and well-being, work/life integration, time management, and health behavior change. She also shares this information on her blog, Pharmacy Work/Life Matters (www.pharmacyworklifematters.com).

Cynthia has more than 20 years of experience in mindfulness-based practices. She has studied and attended trainings with a number of prominent teachers, including Jon Kabat-Zinn, Kristin Neff, Sharon Salzberg, Elisha Goldstein, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Pema Chödrön.

Cynthia received her pharmacy degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed a residency in hospital pharmacy at Rhode Island Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island. Before moving to Ann Arbor, Cynthia held increasingly responsible positions at several national pharmacy associations, including the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, National Association of Chain Drug Stores, American Society of Consultant Pharmacists, and American Pharmacists Association.

Episode Summary

In the last few years, a much-needed light has shone on the issues of resilience, burnout, and wellbeing in the pharmacy industry and we are finally seeing strategies of mindfulness and meditation entering mainstream conversations in an impactful way. But can these practices extend into the realm of financial wellbeing too? Today we are honored to sit down with the enigmatic Cynthia Knapp Dlugosz, pharmacist, coach, consultant, and mindfulness expert, to discuss the intersection between mindfulness and money. A solopreneur, Cynthia has always had a personal interest in stress management, time management, and continuing education. In this conversation, she shares how her 20 years of training in mindfulness and meditation apply to her monetary plan and behaviors. The listener hears how her financial struggles early in her career led her to implement changes and behaviors she still depends on today, as well as a simple outline of how to practice meditation to stay in the present moment. Plus, we’ll touch on evaluating the root cause of overspending and over saving and why having a healthy balance is important. This crucial episode explores the intersection of pharmacy, mindfulness, neuroscience, and balanced living – and how the financial piece fits into all of that. Tune in to begin your mindful money journey today!

Key Points From This Episode

Getting to know Cynthia, starting with the pivots and arc of her career.
Discussing how her 20 years of mindfulness training began intersecting with pharmacy.
How the topics of burnout, resilience, and wellness have only recently gained traction.
Cynthia shares her turning point from irresponsible money management to intentionality.
Using the analogy of the Weight Watchers approach to get real with your spending.
A step-by-step outline of how she first took control of her finances.
How our relationship with money has changed in the age of automation and plastic.
Defining mindfulness and how meditation trains us to live in the present moment.
The various purposes and ways meditation can be practiced.
Debunking a common misconception about meditating.
Exploring different ways to use breathing as an anchor for your attention.
How mindfulness meditation is like a bicep curl.
How being present and mindful is key to making the right decisions with your money.
Peeling back the onion of our emotional baggage and unconscious script around money.
The importance of acknowledging our underlying fears and getting curious about them.
Dealing with the changing goalposts on the question, “Do I have enough?”
The concept of hedonic adaptation; we get used to what we already have.
Setting yourself up with a solid foundation and then giving yourself permission to spend.
Cynthia shares some resources from her website, and some exciting future offerings!

Highlights

“Think about mindfulness as the ability to pay attention to what is happening in the present moment.” — Cynthia Knapp Dlugosz [0:25:12]

“About 50% of the time, we’re either thinking about things that have already happened, or we are planning or rehearsing for things that have yet to happen. Only about half of our time is focused on what’s actually happening right in front of us.” — Cynthia Knapp Dlugosz [0:25:40]

“Shift your thinking about meditation. Think that the objective is that your mind is going to wander and your goal now is to notice that it’s wandered and to bring it back.” — Cynthia Knapp Dlugosz [0:27:36]

“The idea is to train your attention. You sit in meditation, you focus on your breath, you realize that your thoughts have wandered away. That is your win. Your win is that you’ve noticed and then you return your attention, and then you wait, you notice again.” — Cynthia Knapp Dlugosz [0:28:47]

“So much of what we do with money is automatic, unconscious, or conditioned.” — Cynthia Knapp Dlugosz [0:30:44]

“You should have some amount of money that you feel comfortable setting aside, but that you are setting aside specifically for fun, for now, for doing things. Because you don’t want to get further along your life journey and regret not having done things.” — Cynthia Knapp Dlugosz [0:42:10]

“Set yourself up with a solid foundation. But once you’ve got that foundation, give yourself the permission to have some enjoyment. Otherwise, what is all this for?” — Cynthia Knapp Dlugosz [0:43:21]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Cynthia’s Recommended Books

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 pharmacist, coach, consultant and mindfulness expert, Cynthia Knapp Dlugosz to discuss the intersection between mindfulness and money. Some of my favorite moments and takeaways from this episode include Cynthia sharing how her training in mindfulness and meditation applies to her financial plan and behaviors. Hearing her share how her financial struggles early in her career led her to implementing some changes and behaviors that she still depends on today, and evaluating the root cause of overspending and over saving and why having a healthy balance is important.

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

Okay, let’s hear from today’s sponsor that helps make this show possible and then we’ll jump in my interview with Cynthia.

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.

[00:01:40] NT: 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’s 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/yfp to learn more. Give us a jingle or drop us a note. We’d love to chat with you.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:02:39] TU: Cynthia, welcome to the show.

[00:02:40] CKD: I am so excited to be here with you today.

[00:02:44] TU: I am as well. Our paths have crossed several times over the last decade through various pharmacy circles. I’m grateful for the opportunity to talk with you about the work that you’re doing to explore the intersection of pharmacy, mindfulness, neuroscience, and balanced living and how the financial piece fits into all of that. Certainly, a very important topic. Before we jump into our discussion around mindfulness and money, tell us more about your career path in pharmacy, both the work you’ve done up until this point, and what you’re now doing with your blog, consulting, and mindfulness programs and coaching.

[00:03:18] CKD: Sure, thank you. Well, I got a pharmacy degree at the University of North Carolina and I came out of a bachelor’s degree program. Choices weren’t necessarily as clear cut back then. The residency programs were really just starting up and there was such a thing as a post-baccalaureate PharmD. A program that was an add-on after a bachelor’s in pharmacy. Not sure that I wanted to pursue the PharmD pathway at the time, I did a residency in what at the time was called Hospital Pharmacy. During the year of the residency, and then the few months that I worked as a staff pharmacist at the hospital, didn’t really think that was my calling.

Fortunately, though, while I was there, there was an ad in the newsletter for the American Society of Health System Pharmacists. They were looking for someone to join the editorial staff of AJHP. If there is one thing I am confident in, it is my editorial ability. I applied for that job, and was fortunate to get it and that moved me to the Washington DC area, to my initial job in a pharmacy, in one of the national pharmacy associations. And I spent then the next, oh gosh, 15 or so years working for various – probably closer to 20 years working for various national pharmacy associations. I worked first for AJHP, and then briefly with NACDS, and ASCP, the American Society of Consultant Pharmacist. Then finally with APHA.

It was while I was on staff with APHA that I met my husband on a parking lot shuttle bus at Dulles Airport. We got married, and he was at NIH wrapping up a fellowship and he took a position at the University of Michigan. That relocated me and him to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I live now. At the time, this is the late ’90s, I was a telecommuter for a while to APHA. But I mentioned the year just because at that point, telecommuting wasn’t possible the way it is today. I did a lot of – it was like I had a remote office and I went to travel to headquarters maybe once every two months or so. But it was very challenging at the time being a member of a team but not being physically present with the team.

Then I took a brief detour with the University of Michigan College of Pharmacy as their director of experiential training, and decided that really wasn’t my calling. And ended up – this is, by the way, a very – I’m trying to make this as fast as possible, this summary. I ended up at that point making the decision to work on a freelance basis. At the time, I was able to work to do a lot of freelance work with APHA. When I had been a full-time staff person, I actually would manage some people who were working on a freelance basis. They would do a lot of the actual content development meant work on programs. I would manage that development. Now, I flipped to the other side. Now, I was the person developing much of the content and someone on staff was managing me.

Because of the contacts I had made along the way, and especially because I had a history, I neglected to mention that much of the work I did in various pharmacy associations was in the area of continuing education. Because of that background that I brought to freelancing, I was able to both work on, again, like this content development for programs, but also occasionally, associations would contract with me to manage some program of theirs. For example, right now, one of the things that I do is manage the student pharmacist P&T competition for the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy.

I do a lot of different things. In my work, it’s just – I think the easiest way to describe it is that I have a freelance business, and I get contracted to do various kinds of projects, mostly in the area of continuing education. But as you see, that single sentence has a lot that goes into it. That is kind of where I am at now. I still do that kind of freelance work. Now, along the way, going back to the time that I still lived in Washington, DC, and before I started working on it as a solopreneur. I had always been very personally interested in stress management, and time management and in those areas. One of the things that I was introduced to, again, toward the late ’90s was this idea of mindfulness. At the time, kind of very closely connected with meditation. I was introduced to meditation and mindfulness. This is back at a time when many, many people, most people I encountered had no idea what I was talking about and meditation was something still a little bit off the beaten path.

[00:08:58] TU: There was no head headspace and tools, ain’t that right?

[00:09:01] CKD: There was no headspace. There’s none of that. As a matter of fact, most – when I wanted to learn more about this, when I wanted to get more training, to get more understanding, first of all, all of the training that I went through early on, really was rooted in the concepts of Buddhism. I differentiate it from not really what I think of as Buddhism as a religion, but Buddhism as a psychology. It was rooted in these Buddhist concepts, and I really had to go to retreat centers, and especially a place up in upstate New York called the Omega Institute, where I would go and study with teachers.

Over the years, I have studied with teachers like Jon Kabat-Zinn, who is very closely connected with mindfulness in our country, and who is the developer of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program. I’ve done workshops with – I’m dropping these names for any of your listeners, any of the listeners who might recognize them. I’ve done workshops with Pema Chödrön and with Thich Nhat Han. I dropped those names in because, at that time, those were really kind of the leading teachers in mindfulness. I mean, they still are. Then some American-based teachers like Sharon Salzberg and Jack Kornfield, so those teachers.

It wasn’t nearly as easy, or as – I want to say plentiful, the instruction available. I started doing that and again, pursued it over all the years, really on my own. And I would tell some friends about it, and I would make some offers here and there to speak about it. Say, “Hey! I think this is really – I think pharmacists would get a lot out of the information that I’m learning here in this – as I called it my parallel life.” I would be met sometimes with a little bit of eye-rolling or a little bit of like, “Yeah, sure.” Really, not much would come of it. But then I feel like it was around 2018, 2019 and I feel like all of a sudden, in pharmacy, we exploded with the concept of burnout, and resilience, and wellbeing. Not that it wasn’t always there, not that we weren’t paying attention to it. But to me, all of a sudden, it burst forth as an issue that many, many people were engaged with and paying attention to. I remember, at the time, around one particular meeting, I think, saying to a friend who was involved with the meeting, “What do you guys think I’ve been doing for 20 years? Like all of these practices that are right, that are being discussed now and starting to be shared. This is what I’ve been training in for 20 years.”

I have this strong background in mindfulness-based practices and the psychological underpinnings that go with it. And I have increasingly been trying to bring those forth to pharmacy audiences. I do that in one way, in the blog I started, Pharmacy Work Life Matters. And because now I feel like there is some interest. I am also starting to develop some e-courses related to some of these topics, that I hope to launch early in 2022.

[00:12:45] TU: Cynthia, I think you’re spot on. My observation matches yours, that burnout, resilience, wellness have become topics that – they’ve been there in the profession, but there’s definitely been a light that has been shown on those topics, and that we’re having more discussions around. We’re obviously very much interested in the work that we’re doing at YFP, around the connection of the financial part of that. I think and believe from personal experience in talking with many, many pharmacists all across the country, that there is a financial thread that certainly transcends some of these issues of burnout, resilience.

Your career story is relevant, because you shared with me previously that you felt like early in your career, you didn’t necessarily have a good approach to your financial plan, you weren’t necessarily as intentional as you would have liked to be, or at least looking backward, have liked to be. After being in a rut for a while, with spending more than – you ultimately were hoping to achieve the other goals you had in mind, that you had to make some drastic changes for how you are going to manage your money. That you still use some of those techniques today. Tell us more about that journey for you individually and how you realized that you weren’t on the right path financially.

[00:14:02] CKD: Absolutely. Tim, you introduced that topic very kindly. I will be far more blunt in my retelling of it. I got out of pharmacy school, as I said pharmacy school, did the residency. During pharmacy school and I would even say during the residency, I feel like I was kind of on top of – essentially on top of my money stuff. With the residency, kind of getting like that, like half pay I think of it as. Our salary was about half what we’d be making if we had been on a staff pharmacist. It wasn’t like I had a lot of room for error there.

Then I took the position and move to Washington DC and I think a switch clicked in my head that “Hey! I’m earning money now. I’m going to be – it’s my time to be spending money, finally. Finally, I’m a free and easy high earning gal.” I really wasn’t internalizing the reality that how much I was making at the time, while it was a very respectable salary was not a salary that went really, really, really far in Washington DC, especially as a single person. As a single person, I mean, I was living alone. No one was sharing the cost of rent, or food, or any of the basics that we all have.

Bluntly, I overspent and I got myself into – not only do I overspend, but I also didn’t really have a good system set up for keeping track of bills and paying bills. Now, we are scrolling ourselves back to a time where this was all paper-based, right? This I think is before the internet. Bills would come in, I would sort of get busy doing fun things, I would forget about them and then, oops, my phone would get turned off. Or I would realize, “Oh! Oops! I didn’t really plan well, this month. Let’s delay writing the check for this payment for a little while.” I don’t remember what it was, what like my rock bottom was, that point I hit that just made me say, “Okay. Something’s got to change.” But it was like, really, like there was a time when I realized that my internal discomfort about how I was managing this finally got the better of me.

What I ended up doing was a technique that – I don’t think I got it from Weight Watchers, because I don’t know that I had ever been enrolled in Weight Watchers at that point. But it’s a technique that is often shared with people who are trying to get better acquainted with – get on top of a situation that they’re in. That technique being that you write everything down. Just the way in Weight Watchers for many years, I think still you are encouraged to record everything that you eat. I started recording every single thing I spent money on. It, of course, quickly became apparent that I was spending too much. This is back in the days when this was mostly cash. I shouldn’t say mostly cash, it’s probably a mixture of cash, credit card, and cheque. But it was not nearly as fast or easy to spend money as it is today.

I started writing down everything that I spent. Then as the next step, I created a budget for myself, which was just the kind of budget that is recommended to create. It was putting down all of my mandatory expenses, the fixed expenses, I suppose. How much was my rent? How much should I budget for food? How much was phone and electric, and all of those? Then, what did I have left at the end of the month? I made the decision at that point that whatever was left at the end of the month was what I had to spend. There was no more spending ahead on a credit card. I treated all of my money essentially as cash. Then, I would never carry a credit card balance again. Actually, to this day, I have never carried a credit card balance. Because a credit card balance, let’s face it, it’s a loan, you’re essentially borrowing money that you don’t have, to pay off at a future time.

I don’t mean to summarily dismiss the utility of credit cards or why you might want to carry a balance. But for my purposes, it was just irresponsible money management. It took – back when I had joined Weight Watchers at one time, this is back at the time when Weight Watchers was encouraging the – essentially what was at that time the American Diabetes Association exchange approach to meal planning, where you counted everything you ate as like a certain number of proteins, a certain number of – I think they call them starches, vegetables, fats, fruits and you had this allotment every day. What you did at the time with Weight Watchers was, this lunch was two proteins, three starches and you colored in your little blocks. At the point that you ran out of blocks, you were done for the day.

During my first few weeks at Weight Watchers, I realized that I had eaten, as I viewed it, all of the good stuff by lunchtime. And all I was left for dinner was vegetables, and it had to be steamed vegetables because I’d already eaten all of my fats. I couldn’t put butter on or anything. After a couple of weeks of this, again, you have a little meeting with yourself in the mirror and say, “Cynthia, if you’re ever going to have anything other than steamed vegetables again, for dinner, you have to figure out a way to do this differently. You have to figure out how to apportion this stuff during the day.” It was the same thing for me with money management.

I realized, “Okay. You are trying to spend far more than you actually have available as your disposable income, so you’ve got to put the brakes on this.” Also, something I would say very, very importantly, that I did at the time, and I go back and I thank my younger self constantly for making this decision. Which is when I was putting – when I was tightening up on my finances like this, when I was really ratcheting down and saying, “Here is really what I have left for my fun stuff at the end of the month.” I made the decision, in addition to retire to 401k deductions, I made the decision to start saving 10% of – I can’t remember at the time if I did it as 10% of what was essentially like my net salary but before bills, or if it was 10% of what was left. But I have a feeling it was the higher one. In effect, I decided to kind of decrease my salary, my take-home pay by 10%. I just squirreled that away, I had – I set up automatic deductions to mutual funds and just never saw that money.

You can imagine over the years, that compounded quite a bit and I’ve been able to do so many – that money made so many things possible for me, because it was money just sitting there that I treated as money I didn’t even really have to spend. I did that as well. After a couple of months of that, I figured out a way to regulate myself to understand like, really, this is what you’re dealing with every month. Let’s just say it was, you have $50 per week to spend, just free and clear on whatever your heart desires here. This is clothes, this is entertainment, this is whatever, whatever might – what I think of as the discretionary spending.

I just had to, I was going to say resign myself to that, but it’s more that I had to align myself to that. Then along the way, as I would get raises, my little pot of money would pop up as I would then run through that budget cycle again. Oh, yay! My fixed expenses haven’t gone up that much, so now I have more discretionary. At least once a year, I would revisit this budget, I would keep really careful records, or at least save the record so I now knew on an annual basis, this is how much I spent for say, the phone. Which these days, I feel like phone costs are more fixed than they were back then. Back then, my bill would vary from month to month, because long distance was unpredictable.

I would figure out how much I had spent over the year, I would divide that by 12 and that’s what I would budget for the following year, and then keep a very close track on that to see. But it was very much this paying attention. Paying attention and understanding exactly what it was that I was dealing with, rather than hoping, which is what I had been doing. Just hoping that what I had was covering what I was doing. And it wasn’t. I had misplaced hope.

[00:23:26] TU: And intentionality just screams through that story of tracking, and paying attention, and automating your long-term savings. As you alluded to, some of that is, I think, more challenging today. When I hear the concept of mindfulness and money, I really think about this idea of making intentional choices that are not just happening. Ones that we think about, we perhaps feel on some level, we can attach an emotion to it. Let’s be real, this is so hard today with everything, essentially being automated and on some level, being transactional. That automation does have value if we can take advantage of it. Some of the things that come to mind, Cynthia is, plastic instead of cash. We never see or feel our paycheck, direct deposit, that we can connect it to the work that we’re doing. We’re saving for the future without the physical act of passing over money and making that conscious decision to delay something now for longer term. Even debt repayment, it’s a number on a screen. You alluded to me before in a conversation that you have a strategy to learn to pause, and not just spend, or save or whatever we’re working on and to make financial decisions in a way that are intentional, that we’re thinking about it and we’re experiencing it.

Tell us more by what you mean by that and if there’s a strategy that you employ for how to actually do that in a day like we’re in today, where so much of this is happening automatically and so quickly.

[00:25:01] CKD: Absolutely. That is, in essence what mindfulness is. I’m not going to offer up any of the official definitions of mindfulness right now. I’d say, think about mindfulness as the ability to pay attention to what is happening in the present moment, maybe elaborating a little bit on this concept of present moment. Our minds naturally wander into the past or into the future. If you ever sit and think about or try to notice what’s happening in your head, there was one study that characterized it that probably about 50% of the time, we’re either thinking about things that have already happened, or we are planning or rehearsing for things that have yet to happen. Only about half of our time is focused on what’s actually happening right in front of us.

If you think about mindfulness then as the ability to be able to focus your attention on what is happening in the present moment, and to notice that your mind has wandered off somewhere else and to bring it back to this focus on the present moment. That is what, to me, that is what meditation trains. It’s not the only thing meditation does. Meditation can have a lot of different purposes and can be practiced in many, many different ways. I believe that for most people, especially most people who are starting out with meditation, unless they are specifically seeking, say spiritual enlightenment, or they are specifically practicing loving, kindness, meditation for various reasons – the most useful application of meditation is meditation that teaches us to notice when our thoughts have wandered, and to return our attention to a point of focus.

If there is one common misconception I encounter when I talk with people about meditation, it is the idea that the goal of meditation is to make your mind go blank or to try to keep any thoughts from coming into sit in this kind of blissful, no thoughts arriving state. And then people get very, very discouraged. They get discouraged when they realize that they’re sitting in meditation and their minds have wandered. They feel like a failure, “I can’t do this. I’m no good at this.” Well, so then what I would say to you, Tim, and what I would say to anyone listening is, shift your thinking about meditation. Think that the objective is that your mind is going to wander and your goal now is to notice that it’s wandered and to bring it back.

Typically, the traditional focus of attention is the breath. That is typically the focus of attention, because our breath is always with us. There are different places where you can experience breath. You might feel the sensation of breath entering your nose, or you might focus on the exhalation and the feel of breath, say like at the top of your lip, or you might focus on just your – as we say in yoga and in meditation, like the belly. Your belly rising and falling. You don’t just have to focus on one thing. You can even count your breaths. You can make it a more cognitive thing. If you’re having trouble with the sensations.

That’s why the breath is often offered up as the first point of focus. You focus attention on the breath and you can find these kinds of meditations in Headspace, in Calm, I’m sure, in any of the online apps. You can find, I mean, in any of the apps, you can also find them online, in many different places. The idea is to train your attention. You sit in meditation, you focus on your breath, you realize that your thoughts have wandered away. That is your win. Your win is that you’ve noticed and then you return your attention, and then you wait, you notice again. As meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg has said, “It doesn’t matter how many times your mind wanders, what matters is how many times you notice and bring it back.”

Then, what you’re doing in meditation – now meditation is more kin to a bicep curl, let’s say. You are training a particular thing. Like with a bicep curl, you’re making your bicep stronger. So that when you are not at the gym or holding a weight in your hand, you will be better equipped to lift something heavy or whatever else your bicep will do for you. The same thing now with meditation, by sitting in meditation, which can – there’s actually a study that just came out this week. Ten minutes a day is a fine amount of time for this kind of formal practice. You are now strengthening your ability during the day to realize that you’ve been carried off somewhere or to realize that your thoughts are not in the present moment.

One quote that I will share with you is from a psychologist named Miles Neil, who has said that “Mindfulness can help us naturally resist the pull of our automatic, unconscious, or conditioned patterns of thought, emotion, and action.” I’ll say that again really quickly, “Mindfulness can help us naturally resist the pull of our automatic, unconscious, or conditioned patterns of thought, emotion, and action.” That to me, is where now we have mindfulness intersecting with money management. Because so much of what we do with money is automatic, unconscious or conditioned. With automatic and unconscious, as you mentioned, there are things we do out of habit. There are things that happen that we’re not even paying attention to these days, especially as you so aptly noted.

We also bring forth with us from childhood really conditioned patterns around money. We all have grown up with money attitudes and those can’t help but affect the way we manage money as adults. Mindfulness can help us realize that we have either started to get – we have fallen into an automatic habit or that something’s happening that we’re not even paying attention to. For example, we are about to – we might notice we are about to hit, click yet again on amazon.com. Not like I’m speaking from experience here, or anything. We maybe will notice, though, that we are about to one click and we can insert a pause. We bring our attention back and we say, “Wait! Okay. Hold on. What’s about to happen? Is this really what I want to do?” If for no other reason than to potentially save yourself a trip out to Kohl’s or Whole Foods or wherever you need to dump off your return these days?

[00:32:15] TU: Yeah. I think so as you’re talking, I’m reflecting on how exhausting this internal dialogue can be. You mentioned minds naturally wandering, you mentioned a study that 50% of the time or so maybe we’re present. I was thinking about financially, that seems generous. I think that because of some of the emotional baggage, whether that’s from childhood, money scripts that we carry, whether it’s societal pressures around money. I think it’s even maybe that much more difficult. I was thinking about, what are some of the things in the last 24 hours that have been on my mind financially, and things that were coming to mind questions were – just being aware of them like, are we saving enough for retirement? Or, counterpoint, maybe are we saving too much at the expense of experiences and enjoying the present moment? Should we be paying off the mortgage fast? Are we investing in enough experiences for our family? Are we on track with our kid’s college expenses? What’s the game plan for the next car? Have we appropriately protected ourselves from an emergency?

What really is disturbing as I – even just more aware of that is like, we have a plan for all of those things. Like we’ve thought through them, we’ve planned for them. On one hand, I look at those questions and I’m like, “My gosh! That’s frustrating. I talk about this daily, like I feel like we’ve got a good plan.” But I think that acknowledgement is so important, like just being aware, aware of some of those things, and then start to peel back the onion of like, “Where does that come from? What is the root of some of those feelings and pressures?” I think for me, personally, as I start to get two or three layers deeper, I can then start to uncover where is the fear or anxiety coming from this. Often I’ve uncovered it’s not rational, and then I can see it for what it is, and really try to address it at that. But I really feel like that awareness is such an important first step.

[00:34:14] CKD: Well, Tim, you’ve just hit on a really important concept, which is that – I think you are spot on that when you start peeling back some of these things, almost always what we find at the bottom is fear, some kind of fear. The more we can be present to what is going on, we can notice what’s going on and then as you were describing, can start to investigate what’s going on. We probably will eventually get ourselves back to some kind of fear and then we can explore the fear. What is this fear? And as you said, is it irrational fear?

I still, with everything I know about both mindfulness and actually money because I’ve – after my initial, let’s call them the follies of my youth, I have done a lot of self-teaching about money management. I’ve learned a lot from financial advisors, various things over the years. I feel like I am pretty financially literate. But even now, I seem to harbor this deep-seated fear of ending up pushing a shopping cart around with my few remaining belongings, because I have no money. Now, where does this come from? It fascinates me. I didn’t grow up – I grew up in a pretty firmly middle-class family. We were not wealthy, but we never wanted for any – I don’t remember ever wanting for anything as a child. Why is this a fear? Unless this might just be like the fear of public speaking. It’s one of the fears that we’ll end up with no money, for no rational reason.

[00:35:55] TU: Yeah. That’s a really good point, Cynthia. I think something I often ask myself is, where does this come from? And again, getting more to that root cause. I think that in my experiences financially, and working with many pharmacists, and even my own journey, we often talk about overspending and we talked a little bit about some of the automation that can make that challenge. We’re not feeling those expenses, perhaps we can pause, that might help some of that. But I also see folks, myself included, that have challenges on the other side of the spectrum with which is giving themselves permission to spend. I think we’re getting some of that here, as we talk about some of the fear anxiety, is there ever enough? But here’s the thing, is there ever enough? I mean, that is a – we can crunch some numbers and do all of that. But that feeling, if you’re not really trying to uncover what is the source of that and determine, is that a rational thought or not? That can be crippling.

I think that’s another component that we need to be thinking about around this conversation of mindfulness is both, not only behaviors that allow us to become successfully long-term, making sure that we’re taking care of our future self. But as Tim Baker, our director of financial planning says so well, it can’t just be about taking care of our future selves. We also have to make sure that we’re living a rich life today. I think there’s a balance here, correct?

[00:37:14] CKD: Absolutely. The concept of whether it’s enough, “Do we have enough?” That is such a difficult, a such a difficult and fraught topic. Because first, I’m sure you’ve gathered during our conversation that I am further along in my life journey. I’m a little bit older. When I was first starting out, when I made – when I sort of got myself back on the right track, and especially was absolutely contributing to a 401k plan to the point where I would get the match. Like I maxing out what I needed to do. I think at the time, we were being advised like – let’s say it was 10%. If you’re saving 10% of your income. Then somewhere along the line, it seemed to ratchet up to 20%.

Then lately, I’ve been getting things from one of the mutual fund companies I invest with, where they have this thing like how many times your salary should have saved at various points in life. I remember looking at where I was and how much I was supposed to have saved. Let’s just say I was shocked, I won’t repeat the exact thing I said out loud. Let’s call it shock. I thought, I don’t have that. I can’t possibly have that. You can’t spring that on me now. Because I don’t – I don’t have any more time to do that. Then somebody else send out a different graph and I looked like I was fine. So then I calmed down a bit.

I share that little anecdote just as an illustration that one, it seems like the goalpost is constantly being moved on what constitutes – I’m making air quotes here – that you can’t see enough. Then another thing that we all have to contend with is this, I think it’s innate, the concept of hedonic adaptation. We get used to what we have and then it feels like it’s not enough. I grew up in a home that was not very large and now I live in a house that I think is about 3,000 square feet. When I moved into this house, I think I we’ve lived here for about 20 years now. This place seemed cavernous to me, and it’s just me and my husband. Now I walk around and think, “Oh my gosh! This place is so small. Really, I think we need like 4,500 square feet.” We don’t.

It’s like, because you get used to what you have, or you see what other people have, and you start to feel again, “enough”, that what you have is not enough. You start always looking for the next thing. It’s very, very challenging to settle yourself around this notion of enough. My feeling is, if you are, if you are following the advice of rational experts, if there is some fight – there tends to be standard financial advice out there, about things you should be doing. If you’re doing that, you are probably as well set as you can be, is my feeling.

Now, using one of my weight loss analogies, again. I had at one point enrolled in Jenny Craig, because I had gained a little weight, I wanted to lose some. And it occurred to me, you know, what, Jenny Craig just handed me the food, and all I have to do is eat it and it worked. One of the things, though, that I really appreciated about that plan was that every day, I had a treat, they just worked it in that every day you had something that was, as I see it, absolutely no nutritional value whatsoever. It was just fun. That’s something I carry forward in now my just, you know, eating regular food again. I carry that forward with me.

Every day, I allot about 10%, 15% maybe of calories to something that I just want, you know. Whether it’s my sugar cookie flavored popcorn, or a cookie, but I have to keep it in that calorie allotment. I can’t eat a pack of cookies. I can eat my 150 calories worth of cookies. What that does for me, and what I believe it does, in general, we will move this over to money in a moment. But it, first of all, means that you don’t build up this sense of deprivation. Like I can’t eat cookies, I’m not allowed to eat cookies. As a matter of fact, I eat cookies every day or whatever it is, and I give myself permission to do that and I enjoy it.

Knowing that you have that, it’s a bit of a treat, but it’s not an excessive amount. That, I believe that same concept can be carried over, should be carried over to money management. You should have some amount of money that you feel comfortable setting aside, but that you are setting aside specifically for fun, for now, for doing things. Because you don’t want to get further along your life journey and regret not having done things. I don’t mean that, again, it’s this balance between – I’m not saying overspend, because “Woohoo! We don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow.” I mean, obviously, we don’t, but that doesn’t mean you every year go on around the world cruise, and sink yourself further and further into debt. It does mean that you have if you have allotted a pot of money to this, enjoying the present, then spend it. Because if you save it up, it’s just more money that you’re saving. Maybe you’ll spend it one day, but maybe you won’t.

As long as you’ve taken care of everything else, right? As long as, you know what I mean, Tim, as long as the things that you would be advising people to do, that I think you, and the podcast, and just everything you’re doing does so beautifully. Set yourself up with a solid foundation. But once you’ve got that foundation, give yourself the permission to have some enjoyment. Otherwise, what is all this for?

[00:43:31] TU: You said it just beautifully. I mean, that is something that our planning team, I think does such a tremendous job with the clients, which is – if we put the two spectrums, yolo on one end and squirreling money away, we’re miserable and we wake up 30 years from now, and you’ve got $4 or $5 million.

[00:43:48] CKD: It’s going to go to your children.

[00:43:50] TU: Yeah. We’ve got to find this balance between taking care of our future selves, making sure we’re living a rich life today. One step further on that, I would encourage folks, we do this a lot with the clients of YFP Planning is, actually setting up some of the buckets that name those funds accordingly, and allows for that visual permission to spend. One of the powerful things, if you’ve got all your money in one account, and we’re not separating – okay, this is earmarked for normal monthly bills. This is earmarked for emergency fund. But this small sliver, whatever that number is earmarked for those things that really derive some of the greatest joy or experiences, or give – whatever would be, those splurge type of items that folks like to do as well. Giving yourself the permission to spend is also incredibly, incredibly important.

Cynthia, this has been fantastic. It’s a conversation that I’ve been wanting to have for so long, because it’s something that I’ve been wrestling through as a topic individually for several years. I think, in this industry where we talked so much about X’s and O’s of the financial plan, I think this is such a refreshing aspect as we think about the intersection between mindfulness and money. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Where can folks go to further connect with you and learn more about the work that you’re doing?

[00:45:09] CKD: Absolutely. Sure. First, let me thank you. It has been such a pleasure to share this information. I look forward to sharing more of it. I mean, I am now getting to the point where I’m hoping to share more where people can actually access it outside of me, say speaking at a meeting. If you visit my main website, which is cynthiaknappdlugosz.com – are you going to have that written out somewhere?

[00:45:37] TU: We will. We’ll link it in the show notes.

[00:45:39] CKD: Excellent. That’s a lot of letters that I really hesitate to try to like spell out for people right now. If you visit cynthiaknappdlugosz.com, that will show you a couple of tiles that are the main things that I do. I mentioned earlier, I’m a solopreneur. I have the kind of a whole bunch of buckets really, as we were talking earlier. I have a bunch of different buckets that I do. On that page, you can click over to or you can visit directly my blog, pharmacyworklifematters.com. On there, you can sign up. I think I call it “Sign up for my newsletter” or “Sign up to be alerted to posts.”

I am working on converting that to an actual newsletter, where, originally I was just sort of letting people know, “Hey! I finally posted another blog post.” Now, I’m moving that to an actual newsletter, where I will start alerting folks to things that I am about to be doing or launching. One of the first things I am working to get up is what is going to be a free, I think I’m fashioning it as a four-week introduction to mindfulness and meditation, where I’ll try to set you up with a meditation practice. The kind specifically that I’ve been talking about that is focused on training attention. When I say four weeks, it’s just that every week, I’ll introduce something new and then you will be able to practice it during the week. Like I said, if you sign up for that newsletter, I will start announcing things through there and at least, that meditation program will be free. I look forward to seeing you.

[00:47:12] TU: Great stuff. We will link both of those in the show notes. I hope folks will check those out. I’m personally looking forward to the meditation mini-course, course, whatever you want to call it. Count me in as you launch that.

[00:47:23] CKD: Fantastic.

[00:47:23] TU: Again, appreciate your time and for sharing some of your insights and expertise on the YFP podcast. Thank you so much.

[00:47:29] CKD: Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.

[OUTRO]

[00:47:32] 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-chase 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 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 231: From Pharmacist to Calligraphy Artist Working with A-List Celebrities

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

From Pharmacist to Calligraphy Artist Working with A-List Celebrities

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

About Today’s Guest

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

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

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

Episode Summary

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

Key Points From This Episode

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

Highlights

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

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

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

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

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

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

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

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

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

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

[INTERVIEW]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:07:49] RC: That’s incredible.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[OUTRO]

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

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

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

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

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

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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 218: How Marina Created a Business in Clinical Herbalism

Posted on August 26, 2021November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

How Marina Created a Business in Clinical Herbalism

Dr. Marina Buksov discusses her entrepreneurial journey in natural remedies and clinical herbalism.

About Today’s Guest

Dr. Marina Buksov is a registered Doctor of Pharmacy, Health Coach, Clinical Herbalist, and lifelong learner of the Healing Arts. She is the creator of Build Your Holistic Herbal Practice course mentoring other healthcare professionals in clinical herbal as well as business skills. She is also a functional medicine pharmacist as part of PharmToTable telehealth platform.

Marina also offers educational webinars with Radicle Herbs and is a wellness writer for Jejune Magazine. Marina uses her multidisciplinary background to educate patients about the least invasive and most natural methods for healing the spirit-body-mind. Her truly holistic approach helps women embody the best versions of themselves and lovingly celebrate the skin they’re in.

When she is not studying, Marina likes to dance, paint, and tinker with various concoctions (tea blends, meals, DIY projects). She lives with her husband, toddler, and two mischievous kitties in NYC.

Summary

Dr. Marina Buksov, a registered pharmacist, Health Coach, Clinical Herbalist, and lifelong learner of the Healing Arts, joins Tim Ulbrich to discuss her entrepreneurial journey. Marina reveals why she launched her brand and business, some lessons she learned along the way, and how her financial journey has intersected with her business goals.

Upon graduation from pharmacy school, Marina quickly realized that she didn’t feel truly passionate about any one particular area of pharmacy or traditional pharmacy career paths. After connecting with her mentor, she decided to explore alternative medicine. During this time, Marina started working in a Russian-style apothecary that specialized in herbs and supplements. Shortly after, Marina found her way into health coaching, incorporating her alternative medicine training and education from her retail pharmacy experience.

Marina advises other pharmacists who may experience that same sense of not belonging in the profession to explore a variety of areas of pharmacy, connect with mentors, and look for (or create) opportunities to find what and how you resonate with the pharmacy profession even as a practicing pharmacist. Along the way, mentors and coaches have played an integral part in Marina’s business, with financial planning and coaching guiding her ability to take risks with her business while also providing for her future.

Mentioned on the Show

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich: Marina, welcome to the show.

Marina Buksov: Hi. Thanks so much, Tim.

Tim Ulbrich: I am really excited to dig into your entrepreneurial journey and start us off by telling us about your journey into becoming a pharmacist.

Marina Buksov: Sure. So my parents are actually both dual majors, you could say, in biology and chemistry. And so they kind of inspired me to go down this road. I always loved chemistry as well. It kind of came naturally to me, I guess because my dad was also a chemistry teacher, even though I was learning chemistry in English and he had learned it in Russian. So we kind of didn’t speak the same language, even though it’s a science. I never really needed the help, but I guess the interest was there, much like it was for him. And so when I was choosing colleges, they kind of just brought up pharmacy and they said, “Hey, this seems like a really lucrative field of study right now that you can look into since you like chemistry and math.” So I kind of decided to try it out with the thinking that if I don’t like it, I could always get out of it. But if I don’t get in now, then I won’t have a Master’s degree in six years and the opportunity was really good. So I ended up applying to a couple of schools, and there weren’t that many pharmacy schools in my area. There were only two, so that narrowed down my choices. And I actually loved it in school. I loved learning about the body, and I learned about the biochemistry and about all the medications but also about the non-pharmacological areas, which is what I specialize in now. So I loved the whole process. So being in pharmacy school but again, when it came time to graduate, I found myself at a loss for where in pharmacy exactly I see myself fitting in. My focus was, again, kind of widespread and I liked a lot of different areas, but I couldn’t see myself doing any one thing. And I chose a variety of diverse rotation settings just to put myself in different experiences, but I still couldn’t see myself doing a fellowship or any other kind of advanced training program or in retail or in hospital. So I was kind of like thinking, what am I going to do after I graduate?

Tim Ulbrich: So you had a lot of interests heading into pharmacy, ultimately went that pathway for the reasons that you mentioned. And I’m not surprised you graduate, I can tell that you’re inherently a learner, you’re interested in lots of different things. You go through your rotations, you’ve got this doctorate degree, but you’re not necessarily feeling like you fit into any “traditional” mold, right, that we often think of of pharmacy graduates, which as I think we’re doing a better job of now in 2021, you know, realizing that there certainly are lots of opportunities. The PharmD is a pathway, in my opinion, to many different opportunities. And we’re going to get to yours here in a moment. But tell us then about the path after pharmacy school. What did you do? And did you find out and ultimately get into something that you found out you love? Or did it just affirm that, you know what, I’m not sure where I’m going to go with this path?

Marina Buksov: Yes, so I guess it’s just taking things step-by-step and one day at a time and seeing what opportunities arise and present themselves. So I did end up going to Midyear to interview for fellowships, but that’s when I realized that I don’t see myself doing neither a residency or a fellowship, even though it’s such a lucrative and competitive field that I feel like, you know, people go into it for maybe the merit of it or the prestige of it, maybe some people are really into it, but I was only seeing like the prestige side of it and I wasn’t really seeing how it was really something I’m personally passionate about, so I decided that wasn’t a good reason to apply. So I turned down the one offer that I had and I instead took another offer from a local pharmacy that was just a plain independent retail pharmacy that I had been working part-time as I was in pharmacy school and like learning the ropes there. So I accepted their position as a pharmacist. I figured this was like a safe step for me, a stepping stone, and from here, I could also do some learning on the side and figure out what I want to do next. And as it turns out, that pharmacy went out of business. Well, not really. But they were selling the pharmacy, so they said, ‘Oh, you know, there’s probably no point in us hiring you because we’re going to be selling the business so then we don’t know what the new owners are going to do.’ So basically, that offer fell through. And I found myself having no idea what to do. But I ended up just spending the summer after graduation and taking the test seeing on social media what opportunities are out there, and I ended up going to another pharmacy to kind of learn the system there and cover for someone. And it turned out a pharmacy next door was looking for a full-time pharmacist. So I happened to just go in there and drop off my resume, and they called me back and they said, “OK, we have a position for you.” And the interesting thing is it wasn’t a full-time in one position. It was kind of split between two stores. And one of the stores was in an area that I had said to myself that I would like to work in before, which is this area of Brooklyn that’s kind of a Russian population area called Brighton Beach next to the beach. And they do a lot of herbal medicine there because Russian medicine, much like Chinese, is very integrative in their approach. So their pharmacies are trained in both herbal medicine and pharmacological medicine and pharmaceutical medicine. So it kind of embodied both of those worlds, and I started my journey there.

Tim Ulbrich: So you’re working in a pharmacy that has more “traditional,” you know, what we think of of the pharmacy and dispensing medications, and then they have this more nontraditional — at least nontraditional in the sense of how we think of pharmacy practice in the U.S. So tell us more about that experience as you’re getting into more of the herbal experience and, you know, what did you learn through that? And how did this position and experience affect your path forward?

Marina Buksov: So it was pretty amazing to see how we have — we’re considered to be masters in our field, right, doctors, actually doctor of pharmacy in our six years of intense schooling, but we really know next to nothing on other types of medicine, anything “alternative” or holistic or complementary. All of that is kind of like if you’re lucky, you get an elective like I did. But otherwise, we don’t know too much. And even the over-the-counter medicines, we don’t go in depth about — again, unless you’re taking a self-care elective. It’s amazing that yes, we pack so much schooling and we come out with so much knowledge but also there’s so much more out there that we don’t know because we don’t know what we don’t know, right? If you just simply don’t know that it’s out there, you won’t even know that you can look for something else, right? So you’ll just rely on the “traditional” things that are conventional and available. So this was kind of like scratching the surface and exposing me to how other countries actually still utilize plant medicine and herbals and many more diverse over-the-counter products than we do. Basically, they’re very, very creative in how people are taking care of themselves from the home and they can go to a pharmacy and get a lot — a bunch of herbs or a bunch of herbal products or a mix between an herbal and a pharmaceutical that’s available without a prescription. And so there’s just so much more to know. And the pharmacists that are trained by, for example, Russian schools or any other kind of country that has this integrative approach, they know maybe not as in-depth as what we know pharmacologically, but they know a lot more about general self-care things that are, again, available to people without going to the doctor and without going to get a prescription. So that was really impressive, and I realized that I also want to know more.

Tim Ulbrich: So Marina, one of the things that I think of and I’ve seen this and heard it from entrepreneurs that have been on this show is that often, some experience that someone has leads to an interest or sparks an idea and then that ultimately will set them off on the path to start something, could be a business, could be a nonproft, could be a side hustle, whatever you want to call it. And before we get into your business, what you’re doing, what you’re working on, I don’t want to gloss over that there is a big jump from experience to idea to actually starting a business. So talk us through that a little bit more in terms of you’re working in this pharmacy, you’re getting this experience, it’s affirming the interests that you have, you’re a learner and you’re absorbing more information. What is the idea or the opportunity that you see that ultimately leads to you starting your business?

Marina Buksov: I mean, I think there were several big factors that were going on, one of which was my personal health journey that has been going on too during this time. And the interesting thing is that now, I — looking back at it — attribute it to psychosomatic things that were happening in my body and my mind and spirit, perhaps, because as I was graduating pharmacy school, I remember described my confusion and not feeling like I fit in anywhere, not knowing if this is actually the path that I should be on, kind of questioning all of that. And I called this my quarter-life crisis that happened because as I chose, you know, the retail position and the retail, as you know, you’re kind of behind the counter and, you know, the most pleasurable activity there was coming out and counseling the patients. But because of the fast pace, even in independent settings, often unless they had questions, counseling wouldn’t really happen.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

Marina Buksov: So that was my biggest joy, but unfortunately, I found myself mostly just filling prescriptions and checking things and billing insurances and calling doctors and calling insurances and being behind the counter and not really having the patient-to-patient interaction, which is what my favorite part was. And I started having different kinds of health issues arise from finishing pharmacy school and all through my first years of practice where I had like a worsening in my digestive tract issues that I had growing up, IBS type of things. I was also diagnosed with H. pylori. I had to take a lot of antibiotics. Then I had this obscure dacryostenosis happen in my eyes, which is when your tear ducts basically become more narrow. And so my eyes starting getting chronically inflamed. And at that point, I didn’t even want to come out and see anyone from behind the counter because I felt that I looked horrible with my inflamed eyes. And to top everything off, I also started having PCOS type of symptoms and was diagnosed with it and had lots of acne, which I never had growing up. So it was adult-onset acne and weight gain. And so all of these issues started cropping up when I, again, now, looking back at it, see it tied more to my life purpose and my mission wasn’t really being carried out. And so my health was suffering because of that.

Tim Ulbrich: OK, so Marina, you identify an opportunity to help train others, make other folks aware of some of these practices that, again, could supplement more what we think of traditional medicine. So what does that lead to in terms of your business, your services, what you’re offering, who that’s intended for, and really, what does that look like to solve the problem of which you just described, which is to really help fill what is potentially a gap out there and unawareness and lack of education?

Marina Buksov: Yeah, well, it took some time to distill that exact thought in my entrepreneurial journey. And as I like to say, the entrepreneurial journey is kind of like a forever commitment because you’re always growing. And it’s very much tied to professional growth, the business growth, and your personal growth where your business is a reflection of you and what you’re going through internally. And if you can master your own self, you can master having a business. As I was going along and working in mostly the retail setting, I realized this gap existed, right? So the first step was realizing that there is something I don’t know. So the first thing I need to do is educate myself on that. And then I could kind of draw some other conclusions or learn how to run a business with that perhaps or how to incorporate that into my practice that I already have. So first thing I did was I spoke to my complementary and alternative elective professor, and I asked her what she thinks I should do, and I shared with her how I feel like I don’t fit in and I really did have an interest in that elective. So she suggested I reach out to another person who was a graduate right before me. So when I spoke to her, she suggested that I go into health coaching. So my first program out of college was immediately enrolling in a health coaching program. So after that, I underwent a series of other programs where I learned everything from functional nutrition to eventually clinical herbalism. So how to work with plants and phytochemicals in a way to support the human body. Both nutritionally and medicinally, plants have a huge role in this. And they’re really the basis of both traditional pharmacy and naturopathy and even functional medicine or any supplement that you take out there, they have a basis of some kind of plant behind that. So the minerals and vitamins we extract or the active constituents probably have a root in a plant somewhere.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and I think, you know, you’re taking me back, Marina, to sometime in pharmacy school. And you’re right. There’s just a lot of connection back to the herbal aspect. And you’re spot-on that traditional PharmD curricula doesn’t necessarily provide much information — really, if at all sometimes, depending on the curriculum — that would allow folks to think about some of the application of this clinically or how some patients might be interested in approaching this. So again, you’ve identified a need, right? We’ve just talked about that. You mentioned about this very much being a journey, which I would agree with. And you’ve sought out additional training, so you provided some additional education to help increase your skills, which then takes us to the point where OK, you’ve got — you’ve obviously got your PharmD background, you’ve got some additional training, you’ve identified an opportunity to serve a group that perhaps isn’t being served to the full potential. So if I come to you, Marina, and I’m interested in this area of practice, whether I’m a pharmacist or not, like what are you offering? What is the product? What is the service?

Marina Buksov: There were a couple of iterations in my offerings. But it has evolved to me seeing clients in a functional medicine capacity as part of a team on a telehealth platform. So I realized that that would probably be the best use of my time in working with private clients whereas the majority of my business focus is really around educating and that knowledge gap to other providers and healthcare practitioners, especially pharmacists, that are wanting to learn about employing herbal medicine, whether they’re a pharmacy owner that wants to specialize and offer this to their patients or if there’s any other way that they would like to incorporate it as a private consultant like I did for many years or working with supplement companies as a consultant. I mean, there’s a myriad of ways. And that’s actually part of what we do in the program besides the didactic knowledge and homework that I give and accountability that I provide, I also train on the kind of business end side of things and how to actually implement some of these things into your work or business so that you have a successful vocation at the end of it.

Tim Ulbrich: Gotcha. So there’s both the patient side of it; you mentioned seeing clients one-on-one, and then more of the focus of what you’re doing on the business is training and educating others both on their clinical understanding but also some of the business aspects involved with this. So if we continue on the journey, I mentioned before often we have an experience that can spark an idea or lead to an interest that then takes us on our own entrepreneur journey to start something. Once you start something, obviously there’s then the task of OK, do folks know about what I’m doing? And how am I marketing this? And how am I making people aware of this? So tell us about your current strategies. I looked at your website; you’ve got a lot of great educational information, you’ve got a podcast. Like what is your strategy in terms of standing out so that other folks can become aware of who you are, your brand, the services that you offer, and ultimately engage in those and benefit from them.

Marina Buksov: This is definitely something that after I got the clinical knowledge side of things down — and again, I’m a person like many of us, especially pharmacists, we feel like we never know enough, so we always want more and more and more courses and all of this stuff, which I’m definitely guilty of. But eventually, I said, OK, I know enough to start helping people. So now I have to, again, focus on how am I presenting myself? How are people finding me? How can I serve? You know, because I am now capable of serving in the way that I want to serve. But how can I do that without any clients? So I had to also teach myself that and I have to say that it was a very hard and rocky journey to teach myself, so I really recommend investing in a coach that will show you the ropes, which is what I eventually had to do. I actually worked with several business coaches and was part of like Business Masterminds and again, those are great for accountability and support. And I’m trying to really cut that learning curve for people where they can just go to one program that will teach them a really, really good foundation and basis for everything that they would need in terms of botanical medicine, which is again, the backbone of every alternative, holistic practice in some way or form. And so people can get the clinical side of things, get a really good foundation and backbone, and start to dip their feet into the marketing and the business side of things immediately and finding themselves a niche and whatever else will help them on their particular implementation plan because for me, it took me a really long time. You know, I’ve been working slowly, slowly to build my business for about seven years now. And this year was the first year that I really pivoted and decided who am I going to serve and was really clear on that and came out with my program, which I mentioned, that I’m now running. So this all kind of solidified earlier this year.

Tim Ulbrich: And I hope our listeners, especially those that have an idea or maybe they’re at the beginning of their journey or maybe even feeling frustrated with, man, this is just not taking off as quickly as I can, just hearing that timeframe, right? Seven years. You know, I think back to the journey of YFP, coming up on seven years. And there is always something new that is to be learned. And I would encourage folks to check out your website, Marina. We’ll link to that in the show notes, DrMarinaBuksov.com, because I think you’ve done a really nice job of what I think is an important recipe to taking people along the journey from interest to actually being able to engage with those folks and then offer them a product or a service that is of value and hopefully is mutually beneficial between you and that individual. And you know, when you look on your website, you’ve got obviously valuable educational content in terms of interview that you do on the podcast and other resources, but you also have done a nice job with building lead generation techniques and guides and some other things that help you to capture those leads and then you have the ability to follow up with them and convert traffic into conversations that you can have and engage with that community. And so lead with value and then find a way to be able to capture that audience and then you can have that two-way conversation to see whether or not your services may be a good fit. Marina, I want to go back to something you mentioned a little bit earlier. And you mentioned it quickly, but it’s a really important point. And that is that folks that are going on this entrepreneurial journey, no matter where they are in that journey, I do think that certainly includes not only the professional side but a fair amount of personal development. And I believe from my experiences that often, engaging and leaning into the business can really bring out some of the best strengths that someone may have that maybe they weren’t even fully aware of what those strengths were, but it also can expose some weaknesses, opportunities for development, whatever you want to call it, that maybe otherwise weren’t exposed because of all the different hats that you have to wear as you’re trying to get a business off and running. So Marina, for your journey, what are an area or two that you think of by going through this journey and the work that you’ve done in starting this business, it’s really brought out or firmed some of the strengths that you have and then other side of the equation, maybe has exposed some opportunities where you even need to surround yourself with others’ support or even develop yourself a little bit further.

Marina Buksov: That’s a great question. I think really, this journey does expose you with the opportunities for growth, like you said, by exposing you to some of your not-so-favorite qualities or maybe even your worst qualities will come to life when you start to run a business because like I said, often we see the business as a reflection of us because it’s so personal to us. It’s related to our vocation and our personal mission, what we’re trying to be in the world. So sometimes, when we’re faced with not seeing success right away or as soon as we like or the level of success that we like, however you would like to measure that but most people measure it with fame or money or visibility or some kind of feedback, right, from the real world, maybe really good testimonials is another one. So whatever success is for you, it’s important to define it and to also be able to separate you from your business but also learn when it is a mirror and what you can learn from it. So you know, just because your business may not take off as soon as you’d like, like we said, seven years for us, or something is just not going your way or you’re experiencing some sort of setback, just know that it could be a “temporary failure” or think of it only as a lesson because you really can only either win or learn. That’s how I approach things nowadays. And so if something doesn’t take off immediately or doesn’t give you a reward on your investment right away, it doesn’t mean that it wasn’t valuable. It’s a step that was vital for you to not repeat that in the future or to learn a different strategy that will work better or some other important lesson for you to, again, learn from. And especially if you don’t have a business background, you should expect some sort of challenges or setbacks in business your first rodeo because you know, you could be a great pharmacist and know everything there is about pharmacy, but that doesn’t mean that you’ll know immediately how to run a business and how to have that proper mindset to run a business. So for me, it was a lot of coaching that helped me and also seeing that other people on the same journey as entrepreneurs are also experiencing similar challenges and setbacks. So viewing that as a normal part of the growth process instead of seeing it as a failure is my best advice. And ultimately, I realized that even if I do experience setbacks in my business, it’s still worth it for me to eventually have the opportunity to succeed by showing my mission and getting more recognition about my mission. And inspiring others to pursue their missions with my story is worth it to me, despite all of the setbacks that it has potentially.

Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely. And that’s what I encourage folks: Share your story. You don’t know who’s listening, who may be affirmed by that, who might have an idea that it helps stimulate that forward, a student who’s feeling frustrated and unsure of where to go with their career path and just hearing about alternative ideas. I think so much value in that. And Marina, loved what you shared to connect that with the value for you of a coach. And I think that sometimes on this journey, like not only — especially for folks that are working full-time and they’re starting a business or an idea, you know, there’s that excitement, there’s that energy, but it also can be a lonely place and you’re putting in a lot of time. And having a coach, having a community, having a mastermind, having folks around you that you can bounce ideas off of and get support from, is just really important for the accountability but also be able to talk out loud as I think so much of this, we can live in our own thoughts as we’re trying to build the business. And shoutout here as I think about for YFP, my partner at YFP, Tim Baker, you know, I have the opportunity to sit down on a regular basis and we can share wins, we can share frustrations, but just having those conversations I think is so, so valuable. Marina, I’m going to ask you about the connection between the personal financial plan and what you’re doing on the business side and vice versa. And where I’m going with this is that I am a firm believer that a good, healthy business is often built and built confidently when you can build that upon having a strong personal financial foundation because you’re not necessarily worried about, ‘What about this? What about that?’ It doesn’t necessarily mean you have all of your financial goals achieved, but you’ve got a good foundation of which you can work from so you’re not constantly worried about that as you approach the business with confidence. And vice versa, often our business activities are able to help support our personal financial goals, whatever that may be for individuals that are listening. So tell us a little bit about for you, how the business and your personal plan have really worked alongside and have ultimately fed into one another.

Marina Buksov: I have to admit that I was a little bit floundering in this area before with actually tracking things. Like you were saying, it’s really important to bounce ideas and to talk about what’s happening, what are the wins, what are the challenges, and to actually put that into numbers and see in that way how your business is actually doing because numbers don’t lie, as they say. So that part of it, actually tracking and putting things down as data and analyzing it, you know, you can just remove some of the stigma that’s attached to OK, is this number a win or a fail? And actually, just view it as a statistic that is showing you OK, what can you improve on based on these numbers? You know, which area needs improvement? Which area is doing well? So that way, you can focus your resources and your time and energy on improving the things that aren’t doing well and doubling down on the things that are. But unless you track it and use numbers, you really won’t know. And so same thing with my business. You know, for a long time, I was reluctant to even put down numbers that are coming in from clients and balancing the checkbook and all of those kind of business tasks because it’s like a hassle because it’s another thing for you to do, but I realized that it’s very important and it actually gives you the clarity and the confidence with what needs to be done next because another thing that was a challenge for me is to learn how to prioritize. And so when you see the numbers in front of you, you see what needs to be done first. You know, what is an area that really needs your help and attention right now? And what scenario that can wait? And often, you know, I spread myself thin. I’m sure many other people do, trying to do all the things. But really, we need a structured guide so that you mentioned before, not to burn yourself out by all the business activities and to really have this focused plan of intention and a plan of action, which can really be informed by the numbers. So when earlier this year, you know, I was investing in coaching programs all these past years and really wanted to take my business to the next level and wanting to leave my job full-time, that’s when we started to — actually last year at this time, so about a year ago, my husband and I decided to look into a financial planner because we wanted to know, you know, where do we stand financially personally? And where can we be confident in making a certain buffer for ourselves so that we can take certain risks with our business? I think that’s really important to have a plan and to expect some setbacks. Nothing is going to be smooth sailing. You know, the past few years taught me that. But I decided it was really important to look at the numbers and to create a buffer, which we were comfortable for a certain period of time so that we give ourselves that safety zone from which the business could grow. And again, that’s always a risk. Is the business is going to take off exactly per our plan, our projections, or not? So shameless plug to YFP: I was working with YFP, and I found that I really didn’t know much because this is not my area of interest, right? Accounting and counting numbers, I am more into health and wellness and getting results for my clients. I would like to dedicate my time for those kind of things. But living in the real world, you do have to think about personal finances and business finances and retirement and putting away money for more expenses than you even are expecting because —

Tim Ulbrich: Boring, right?

Marina Buksov: Yeah, a lot of us live paycheck-to-paycheck, and we don’t realize, you know, we need to set aside money for this or we need to plan an estate or we need to maybe save for education for our kids or if you are a homeowner, there’s many hidden expenses that pop up that you don’t expect. So we decided it was time for us to kind of get a realistic perspective and reality check so that we can be more confident in the business side of things. And so I highly recommend working with a financial advisor that has your best interests at heart and doesn’t just want to sell you things with commission attached.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and I think for Marina, you mentioned some of the value that can come from the technical side, right, of the financial plan. I know for Jess and I and our journey, which I think is something that others may find value in, is sometimes when you’re in the weeds of your own financial plan, it’s really hard to see outward, right? And having somebody as a third party, you know, thinking of spouses or couples that might be working with a planner specifically, where you can have somebody ask really good questions that get you thinking, that get you talking, that get you really evaluating like, what is the true risk on this scale, right? And I think that while I don’t want to categorize all pharmacists as being risk-averse, I think sometimes we view financial decisions on that end — and I’m certainly not promoting that we go out and make crazy financial decisions, right. We’ve got to take care of our future self. But we’ve also got to live a rich life today. And part of what I’m hearing through this interview, Marina, for you is living a rich life was pursuing this passion that not only was only important to your physical and emotional health but also what you saw as an opportunity to bring this information to other healthcare practitioners and ultimately the patients that they serve to be able to have an impact. And that’s an investment worth making, right, in being able to see that through, whether it’s a coach, whether it’s a financial planner, and certainly all the other investments you’ve made in getting the business up. Marina, I’m thinking back to your journey where you mentioned, ‘Hey, I’m graduating pharmacy school. Yeah, it’s been an interesting ride, but I don’t really feel like I fit, right? I don’t fit in a traditional mode of fellowship or of residencies or, you know, community pharmacy or inpatient practice. And so I suspect we have a lot of other people that might be feeling that, whether it’s students that are maybe questioning was this the right decision or I’m not sure where I’m going to go or practicing pharmacists that might feel the pull to explore another area of pharmacy and how their pharmacy degree could be used but they just don’t know where to go, who to talk to, where to start. What advice would you have for folks that are out there that are listening and feeling like, I’m just not sure I really fit in this whole pharmacy thing. Like where do I go? What do I do?

Marina Buksov: Yeah, so I think the best thing to do is really dip your toes, just like I was talking about how I selected a diverse variety of rotation sites for myself in APs and FPs. As much as possible, I tried to diversify. I worked in insurances, worked in different settings, pharmaceutical industry, basically everything was super different. And that taught me, actually, what I liked and what I didn’t like because just getting a glimpse into a setting and how it would be like to work there and the day-to-day, how to assess what they’re doing on their back end and how you feel about that and then giving you a sense of if you can climb the ladder in that space, if it’s more corporate or not. So you can kind of picture yourself in those spaces and see do you feel good there? And does this agree with your inner wiring or your ethics? Because for me, I found that I really wanted to make an impact. That was important to me to use my skills in a way that was impactful and that I felt I was creating good in the world. And I saw that as targeting the low-hanging fruit, you know, how we can improve on a large scale our public health and self-care by education and by self-care. That’s really my mission, what it really boils down to. And the other settings for me didn’t provide that level of impact. You know, there was some personal gratification or again that prestige aspect in some settings, but I was not on the same mission as those settings and what they were doing. So I didn’t feel like I fit in there. On the other hand of the spectrum, even if you don’t get to go on a variety of rotation sites, you can find your own opportunities. So actually, I had a bunch of students reach out to me. And I might be a preceptor someday soon.

Tim Ulbrich: Oh, fun.

Marina Buksov: And then besides — nowadays, yeah, the opportunities are crazy because we’re in a virtual world. But you can also just reach out locally. So when I was considering going to herb school — actually, before I even knew there was a thing because that’s another missing knowledge gap because I didn’t even know there was such a thing — so before I even knew somebody had recommended that I check out an herb shop as a place where I could practice alternative pharmacy. So I went to a local herb shop and asked the owner to give me an internship, which he did. So there is plenty of ways you can create your own opportunity and learn from the experience and empirically applying yourself there. It’s going to teach you so much more than what you can read in a blog or a book. So that’s really what I recommend. And when I was in the shop, that’s when I decided to go to this school and get a more formal education because I did see myself aligning with that and being interested to learn more. So I think exposing yourself to experiencing is the best teacher. So whatever way you can do that locally or virtually nowadays and get somebody to mentor you or again, if you’re able to invest in a coach if let’s say you’re not a student but you’re a pharmacist, it is worth it to have some level of guidance or mentorship.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, great advice and wisdom, Marina. And back to a comment that you made earlier. You either win or you learned along the way, correct? And I think of maybe students who have some of those opportunities to choose rotations and get out there and network. But for pharmacists that are out there, you know, don’t let that be a hindrance. You know, reach out to folks like Marina. Reach out to folks in other nontraditional areas. You know, have several conversations. People are very willing typically to meet. And I think not only will that networking be really valuable, but I think it will also stimulate hopefully some ideas and conversations and lead to other connections that will affirm areas of interest and hopefully generate some ideas as well. Marina, I really appreciate you taking the time to share your story. I’m looking forward to following your journey in the years ahead. And I have a feeling you have inspired folks that are listening and perhaps in their own journey, whether they may be on moving forward with some of the ideas that they have of their own. So Marina, as we wrap up, where can listeners go to learn more about you and the work that you’re doing and to connect with you?

Marina Buksov: Yes, so the website you mentioned, it’s DrMarinaBuksov.com. And it has all the links to my social media. But I am on Facebook and Instagram and even TikTok nowadays. So you could reach me everywhere at @DrMarinaBuksov. And you can also search by my business name, which is Raw Fork.

Tim Ulbrich: Great. We’ll link to those in the show notes. And again, Marina, thank you so much for your time.

Marina Buksov: Thank you so much, Tim.

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