YFP 379: Inspiring Bold Ideas: Career and Entrepreneurial Insights with Dr. Brooke Griffin


Dr. Brooke Griffin, founder of Bold Idea Group, shares her career journey in pharmacy academia to launching her own coaching business. 

This episode is brought to you by First Horizon.

Episode Summary

In this inspiring episode, Tim Ulbrich introduces Dr. Brooke Griffin, a coach, mentor, and founder of Bold Idea Group. Dr. Griffin shares her career journey in academia to eventually launching her own business, and opens up about the challenges and triumphs of her path, including the bold steps she took and valuable lessons she has learned along the way. 

This conversation is packed with practical wisdom for anyone seeking career fulfillment and personal growth. Whether you’re just starting your career or looking to make meaningful changes, Dr. Griffin’s journey and insights are sure to inspire you to take bold steps toward your own growth.

About Today’s Guest

Brooke Griffin, PharmD, BCACP is a Professor of Pharmacy Practice and Vice Chair of Clinical Services at Midwestern University College of Pharmacy, Downers Grove. With over 20 years of experience in various ambulatory care clinics, she has worked on several multidisciplinary teams and precepted hundreds of students and residents.

She is a Professional Coach in Life & Work and is passionate about offering career support through a thought-provoking and creative process. She is a coach and mentor through several pharmacy organizations and speaks nationally on various professional development topics, including the importance of coaching and mentoring, time management, and work/life integration.

In 2022 she launched Bold Idea Group with a mission to inspire bold ideas from within. Her motivational podcast, Today’s Bold Idea, offers a five minute inspirational boost to start your day. She is on this self-development journey alongside all of you and believes “every pharmacist deserves a coach.”

Key Points from the Episode

  • Introduction and Overview [0:00]
  • Upcoming YFP Webinar [0:33]
  • First Horizon Home Loan Information [1:24]
  • Dr. Brooke Griffin’s Career Journey [3:23]
  • Transition to Academia and Work-Life Integration [6:45]
  • Challenges and Opportunities in Academia [8:58]
  • Starting Bold Idea Group [23:12]
  • Balancing Academia and Entrepreneurship [36:48]
  • Lessons Learned and Reflections [38:30]
  • Conclusion and Contact Information [43:46]

Episode Highlights

“Out of all the clients I’ve worked with, it is very rarely about leaving their current job. It’s really this job crafting aspect of thinking about is it a task that needs to be done differently? Is it a relationship that needs to be looked at differently? Is it a mindset? And most of the time, it’s mindset. We always start with mindset.” – Dr. Brooke Griffin [25:32]

“Because we know that our academic careers are demanding, and we know that it’s not a nine to five job. There’s a lot of things you’re doing on nights and weekends to fulfill that role. And the first thing I always tell people is, whatever idea you have for a side hustle, it cannot feel burdensome because you will not last. It has to be energy giving.” – Dr. Brooke Griffin [33:35] 

“When you start a side hustle or start your entrepreneurial journey, you are learning a new language. You are taking baby steps. Everything seems new and everything seems scary, and being able to embrace that beginner’s mindset again is something that I really treasure.” – Dr. Brooke Griffin [43:08]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich  00:00

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 welcome Dr. Brooke Griffin, who is a coach and mentor through several pharmacy organizations, and speaks nationally on various professional development topics, including the importance of coaching and mentoring, time management and work life integration. In 2022 she launched her business, Bold Idea Group, with a mission to inspire bold ideas from within. During the show, we discussed her career journey in pharmacy, why and how she started Bold Idea Group, and lessons that she has learned along the way, including advice that she would give her former self, both as it relates to her academic career and starting a business. Our next YFP webinar is just around the corner on October 7, at 9pm Eastern. This free webinar titled “Aliquot Investing: Small Investments in Big Real Estate Investing” will be led by YFP Real Estate Investing Podcast co-hosts Nate Hedrick and David Bright. This webinar will explore how syndications fit into a well rounded real estate investment strategy, especially for busy pharmacists who don’t have time to source, vet and manage real estate investments. In this webinar, David and Nate will be joined by Alex Cartwright, an economist who has also led syndication projects, including one in which both David and Nate have invested themselves. You can learn more about this webinar and register at yourfinancialpharmacist.com/syndication. 

Tim Ulbrich  01:28

All right, let’s hear from today’s sponsor, First Horizon, and then we’ll jump into my interview with Dr. Brooke Griffin. Does saving 20% for a down payment on a home feel like an uphill battle? It’s no secret that pharmacists have a lot of competing financial priorities, including high student loan debt, meaning that saving 20% for a down payment on a home may take years. For several years now, we’ve been partnering with First Horizon, who offers a professional home loan option, AKA a doctor or pharmacist loan that requires a 3% down payment for a single family home or townhome for first time homebuyers, has no PMI and offers a 30 year fixed rate mortgage on home loans up to $766,550 in most areas. The pharmacist home loan is available in all states except Alaska and Hawaii, and can be used to purchase condos as well, however, rates may be higher and a condo review has to be completed. While I’ve personally worked with First Horizon before and had a great experience with Tony and his team, don’t just take it from me. Here’s what Emily from Prattville, Alabama had to say about her experience with First Horizon: “Clear communication and excellent guidance from Gail and Cindy throughout the entire process. I greatly appreciated the fact that everything was digital, because I’m allergic to paper! The ability to upload inside everything digitally made the process very efficient, which I prefer. This was by far the best mortgage process I have experienced. This is my seventh when counting refinances.” So to check out the requirements for First Horizon’s, pharmacist home loan and to start the pre-approval process, visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/home-loan. Again, that’s yourfinancialpharmacist.com/home-loan. 

Tim Ulbrich  01:52

Brooke, welcome to the show.

Brooke Griffin  03:10

Thank you, Tim, thanks so much for having me.

Tim Ulbrich  03:13

So excited to have you here. This has been a while in the making. We ran across each other at ASHP mid year in the airport, flying home from California, and reconnected on what you’re working on, on the entrepreneurial sides of things. I said, Hey, we’ve got to have you on the podcast to share your entrepreneurial journey, and we’re going to do that, but before we get to that, tell us a little bit about your career journey, what led you into the profession, where’d you complete your pharmacy training and what your focus has been in your academic career?

Brooke Griffin  03:44

Yeah, sure. Well, thank you so much for having me. And I feel like our paths have crossed a couple of times, and even before I saw you in the airport, you were so generous with your time when we had a phone call when I was just starting this journey and thinking about how to build something while working in academia. So I very much followed in your footsteps. So thank you for going first, Tim. Or one of the first because you inspired me. You helped me a lot that day when we talked. So what got me into pharmacy? Well, I was a very confused high school student and wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, and I had a huge chip on my shoulder, and I was very stubborn, and I thought I, you know, didn’t want to go to school for very long because I was 17 and really stubborn, but I wanted to be able to support myself and have a service aspect to my job that it felt impactful. I feel like a lot of pharmacists say they wanted to help people. I think I was too selfish for that, but I knew I just wanted to have some sort of impact in my role. And so a friend of mine, her older sister, was going to pharmacy school, and back in the day before there were like, websites and virtual tours that you could go to, you would go to campuses and spend the night with an upperclassman to really get the feel. And so I just fell in love with this idea of going to school for five years and having this great degree and being in healthcare. And ended up going to Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and graduated with my PharmD, which ended up taking six years, and then added a residency to that. So my bold idea at age 17 with getting out in five years ended up being seven, but I fell in love with pharmacy, basically.

Tim Ulbrich  05:28

And that led to an academic career that you’ve been on for some time now. So tell us about your journey into academia. When did you know that was the right path for you, and what’s been your focus in that area?

Brooke Griffin  05:39

It was during APPYs. So I did an academic rotation with one of my favorite professors, Dr. Lynn Sylvia, and she really gave us a behind the scenes look at what faculty do, and it was so much more than what the student sees from the lecture hall. And she introduced us to kind of a three legged stool of teaching, service and scholarship, and all the organizations that faculty are part of, and how they really enrich their professional development continuously. And I had no idea that this was even an option for me after graduating with a PharmD and then completing a residency. So that really set me on my path. I also had a strong interest in ambulatory care, so that was also solidified during appys. So thankfully, I found a residency that combined both ambulatory care and a ton of teaching, and that was with Midwestern University. And then when I completed the residency, they offered me a job to stay on.

Tim Ulbrich  06:35

We didn’t know each other at the time, but very similar path. So I went down a residency in ambulatory care that had an academic component opened up my eyes to teaching scholarship, service, and that’s one of the things I loved about academia, is especially for those that like to create and build there are so many opportunities, whether it’s in the classroom, teaching, whether it’s at a clinical site teaching, whether it’s in scholarship teaching, even In service. Opportunities like there are a ton of ways to be entrepreneurial and build inside of an academic environment. And I think the flexibility that can be afforded there and the creativity that can be afforded there is really unlike many other roles. And you shared with me several weeks ago, and we had talked leading up to this podcast, that early in your academic career, you went to four days a week, a 0.8 full time position. Why did you decide to go down that path? What? What did that allow you to do? And how did that help pave the way for others to do that as well? 

Brooke Griffin  07:32

Yeah, it was 2009 after the birth of my first child. I had this calling on my heart to work part time, and I wanted to stay in my current role, and I felt so strongly about it that if it wasn’t going to be approved in my current role, I was seriously thinking about, what else could I do with with my career? So you know, all you can do is ask, and it was not an immediate yes. And it was a great lesson in that, you know, nothing is given, even if you are a hard worker and you feel like you’re putting incredible value in, day in and day out, your asks are sometimes not always granted. And it really surprised me thinking that it was, you know, 2009 2010, and I was really the first person to have this request. We had a couple of part time faculty who came in as part time to do some labs and workshops, and that was a little bit different. I was the first one to ask to be reduced. So it took about a year, Tim, for it to get approved through all of the appropriate channels. And if you’re in academia, you know, things take a very long time and a ton of non fillable PDFs. So you know, thankfully, I had a couple of at a mentor and my immediate supervisor, my chair, who who were supportive of me and kind of vouched for me and advocated for me and said, I know Brooke will be able to do this if she goes down to 0.8 and there were some conditions that I had to agree to, and I didn’t have Your Financial Pharmacist to lean on at the time to help me navigate that decision. So ultimately, I have no regrets. And really what it did is it gave me that work life integration that I was looking for. And for some of you who are listening, you may think, well, one day is that, was that really enough? And for me, it was. I know that there have been other faculty who’ve been able to go down to point six, and that’s the right balance for them. Point eight was the right balance for me. And so what it was able to do then is open up the door for several faculty behind me. And it wasn’t necessarily a lot easier, but it was somewhat easier. So there were two faculty that were able to put together a job share proposal. They each were point six to make up a 1.2 FTE that was really unique. And then we even published an article, Tim, that showed our productivity 18 months before going part time and 18 months going after part time. And who would have guessed it, our scholarship was way up 18 months after going part time. Because, you know, when you start a family and you have limited time in your day and then limited time on the job with being point eight or point six, you know how to get things done in the precious minutes of the day. And not that anyone is slacking off before, not to say that, but we were just able to really hunker down and fulfill our goals, regardless of the point 8 or point 6.

Tim Ulbrich  10:28

Yeah, forces and efficiency, right? That for sure. And if you’ll send us that article, we’d love to link that in the show notes. I think others would be interested in reading that, and the data helps, right? If people are thinking about making some of these proposals. I love what you shared that all you can do is ask, and even if the answer is no, doesn’t mean no forever, and it doesn’t mean that’s personal either. I mean, sometimes we’re just inside of structures and organizations where they may not be the flexibility or the creativity yet for these positions. I think we’re seeing an evolution in this space. Thankfully. I love the example you gave of two part time folks coming together for, you know, a hybrid role. And I think with the right leadership and the right conversations and the right approach, there can be a solution here, but doesn’t always mean it’s going to be on the first ask, right? And I think academic roles, the other one, I hear a lot about our VA roles – pharmacists who often will run up against barriers in proposing these types of things, but may get creative with two halftime positions, you know, replacing a full time clinical role. 

Brooke Griffin  11:29

Yeah, you’re right. And I think sometimes some leaders fear that I’m going to open the door, and the floodgates will open, and now everyone will want to request to go part time. And I can just share, from my own experience, that was not the case. There are obviously the majority of faculty who like working full time and prefer to work full time. Everyone has their own unique circumstance, and I’m thankful that they took a chance on me and that it’s been a successful model for us.

Tim Ulbrich  11:53

I have a question related to the passion that you have for your academic work, and I think this is very much going to connect to our discussion around the work that you’re doing and what you’ve been building at Bold Idea Group, your business. And the question relates to running towards something versus running away from something. I talk with a lot of pharmacists that perhaps may not be satisfied in their current role, and the desire for something else, very much as a running away from something versus running towards something. And two very different things, two very different things, from from an energy perspective, from a mindset perspective, from a motivation perspective. And one thing you shared with me several weeks ago leading up to this interview is that despite the business growth that you’ve had and the efforts that you don’t want to leave academia. That’s an area for you that has been fulfilling, that work has been able to really align with your passion, your interest, where you’re adding value to others. Tell us more about that. Where does that passion for your academic work and role come from? That it allows you to then build something else on the side as well, that you can really be moving towards that effort, not running away from what you’re currently doing.

Brooke Griffin  13:05

Yes, yeah, great question. And I talk with so many pharmacists who are going through the same thing, where they feel like they they’re running away from something. So I can definitely relate to that. I love academia. I love my faculty role. I love working with my colleagues in this space. I love working with students and the next generation of pharmacists. I love the autonomy and all of the flexibility that we talked about earlier that comes with this role, even if not all of my asks are my choice. I usually have flexibility to make it my own when I do a course or when I do a certain lecture or workshop, and for me, that’s enough. But it hasn’t been all roses. I mean, there was a time about five years ago when this all kind of started with my side business that I felt really stuck in academia. I reached all of the accolades that you could in academia, in terms of Associate Professor and full professor, I was tenure track with pretty much secured that I was going to achieve tenure, and I just hit a brick wall. And no one, no one really tells you that’s going to happen after you reach full professor. And I it was a big time of growth for me, because I didn’t realize how ambitious I was, and that when I didn’t see the next rung on that ladder that’s so well laid out in academia, that that made me really nervous, and when I realized I didn’t really want to ascend in traditional academic leadership roles, that was another sign that, Okay, what else is going to fulfill me here? I love my job. There’s certain aspects I didn’t like about it, and there were some days that I really liked my job, but the love was kind of missing. So I was feeling like I was on this constant seesaw, which made me feel stuck. And that’s when I sought out my first coach and really started asking myself some really deep, insightful, hard questions. Like, what do you want this next chapter of your career to look like? Where is your passion going to come from? And we have a word for that now, and that’s job crafting. I didn’t have that term when I was going through this on my own. I’ve kind of scrapped it together by listening to a ton of podcasts and reading a bunch of books and collecting questions and journaling at home, some of it facilitated by a coach, which was really helpful. So now I look at this time in my career where I am building something on the side that brings me immense joy, and sometimes the day job doesn’t provide all of that joy that it once did. That’s okay. I have this business on the side which is doing it for me, but there are certainly aspects about the job that I absolutely love, and I am not ready to to leave that yet. 

Tim Ulbrich  15:48

It’s interesting as you’re sharing about being stuck, you know, you’re taking back, me back and my own academic journey. And one of the things that you share that really resonates with me and maybe many listeners as well, is that often we don’t realize that there’s some of these external motivations here. We’re talking about promotion and tenure, right? Where, you know, said or unsaid in the system, we’re kind of trained to be like that’s the definition of success, right? And you see this language used all over the place, in different types of books or resources. This is not a pharmacist, academic or even a pharmacy type of thing. What we’re talking about is climbing a first mountain climbing a second mountain type of discussion. And I think when you check off those boxes, which are a necessary part of the process, they have value. And getting to that point, I think where you realize like, Hey, I’ve checked those boxes, those are all external affirmations that may or may not always align internally. And what I hear you sharing is you’re beginning to build the business, and have been building the business is there’s very much an inside out type of motivation of what you’re building and how you’re serving and helping others, and that is a whole different level of achievement, success, whatever you want to call it. You know, joy is a word that I heard, and obviously the work that you’re doing to serve others as well. So I just I love how you painted that picture. Really beautiful.

Brooke Griffin  17:07

Yeah, thank you. I think you hit the nail on the head. When I was feeling stuck and relying on some of those external validations for success, I couldn’t really name my strengths and the values that I brought to the table, and it was really hard for me to see how I was adding value every day to the job, and I realized that this is going to be an internal job to figure this out, and that’s when I made a commitment to myself that I’m going to invest in myself and figure this out. And I wouldn’t be successful in as a business owner today if I didn’t do that work, if I didn’t have such a strong idea of who I am and how I’m showing up, and what value I bring and what my strengths are, but that’s a lot of hard work of self discovery to get there, and some of us choose to stay in the discomfort and because, you know the future is uncertain, and you know we’re not sure what this is going to uncover, but I was willing to take that risk because I knew I wanted this next chapter to be fulfilling. The other thing that was really helpful to me was there was, there’s this podcast called Disrupt Yourself with Whitney Johnson. She’s got this concept of an S curve, and she says that when you reach mastery and anything that you do, you’re at the top of the S curve, and you’re you’re ready to launch, you’re ready to jump onto something new, because as humans, we need to get to the bottom of the next S curve to learn something new, to gain mastery in something and we’re constantly doing this throughout our careers. So that was really insightful for me to see. Okay, I’m at the top of my S curve. I’m ready to learn something new. I’m ready for a new challenge, and but it’s not going to be leaving my job and finding a new job. It’s going to be finding a passion project that aligns so well with my strengths and my values, and now I get to use those tools in the day job, and I get to use those tools with my business.

Tim Ulbrich  18:48

Yeah, Brooke, it sounds like as you were going through your own journey, as you described the S curve, it really forced some deep reflection questions that are big, scary questions, who am I? Who am I? What do I want? And this is why I think these earlier stages are so important that we shouldn’t…the goal shouldn’t be to avoid some of these walls we, you know, find ourselves butting up against, and some of these bigger questions that come because it’s through these moments that I think we’re afforded the opportunity for some of the self discovery. And I don’t think this ends either which is, which is beautiful, very beautiful. 

Brooke Griffin  19:24

No, you’re you’re just quickly, you’re sort of reminded me of something that there, you know during this time that I felt really stuck. I couldn’t really identify what made something a good day or what made something a bad day. I knew that I would leave with certain feelings, and so what I kind of forced myself to do was to just jot down a couple of notes at the end of each day, like what really lit me up today and what really brought my energy down. And this quick exercise, even just after a few weeks, I started to see some patterns, Tim, that it was always these types of activities that lit me up, and it was always these one or two people that really brought my energy down. So that helped me find some lanes to stay in. In terms of I’m going to push myself forward, if I’m going to do something outside of work, if I’m going to capitalize on my strengths, it’s in these areas that would be a great start.

Tim Ulbrich  20:16

And I think that’s great advice for our listeners that may be feeling some of that restlessness. Sometimes this presents as chronic irritability, chronic anger, right at this undertone type of level. But like, what’s behind that? And just journaling on it, getting curious. I love what you shared about like, what are those activities? What are the moments of the day where you feel like, regardless of time spent, you feel like it’s energy filling, bucket filling. And what are those moments and times of the day, regardless of time spent where you’re like, oh my gosh, if I had to do that for 15 more minutes, I’m gonna go crazy, right? And not to say we’re gonna find ourselves in roles that those things necessarily go away. I mean, I can even speak as making that transition from, you know, what was the dream right into owning my own business? Like, there are real challenges, there are highs, there’s lows – this is part of life. But I think being equipped with some of those things where it’s like, Hey, these are the areas that I really feel like I’m in that zone of genius, and I really can contribute and align the time I’m spending, the energy I have, with the efforts that hopefully can come out of that. I want to ask you, I think many pharmacists, and I’ll put myself in this category, as I started the business back in 2015 really struggle with the idea of making an investment in themselves in the form of something like hiring a coach. You mentioned how integral that was in your own journey, and I think there’s several factors. It’s an investment of time, it’s an investment of money, and it’s raising your hand to say, I really want to look internally and put that mirror up, right and get into some of the uncomfortable space. So how were you able to get over that hump to say that I am going to make an investment of time, of money, I am going to make this investment of self-discovery without necessarily knowing where that was going to go on the other end?

Brooke Griffin  21:59

Yeah, great question. And I think this is something that a lot of people do face, because it’s not only time, it’s money, it’s energy you have. You don’t want to pay for something, and kind of just put 50% in. So for me, it really was kind of hitting rock bottom in a professional feeling way, not in a mental health space kind of way, but in a and I don’t know where else to go. I had wonderful mentors, Tim, my entire career, I’ve been so blessed with wonderful mentors, and there was one who really just saw me for me, and could cheer me on with my triumphs, and could listen to me cry and not think I was, you know, a mess. And we got to a point where our meetings became more social. I think I just ran out of questions to ask. I didn’t know what questions to ask. And as a mentor, she wasn’t in a position where she could help me, because she’d never been there before, which that’s how mentors help us. They’ve been to where we aspire to go. So that was a big aha moment for me, that I’m going to need a different kind of career support. I’ve never had a coach before. I didn’t know how coaches could help pharmacists, but it was something I was just willing to try. I work with a lot of faculty, Tim, and for those of you who aren’t academia, a lot of faculty positions have professional development funds that the department allows you to use for books or conferences or travel. So I’ve worked with a lot of faculty who are able to use some of those funds to for that initial investment. So for anyone out there who’s considering it, that’s just something to keep in mind that we can kind of think outside of the box about how we can fund something like this. 

Tim Ulbrich  23:35

Yeah, and my personal experiences. I mean, of course, if we can get somebody to help with the bill, that’s great. My personal experiences in us, investing in resources that have helped us as we’ve grown the business, as well as our clients, investing in us is that there’s an important step of intentionality that comes when you have skin in the game. I mean, this is night and day. I know we’ve all been told this, but it really is true that, and to be clear, I have invested in coaching services that have been a clear ROI, and I have invested in other coaching services that I look back on, that they had a great learning experience, and I didn’t know all the things going into it, but it wasn’t necessarily a positive ROI, and that’s going to happen, you know, especially as you continue to make this an area priority. But when you have some skin of the game, you come with a different mindset. That’s just a matter of fact, I can tell you that over and over again from clients that we’ve worked with, whether it’s investing or student loan repayment, any part of the financial plan, when you are making that investment of time and money, you come ready, and I think that very much is going to help yield some of the results. So with that in mind, let’s talk about your business and offering the Bold Idea Group. We’re going to link to the website in the show notes. What is the Bold Idea Group? Give us a 60 commercial about the problem you’re solving and how you’re solving that problem. 

Brooke Griffin  24:53

I help pharmacists who are feeling stuck in their careers who need a different kind of career support. So I offer coaching, consulting and speaking for organizations and individuals who want something different, want a positive change in their career, and they’re not sure of the how, and through the coaching process, and through this aspect of curiosity and asking really powerful questions, and this investment of time and energy and space and holding space for people, we really figure it out, whether it’s, you know, work, life, integration, improvements, a different area of fulfillment, focusing on a specific aspect of your career. I’ll tell you, Tim, out of all the clients I’ve worked with, it is very rarely leaving their current job. It’s really this job crafting aspect of thinking about is it a task that needs to be done differently? Is it a relationship that needs to be looked at differently? Is it a mindset? And most of the time, it’s it’s mindset, we always start with mindset.

Tim Ulbrich  25:55

I mean, sometimes it’s a difficult conversation that we need to have, that we’ve been avoiding, that unlocks things going forward, right? Sometimes it’s a different perspective we’re bringing into the work culture environment. And I don’t know for some people if they hear that and they’re like, ah, darn it, like I was hoping that this would help me go, you know, to something else. But I find that very interesting, because I think it’s easy, and I’ve been in these moments, it’s easy where if we feel stuck, if we feel overwhelmed, confused, frustrated, we’re having those difficulties in the positions the grass always look greener on the other side. And I think with experience, you know, I’ve come to realize, as I alluded to a little bit ago, that there’s always challenges that’s just a part of life, and it’s our mindset of how we’re approaching those. And if we come at it with a mindset, mentality of, hey, difficult things are going to happen today or this week or this month in this season of life that’s a part of life. How do I see those, learn from those things and continue to move forward? But that doesn’t surprise me, and actually excites me that often, it’s almost helping people get unstuck in their current environments, right?

Brooke Griffin  26:59

Absolutely. Even just speaking for myself, when I started working with a coach, everything around me started changing, Tim. My, you know, definitely my approach to work, how I showed up at work, but the relationship started changing. And then I thought, wow, okay, I’m changing. I’m changing, and that’s what’s causing all of these other things to change. And it was just a total positive, level up that I needed to fuel this next chapter of my career.

Tim Ulbrich  27:30

And I would argue, Brooke, that’s richer change, right, because that’s inside out change, not outside in. I mean, we can change environments, yeah, and that may lead to some internal change, but we’re obviously changing things outside of our environment, and that may be the right move as well. But that inside out change, when you go through that self discovery, you look at the mindset, you look at, hey, how am I showing up every day? That’s going to transcend any environment you’re in which is, which is really exciting.

Brooke Griffin  27:56

Absolutely, I had, I tell the story that there was a colleague at work who I was having a lot of friction with, and I realized that I had some responsibility in that, but I just didn’t figure out what was going on, like, why there was all this friction, and our relationship has totally transformed. But, you know, we never went to couples counseling. You know, it was just I showed up differently. I was able to just approach the situation totally differently.

Tim Ulbrich  28:20

Although, to be fair, we could use a version of couples counseling in academia, right. 

Brooke Griffin  28:24

Somebody start that business, please!

Tim Ulbrich  28:26

One of the things I like to talk through with people that have built something is, where did it start? And where is it today? And we know the evolution’s not over. Of course, you’re going to continue to evolve and tweak as you find out what’s having an impact and what meets your needs as well. But for people that are thinking of an idea that maybe they have or something they want to start, whether it’s going to generate revenue or not, I think it can be very overwhelming to see someone’s current version without understanding how it’s evolved. And more often than not, it’s evolved over time, right? And it went from idea to version one to version two, version 3, 4, 5, 6 and to the current state. And there’s been things that have worked, things that haven’t worked. And the more we share that, I think it’s a breath of fresh air to say like, Brooke doesn’t have it all figured out. Tim doesn’t have it all figured out, like I’m learning. And some things work daily. Some things don’t work daily. So how does the current version look different from where you started? What has this evolution looked like in the business? 

Brooke Griffin  29:30

Great question. One of my favorite quotes by Mel Robbins is “Confidence is the willingness to try.” That it doesn’t come after you get success or after you have so many wins. Like confidence comes from trying something and realizing you’re going to get back up and try something again. And that really fueled me in the beginning, when I started thinking about, okay, what are my strengths? What are my values? What could I offer this world? Where do I want to have impact? When do I want to have impact? I started with a free group coaching program. And my quote business name at the time, even though it wasn’t an established business, was 21st Century PharmD, and it started as a weekly blog, and I had an Instagram account, and I made my own website from scratch. And I’m not a tech person, so I’m super proud of that experience. And it looked like a non tech person created a website, and the students told me that the colors hurt their eyes. I mean, it was just an awful version of a website, but I was so proud to put this thing together and publish my blog there weekly, and I started a little Facebook group where people could get personal and professional development. I thought in the beginning, like you said, the evolvement, I thought this was going to be targeted towards students, personal and professional development for students, the things you’d get outside of the classroom. And then I offered a group coaching program for students and for faculty for free, that was in 2020 and told them that I’m going to ask you for your feedback on what worked well here, and I’m also going to use this to figure out, do I like coaching? Do I like facilitating this group, and the answers to both those questions were yes, yes, people liked it, and yes, I liked it. And then working with another coach, decided, okay, what’s really next for me? And all signs were pointing to get coach training. So in 2021 I completed my coaching certification, and then in 2022 rebranded as Bold Idea Group, because I realized that all of this content I was putting out there through the Facebook group and through the weekly blogs, my peers were resonating with the content, sometimes even more than the students who hadn’t been in the workforce yet. I was really speaking to this mid career pharmacist and the mid career faculty member who just didn’t know where to go after reaching some success, but all of a sudden, felt stuck for a variety of reasons. So I rebranded in 2022 to be Bold Idea Group. And yeah, so that’s where we are today, offering group coaching and one on one coaching and more speaking engagements.

Tim Ulbrich  31:56

And I love the rebrand, but I also love the initial version for all the reasons you mentioned, right? I what I hear there is you’re sharing is that you are willing to try, you’re willing to test, your you were willing to tinker and evolve and change, and you were listening to what your audience was saying. That was a value to them. And those are some of the best businesses to build. And I think that, you know, if we think about this like an iceberg, right? Often, the first $1000, $10,000 $100,000 that a business will earn, that’s the tip of the iceberg. Oh, and by the way, what you actually see often, if you translated that to an hourly wage of time invested it took to get there, like maybe minimum wage at best, right? But all underneath the water is all of these things behind the scenes that nobody sees, and that’s why I say it’s so important when people are building something, there has to be an alignment with a very strong why and purpose with a problem you’re trying to solve, because it will grind you down otherwise. But back to what we were just talking about previously, of time that you spend that can be bucket filling energy, filling time that you spend that may be not when you’re building something that you really feel like is adding value, is providing transformation to people. I don’t want to speak for you, but I’m guessing you could write several hours on something, and there’s energy that’s coming from that, because you can see the impact that it can have. Certainly that doesn’t mitigate that. It’s hard. It takes time. There’s other priorities of how you could be spending your time, but I love to hear the evolution of that; that’s really great, 

Brooke Griffin  33:25

Yes. You know, maybe we’ll talk about this a little bit too, but a lot of faculty and pharmacists ask me about what it’s like to have a side hustle, or where do you find the time, or where do you find the energy? Because we know that our academic careers are demanding, and we know that it’s not a nine to five job. There’s a lot of things you’re doing on nights and weekends to fulfill that role. And what I the first thing I always tell people is, whatever idea you have for a side hustle, it cannot feel burdensome. Yep, because you will, it will not last. It has to be energy giving. 

Tim Ulbrich  33:56

I remember you took me right back Brooke, when I’ve got four boys now, 13 down to five, but when I started YFP, my oldest was four, my second was two, and we were just about ready to have my third. I remember them being very, very young, and late nights writing. Late nights doing webinar. But it never felt like work. It really didn’t. And, you know, it was that constant feeling of, you know, providing value, helping people along in their own journey, and just the incredible relationships that have been formed, the amount of learning I’ve been able to do from talking with individuals such as yourself. So yeah, great wisdom there, and what you’re sharing. And speaking of trying, you recently started a podcast! Today’s Bold Idea: Mindset, Motivation and Coaching for Pharmacists. We’ll link to that podcast in the show notes. What was the thought behind starting a podcast? I think that’s something that a lot of people struggle with, is I only have so much time. You know, should I be focused on social media? Should I be focused on YouTube? Should I do a podcast? What led you down that path?

Brooke Griffin  35:02

So I mentioned before that when I first started 21st century PharmD, I had a weekly blog, and I really loved that weekly blog, and I made a promise to myself, I was going to do it weekly for 52 weeks. And I did. I accomplished that goal, and then I took time off to get coaching certification, and when I rebranded Bold Idea Group, I really wanted to think about what is going to be my venue, what is going to be my forum, what is going to be my way of getting my message out there? And I realized that I wanted to try something different than blogging, and I had this whisper of starting a podcast. I did have a podcast very briefly with 21st Century PharmD, but it was all interview style. So my idea for this podcast was to produce something positive and short that someone could listen to every day before they got out of their car and walked in that door, or in between meetings when they just felt completely like helpless and hopeless. I actually started a podcast, Tim, that I was looking for –  a short, brief, positivity boost that came from someone who kind of understood this field. And there are lots of podcasts out there, as you know, I couldn’t find one that was exactly what I was looking for. And I had this, I had this joy that was coming from posting daily in my Facebook group. And I thought, Well, if that’s bringing me so much joy, I wonder what it would be like to produce it in more of an audio format. And again, let’s just try this. Let’s just throw some spaghetti on the wall and see what happens. And it’s been, it’s been really, really incredible, Tim, just I am getting messages from community pharmacists who have been a community pharmacist for 30 years, you know, telling me that they’re thankful that they’re able to listen to this, and I’m thankful that I’m a part of their day. I mean, they have so much on their plate and so much pressure. Yes, it’s a complete honor. And so we’ll see where it goes. And I’m not quite at daily yet, and I’m at three days a week, but I’m working my way there. So I also tell myself, and I say this on the podcast, is that I am taking imperfect action every day, and that’s looks. That’s a three day a week podcast when you told yourself you would produce daily. So I’m getting there.

Tim Ulbrich  37:12

I love the short form aspect of it. I was looking at your show, stream, 3, 5, 7, 9, minutes, right? Very short form content.  Inspirational. It’s vulnerable, it’s real. So I love what you’re doing there. Keep going, keep building. Thanks. I love the commitment to you know, whether it’s writing or to this, it’s so important. Because I think when you have a new idea, there’s inevitably an energy and a surge that comes you’re getting started, that eventually you will hit a point, and no matter what you’re building, anyone’s building that you’re like, What am I doing? Is this worth my time? And to really fight through that and make a commitment to yourself that I’m going to do this for a certain period of time and then reassess, you know, from there. 

Brooke Griffin  37:56

That’s right, yes, and and nothing’s a failure. You know? It’s all, it’s all building something. 

Tim Ulbrich  38:02

I do want to give a shout out here, if any pharmacist is listening, not only to check out Brooke’s show, we’ll link to that in show note, but if any pharmacist is listening that is thinking about starting their own podcast, Kim Newlove is a fantastic resource. Kim is the founder of the Pharmacist Voice, a fellow Ohioan, has some great resources available to pharmacists that are thinking of starting their own podcast. And I just love the passion, the energy she has, the way she wants to serve and help others. So we’ll link to some of Kim’s resources as well in the show notes. Brooke, let’s wrap up by doing some reflection backwards, first on your academic career, and then we’ll do it on your entrepreneurial career. As it relates your academic career, what are some key lessons that you’ve learned along the way? What would you tell your early career academic self?

Brooke Griffin  38:54

Another one of my favorite quotes is, “Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.” by Oscar Wilde. And in academia, maybe it’s like this and other pharmacy niches, there’s a very there’s very much a cookie cutter approach to how we do our work, down to how many lecture hours somebody has, how many APPY students somebody takes, the number of courses people are involved in. There’s a model for workload equity that people kind of look the same and do the same things, and even in order to get promoted, the same types of activities are encouraged. It’s hard to think outside of the box, and it’s hard to be that person in academia, and I found myself a square peg trying to fit herself into a round hole in many aspects, in committee meetings, in courses I was involved in in bold ideas that I had that just seemed so completely out of the box that people made it seem like it was unrealistic and unattainable. So I think I would tell myself that you being unique. And bringing your ideas to the table is valuable, and sometimes it takes just finding the right ears and the right support to get there. So if you don’t have an internal mentor, if you don’t see anyone at your institution who kind of gets you, there are so many opportunities to find mentorship in external organizations. Almost every pharmacy org has a mentorship program. So I would say, keep finding to find that career support so that you don’t lose any aspect of your uniqueness.

Tim Ulbrich  40:32

I love that, and it reminds me, Brooke of the visual that came to mind as you’re sharing is that we all, we all have an internal flame that sometimes loses its fire over time, and I think having others around us, mentors, community, colleagues, friends, spouses, whatever that you know, can really help us identify, see that and ignite. Help us reignite that flame is so important. It also reminded me one of my favorite quotes that I listen to every day as a part of a morning affirmation from Rabbi Zusa. It says, “In the coming world, they will not ask me, why were you not Moses? They will ask me, why were you not Zusa?” Goes back to those questions, right? Who are you? What do you want? And what does that? What does that look like? How about on the entrepreneurial side, obviously, more near term journey that you’ve been on. But what are a couple of lessons that you’ve learned thus far along your entrepreneurial journey?

Brooke Griffin  41:27

When I started blogging, and I hit publish on that for the very first time, and I had lived in this academic world for my entire career, when even the good ideas take 18 months to see implementation, and you need a lot of approvals to get things done, to have an idea, to write about it and to hit click and publish and have it go out on social media was incredibly freeing, and as nervous and as scared as I was, and even that very first blog hit some, you know, little controversy that I wasn’t expecting. And I almost shut down the whole thing, but I think I was really nervous about what my colleagues might say the next Monday. Like, What is everyone gonna say about Brooke putting her ideas out there in the world, and now she’s got a blog, and who does she think she is? I probably can count on one hand how many people have asked me about that blog out of all the people that I work with. I think people are assuming that everybody’s kind of watching each other. But what the experts say is true is that everyone is just so laser focused in their own lane that it just really reinforces that we have to do what feels good to us, as long as we’re not harming anybody or saying anything offensive. That you know, if that’s the impact you want to have on the world, it really doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. I think the other thing, the other big lesson that I had, was being able to embrace the beginner’s mindset. When you’re in academia for so long, you know how to do a lecture. You know how to run a course. You know how to have APPY students. You know how to run a committee. When you start a side hustle or start your entrepreneurial journey, you are learning a new language. You are taking baby steps. You everything seems new and everything seems scary, and being able to embrace that beginner’s mindset again, is something that I really treasure. And there was someone I follow, and she said something like, you’ll never be at this point in your entrepreneurial journey again. This beginning stage is so beautiful, and there’s so much growth that happens. You know, from zero to your first 100k that’s just so amazing. You’ll never be here again, so cherish all of the ups and downs and the good and the bad that comes during this time.

Tim Ulbrich  43:46

A lot of wisdom there, and I think the holding the space to allow for the conflicting emotions as you were talking, it reminded me of like the excitement and anticipation that was present with the fear. Both were there. And you even talked about, you didn’t use the words inner critic, but when you were sharing of your own journey and publishing that first blog post, like, pay attention to those voices. I’m not speaking to Brooke. I’m speaking, you know, more broadly. Like, well, that’s interesting. Like, who is that? What are they saying? Where does that come from? And, you know, I think just an awareness and a curiosity to those will really start to unlock and that is one of the most beautiful things of this journey. I always say, second to parenting my four boys, entrepreneurship is challenged me to grow and stretch in ways I could have never imagined. And those have been painful at times, and they’ve been beautiful at times. And I wouldn’t change it for anything, but I think that holding the space for some of that inner awareness as you’re going through not only building whatever you’re building, but also what is the transformation that’s happening inside as well. 

Brooke Griffin  44:56

Well said. 

Tim Ulbrich  44:57

As we wrap up, what is the best place that our listeners can go to connect with you and learn more the about the work that you’re doing. 

Brooke Griffin  45:04

Oh, thank you, Tim. For any listeners who are on Facebook, I have a Facebook group called Bold Idea Group. I post every day at 5am something inspirational, motivational. I’m also publishing the podcast called Today’s Bold Idea three days a week right now, working myself up to daily. My website is boldideagroup.com, and I’ve been fortunate enough to be invited to a couple of colleges of pharmacy and other organizations to even just present some of these ideas about job crafting, speaking to a larger audience. For those of you who aren’t necessarily ready for one on one coaching or group coaching.

Tim Ulbrich  45:40

Awesome. We will link to all those in the show notes, the website, the podcast page, the Facebook group, so that folks can go in and learn more and connect with you. So Brooke, this has been amazing. Speaking of energy filling, it has been that for me. So thank you so much for taking time to come on the show and share your journey with our listeners.

Brooke Griffin  45:58

Thank you so much. Tim, I had a great time.

Tim Ulbrich  46:02

Before we wrap up today’s show, I want to again thank this week’s sponsor of the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast, First Horizon. We’re glad to have found a solution for pharmacists that are unable to save 20% for a down payment on a home. A lot of pharmacists in the YFP community have taken advantage of First Horizon’s pharmacist home loan, which requires a 3% down payment for a single family home or townhome for first time homebuyers and has no PMI on a 30-year fixed rate mortgage. To learn more about the requirements for First Horizon’s pharmacist home loan, and to get started with the pre-approval process, you can visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com, /home-loan. Again, that’s yourfinancialpharmacist.com/home-loan. 

Tim Ulbrich  46:45

As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. Furthermore, the information contained in our archive, 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 analyzes 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 375: Breaking New Ground: Emmanuel Ayanjoke’s Vision for Altev Community Pharmacy


Tim Ulbrich interviews Emmanuel Ayanjoke, PharmD, on his journey to opening an independent pharmacy in Avondale, tackling challenges with vision, risk-taking, and community care.

This episode is brought to you by First Horizon.

Episode Summary

In this inspiring episode, Tim Ulbrich interviews Emmanuel Ayanjoke, R.Ph, PharmD, MBA, a third-generation pharmacist with a passion for community care. Emmanuel shares his remarkable journey to opening an independent pharmacy in Avondale, Cincinnati. Driven by a desire to make a difference, he pursued a pain management and palliative care fellowship, gaining invaluable entrepreneurial experience along the way. Through the support of Project Oasis, a McKesson initiative aimed at addressing pharmacy deserts, Emmanuel was able to turn his vision into reality.

Despite facing significant financial challenges, including high student loan debt, Emmanuel underscores the importance of calculated risk-taking and the power of strong relationships. Emmanuel offers insights into the future of independent pharmacy and how he has strategically aligned his personal and business financial plans to achieve his goals. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the evolving landscape of independent pharmacy and the bold steps required to succeed.

About Today’s Guest

Dr. Emmanuel (Manny) Ayanjoke, R.Ph, PharmD, MBA is the proud owner of Altev Community Pharmacy in Cincinnati, Ohio. A graduate of University of Toledo College of Pharmacy, Dr. Manny has spent over 5 years serving various communities as a dedicated pharmacist. Before opening Altev, he worked at Ziks Family Pharmacy, honing his skills, and understanding the vital role of pharmacists in community health. His work as a clinical pharmacist at Ziks had notable success and he was featured as a keynote panelist at the American Pharmacist Association (APhA) 2022 conference. Alongside his clinical role at ZIKS Family Pharmacy, Dr Manny completed a fellowship in pain management and palliative care fellow at Cedarville University where he engaged in teaching, research, patient care, as well as creation of innovative ways to advance pharmacy practice.

Key Points from the Episode

  • Opening Remarks and Sponsor Introduction [0:00]
  • Emmanuel’s Career Path and Family Background [2:28]
  • Pursuing a Fellowship and Entrepreneurial Vision [4:58]
  • The Decision to Open a Pharmacy [10:45]
  • Challenges and Support in Opening a Pharmacy [19:51]
  • Intersection of Personal and Business Finances [27:30]

Episode Highlights

“I wanted to pursue something that allowed me to be an entrepreneur in some way; I knew it had to be something that would leverage my school as a pharmacist, and with my experience, I was like, well, in every other you know, area of pharmacy practice, they’re already really the people that are dominating. I want to sort of create my own niche.” – Dr. Emmanuel Ayanjoke [5:53]

“I wanted to sort of carve out a niche for myself in pain management, to be able to be an entrepreneur, be a consultant, pharmacist, and do all these things until the point that I was able to actually stop my pharmacy so it was still in line with my overall vision of being an entrepreneur and being able to self, direct, direct my destiny, and not, you know, be beholden to a paycheck.” – Dr. Emmanuel Ayanjoke [6:24]

“I think your biggest asset to success, for anyone, any successful person, is people.” – Dr. Emmanuel Ayanjoke [20:43]

“I’m not saying this because I’m anywhere yet, but I’m saying this because I’ve seen other people, and I learned from a lot of people, but what I found is people that tend to be successful often go against the grain, go against what the crowd typically does.” – Dr. Emmanuel Ayanjoke [23:17]

“My vision and the way I see things and my general approach to life and business is sort of like planting trees, right? And what I mean by that is, yes, you might not have the perfect nutrients for a tree that’s several feet high, but you can at least plant something for now. And that that is kind of has been my approach to everything. You might not feel like you have the financial capacity to do certain things, it’s still important to plant the tree. – Dr. Emmanuel Ayanjoke [28:37]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich  00:00

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 sit down with Emmanuel Ayanjoke to discuss his decision to open an independent pharmacy as a new practitioner, his perspective on the future of independent pharmacy and the intersection of his personal and business financial plans. Let’s hear a note from today’s sponsor, First Horizon, and then we’ll jump into my interview with the Emmanuel. 

Tim Ulbrich  00:29

Does saving 20% for a down payment on a home feel like an uphill battle? It’s no secret that pharmacists have a lot of competing financial priorities, including high student loan debt, meaning that saving 20% for a down payment on a home may take years. For several years now, we’ve been partnering with First Horizon, who offers a professional home loan option, AKA a doctor or pharmacist loan that requires a 3% down payment for a single family home or townhome for first time homebuyers, has no PMI and offers a 30 year fixed rate mortgage on home loans up to $766,550 in most areas. The pharmacist home loan is available in all states except Alaska and Hawaii, and can be used to purchase condos as well, however, rates may be higher and a condo review has to be completed. While I’ve personally worked with First Horizon before and had a great experience with Tony and his team, don’t just take it from me. Here’s what Molly from New Berlin, Wisconsin, had to say about her experience with First Horizon: “The communication and always being available to talk over the phone was great for us. It also made an impact getting an initial overview and education on the process from Gail. Being able to submit everything electronically made it more efficient.” So if you want to check out the requirements for pharmacists Home Loan from First Horizon and to start the pre-approval process, visit yourfinancialpharmacist./home-loan.harmacist.com/home-loan.

Tim Ulbrich  01:58

Emmanuel, welcome to the show.

Emmanuel Ayanjoke  02:00

Thank you, Tim. I’m delighted to be here today.

Tim Ulbrich  02:03

Me as well, and I’m looking forward to the opportunity to talk to you about your experiences opening up in independent pharmacy. We crossed paths through the Ohio pharmacy circles over the past few years, and once you announced the grand opening of your store, Altev Community Pharmacy and the Avondale, Cincinnati area, I reached out to invite you on the show so we can learn more about your entrepreneurial journey. And before we get into that, let’s talk about your career path into pharmacy, Emmanuel, what led you into the profession and to the University of Toledo, where you completed your PharmD in 2020 

Emmanuel Ayanjoke  02:38

Absolutely. So I, you know, I’m Nigerian. Grew up in Nigeria. That was born in Nigeria, till I was I grew up left Niger when I was about 15 years old, and I was fortunate enough to grow up in the family of that pharmacy is a thing. So my dad was a pharmacist and a pharmacy owner, and his dad was a pharmacy, pharmacy owner. Now, back then, they refer to them as chemists, because this was way back then in the days, but they were, you know, I come from a long line of pharmacists, and I would never forget when I was about seven years old, because I think that’s the age where everyone kind of starts to pick up on things. And, you know, observe our parents doing different things, and I remember so vividly, so many moments where patients will just come in. And, you know, one of the things I always like to say is pharmacists. Pharmacy in Niger is very different than here. Pharmacy is much more front line of healthcare. You went to the pharmacy first before going to the doctor, they actually the pharmacist referred you to the doctor in things that were too complex to be handled in outpatient. So I grew up in that setting, seeing my dad as a pharmacist, business owner, taking care of his family, but also taking care of the community. And people just come into the pharmacy asking questions, having their needs, health needs met. You know, it was a different way to impact people’s lives, and that resonated with me very deeply. I, you know, grew up in that environment that I knew I wanted to direct my own destiny and own a business. And what dawned on me over the years is what’s more important in owning businesses, doing something that impacts lives. So put it short, I’ve always been in pharmacy. I grew up in a pharmacy, and I didn’t see myself doing anything else, because that was what was just in front of me. 

Tim Ulbrich  04:33

So third generation chemist, then, right?

Emmanuel Ayanjoke  04:36

 Yes.

Tim Ulbrich  04:38

So after you finished your PharmD at the University of Toledo, you went on to pursue a pain management and palliative care fellowship. And some might be looking at that and saying, All right, so you grew up in a pharmacy environment, independent ownership, owning your own business. And this seems like a different type of an opportunity. So tell us more about the pursuit of that fellowship, and what were some of the experiences and things that you took away from that?

Emmanuel Ayanjoke  05:04

Yeah, so the reason why I went to pursue a fellowship was at the time when I was in Toledo, I was an intern, and I because I knew I wanted to own a pharmacy at some point, I decided to only work in an independent pharmacy, and that so me served me really great, because I started to experience first clients, what it took to run a business, run a pharmacy business in the United States. And I was fortunate enough to have a great pharmacy owner who showed me so many things. But you know, unfortunately, what that did to me was kind of give me a very bad perspective of how pharmacy should what pharmacy is. And I thought that, well, pharmacy is what I want to end up doing, but I don’t think it’s the time. I don’t think it’s the right time. But knowing that I wanted to pursue something that allowed me to be an entrepreneur in some way, I knew it had to be something that would leverage my school as a pharmacist, and, you know, with my experience, I was like, well, in every other you know, area of pharmacy practice, they’re already really the people that are, you know, dominating. I want to sort of create my own niche. I don’t like to follow the general trends and what people do, you know, go to AMK and those things, and those things are great, and I do a lot of that, and I did a lot of that in my career so far, but I wanted to sort of carve out a niche for myself in pain management, to be able to be an entrepreneur, be a consultant, pharmacist, and do all these things until the point that I was able to actually stop my pharmacy so it was still In line with my overall vision of being an entrepreneur and being able to self, direct, direct my destiny, and not, you know, be beholden to a paycheck. I just that idea just just doesn’t sit well with me, so that, that was why I pursued the fellowship, and was a great, great experience for me. 

Tim Ulbrich  06:58

So what I hear there, Emmanuel, is there was this throughline of entrepreneurship that’s always been there, not surprising, right? Multiple generations in the family. And so you had this thought pretty early on, of, hey, I would like to own my own business, own pharmacy. Had some real life experience in independent pharmacy working for someone else, which I always recommend people that are thinking about, Hey, open up a business, get that experience, kind of see it firsthand, see what you like, what you don’t like. But through that experience, it sounds like you you butted up against the real challenges that we’ll talk about, you know, in the profession, and maybe that tampered down some of that interest, at least temporarily. And so you pursued this other pathway all the while, this through line of entrepreneurship, was there of, hey, I’m not sure exactly what it’s going to look like or when it’s going to happen, but I want to continue to pursue opportunities that are going to put me in a position in the future when I’m ready. Is that right?

Emmanuel Ayanjoke  07:49

Yep, that’s perfectly that’s that’s accurate. That’s exactly what happened. 

Tim Ulbrich  07:53

One thing you said I’d love to hear more from you on is, you know, I knew that I didn’t want to be beholden to a paycheck. I sensed some emotion in that statement of just, you know, I know myself, right? I know that that’s not for me. Tell us more about you know that realization and why that was important to you?

Emmanuel Ayanjoke  08:12

Yeah, I think that realization has always been there in the one thing I didn’t also say was, my mom was also an entrepreneur. She had her home business, and she, you know, used to run convenience stores and couple gas stations back at home then. So I knew for a fact that, you know, that that’s just what I wanted to do. But, but one of the things that I’ve also learned about the system of America is the reality that, unfortunately, those who you know pay for everything is the middle class. And when I say middle class is those you know who are professionals, and you know, you’re hit with so much taxes and so many there’s so many downsides to being a W2 earner. So I realized that real, that part, but also the quite honest reality is that you’re never paid what you’re worth as a W2 earner. That’s just a reality down. There’s no two ways around it. If you were paid your worth, no one would create companies, right? 

Tim Ulbrich  09:15

It wouldn’t make any sense.    

Emmanuel Ayanjoke  09:17

Yeah, it wouldn’t make any sense, right? So I just didn’t like that idea. I felt like there was a lot more I need to do in this world than to have my, you know, my impact kept by being by working at a place. But that’s just what drives me, you know, again, it’s okay for most people, and that’s, that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong about it. I just didn’t, I don’t think that aligns with me, internally and throughout my life experiences. 

Tim Ulbrich  09:43

Yeah, it’s interesting. And we’ll talk about the challenges of owning your own business. You know it’s real. I know it’s real. There are highs, there are lows, but it certainly does take off the ceiling. It also takes off the floor, right in terms of, you know what could go wrong, but you know what you’re sharing is very real. There’s no knock whatsoever to the path of a W2 you know, for many people, that is what makes the most sense, for a variety of reasons, but it is a reality that in the US, from a tax standpoint, the tax code is very much written in favor of people that own a business and own real estate. Those are really two things. And you know, it’s interesting we think about a lot of independent pharmacy owners, despite the challenges. You know, they’re really tapping into both of those things, and I can really sense how it was important you have that autonomy to be able to pursue not only the decision making in the business, but also to have some of the financial upside flexibility. But I want people to hear this loud and clear, like there is real downside as well when it comes to owning the business. And both must be considered, and we’ll talk about that here in a little bit. So take us back then you open the doors of the pharmacy in the Avondale, Cincinnati area in April of this year. And so at some point, you know, while you might have temporarily went away from Hey, I’m ready to open my pharmacy, it came back, right. So what was the moment where you said, All right, I’m ready to do this. And what led, what was the spark to really get into that place of alright, let’s go.

Emmanuel Ayanjoke  11:11

Yeah. So this was in 2022 which feels like last year, but two years ago, when I was in the middle of my fellowship, and I, you know, one of the things I value is network and having people around you that always look out for you. That is the value of that has just been immense in my life. But, you know, I was in my fellowship at the time, I was working part time, sort of, I mean, I wasn’t the official pharmacy manager, but I was basically the manager at the independent pharmacy that I worked at. So I was quite busy, you know, being the fellowship, doing research, and doing all these different things, and still fully commit, you know, helping out at the retail pharmacy. And I remember it was Stu Beatty, actually, from OPA. 

Tim Ulbrich  12:04

Oh, no way. 

Emmanuel Ayanjoke  12:06

Yeah, yes, yeah. He sent me the flyer to Project Oasis, which is the program that I got the opportunity to open the pharmacy through. And I started to learn about it. And initially I brushed it down. I was like, Well, this is some national program. There’s no chance that I’ll even get anywhere close to this. And I sort of didn’t even, you know, want to, I knew that’s what I wanted to do, but I really didn’t think I would get anywhere. And then, you know, two weeks later or so, Antonio Ciaccio who have gone to me, you know, through different experiences, and we’ve connected very well, he’s forwarded that same flyer to me, saying, Hey, I think you’d be a good candidate. I think you should apply to this. I was like, Oh, my so I guess the stars are aligned, and everyone thinks that I’m, you know, I tend to think of myself more humbly, and I didn’t think I would get anywhere. But you know, was these two folks that believed in me and encouraged me to go out and apply, and I took on the process and started doing my due diligence, drawing from my knowledge, and really leaning in on people that I know. Again, once I started to digest and understand what Project Oasis was trying to accomplish, it was almost mirror of what I wanted to do in every way right, make an impact in a place that doesn’t have a pharmacy, be the pharmacy, be the pharmacy shepherd, quote, unquote, in that community and helping address the needs and concerns of the community. So that just resonated with me on a very personal level, and it just aligned. And the biggest part of all that was that you got to open a pharmacy, but not just by yourself. You had the back end support of so many people that are committed to seeing this successful. So to me, was like, a no brainer, to at least pursue it. If it didn’t pan out, at least I learned a thing or two about writing a business plan that needed to be presented in like, you know, really, really hire people in McKesson, and so I applied for it, and that’s basically all where the story started.

Tim Ulbrich  14:22

You know, it’s interesting. Back to the through line of entrepreneurship. Emmanuel, I often say that, you know, for people and your story is such a good one, the synchronicity here is not accidental, right? So you might have kind of taken a sidestep or a pause, but it chased you down eventually, right? It chased you down in the form of Stu Beatty, now the Dean at Ohio Northern and Antonio Ciaccio, two incredible individuals in the profession and Ohio pharmacy practice that clearly saw a potential and an opportunity, and really, you know, that was a big nudge and an avenue forward. You mentioned Project Oasis a couple times. Tell us more about that for those that are listening, what exactly is that? How is that helpful to you getting this off the ground?

Emmanuel Ayanjoke  15:03

Yeah, so Project Oasis, was, you know, being that, you know, of course, I’ve been involved in no ins and out. But if you know, McKesson always tries, tries to tell everyone to just, you know, say certain lines. But I’ll give more, more back into how we started. You know, in Avondale here we had one of McKesson employees who lives and doesn’t live in Avondake, but family’s from Avondale here and has a very personal ties with community. This is way back then in 2018-2019 and he started to notice that his community was losing access to so many things. Grocery stores were closing, pharmacies were closing, and a community that’s in the heart of Cincinnati, literally, you see, health is right behind us, doesn’t have these critical things, grocery store, a pharmacy and so many other things that were needed. And there was this general talk within McKesson of trying to do a community impact project, something that would impact lives. And I think every organization of business should always try to do something beyond just their typical mission of whatever it is that they do to impact lives, because that’s where that’s all that matters at the end of the day. So they, you know, he took on the idea with support of folks within his division McKesson, that was a Russo O’Neill, okay? And he pushed his idea that, hey, let’s try to start a pharmacy where it’s needed. And they did an analysis and found that Avondale, Cincinnati, truly was, like, top of the list in terms of, you know, an urban region that doesn’t have a pharmacy, health isn’t where it needs, where it needs to be as a community level, and so many other things, disparities that were going on in Avondale, and that’s where it all started from. And, you know, fortunately, those within the higher ups of McKesson saw the impact that this project could make. And, you know, they dubbed the Project Oasis with the term that, you know, desert, pharmacy desert, and you’re putting the pharmacy there. And so, yeah, that’s what, that’s where Project Oasis started from, but one of the things that I learned through applying to it was the level of commitment that people had, not just as you know workers within this, you know, Fortune 10 company, but also the personal connection that people had towards a Project where people you know, you meet folks, are like, hey, whatever you need to be successful. I am happy to help you out. This is important. We want to make an impact in your community. So that was really, that’s really what Project Oasis is about. Now I don’t know what their what McKesson and their goal is right now with Project Oasis. But the goal was to sort of address this pharmacy deserts that come across, you know, the United States. 

Tim Ulbrich  18:07

So we’ll link to that in the show notes for folks that want to learn more about that program. Do you have an idea? Manu, I’m just curious now, how many pharmacies have been supported by Project Oasis?

Emmanuel Ayanjoke  18:19

Oh, so right now, I am the first.

Tim Ulbrich  18:21

Let’s go!

Emmanuel Ayanjoke  18:22

Yeah, I’m the only one so far. And you know, it’s quite, quite a responsibility to be success, to make this successful, because a lot of other communities are, hopefully, maybe might be impacted by this. So failure is not an option. That’s how I see it. So I’m sort of a test run to see, yeah, if this can work.

Tim Ulbrich  18:45

Well, you and I both know, from a business standpoint, there will be micro failures that happen along the way. I hear you in the global failure, right? But, but naturally, for you to see this vision through, you’re going to have to embrace some level of failure along the way and take some risks. One of the things that stands out to me, Emmanuel, is that, you know, I talk with a lot of people on a regular basis, they have an idea, but it often dies at that point, right? The idea doesn’t go forward. It’s a whole nother level to actually execute, take on risk and begin to see that vision through and and I’ve since in your journey, while you’ve always thought about owning your own business, clearly the support and the resources through Project Oasis have been huge for you to say, All right, I’m ready to jump. I’m ready to move this forward. In addition to project Oasis and the team from McKesson that support you, what other resources have been critical to you as you’ve gone through this, this journey of open your own pharmacy?

Emmanuel Ayanjoke  19:41

I mean, if I started to list them out, you provide spend the next hour of this going through it. But I think the most important resource for me, in addition to the things that I try to do personally, like reading a lot of books, listening to a lot of audiobooks, has been people, the people that have gotten to meet. For me, I value relationships at a very high attribute, a very high value to relationships. So people that played a key part in my life, as been my former boss that I worked with in Zik’s Pharmacy. He’s just been a terrific human being to me, and has helped me with the realities of owning the business and how to be successful. So it’s people. I mean, I could go down a list of folks at Cedarville who have helped me personally my personal growth as a pharmacist, helping me understand certain things. It really is just people. I think the big, your biggest asset to success, for anyone, any successful person, is people. 

Tim Ulbrich  20:49

Yes, relationships, people, absolutely. Especially in our profession, you know, where that community is is so small, right? Relatively speaking. And one of the things I asked you, before we hit record, I said, Hey, Emmanuel, how you doing? And you said, Hey, I’m going 1000 miles an hour, but I have so much support, so much support, and I think that speaks to the work that you’ve done in fostering those relationships, and the growth that has come from those. Emmanuel, I have to ask the obvious question that I think a lot of probably new practitioners that are thinking about owning their own pharmacy, or anyone, for that matter, that maybe is thinking about owning on a pharmacy, which is Wow, opening a pharmacy in this climate, right? We know the challenges are real. According to a recent NCPA survey, over 30% of respondents reported that they’re considering closing their doors in 2024 because of the financial challenges, and over 90% of them said that they may drop out of Medicare Part D in 2025 if the challenges still persist. So from the outside looking in, it doesn’t appear to be the best time to be launching a new pharmacy. So tell us more about how you’ve been able to, you know, see through that despite those challenges being real, and say, Hey, I’m still going to go at this. 

Emmanuel Ayanjoke  22:02

I think the first thing I’ve learned in life is nothing is truly as good as it seems, and nothing is truly as bad as it seems. It’s always all gray. There’s no exactly this is black and this is white. It never is that way. It’s always all gray. And what I mean by that is, will you dive deeper and understand in a specific market the factors and headwinds going on in that market is very different. For example, in Ohio, if you’re in a Medicaid an area that has high Medicaid concentration, you have a fair dispensing fee that covers your costs of operating as a business. So that alone is a huge difference than a pharmacy that doesn’t have a high Medicaid area, right? So, yes, there’s always there. They are real, harsh realities of the pharmacy right now, even as a new business, when I look at my Medicare, you know, scripts, and performance in those scripts, I mean, I want to, I would throw my hands up and just, it’s, it’s horrifying sometimes, you know, but the reality of what I’ve learned is, you know, typically, to be successful in life. And I’m not saying this because I’m anywhere yet, but I’m saying this because I’ve seen other people, and I learned from a lot of people, but what I found is people that tend to be successful often go against the grain, go against what the crowd typically does. And there’s cycles in life. There’s always going to be naders and high points. And I think pharmacy is out of Nader right now. But when you are the Nader, that’s not necessarily negative thing. That’s a good thing when you started a native because it’s only high from there. And there’s a lot of factors and a lot of things and challenges that are going to happen in next 10 years for pharmacy to be where it needs to be. But I think that I am hopeful that we’re at the lowest point, and from here it’s just moving forward. 

Tim Ulbrich  23:59

Yeah, I really hear mindset there Emmanuel, which I think is huge as a business owner, but I also hear optimism. I’m an optimist by nature, you know, as well. But I agree with you, actually, you know, it reminds me of Seth Godin talks about this in his book, The Dip, where, you know, often we go through these cycles, could be a project, could be a business, wherever you know, where we have an initial momentum and surge, and then we, you know, for whatever reason here we’re talking about market conditions and factors and reimbursement. You know, we kind of go down right, and we get to this low point, and we start to just come out of the other side of it, but we can’t yet see what’s coming. And that’s the point where a lot of people give up, you know, is when they’re in that low point, in that dip. And I think that it feels, and again, I’m a half glass full person, it feels like all signs are pointing towards some reform and these things, I think you and I look at this just as a common sense business owner, and we’re like, How in the world can this be okay to operate a business with these practices going on right? Now there’s a lot of headwinds that we’re facing in terms of why that’s the case, but I’m curious to hear from you as you look at as an owner and someone who shoulders some of the responsibility to advocate for, you know, the viability of community independent pharmacists to be able to provide the value that we know. The literature is very clear, the positive value and outcomes that a pharmacist can provide in their community, especially in an area where there’s a lack of access to healthcare. The data is clear. It’s there, but we continue to be undervalued and under reimbursed globally speaking. So as you look at this from, hey, I’m a business owner, but I’m also an advocate for the profession, what are some of those key issues that we really have to address?

Emmanuel Ayanjoke  25:35

Oh, where do I start? I think the biggest key issue is, you know, we live in a capitalistic society, and we just have to accept that reality. Our businesses are not, you know, they’re not you know, pharmacies are not nonprofits. They have to be able to make money doing a certain service. And there are two ways to incentivize people to do things. You either use the carrot or use the steak method, right? And to really move the needle on a lot of things in pharmacy practice, to get community pharmacy practice to be where it needs to be, there has to be payment reform. Reform in a sense that it covers us to operate as a business and provide those scripts, but also reform in a sense that we’re actually paid for the clinical knowledge that we provide. So those are, I mean, that sums, encapsulates lots of challenges, but those are the key. I think those are two things that need to happen for pharmacy, community pharmacy, to be where it needs to be. I think the values there. I mean, everyone is the values there. I’ve been opportunity to be on the tables with payers, physicians. I mean, everyone, even patients, everyone agrees that the values there. The challenge now is just getting rid of those barriers that allow us to be able to create a clear path to making these realistic, or, I guess, tactile, changes in the payment models that allow pharmacists to be paid.

Tim Ulbrich  27:08

Yeah, amen, you know, I think we it’s very clear. We don’t need another study to demonstrate the value of what a pharmacist can bring, right? We don’t need another pilot project, you know, to demonstrate that. They’ve been done. We see the value and the reimbursement, I think, is really the issue. And two individuals you mentioned earlier that were pivotal, you know, you started the pharmacy, Antonio Ciaccio, Stu Beatty, have been key advocates of this in the state of Ohio, you know, over the last decade, if not more. So last question I want to ask you is really the intersection between the business and the personal side of finances. You know, I talk with a lot of new graduates, and it’s not uncommon for me to hear something along the lines of, Hey, Tim, I would love to do X, Y or Z. And that could be on a business that could be, you know, do something different, work part time. It could be a variety of different things. But what comes next is my $200,000 of student loans, or insert any other financial challenge that is so common among new practitioners is a barrier to being able to go work towards these other goals that they have, right? And I think the golden handcuffs can be very real when you’re looking at a couple $100,000 of debt, and you can sign up and work for 120 130 $140,000 it’s hard to say no for that, and it doesn’t incentivize a whole lot of people to take risk in the way that you have done. So tell us about your decision, your journey to reconciling your own financial plan as a new practitioner, and ultimately making that decision to take on some risk as a business owner.

Emmanuel Ayanjoke  28:35

Yeah, absolutely. My vision and the way I see things and my general approach to life and business is sort of like planting trees, right? And what I mean by that is, yes, you might not have the perfectly, you know, I guess nutrient swallow for a tree that’s several feet high, but you can at least plant something for now, and that that is kind of has been my approach to everything, and why you might not have the financial capacity to necessarily, you know, you might not feel like you have the financial capacity to do certain things, it’s still important to plant the tree. And that’s, that’s how I see things. So I have about, honestly, have just slightly I’m a little bit better, and in comparison to a lot of pharmacy graduates, I have about $103,000 in student loans, which, which is still a lot of money, quite a lot of money. But it’s not nothing compares, in comparison to others who are just graduating. But the thing I would say is the way I would approach this is, do I have the cash flow to sustain my ability to eradicate those loans in a reasonable way? And if I do, or if I don’t, what ways can I mitigate that, even if I went to going to you know, own a business, that would be how our approach is. Because no matter how you see it, right, if owning a business is your end goal, if that’s where you want to be, time is going to go on. You know, time doesn’t wait for anyone. 10 years down the line, you’re going to be in the same place having, I mean, if you’re lucky, cleared all this debt, but at the end of the day, if this is something you want to do, you have to figure out to make your finances accommodate that in a way that makes sense. Now, again, it doesn’t mean you’re just blindly taking risks, right? Yeah, you actually have to calculate and see, okay, yeah. What is the worst case scenario if this happens, you know XYZ, and be able to be okay with that. If you can’t be okay with it, then maybe, I mean, some people, just maybe, the reality is that they actually are aren’t fit from a mindset perspective, to own a business, and that’s okay because it requires that you’re okay with, like, literally, things burning down. You just being by yourself and being able to weather through storm, you have to be okay with that reality, and that shouldn’t, shouldn’t scare you or deter you from accomplishing what you actually want to do. Yeah,

Tim Ulbrich  31:12

What I really hear there is, is, there is risk. It’s real, but it’s calculated risk, right? You’re not blindly entering into something, but we’re also not being paralyzed, you know? We could wait forever for the stars to align, you know. And I think that’s something I had to reconcile on my own entrepreneur journey. Is sure, could there be a tomorrow where it’s a better time, maybe, but there’s also a lot of things I don’t know that are going to happen tomorrow. And the question I always ask myself, not only in starting a business, but also in making decisions within the business, is, how high is the ceiling and how low is the floor. And I think my mindset, and probably for a lot of pharmacists, that I’ve kind of untrained myself, or I’m still untraining myself over time, is, you know, we tend to overestimate the worst case scenario, when, in fact, if we write it on paper, often it’s not as bad as we think it is, or built it up to be in our heads, and we maybe give we underestimate the potential of where this could go. Now, you got to be careful about that, right? If we have naive optimism, you know that that could burn us, but really assessing risk, you know, I think risk can bring a ton of emotions of fear, and we lose the objectivity of what are we actually talking about, right? What is the worst case scenario, and how can we begin to work through that? So I appreciate you sharing that as it relates to your own journey. Well, this has been fantastic. Dr. Manny, right as your patients call you, so grateful for you taking the time before you open the store today. A lot of inspiration that you provided to me in your own journey. I look forward to continuing to stay connected with you and to see where the journey goes going forward. Thank you so much for taking time to come on the show.

Emmanuel Ayanjoke  32:41

Thank you so much. Tim. Glad to be on.

Tim Ulbrich  32:45

Before we wrap up today’s show, I want to again thank this week’s sponsor of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast, First Horizon. We’re glad to have found a solution for pharmacists that are unable to save 20% for a down payment on a home. A lot of pharmacists and the YFP community have taken advantage of First Horizon’s pharmacist home loan, which requires a 3% down payment for a single family home or townhome for first time homebuyers and has no PMI on a 30 year fixed rate mortgage. To learn more about the requirements for First Horizon’s pharmacist home loan and to get started with the pre-approval process, you can visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/home-loan. Again, that’s yourfinancialpharmacist.com/home-loan. 

Tim Ulbrich  33:30

As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. Furthermore, the information contained in our archive, 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 analyzes 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, action results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward looking statements. For more information, please visit your financial pharmacist.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 374: Pharmacy Innovators with Aaron Emmel, Founder of Pharmacy Tech Scholar


In this episode of the Pharmacy Innovators series hosted by Dr. Corrie Sanders, we meet Dr. Aaron Emmel, a pharmacist with a diverse career path. 

This episode is brought to you by YFP+

Episode Summary

In this latest episode of the Pharmacy Innovators series hosted by Dr. Corrie Sanders, we meet Dr. Aaron Emmel, a pharmacist with a diverse career path. 

Dr. Emmel shares how open doors and opportunities led him on a journey from a community pharmacist to executive health system leadership and the pharmaceutical industry to entrepreneurship. With many lessons learned along the way, Dr. Emmel reflects on trusting his intuition, leaning on mentors, working hard and staying curious. Throughout his journey, he explored other income streams, including real estate investing, consulting and eventually launching Pharmacy Tech Scholar, an online education program for pharmacy technicians. 

Dr. Emmel’s career journey exemplifies the extraordinary versatility and potential of a PharmD.

About Today’s Guest

Aaron Emmel graduated with his Doctor of Pharmacy Degree from the University of Florida in 2007. After a short stint as a staff pharmacist at Walgreens, he was afforded an opportunity to work as a clinical pharmacist at his local community hospital. He developed a passion for critical care medicine and spent years as the dedicated ICU pharmacist. In 2015, he earned his Masters in Healthcare Administration from the University of North Florida. With a goal of moving into executive health system leadership, he transitioned into a role as the Director of the Clinically Integrated Network and ACO owned by the hospital and local physicians. He served in this role until 2018, when he made the decision to transition into the pharmaceutical industry where we worked in Medical Affairs roles until his decision to end employment in 2024. 

Aaron launched his first business, SmarterMeds, in 2010. Focusing on MTM services, he learned many lessons on entrepreneurship and business before abandoning the effort in 2012. He first began consulting in 2014, and significantly increased this work following his departure from the hospital in 2018. In 2020, he launched Pharmacy Tech Scholar, an online education program for individuals interested in becoming certified pharmacy technicians. He also invests in real estate.

Aaron has been married to his high school sweetheart, Allison, since 2010. They have two amazing daughters, aged 8 and 11. In his spare time, Aaron loves traveling with the family, fishing, exercising, and fueling his coffee obsession.

Key Points from the Episode

  • Dr. Aaron Emmel’s Career Journey [0:00]
  • Dr. Emmel’s Early Career and Decision to Leave Retail Pharmacy [3:38]
  • Transition to Pharmaceutical Industry and Consulting [6:48]
  • Financial Decisions and Career Transitions [11:44]
  • Building and Diversifying Financial Portfolio [30:06]
  • Final Thoughts and Advice for Listeners [1:01:16]

Episode Highlights

“I’m just so grateful that I’ve had an interesting journey and I’ve been able to do so many different things. I’ve met so many amazing people along the way. So when I reflect on this, I’m just so grateful for everything that’s happened, and I’m excited for what’s to come, because I feel like I’m always trying something new and navigating things, maybe accidentally, just the right way.” – Dr. Aaron Emmel [1:58]

“I’m not out there to make, you know, a bazillion dollars and live on a mountain somewhere. I mean my mindset at this point has become one of, I want to be prepared for anything. I could be in a position to retire pretty soon, if I really wanted to, but that’s not what I want. I want to be able to weather any storm, and I want my family to be set no matter what. That’s what’s driving me. – Dr. Aaron Emmel [29:46]

“I do good work because I want to do good work. But there’s other ancillary benefits that come from that, just aside from just doing well in your employee role and growing that career ladder.” -Dr. Aaron Emmel [32:54]

“Being brave enough to make tough decisions that you know are in your best interest, always try to do things the best that you can. And the other important lesson that I’ve learned is to do them for the right reasons.” -Dr. Aaron Emmel [42:51]

“I didn’t have enough of an altruistic mindset at the time, but I’ve literally built my career ever since then on the concept of trying to do the right thing for people. So if you do all that and you do it well, opportunities come”. – Dr. Aaron Emmel [43:42]

“With all these inflection points in my journey, it has had just as much, if not more, to do with the other people around me than it’s had to do with me. And I definitely come to understand that better now.” -Dr. Aaron Emmel [1:01:45]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

Corrie Sanders  00:00

Hi YFP community. Corrie Sanders here, host of the Pharmacy Innovators Segment of the YFP Podcast. Pharmacy Innovators is designed for pharmacists navigating the entrepreneurial journey. In this series, we feature stories and strategies that help guide current and aspiring pharmacy entrepreneurs. Today, we have Dr. Aaron Emmel, whose unique career pathway and experience highlights the true flexibility of a PharmD. After graduating with his Doctor of Pharmacy degree from the University of Florida in 2007 and a short stint as a community pharmacist, he was afforded an opportunity to work as a clinical pharmacist at his local community hospital, where he specialized in critical care. After earning his master’s in healthcare administration from the University of North Florida, he transitioned to Executive Health System Leadership. He then made a large career shift by leaving clinical practice for the pharmacy industry, where he simultaneously started various businesses and consulting while expanding his investment portfolio. In 2020, he launched Pharmacy Tech Scholar, an online education program for individuals interested in becoming certified pharmacy technicians. Today, we speak to Dr. Emmel about the importance of mentorship and decision making and building unique and valuable skill sets in each chapter of his career. But what really stands out to me the most in my discussion with Dr Emmel is his passion for helping others by problem solving through the lens of a pharmacist. I’m sure you all will enjoy the true diversity of D.r Emmel’s path. So let’s jump right into our conversation. 

Corrie Sanders  01:31

Well, Aaron, thanks for joining us on the podcast today. We’re excited to have you here!

Dr. Aaron Emmel  01:35

Yeah, thanks for having me. Corrie, I’m flattered. Hopefully my story adds something to the podcast.

Corrie Sanders  01:41

I’m sure it will. So before we dive in too deep, why don’t you give our listeners a little bit of background. So describe your path in pharmacy. Where’d you go to pharmacy school? What kind of training do you have? And just a general overview of your career to this point.

Dr. Aaron Emmel  01:58

Yeah. Okay, so where do I start? I will say up front, I’m just so grateful that I’ve had an interesting journey and I’ve been able to do so many different things. I’ve met so many amazing people along the way. So when I reflect on this, I’m just so grateful for everything that’s happened, and I’m excited for what’s to come, because I feel like I’ve always trying something new and navigating things, maybe accidentally, just the right way. But I went to the University of Florida, so I graduated with my Doctor of Pharmacy degree in 2007. I was, I think, the second class that did remote campuses at UF so I actually went to a campus in Jacksonville, Florida, met some awesome classmates that are still close friends of mine to this day. Here we are almost 20 years now after graduating, but all throughout pharmacy school, I worked at Walgreens as a technician/pharmacy intern. I’m sure we’ll talk about this in more detail. But with that, you know, I was kind of, I don’t want to say indoctrinated, because, you know, people have made great careers out of working at Walgreens, but I had bought into, you know, the long term career path with them, and took all the tuition assistance, and when I graduated, thought that that was going to be my career. And I’m ambitious young man. At the time, I kind of saw a path for myself, growing in the business sense, so I took the sign on bonus as soon as I graduated and worked for them as a staff pharmacist. But thankfully, after that, I had a couple of months later, a phone call from my local hospital where I did many of my clinical rotations, and they offered me a job to come there and work as a pharmacist, which at the time, I was starting to feel like I had made the wrong decision. Couldn’t have been better timing, and we can dive deeper into this, but to have that opportunity without doing a residency, I knew it was now or never. So I made that transition then, and had the wonderful opportunity to end up specializing in critical care, which to this day, is my clinical passion. I worked almost 10 years as the critical care pharmacist at Flagler Hospital in St Augustine, and I don’t know that we have time in this podcast where come with that, but that was by far my most professionally rewarding work. And I often fantasize one day about going back. I don’t know if that’ll be possible this many years later at this point, but just had an amazing career as a critical care pharmacist. Got to do a lot of really cool things at the institution and really drive some pretty substantial change in their ICU practice and even in the pharmacy practice in general, and I had some mentors that I looked up to in terms of what they had done in their careers and their health systems. But again, you know, kind of ambition driving me to think I’ve got a long career path ahead of me. What am I going to do with my life? I don’t see myself being a critical care pharmacist forever, and it’s a stressful job. And starts the way on you mentally, at least it did for me. So I went back and got my master’s in health administration, and kind of thought of having a goal that maybe one day I’ll be the CEO of a hospital. So that was the path I started to pursue almost 10 years in to having worked as the critical care pharmacist. So once I got that degree, I had always been pitching business ideas and thoughts to the hospital leadership, and I started asking for more and more responsibility. So they gave me a really cool opportunity to take a dual role as the Assistant Director of Pharmacy and then as the Director of Quality for their clinically integrated network, which essentially functioned as an accountable care organization, and I built their entire quality program, all the claims analytics that went along with that, all the infrastructure necessary to execute quality reporting for the entity. And it wasn’t long in that role where they really saw the opportunity for me to grow and take on all the administrative leadership for that organization. So I became the Director of the organization, handled everything from physician relations to finances and contracting, continued to oversee the quality program, and for that two year period, just had an incredible professional growth and sense of just learning about healthcare administration, working very closely with payers, and working very closely to oversee population health in the community and working with the physicians to do that. So that role was amazing in that sense, but it drove me into the ground. I mean, it was tons of work. You know, 60 plus hours a week, missing many evenings at home to be in physician committee meetings, lots of stress, because the organization, just as all community health systems in the past five years have experienced, for sure, just struggled financially. So I started to get the feeling that that wasn’t a long term path I wanted to pursue. And I had, you know, my mentor in that role, who was my boss, had gone on to be an executive member of the leadership team for the healthcare system. I saw what that was like for him. I didn’t want that for myself. So again, I kind of hit this inflection point where I saw the need to maybe pivot one more time. And I had just as many clinical pharmacists, you know, they get friends that go to the pharmaceutical industry and work in medical affairs and hear about how wonderful that job is. And I had so many people that left clinical practice that went and did that either came to see me in their role, you know, to kind of to do their opinion leader meeting, you know, requirements, or they’d call me and just tell me how amazing that job was. I never thought I’d work for the pharmaceutical industry, because at the time, I was always the clinical pharmacist that gave everybody from industry a hard time when they’d come in and try to detail people. And you know, to me, that was, quote, The Dark Side, just like that perception exists amongst many of us in the pharmacy world. But I, you know, thought, why don’t I give it a try? Let me see what it’s like. I was always afraid of the travel, but I did it. So in 2018 I moved into a role with Otsuka pharmaceuticals as they were building the Medical Affairs field team for new indication they were getting in rare diseases and kidney diseases. And again, it was just a great growth for me. I got to experience something new, meet a ton of different people, learn about the pharmaceutical industry. Got rid of a lot of the misconceptions I had about it, and really thrived in that role for six years. So I worked for that company for a while. I pivoted and took a director field role with another company shortly after, or five years later, and then at the same time, I had started some additional side ventures. We haven’t even gotten into my all my side businesses over the years, as I’m trying to keep all this story straight, but that it just became very difficult for me to handle everything else I had been doing on the side. So I stepped away from the director role. I took another just individual contributor role with another company as an MSL, but even that individual contributor role, I just couldn’t fulfill, you know, the duties of that role in my opinion, everybody thought I was doing a great job, but I didn’t feel that I was doing good service to the company or myself for my business ventures and other reasons too. I saw the need to leave employment, and I made that decision professionally earlier this year. And again, we’ll dive much deeper into all that, especially the finances and considerations that went into that, but that would be probably too long of a summary professional career as a pharmacist. Um, and at the moment, I would consider myself, you know, still a pharmacist, because I’ll always be a pharmacist. I do think I will be going back at some point to do something professionally as a pharmacist, and more than I’m doing right now with with my education business for pharmacy technicians and the consulting work that I’m doing. So yeah.

Corrie Sanders  10:26

That’s a great summary to at least kind of set the stage for where this conversation is going to flow, the many different aspects and transitions that you’ve made into the career. So just to summarize it for the listeners too, to paint a picture of where we’re going. But started in community pharmacy, transition to inpatient pharmacy, where you worked your way up through the leadership chain, and then making another career pivot into industry, which I can’t wait to talk about that, but then ultimately switching to consulting and really starting your own business. So diving full time into entrepreneurship, and I’m sure the wide variety of things that you had done prior to that were able to give you a really steady foundation as to what you wanted your business to look like, and different financial considerations and all that experience, I’m sure, came into play in a really positive way for you. So let’s break this down into the smaller chunks, so we can really dive into the details. I know you started in community pharmacy. You said you were a technician at Walgreens for a couple years through pharmacy school, and I know there was some financial incentive to stay on board as a community pharmacist once you had graduated. So can we dive into some of those benefits that that company had offered, and then ultimately you made a pretty quick shift into inpatient pharmacy, so talking about the benefits of community pharmacy, and then ultimately that really quick flip into to inpatient and kind of the decisions that went into that, if you could elaborate a little more.

Dr. Aaron Emmel  11:59

I’ll be happy to. You know, when I was going to school, I will say my financial mindset and my financial education was not very sound. I thought it was. It certainly wasn’t. There’s so many mistakes that I’m just so grateful I can share them with my children now. But you know, I was of the mindset that it was ridiculous to do a residency, because why would somebody in their financial life take one to two additional years where they’re not able to earn a substantial income after investing all the time and money into pharmacy school? A very, very short sighted mindset, by the way, if, if, if I didn’t know how my career was going to pan out and I had to do it all over again, I would certainly have done a residency, no doubt about it. I’m fortunate things worked out the way they did when I didn’t. But you know, I was kind of committing myself that I wanted to earn as much money as I could, as fast as possible. And at the time, the salaries that pharmacists were earning in community pharmacies, for the most part, were substantially higher than they were in hospital pharmacies, at least in terms of what those dollars look like for a student who wasn’t making much money at the time. So I’m thinking, why would I earn $20 to $30,000 annually less a year to work at a hospital, when I could just make that much more money in the community and not have to do a residency to be competitive. So that was the mindset that drove me to do that, and I was ignoring all the subliminal things I was feeling, especially as I started to go through my clinical rotations. And I loved all of the clinical rotations I did, and I don’t feel like I was a great pharmacy student. I probably was just going through the motions at the time as just kind of a young guy that just wanted to get out and make a great living. I have learned so much since then, and you know, I certainly have a much different mindset when it comes to learning now and what the pharmacy career is all about, and the role of the pharmacist. I was ignoring all that because I was so focused on the dollars. And at the same time, I was living a life that was not financially healthy at all, you know. So it was kind of a really terrible path I was leading myself down, and I wasn’t happy, you know, with the day to day work that I was doing at the community retail pharmacy level. And again, I was kind of trying to ignore that, because I was so focused on the finances. So, you know, after having gone through all the clinical rotations and knowing what experiences I enjoyed and what I didn’t, and then committing myself when I got done to work for Walgreens, and this is nothing again, I’m not throwing shade on Walgreens in this podcast, but it was just my personal experience and feelings. I just wasn’t happy, and I really started acknowledge that a little bit more when pharmacy school was over and I was working as a pharmacist, and I’m getting those first paychecks, and those paychecks weren’t really satisfying enough to warrant, you know, the experience I was having in the work. So I definitely had regrets, and I was so grateful when I got that call from the director of Pharmacy at Flagler. And I will tell you, this to me, was the most important inflection point in my professional career, by far, was the decision to leave retail pharmacy, to go to the hospital to do that. And you got to realize at the time, I did the stupid stuff that so many pharmacy students do. I had bought a house, bought a car, taken out all these loans before I even graduated, right? So, you know, I was in a negative net worth situation that took me a long time to dig out of, and then I’m faced with the decision that, okay, I’m going to take a at the time, I think it was about a $30,000 a year pay cut to leave retail, to go work for the hospital, and I had to write Walgreens at check for all the money I took, you know, because there was a fulfillment criteria for that tuition assistance and the sign on bonus. So I don’t even remember the dollar figure at the time, but it was $30 to $40,000 and at the time, that was a whole lot of money that I didn’t have. So, you know, I borrowed money to pay them back, and it felt like financial suicide at the time. And I will tell you from my personal experience since then, might have had a wonderful career that I never would have had had I not made that decision, and as I learned better financial management over the years, that singular decision has probably also put me in a financial situation now I never would have been in before in a positive way. I didn’t know it at the time, but all the opportunities that have come to me since then would have never come had I not gained the different experiences I did along this journey. And it all goes back to that decision.

Corrie Sanders  17:14

Yeah, I think that that’s a really great point. Is that as pharmacists and really calculating the risk and reward for some of these financial decisions that we make, or just career decisions in general, it is always really easy to look at the dollar, because that’s such an objective measure of success. But often I feel like pharmacists just have their blinders on and they’re looking at a very shortstarted, sighted mindset of, what’s my next step? Where is the paycheck coming from, but not seeing the long term implications of what is this risk going to play out in the long term? What is my career path going to look like long term? What are the opportunities that are going to exist for me in a certain role long term. So you’ve done a very good job of elaborating and eloquently explaining why this decision was so important and what this inflection point meant for you. So I want to again highlight the short sighted mindset that you said that you had with the financial decision and the career decision that you made, and how you just hadn’t trusted your gut. So it’s great that you had the opportunity to make that transition so early on in your career, but then talking about that tuition assistance program, so that was huge, that you were getting some assistance, and that you had to sign on bonus with this job, and you still decided to walk away and to pivot into something different, which ultimately changed the trajectory of your career. So kudos to you. As a very young pharmacist for, I guess, being prompted to move in a different direction.

Dr. Aaron Emmel  18:45

So I had help with that, by the way, so the encouragement of my girlfriend at the time now my wife, my high school sweetheart, she was right there to support me, and she could see and feel what I was experiencing, so she knew what was best for me and my peers and one of my biggest mentors, even to this day. So I did a lot of my rotations at the St Vincent’s Hospital System in Jacksonville. There was a wonderful pharmacy director there. He’s been retiring now for quite a bit of time, but Jim Makava, I did a couple of my rotations at his health system, and I was blown away by what they had been able to accomplish as a community health system, not an academic health system, but the level of clinical pharmacy services they had just blew me away. So I knew right away that was somebody I needed to maintain a relationship with and look up to. So he helped guide me in that decision, too. I called him many times as I was trying to decide what to do, and he helped, you know, he didn’t tell me what to do, but he asked me all the right questions to make me realize what I needed to do, and I had my one of my best friends that I met in pharmacy school had the same exact scenario as me, and we both went through this together. And I can’t speak for him, but he made the same decision I did, and he’s now a systems director for ascension at this at the systems level, and he’s had a wonderful pharmacy career, brilliant individual. So we both benefited, I think, from going through this pain together, the fortitude to make the decision now.

Corrie Sanders  20:28

It certainly helps not to go through things by yourself in any chapter of life, especially something as as drastic as this, to really change the trajectory of your career so early on. So something else I want to highlight too is that you had mentioned having a pretty significant lifestyle creep up to this point. So you’re spending money that you don’t have. You know, you’re looking at the what the paychecks are going to look like, but your financial literacy is not matching what’s going in and out of your bank account. So also, for our pharmacy student listeners, I think it is so important to highlight how necessary it is to be financially literate and educated as you’re making some of these decisions very early on in your career, especially with the significant loan burden that a pharmacist generally has. So that was a, I’m sure, a tough learning lesson for you, but ultimately set you up for Financial Success down the line when you were able to reflect on on some of those changes.

Dr. Aaron Emmel  21:19

Yeah, it did. I mean, the education that came from that invaluable. Sometimes I look back and I’m like, Oh man, like, I’m in a great place now, and I’m grateful for that. But how much of a better place would I be in had I done things a little better for that 10 year period?

Corrie Sanders  21:38

So then Aaron, I want to move from making that initial career transition so switching from community pharmacy being given the opportunity to navigate your way into inpatient and then ultimately staying within the Flagler Institution for a significant amount of time, working your way from a staff pharmacist to a clinical pharmacist, up through the leadership team and then your next big career transition is moving from the hospital setting to pharmacy industry. And you said something to me earlier that really struck a chord with me was that, you know, a lot of pharmacists call industry the dark side of pharmacy, or going to the dark side, or some of the misconceptions that you had. So let’s talk a little bit about that decision. And I know in your initial summary of your career that you were just talking about the work life balance at the hospital setting, but I really just want to dive into the financial implications of that transition, and then what ultimately went behind making the jump from the hospital setting to the industry setting? 

Dr. Aaron Emmel  22:47

So the biggest impetus, I would say, for me, making that change had everything to do with work life balance, you know. So if I rewind the clock to late 2017 as I’m thinking, I’m going to have to make a pivot. I’ve got a one year old, and I have a three year old, soon to be four year old at the time. So I’ve got little girls. I’m realizing the importance of being present and the fleeting nature of this point in time that you know, I didn’t want to miss out on and also, it wasn’t just the time to it was the level of stress and and the impact of that stress on my behavior and, wellbeing at home, and, you know, me and me and my wife, Allison, we had many talks about this. We knew this wasn’t sustainable. Sustainable both from just a family time together standpoint and from a health of our family unit standpoint. So that decision I made to go to industry based purely on that. I mean, I was all in. So I had, I had a game plan for all the jobs I was going to apply to, you know, a game plan for how I was going to interview and get in front of people. I didn’t have any other factors. I mean, I knew I was going to do this, my assumption at the time, because I was an executive director at the tail end of this period. So I’m making a pretty good salary that at the health system level, and I’ve got great benefits. I mean, I’m getting like, 36 days paid off a year, you know, all the ancillary benefits that come with being at the director level at the hospital. I didn’t think I was going to be able to match that, to go and just be an individual contributor, medical science liaison to start in the industry. So I made that decision, thinking, once again, I’m going to be taking a pay cut. Well, when I interviewed for my first job, I didn’t negotiate at all, and I got an offer after the interview, and it was a pay increase, and the benefits were incredible. I couldn’t believe it. I just never forget I stepped outside to take the call from HR, and they gave me the offer. And I came back in. I misunderstood at first, and I said, Wait, it’s this much, you know. When I came in and told Allison, I said, you’re not going to believe the offer I just got to come do this. And she’s like, well, you’re going to do it anyway. You better do it now. So I will say, from a financial standpoint, I was committed to do it yet again, because I wanted to just have a different experience and a work/life balance and be more present at home. But it turned out to actually be an improvement financially. And importantly, I will tell you, it gave me the time and energy to be able to do additional things as well. And again, while making the decision to go to from retail to clinical was the single most important decision in my entire professional career, this decision and just the way that things happened, completely changed my life financially. And it’s not because I made, you know, 10% more going from the director role to industry, but because of everything else that came with it. So I had done consulting before, and I My mind’s always racing. I’ve always got ideas. So I would always chase you know, opportunities and make pitches for doing these short term consulting arrangements, but when I left, there was nobody to fill my shoe my shoes at the hospital, then nobody that understood how to run the quality program. So they asked me if I’d be willing to stay on as a consultant to advise them and help them run the operations to execute the quality program requirements. I got approval from my new employer to allow me to do that, and that additional consulting income that I got for doing that, which, by the way, from a time in to dollar amount ratio at the time, I felt bad because I just didn’t understand how these things were valued, and I my business education has increased substantially since then, but I wasn’t making all that much less than I was getting paid, you know, as an employee, to essentially work five to 10 hours a month as a consultant. And that was income that was not factored into our budget so that additional money allowed me the opportunity to invest, invest in a new business, and put away money that we would have never put away before. So you know, I had done so much financial damage to myself in pharmacy school in the 10 years it took to dig me out of that hole, I hardly had a positive net worth, even going into that transition, and my life financially changed afterwards, because of everything else that came from being able to do things in addition to my employment.

Corrie Sanders  27:52

And that’s great reflection to hear. I love that you said, you know, you made this transition, not just for yourself, but for the overall health of your family unit. I think that that’s just a great lens to view any career transition through. Is not just looking at the professional aspect of it, but thinking again of the bigger picture and the others that are affected by your career. And I do want to give you kudos to I think you’re doing a great job of shifting your identity as a pharmacist, which I don’t think a lot of people do. They become so tied to:  “I am a critical care pharmacist, and that is where I’m going to hang my hat for the rest of my career.” But you’ve done such a great job of not only being flexible throughout different positions, but really stepping back and taking a look at the bigger lens of your your career and what that ultimately means to your family. So I think looking at the logistics and the nitty gritty of that transition too – really helpful to know where the flow of some of those funds went. So you mentioned, you know, you put yourself in a pretty bad spot early on, but being able to leverage some of these new opportunities to give yourself some stable financial footing, and then what a great way, even if it wasn’t intentional, but to be able to capitalize on having a consultant position on top of a new position. So when you’ve already made a little bit of a career transition, but being able to dabble in consulting so early on. So how long did you maintain that consulting piece, and then ultimately, what has that turned into, if anything at this point? 

Dr. Aaron Emmel  29:26

So still do it, and I’ve done it for other institutions as well. So I would say at this point, from in my financial picture, and I had this discussion too with Tim, just about my my mindset now, and I don’t want to get too derailed, but I’m not out there to make, you know, a bazillion dollars and, you know, live on a mountain somewhere. I mean that my mindset at this point has become one of, I want to be prepared for anything I’ve. I could be in a position to retire pretty soon, if I really wanted to, but that’s not what I want. I want to be able to weather any storm, and I want my family to be set no matter what. So that’s kind of what’s driving me. And when I think of how to accomplish that, it’s just basically to make sure we’ve got enough income coming in, and a stable enough income where one income stream can go away or get hurt, but we’ve got enough other diverse forms of income coming in. So the way I view that is this consulting work, I found I’ve been able to string that along, and there’s many opportunities I could get after if I really wanted to. So that is a very important source of stable income for us at this point. We haven’t talked about the education business yet, but that one’s doing pretty good too. So that’s a nice right now, stable form of income. I view a lot of external threats to that, which is why I feel the need to diversify income from investments. And right now, I’m focused more on real estate as a better cash flowing vehicle for investing income. So I want to grow these three as much as I can, and that way we have a very diverse income stream coming in. So the consulting piece has been excellent. And the thing that I have learned about consulting and where these opportunities come from, they come from doing a good job and building really good relationships. And I hope not getting too sidetracked here, but I think it’s important for the listeners to know that there are so many consulting opportunities that exist out there if you had the reputation and the experience to be able to present them or capitalize on them. So the consulting opportunity I got from the hospital came because I did a really good job with the quality program, and I spoke well, and I built great relationships with everybody, and they knew I can fulfill that need very well. They can count on me to do it. That’s why that opportunity presented itself, and we’ve done really well. And I say we because my wife, Allison, helps with that. She’s a nurse, and she does a lot of the chart reviews and quality abstraction we do as part of the services we provide. So that’s one and because of word of mouth and the ability to reference some of the key stakeholders and physician leaders, additional opportunities come with that. The other thing, and it might be a little early to talk about this, but you know, I exited industry employed employment in industry just recently, but I’ve already had opportunities come up to consult for industry because of all the relationships that I built and the fact that I did a really good job while I was in it. And those may end up being quite a bit more substantial than the ones that existed from the health system. And it all came from just always remembering that you have to present yourself well. You have to do good work. I do good work because I want to do good work. But there’s other ancillary benefits that come from that, just aside from just doing well in your employee role and growing that career ladder, so to speak. 

Corrie Sanders  33:07

I think that that’s honestly been an underlying theme throughout our conversation so far, is doing a great job in the position that you’re given and creating and cultivating those meaningful relationships and realizing your value within whatever company or institution, it is that you’re performing in and then being able to leverage that amount of skill and those relationships as you’re navigating through different chapters in your career. But also, I think that you’ve done a great job of not only maintaining those relationships, but tapping into mentors when you need to, and seeking guidance and advice on what you should do next, or people that have gone through this experience yourself, so you don’t feel like you’re moving through these decisions in a silo. You feel like you’ve got that level of support and level of knowledge where you’re able to confidently make a decision and pivot as needed. So I wanted to point out those underlying themes too, but now I want to dig into So you’ve now been in industry. You’re leveraging some of these relationships, but you’re also given a lot of flexibility to pursue some ancillary interests on the side. So you’ve now got your consulting business, and I want to dive too into some of your other the other ways, you’ve diversified your financial portfolio. So you started investing in real estate, and you’ve also started a business. So let’s talk about both of those things, when which one came first? How did that come about? I’ll kind of let you take the floor there with with how you’ve gotten to this, what seems to be like a three pronged financial diversification portfolio strategy.

Dr. Aaron Emmel  34:43

Sure. So I have always been, I would say an entrepreneur at heart, I mean, and that probably just comes from my nature. I never stop. I mean, I’m up hours before anybody else in the house. Just so I can think of ideas and do work. It’s not, you know, work directly related to the objectives I had as an employee or a consultant. So the wheels are always spinning. And, I mean, I had iterated a couple of things over the years. My first try was back in 2010 I started a business essentially to do medication, therapy, management services. We don’t need to get too deep into the details on that one learned a lot of lessons about you know, what you need to do to be successful. One of those being having a target market that’s interested in your service. But we could always revisit that if needed. The way I wanted to do it, in my mind, wasn’t one that was suited to the market at the time, which was a really important business lesson learned. I had started an analytics business too, as I was starting to do all of the health system quality stuff when I was still an employee to health system. Didn’t really have the bandwidth to do anything with that, but after working in industry for a year, things were going well. I loved the job I was doing well, as a family, we couldn’t believe what that was affording, in terms of just the flexibility and work life balance, the fact that I was able to perform so highly yet still have such a flexible schedule. And even with the travel, and at the time, I traveled a lot. I mean, I was trying to get out there and do really well on the role, but the flexibility of being present when I was home, oh my goodness. I mean, the time that I gained, you know, with my family, good quality time, just couldn’t believe how well that was going. But at the same time, I had this energy where I’m like, man, you know, I really have the bandwidth to do more. So I really saw the need to try something again. I said, Okay, well, what is my skill set? Where is there an opportunity in the market? And at the time, you know, it was the concept of online courses and stuff was a growing fad and kind of the side hustle industry, and I had read all those, you know, side hustle kind of books, and listened to podcasts and lean startup concepts and things like that. So I landed on, well, why don’t I develop an online course for something? And I tried to think of all of my hobbies and expertise, and, you know, really, where was there truly a market that I could attack. And I fell back to pharmacy. I said, Okay, you know, maybe I could create, like, a prep course for a pharmacy certification, like a board pharmacy specialties kind of thing. You know, there was already a few solutions out there, and that, to me, was probably a little more than I wanted to tackle in my mind. But then the one thing I did in my market research that stuck out to me was really an opportunity for pharmacy technician education, especially tailored towards helping somebody become a certified pharmacy technician. And there wasn’t a lot of competition specifically in that online market at the time, there were a couple players that had done a really good job, but I thought, you know, I’m so ambitious, and I always execute things really well, why don’t I get throw something together and give it a shot? So I spent about a year while I was employed, and I had a conversation with my employee and my direct line manager at the time. I said, Hey, I’m going to try to do this. We went through the official process of conflict of interest and all that. They allowed me to do it. So I built an online education program. I learned how to do computer code, I learned how to build and develop a website. I could we could have eight hours of a podcast of everything I’ve learned since in terms of running a business and operating a business in this kind of niche aspect. But, you know, I built the entire curriculum, I had a few people kind of advise me in terms of making sure that it was something that would meet standards for pharmacy technician education. That’s a whole other conversation as well. But as an online only program. It wasn’t something I was going to be able to get accredited by ASHP, but the pharmacy technician certification board didn’t have a limitation in providing just didactic online education. So I pursued that, built the curriculum, submitted everything into the PTCB, got the approval for the course to be recognized by them, to qualify people to take the pharmacy technician certification exam. And after a year of hard work, click the button to launch the website. And didn’t really have much of a marketing plan, other than learning things about search engine optimization and different digital advertisements you can do, and didn’t get much traction for a while, but after, you know, a lot of work in terms of trying to tune up the website and get more visibility on it, slowly started to gain some business to customer market share in terms of people finding the website and paying for the course to go on and get certified. And I did all that on the side, and I shouldn’t say side, because I learned real quick it was quite a commitment in the way that I wanted to do it, and that, I would say almost, kind of turned into my primary focus. At the same time, I wanted to meet all the obligations of being an employee, and I worked very hard for a few years to be able to do all that together, but here we are today, and I got myself through the consulting and the income from the business. Those two things alone are more than enough at the moment for me to just be able to do those and not be able and still be able real estate stuff as well.

Corrie Sanders  40:44

So that, and that’s a great lesson, I think, for viewers and listeners to hear, is that you really bootstrap the business together outside of your W2 job with, I mean, truly bootstrapping. I think a lot of pharmacists that make the pivot into entrepreneurship aren’t doing the level of detail with coding and SEO optimization and all these different things you had to do.

Dr. Aaron Emmel  41:04

I mean, bootstrap. I didn’t even count the hours that I put into this, but I did and it was with a true business owner mindset now and being in a completely different situation from a capital standpoint. I mean, that’s not always the best way to launch a business, but because I had the bandwidth and I just did it, I’m grateful I did, because not only was I able to do it at a relatively reasonable startup cost, but everything I learned along the process made me an extremely nimble business owner in this space, because now, I mean, I understand all these technical things. You know, I serve business to business clients now too. So I’ve got health systems and a few GPOs and educational institutions across the country that I’m doing group contracting with, and there’s a lot of vendor credentialing requirements that come from that. And now I know more about cyber and information security than I ever did before. I would have known all these things had not spent all the time to learn it as I was trying to figure out how to build and launch this.

Corrie Sanders  42:19

Which makes you even more valuable in a way that you probably never imagined.

Dr. Aaron Emmel  42:23

Over the years, that you know they want to do something similar and wanted guidance. I’ve had people ask me to be a business coach to help them be able to do that. I haven’t latched on to that because I feel at some point you know, you have to maintain some focus. I don’t want to throw too many things out there again. Yeah, it’s I would say my biggest take home that I can think of from the audience, other than just being brave enough to make tough decisions that you know are in your best interest, is to just always try to do things the best that you can, and do them in a sense too, that the other important lesson that I’ve learned is to do them for the right reasons, and that’s, you know, to be mission and vision focused, and to build genuine relationships with people, and to have a primary goal of helping other people more than anything else. And that was another mindset that I go back 20 years ago, where I’m focused on the money that wasn’t the right reason. I mean, I had stories I could tell you of some of the feedback I got from preceptors and, you know, education factor, educational faculty about, okay, do you really understand what the pharmacy role is supposed to be like? And I didn’t have enough of an altruistic mindset at the time, but I’ve literally built my career ever since then on the concept of trying to do the right thing for people. So do all that and you do it well, opportunities come. That’s one thing I’ve learned, yeah.

Corrie Sanders  44:00

And that’s a great, I mean, career lesson, but life lesson in general, too. And I want to back up just a little bit to make it clear. So you’re in this position where you’re doing some consulting, but you’re still within the industry, and the business that you built out on the side, or what became your full time business was Pharmacy Tech Scholar. So that’s what you’re building up this platform to ultimately provide education and certification courses to pharmacy technicians that can be purchased all online. So for our pharmacists that are listening, that do work with pharmacy technicians, I want to give you the opportunity to just elaborate a little bit more about this business. What is the goal of Pharmacy Tech Scholar, who are some potential clients and and how have you envisioned, you know, where the business is going in a way that’s understandable to the audience, and hopefully, if they need some of those services, is, how can they reach out to you.

Dr. Aaron Emmel  45:00

Awesome. I wasn’t even thinking of having any kind of talk here. But so the mission is simple. It’s to empower anybody to become a certified pharmacy technician. So the opportunity that I saw at the time, and the one that I believe in very strongly, this comes from my own financial experience as well is that there’s such a demand for pharmacy technicians right now, and there is a massive supply gap that exists today. It’s been going on for years now. I mean, I could I hear all these things from employers that contact me of how hard it is for them to find qualified pharmacy technicians, and there’s a major gap between from a pharmacy association perspective, on the type of training and preparation that you want for somebody to go out in the world and be a competent pharmacy technician and fulfill the level of scope of practice that role can provide and elevate, elevate the profession as a whole. It’s a lot of training and education. So you know, if you look at the ASHP accreditation model, as the gold standard for pharmacy technician education, which which I believe in, and I support, it is robust, and it’s extremely hard to attain that accreditation status. And if you’re not an employer, and you do this to recoup the cost of running that program, you got to charge quite a bit, whether you’re a vocational school or secondary educational institution, for somebody to go through a training program. And I just in my mind, it’s tough for me to see somebody invest, you know, the 1000s or 10s of 1000s of dollars that education might cost to get out and earn what a pharmacy technician earns, quite frankly. And there’s been a significant increase in the pharmacy technician wage, even over the past three years, if you look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics data. But it’s still not one that’s equitable in terms of what the outlay would would need to be for that level of education and training to go out and make that money. So I’m trying to envision the path for what I’ve done and being able to fulfill at least the didactic component of the education that a pharmacy technician needs at a very low cost. And the whole goal of this is to empower anybody to do it without any financial constraint. So my goal is that somebody can, as an individual, take our program, then go on to take the pharmacy technician certification exam and get their certified pharmacy technician status, which in most states is kind of the barrier to entry that are lower to be able to register and get out into the world and start to get some on the job training. So that’s kind of the path that I see from an individual standpoint. If somebody wants to be a pharmacy technician, that’s a really efficient path to take. You get your didactic education in a very inexpensive manner. You get your rubber stamp. So you can go out and get employed, and the employer is going to take the impotence to give you that experiential training that you need. So that’s kind of, if I frame it from the individual or the aspiring pharmacy technicians perspective. That’s the vision that I have for where we fit into their journey. Now, what I envision in terms of going forward, how, how do we how do I our business. How does our business deliver that service and help meet the standard that the pharmacy profession wants to see for pharmacy technicians? So especially with this audience, if it’s mainly pharmacy professionals, you know, my goal is for us to be able to fulfill the didactic component of a fully accredited training program which needs to include simulated, experiential training. We’ve done a really good job building a very interactive and active, didactic learning experience because, you know, we have a multimodal learning system in our learning management or multi multimodal experience in our learning management system, from, you know, video lectures to self study material to we provide all the readings as well at no cost, student discussion board, interactive messaging with with me. I mean, I’m on hours every day communicating with all the students. We’ve got self study activities. We’ve got, like, different educational games and these different h5p modules on the site. So it’s a it’s a really holistic student experience from a didactic standpoint, and integrating a lot of active learning and adult learning principles. So what I like to think is that we’ve built pretty much the best experience you could get from a self study, self paced, online, didactic perspective, that would be a really nice supplement for any holistic training program. So it alleviates the burden from the employer, essentially, if you think about an employer based training program that didactic components covered, and then you can focus just on the simulation. An experiential piece of that, and the students are already going to have a good background of that technology to be able to then move on to those types of activities. Go back to my time at the hospital, you know, in the state of Florida, which is kind of ironic, because that’s where I’m at. It’s one of the states that you know that’s not enough. You have to complete an ASHP accredited program, or a fully, you know, accredited educational institution program. You can’t just do an online program and get certified. But at the hospital, we didn’t have the bandwidth to go out and pursue ASHP accreditation, and we had a really hard time sourcing pharmacy technicians because of that, and I believe that the hospital still struggles with that. I’ve been trying to think about how to approach them, to work out some kind of combo deal, but yeah, so that’s kind of what I’d say, is we can offer what I personally feel is the best didactic experiences you can get from an online self study program.

Corrie Sanders  50:58

It sounds like a really robust experience and a really, you know, detail oriented, hands on experiences that has a lot a lot of thought put behind it. I love, I think it’s so ironic, not only that you’re in Florida with whatever restrictions may exist for the technicians, but I love that you had worked your way so far from community pharmacy and then ultimately reflecting back to a service that can totally help community pharmacy, not only the inpatient setting too, with recruiting technicians, but in a way that can really serve the pharmacy industry as a whole with that gap in the market, and really seizing the product market fit for that specific opportunity with Pharmacy Tech Scholar. So once you’ve got that up and running as your side hustle, that’s now become a full time job at this point, when do you lean into real estate and divesting even further? Is that before or after the Pharmacy Tech Scholar component leveraging some of the other consulting salary or your salary as a hospital employee? What did that step look like with diversification of your finances and just in general, can you help paint a better picture of when you reached into some of these other avenues?

Dr. Aaron Emmel  52:07

Yeah, excellent question. And again, we don’t have enough time to get into all my financial thoughts and ideas at this point, but I will say I thought about investing in real estate probably starting about 2018, 2019, I didn’t really have the capital to do much at the time, and I’ve got a lot of opinions too, about all the, you know, flashy real estate podcasts and ideas about all these crafty ways to invest in Real Estate. But I started to build my education around that time, probably way too much. So I certainly suffered from analysis paralysis. So I mean, I probably consumed 50 to 100 books on real estate investing build all these financial models on the side, because I’m a geek like that. But it wasn’t until really a couple of years ago, that I started to set some real goals, because I didn’t really have the capital to do much until then, at least in addition to all the other investments I had, I didn’t want to be able to pull out any money that I already had invested. And the rationale in my mind, was, ultimately, I want to get to a point where it’s just the investments that that fund, you know, the expenses that we have as a family, not because I don’t want to work or do anything anymore, but that, to me, puts us in a position where we can weather the storm no matter what happens. And I just don’t think any of us know what the world’s going to look like in five to 10 years. Five to 10 years or 20 years or 30 years, and to me, the more I can do to put our family in a situation where we’ve got that buffer. I’m doing my job. So the problem that I saw was that most of my or all of my investments, are in these tax protected vehicles that come with substantial penalties if you tap into them. So, you know, 401K, 403b, 529, plans for the kids health savings accounts, I had built up a pretty good nest egg, I would say, for my age as of a few years ago. But they weren’t producing any cash flow I could realize. So I made the decision on my mind that all the excess income that I have now, I’m just going to start investing in the real estate assets that ultimately I can get to the point where they’re cash flowing. And it’s cash flow that I can realize. And there’s some tax advantages to that too. So there’s not like, a huge additional tax burden that would come from that. In fact, I’ve got a situation this, this last tax season, where it was highly advantageous the way I did a couple of the investments, but that was the thought process. I didn’t execute my first real estate investment until early last year. And help focus me, if we need to stop me and ask me questions If you need but I went through all the different asset classes of real estate in my research on where can I put money in a real estate investment vehicle that’s going to produce both a very safe return overall and will cash flow? And I had a hard time finding anything, and maybe because I didn’t have the bandwidth to do a ton of lead generation. I mean, the to really generate, you know, major opportunity leads is a lot of work and a lot of investment in marketing. And I’m doing all this on the side. I don’t want to create another full time job for myself. And, you know, I couldn’t find anything in my area on the MLS, whether it was a multifamily or single family residence that pInned out from an investment standpoint, that would meet my metric criteria, I started looking into commercial assets, same thing with everything that was on LoopNet or that you could publicly find for commercial properties. And it wasn’t until I met somebody to become one of my best friends, whose kid was in my my youngest daughter’s class, and told him about my aspirations to invest in real estate. And he was a commercial real estate developer, so we started bouncing a ton of ideas around, and made the decision last year to do a couple of investments out of town in South Carolina for some commercial properties. So I did a couple of investments up there as a partner in a venture LLC for two retail complexes in South Carolina. And both of those, and these are pretty large outlay what many people would consider to be high risk investments, but they were such great opportunities at such a low acquisition cost that there was so much buffer for things to go wrong, and things have gone wrong, and even though they’ve gone wrong, you know, we’re still standing to make a substantial double digit rate of return, whether we refinance those this year or dispose of them in the coming months, the coming years. Well, so lots of thoughts. I mean, there’s so many things I could discuss about that, but ultimately, I made the decision to do this more as a passive partner, because I didn’t have the time or bandwidth to really pursue an active real estate investment with a strategy that was going to generate an investment that performed well from the outset. I think there’s a big misperception in my opinion, of people that think they can just go out and buy a house or a duplex and it’s a good investment. If you’re looking at the market, and whether you’re paying all cash or you’re leveraging it, especially these current interest rate environments, you’re probably going to lose money, or you’re probably at least in the near term, without knowing where inflation is going to go, you’re better off putting that money even in a money market account right now, unless you’ve got a really sound investment and you really understand the capital requirements of what you’re doing.

Corrie Sanders  58:08

And again, it’s so nice to hear that one you had already kind of financially leveraged, you know, with all these different forms of income, the ability to start investing in real estate a little bit later in your career, but ultimately, the ability to do it in the way that you did came from another relationship that you had made and some more conversations that you had had with people that are like minded. So I want to point to a couple different things, and then we’ll try to summarize it all up and with some clean takeaways. But I think overall, just listening to your journey one, you are great at doing different ways of self reflection. I feel like you’ve got a good head on your shoulders with where am i right now and where do I want to be? And then, if those two things aren’t aligning, for whatever reason, you’re another great example of you know, there’s no perfect time for a shift. There’s no black or white idea of when you have to be a certain thing in the pharmacy profession, but being able to have a shift in mindset or a shift in your career at any point in time, just based on what feels right and doing the right thing and working really hard has opened yourself up for a lot of different opportunities. So to summarize things up, we started in community pharmacy. We pivoted to that inpatient setting, and then ultimately switching into industry, and once you had some financial leverage, really working on diversifying that financial portfolio, so then reaching into real estate, looking at some of those hard and soft skills that you had developed from different points in your career and leveraging those in a way that was financially advantageous, but being able to eventually walk away from a W2 job because of these different diversifications that you had built with both the business, Pharmacy Tech Scholar and then some consulting. So anything else that you know you want to highlight in your career that you think would be useful to our listeners that, before we summarize it even further?

Dr. Aaron Emmel  1:00:10

My goodness, there’s so many things. And again, if I, if I take your kind words about my my ability for reflection, I would say the other important lesson I’ve learned is to have, at least in my own history, the need to have a higher degree of respect for everybody else around you and the things that they know. So that was my other lesson that I’ve learned over time, and I’m on a continual path with this, is, you know, when I got out into the hospital and here I am. I think I’m so smart, I didn’t even do a residency. I mean, I know everything right, and I had that mindset. I was so judgmental if somebody didn’t review something, or they let this medication get verified, or, you know, I assume none of the physicians knew anything about anything they were prescribing, but I have since come to learn that I don’t know as much as I think I know. That’s still true today. I’m always trying to learn more, but I missed out, I think, on a lot of opportunities to learn from other people early on, because I had that brazen mindset, and I would say it served me well as the years have gone by to have a more grounded perspective that other people know a lot more than I thought they did, and probably more than I do, and the ability to learn from other people and having that mindset has really served me well. So that was my own personal thing. That’s probably too many of your readers, but I would say that to me, and you noted too, with all these inflection points in my journey has had just as much, if not more, to do with the other people around me than it’s had to do, and I definitely come to understand that better now, and that circle could have been much bigger, And I could have learned much more had I been a little more introspective, I would say, and empathetic as well with everybody else in my space.

Corrie Sanders  1:02:10

No, that’s so beautifully said. Everyone’s got something to teach you. It’s just whether you want to see it or not. And the last question Aaron that I’ll ask, we’ve talked about a lot of different resources that you tapped into, so mentorship from a very early point in your career, you talked about consuming a lot of books and a lot of podcasts. Is there any other useful vehicle in your entrepreneurship journey that you want to point out to the listeners? Anything that you tapped into, or maybe your most valuable resource to this date.  

Dr. Aaron Emmel  1:02:44

Letting go of the fear of failure, I would say that’s a big one. And I’ve failed quite a bit, and I continue to fail, but every time you do that, it’s an opportunity to learn something, and don’t be afraid to put yourself out there. That’s the other thing that I still struggle with today, we spoke before we started recording, about, you know, I’ve recognized the need to be more present socially, at least in terms of social media and stuff. And it’s got more to do with my, I guess, lack of like excitement around being that publicly visible. But if you want to succeed, I mean, you have to have a brand you know. You’ve got to be out there. You can’t be afraid of what other people think you know. And that’s something that I try all the time to let go of, and I still need to work on. It’s so important. If you’re going to be putting something out there that’s new, or putting something out there that’s going to compete, you’ve got to be fully behind it and fully visible, and you’ve got to be willing to just look stupid if you think that’s the way you’re going to look, but just put yourself out there.

Corrie Sanders  1:03:47

Well, on that note, Aaron, if people want to find you, what’s the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Dr. Aaron Emmel  1:03:53

You can find me on LinkedIn, it’s AaronEmmel. No period. My tag on LinkedIn. I just now put up my own personal website again from many years back. So themedicineguy.com There’s no content on there as of this minute, but hopefully in the coming weeks, we’ll have some I’ll have some stuff on there as well. And that’s also my Twitter/X handles @themedicine guy. Haven’t been tweeting since 2020 but again, I’m going to try to get active.

Corrie Sanders  1:04:21

Well, that sounds great, and there’s this has been such a beautiful conversation, I feel like there’s a lot of great life lessons worked into a lot of this professional journey. So wanted to say thank you again for taking the time to be here with YFP, and wish you all the best. Thanks, Aaron.

Dr. Aaron Emmel  1:04:37

Thank you. Corrie. I really appreciate it.

Tim Ulbrich  1:04:41

As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offered 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 posts and podcasts is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analyzes 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 363: A Conversation with My Dad: Lessons on Entrepreneurs, Fatherhood, & Finance


YFP CEO Tim Ulbrich talks with his dad, Tom Ulbrich, on entrepreneurship, fatherhood, and finances.

Episode Summary

In celebration of Father’s Day, Tim Ulbrich talks with his own dad, Tom Ulbrich, to have a conversation on entrepreneurship, fatherhood, and finances. 

During this wisdom-packed dialogue, Tom shares his career journey starting with running a family business, to developing an e-commerce business out of the basement of his home, to achieving his MBA in his 40’s, to his time in academia, and to now leading a large nonprofit in Western New York. Tom shares his thoughts on his two sons going from traditional to non-traditional career paths, how he and his wife, Lynn, have defined what it means to be living their rich life, and his take on redefining retirement and why it shouldn’t be a one-size fits all approach.

This special conversation highlights the generational throughline in the Ulbrich family of entrepreneurship and how career and life choices are about the journey, not the destination.

About Today’s Guest

As a passionate advocate for small business and a former business owner himself, Tom Ulbrich intimately understands the power that entrepreneurship has to unlock human potential, create jobs, inspire wealth, and invigorate economies and communities across the globe.Tom is an entrepreneurial leader with broad-based management experience in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors. His passion for social innovation is focused on nurturing strong relationships and building consensus across diverse groups of stakeholders in the academic, for-profit, non-profit and government sectors.

During his prior tenure as an assistant dean at the University at Buffalo’s School of Management and School of Social Work he did extensive work in the field of social entrepreneurship with a focus on the emerging concept of the “entrepreneurial non-profit”. He retains an appointment at the UB School of Management as Executive in Residence for Entrepreneurship. He is a speaker and writer with a weekly newsletter titled Soar, Don’t Settle where he shares his thoughts about business, leadership and life. He is also a member of the Forbes Non-Profit Council and contributes content that you can find on Forbes.com. In May 2020, he became President and CEO of Goodwill of Western New York  where he is working with a dedicated team to apply an interdisciplinary approach to social innovation in a real world setting.

Key Points from the Episode

  • Career journey from family business to nonprofit leadership. [0:00]
  • Entrepreneurship, identity, and risk-taking in various professions. [7:54]
  • Importance of financial literacy and creative problem-solving in education. [15:06]
  • Entrepreneurship, risk mitigation, and leadership. [19:05]
  • Entrepreneurship, leadership, and strategy. [27:25]
  • Personal growth and career development through education and experience. [35:28]
  • Starting and selling an e-commerce business within a family-owned landscaping business. [38:42]
  • Career pivot from family business to entrepreneurship, with reflection on past experiences and their impact on current success. [43:50]
  • Parenting and entrepreneurship, balancing safety and individuality. [47:11]
  • Finding balance between saving for future and living a rich life today. [52:07]
  • Financial planning, relationships, and experiences. [59:20]
  • Individualized retirement planning and prioritizing personal goals. [1:02:18]
  • Financial planning, retirement, and career fulfillment. [1:07:49]

Episode Highlights

“I feel like everything I’ve done prior to this, all the pieces of that journey, have led me to sort of my dream job where everything is coming together. Entrepreneurship, leadership, all the things that I love to do, are sitting here in this job.” – Tom Ulbrich, [5:29]

“So to your point with with young pharmacists that are on a career path, I think the challenge for many people, especially when they have invested in education, a lot of money, a lot of time and have deep expertise in a field, you can get trapped and stuck, because it’s uncomfortable leaving something that’s comfortable. But by never leaving, what makes you feel comfortable is really that can potentially really rob you of having the thrill of being able to do something that you can make a good living at, and still be passionate about at the same time.” – Tom Ulbrich [5:48]

“There is you have to think about skills, not think about titles, not think about licenses. But think about the diverse set of skills that you’ve learned and that you’re that you that you’re a unique individual that’s put together all these little pieces along the way that makes you special, and whatever that next step is that you’re after.” – Tom Ulbrich [7:35]

“I don’t think we give our kids either in school or sometimes as parents enough teaching or learning around creativity because the truth is the world we live in today, a degree is a piece of paper. That’s great. And I know it’s required for many professions. But what you really need to do to be successful today is you need to know how to identify what the true problem is when you see a problem.” – Tom Ulbrich [14:25]

“The fact is, entrepreneurs are really great risk mitigators, they don’t gamble. What they do is they try to identify what the risks are, mitigate what they can, and then understand what true risks they’re taking.” – Tom Ulbrich [20:45]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich  00:00

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. In celebration of Father’s Day this weekend, I brought my dad Tom Ulbrich, onto the show to have a conversation on entrepreneurship, fatherhood, and finance. During this episode, my dad shares his career paths starting with running a family business to start another business in our basement, and then leading a large nonprofit in Western New York. His thoughts on my brother and I going from traditional to non traditional career paths, how he and my mom had to find what it means to be living their rich life, and his take on redefining retirement, and why it shouldn’t be a one size fits all approach. This is a good one, my favorite episode thus far in the 363 episodes, and nearly seven years that we’ve been recording the show. Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there listening. I’m rooting for you. 

Tim Ulbrich  00:55

Dad, welcome to the show.

Tom Ulbrich  00:57

Excited to be here. Thank you for having me. I’ve been looking forward to this.

Tim Ulbrich  01:01

Well, it’s a joy to say those words, something I haven’t been able to say on the first 362 episodes of the podcast. I’m looking forward to the conversation. I think we could spend hours talking about a variety of topics around fatherhood, entrepreneurship financing. So we’ll see where the conversation goes, I do want to start with your career journey. And the reason why I want to start there is that, as I was talking with you about the other day, I see a lot of pharmacists that are stuck. Stuck defined by the sunk cost of time and money that they invested into getting their pharmacy degree and perhaps they’re interested in something else that might be within the profession that might be outside of the profession, but they’re unable to see paths, the straight line path that they embarked upon, many at a young age. So with that backdrop, give us an overview of your career journey, that I think highlights so well how it’s really much more of a journey and not not a destination. 

Tom Ulbrich  01:58

Sure. I’m happy to do that and cut me off if this gets a little bit long. It’s a long journey, right, at my age, but, excuse me, the so my path started with I had one goal in life when I was graduated from high school – that was to get married to your mom as quickly as possible. So the pathway for me to do that I didn’t didn’t have any particularly great interests in one thing or another, was overall, a decent student. But the family we had a garden center in the family, landscaping business. So I’m like, let’s go into the family business. So I can get done with school. I went to school for ornamental horticulture and landscape design, entered the family business, got married right away, and Michael came along almost immediately, then you. And for over 20 years, I stayed in the family business, not because I was necessarily passionate about it. But because it was that that sort of like straight line you were talking about where you’re, you feel I don’t want to say I ever felt trapped. That’s not the fair, fair word. But I felt responsible, like it was my job to provide for the family. So once you both were in college, I decided to pursue some of my dreams, which meant I went back to get my MBA, I decided to leave the family business and actually ran for public office unsuccessfully. And the reason for running was I was very involved supporting small businesses through the National Federation of Independent Business and thought, why not do this on public policy side. But when I ran under those auspices, what happened was I had an opportunity then given to me at the University of Buffalo to run their Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership. So went Hey, you want to do all this stuff. You don’t need to be elected official, come here and do that. And I’ll kind of speed that all up, but I was there for 12 years. I became the Executive Director of the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership and became an Assistant Dean and faculty member in the School of Management where I taught entrepreneurship. And then towards the end of my time at University of Buffalo, which ended in 2020, I had a dual appointment as Assistant Dean to the School of Management was well of the school as well as the School of Social Work. Where I working on a real passion project and that was social innovation or the the intersection of for profit, business and social sector or nonprofit business. In 2020, I was recruited by a recruiter to Goodwill. Have to be honest for probably six or eight phone calls, I said thanks for calling. I’m not interested in running a bunch of retail stores. I finally did meet with the board; was really intrigued with the business model here at Goodwill that we are a social enterprise and that we can you know we can raise money or profit through our retail stores and reinvest that into our workforce development. So the challenge to me as an as an entrepreneur, and I didn’t mention along the way, we’ve started a couple businesses and stuff, I’ve skipped that part. But having been an entrepreneur, the challenge was I’ll come out of academia and do this in the real world. And I kind of took the bait, and here I am at Goodwill. I’ve been here for four years, and absolutely love the work here, and feel like everything I’ve done prior to this, you talk about journey, all the pieces of that journey, have led me to sort of my dream job where everything is coming together. entrepreneurship, leadership, all the things that I love to do, are sitting here in this job. So to your point with with young pharmacists that are on a career path, I think the challenge for many people, especially when they have invested in education, a lot of money, a lot of time and have deep expertise in a field, you can get trapped and stuck, because it’s uncomfortable leaving something that’s comfortable, but by never leaving, what makes you feel comfortable is really that can potentially really rob you, I guess it’s the right word, I was looking for the right word, rob, you have the thrill of being able to do something that you can make a good living at, and still be passionate about at the same time. And I think what people have to think about is not the degree, not the technical skills that I have, but under the auspices of a pharmacy license, but to think about what skills do I have that transfer to many other things. You’re, you know, you’re a perfect example, and many of your friends are that you’ve taken those skills that come with what you’ve learned as a pharmacist and gained all this experience along the way, then you’re able to pivot into something that uses those skills. I think we were talking about the other day, you see this a lot and people that come out of the military, incredibly skilled and valuable people for any organization. But it’s really hard sometimes to transfer those jobs, like what you did in the military, and how do they transfer out into, you know, the business sector here back home, or? And I think what happens there is you have to think about skills, not think about titles, not think about licenses. But think about the diverse set of skills that you’ve learned and that you’re that you that you’re a unique individual that’s put together all these little pieces along the way that makes you special, and whatever that next step is that you’re after.

Tim Ulbrich  07:54

Yeah. And I think that goes back to this idea of identity not being attached to the degree or the title. And I think for our profession, we struggle with that, right? Because at 18, 19, 20, 21 years old you know, there’s a story of, hey, you’re going to be a doctor, you’re going to have a pharmacy degree, you’re going to do X, Y, or Z and a feels big, it feels weighty that you have to make these decisions. And I think there’s actually a lightness and a relief as scary as it may sound to the listeners of kind of stepping into this uncomfortable territory and detaching yourself from the identity of the degree or the identity of you know, I’m a hospital pharmacist or I’m an industry pharmacist. It’s it’s about these transferable skills that we’re talking about. And I think honestly, one of the many things you taught me, maybe it was said, maybe it was unsaid, it was role modeled, like I lived that firsthand. I saw you go through this journey. I was in high school, finishing high school, going into college, when you made this transition and entered into the MBA ran for political office took the next step. I remember the phone call when I was in the airport traveling when you’re interviewing with Goodwill, right? Like we’ve lived these things firsthand. And my brother, Mike, he’s a great example of this. You know, he’s an industrial engineer by training. He went in, worked in corporate finance was very successful. And then he got 10ish years in and realized like, hey, I want something different for my life, for my family. And the pivot moment from for him was when he was able, with the help of a coach and some others, to detach himself from the identity with the degree or the identity with the role that he had spent his first decade of his career in. And that’s uncomfortable, but I want to talk about that uncomfortable in this because human beings are wired for safety. Right? That’s that’s normal and everything else is a risk. And for pharmacists, that’s real. Doctorate degree, good paycheck, lots of debt to pay off. Any other path than the quote, “norm” is risk and that’s hard hurting our profession. Because what’s this? What’s the incentive for taking risks and taking innovation? So as you’ve taught many entrepreneurs, and you’ve lived this journey yourself, what would you have to share to those folks that are, hey, I’m wired for safety, I see that and this idea of stepping outside of that is uncomfortable.

Tom Ulbrich  10:18

So that that’s great background, and really a really good question. And remind me I want to get back to we’re, you know, Father’s Day, and I want to talk a little bit about how parents are part of that journey with us shaping us to, we’ll come back around to that, but back to, you know, I’m gonna go back to the classroom for a minute. So one of the interesting things they taught entrepreneurship, and anybody on here should be saying, how do you teach entrepreneurship? Well, the fact is, you you don’t. Really to become an entrepreneur, you need to live in what we teach people are, here’s some best practices, how to validate a business, how to do customer discovery. But what you’re really referring to is something that you that I picked up, I only remember where I picked it up from a long time ago, is in entrepreneurship is the concept of 50,000 chunks of experience. So meaning that you will not be successful until you gain that experience. And you gain that everywhere. From you talked about a pharmacy degree. But you gain it also from role modeling. So both of both of my sons, now we’re entrepreneurs, not I was an entrepreneur, my dad was, in a sense, an entrepreneur. So we learn these skills by role modeling and seeing it. One of the interesting things when you look at data around entrepreneurship, and most of the data I’m familiar with is around minority entrepreneurship and women owned businesses. Until the last maybe 10 years, the the those demographics struggled mightily with being able to be successful entrepreneurs. And the question is, why? What the research showed was the why is, where’s the role model? Whereas somebody that looks like me, that has done this before? So long winded answer to say, yes, we as human beings are risk averse, we are wired that way. And the further down a path you get in a good career, like being a pharmacist, the that risk aversion just tightens and it’s even harder to walk away. And many entrepreneurs, you don’t need to be successful, like Mark Zuckerberg is an outlier, the 21 year old that created something and blew it up. Most entrepreneurs are successful later in life after they gained their experience, and they are in a stuck track. But what often happens is we have a financial downturn, something happens and maybe they lose their their job. And they’re sort of forced into entrepreneurship and recognizing can do that. Yeah, if I can, can I back up to parenting for a minute? Because I think it’s important and and no and answer your question. Will not question but your your comment about, did I role model for you? No, not deliberately at all. In fact, not at all, but it may have happened. So I think one of the challenges too, as parents, we want what we think is best for our children, I think everybody does. And sometimes we maybe think about it through the lens of safety for kids. And we don’t, we’re afraid and we almost drive people to a profession. Remember, when you’re thinking about college, you didn’t really know what you’re wanted to do. And I think we’re like, oh, this is probably you’re really good in these things. 

Tim Ulbrich  13:39

Yep. 

Tom Ulbrich  13:39

But it doesn’t mean that something you were passionate about or wanting to do. So I think from a parenting standpoint, and I wish I would have known these things, you know, 40 years ago, but I we did the best we could with what we knew, right? Probably would have done things differently to just try to understand now that I know how successful you can be as an entrepreneur, focus a lot more with understanding the unique individual that each child is and spending a lot more time in creative play, teaching about innovation, and not so much in the structure of I don’t want to say school because I don’t want to say schools are bad. It’s not. I don’t think we give give our kids either in school or sometimes as parents enough teaching or learning around creativity because the truth is the world we live in today, a degree a piece of paper. That’s great. And I know it’s required for many professions. But what you really need to do to be successful today is you know, how you need to know how to identify what the true problem is, when you see a problem. How do I look for the root cause of that problem and know how to do that and you know how to seek out information, really. Those are and solve problems creatively, which is really creative, creative problem solving.

Tim Ulbrich  15:06

Yeah. And you said the other day when we were talking, you said, hey, if we as a nation, right want to remain great for centuries to come, we talked about two things, you know, personal finance education, our listeners will give an amen to that and then creative problem solving. Right. And it’s interesting, I was just read an article the other day, you know, you think about all the focus around STEM over the last 10-15 years, and I’m not saying STEM is bad in any way, shape, or form. But even look at an area of study like computer science, and I was reading article about computer science graduates coming out having difficulty, you know, finding jobs because of AI and some of the replacement and technology thing that’s going on in coding, etc. And, you know, we have this huge surge of focus in that area, you have an overabundance, right, in some regards to people that are going into those fields, and now we have disruption that’s happening right now. But when you look at something like creative problem solving, so I’m very hard to teach in a structured environment, very important skill, that translates that is not easily replaceable, as we think about where trends are going. 

Tom Ulbrich  16:02

Sure. And when what you just said is really critically important. Imagine if we taught these two things, from the time your kindergarten or even before – financial literacy, and creative problem solving. Yeah, if that was baked in to the basic sort of like a core curriculum that that was part of the core curriculum, those things it would really change so much for the better. Because, you know, in the work that you do, how many people don’t understand financial literacy, and we can’t blame the individuals, you know, yes, you’re responsible to learn that, but they’ve never learned it. And they also back to role modeling, we talked about with entrepreneurship, you also role model people with money, too, right. And so you have, you have poor role models, quite frankly, and aren’t sure themselves, because they never learned how to handle their finances. So I think those two things could really, really start to teach things. And what’s fascinating to me, we talked a little bit the other day about the Medici effect, which is, which is really important, which, if anybody’s interested in that maybe could put it in the footnotes of Franz Johansson has wrote the book and had some really great simple TED Talks and learn about it. But it’s really around the concept that creativity, and innovation are enhanced by diversity, which is really interesting to me, because we’re so focused on diversity, which it’s important. But it’s all those diverse experiences, which ties back to our beginning discussion, and its diversity and everything. It’s in diversity in the people we work with. And that diversity isn’t just ethnic diversity, its age diversity, education diversity, likes diversity. It’s all that diversity. When you take people that are diverse, and you put them together, the sharing, and the creative, problem solving that can happen is just really, really amazing. So again, to teach that, and to stop, you know, that whole concept sort of busts up our limited thinking, and that’s what holds us back is, is we’re, we’re just back to risk aversion. We’re wired to be risk averse, okay, I’m making $110 grand as a pharmacist, or whatever pharmacists make, and why do I want to give that up? Like, maybe you want to give that up to pursue something that you’re really, really passionate about, that you’re going to thrive in, and maybe you’re going to make way more money, doing something that you’re passionate about. And again, I don’t believe in the old saying, do what you love, and you’re going to be fine. I think you have to balance that you can’t just ignore, you have to look at your skills. But what also is nice about having a career like a pharmacist, you can you have the safety of your career, while you build something. So if you’re really want to do it, and you’re willing to put in that extra work in the evenings in the weekends, you can build it while you have the safety of your of your career at the same time.

Tim Ulbrich  19:05

Can we talk about that for a minute? Because I think we tend to generally speaking about pharmacists, especially because of the things we’ve been talking about with, you know, some of the fixed mindset around the degree and the ceiling of income and the debt we have to pay off. You know, we tend to miscalculate risk, meaning we blow it out of proportion. And I found myself doing this early in my own journey. And one of things I often say is that at the end of the day, your pharmacy license is the greatest emergency fund you’re ever gonna have. 

Tom Ulbrich  19:32

That’s true. 

Tim Ulbrich  19:33

So if you take a risk, and worst case scenario happens and it doesn’t work out, to be able to have something you can fall back on that you can make $55 to $65 an hour. I’m not saying you want to go do the work that’s available necessarily or want to do it forever. But that is an incredible asset to lean on. And it really changes your perception of worst case scenario and taking risk and I’m curious from your perspective of your own business journey and mentoring many other business owners, how do you help people really evaluate risk objectively, when it becomes so emotional often that we look at it, and perhaps it looks scarier than it really is.

Tom Ulbrich  20:14

I think that’s an excellent point. So so as we keep saying, people are naturally risk averse, most of us. Here’s the other fascinating, you know, studies around entrepreneurship. Many people and I think people that are maybe in your industry that are considering doing something different or building something, they look at entrepreneurs and assume that they are these insane risk takers and throw it all down, you know, I guess it’d be the equivalent of going to a casino and putting all your money on black or red, whatever it is. The fact is, entrepreneurs are really great risk. mitigators is what they are, they don’t gamble. What they do, they try to get the risk, they try to do whatever they can to identify what the risks are, mitigate what they can, and then understand what true risks they’re taking. And, and I know myself and probably most successful entrepreneurs, they’re not they’re not taking 80% chance of having a loss, they’re looking to make sure that they’re way better than a 50/50. If I go into this, and how do they do that, the way you do that is lots of research, lots of Proforma work, like trying to understand how I’m going to make this work. But the most important thing is if you have a new idea – customer discovery. Speaking to potential customers early and often, talking about what you’re going to try to sell or what you’re going to present to somebody. And if the market is there, you’ll be able to see that the market is there, because all too often, many of us have a passion about something and go run off and build a business without ever asking is somebody going to buy my product, right. I’ve done that a couple of times, and you start to customer discovery, realize you’re the only person that’s interested in this. So it’s really important to not be the gambler, is what it boils down to. And to do that work that you can do. And think about mitigating risks before you take that next step for it.

Tim Ulbrich  22:17

That’s so good. I often say that the best businesses are when you can combine something you’re passionate about plus a problem that needs to be solved plus is something that people are willing to pay for. And sometimes you can have one of those or two of those but not three of those, right you can have as you mentioned, you can have a passion, but people may not want what you’re selling, or it’s not necessarily solving a problem that is as big as maybe you think it is. Or you could be solving a problem that you know isn’t big enough that people are willing to pay for it. And so you’ve got to really do all of those things. And hopefully there is passion behind it. Because as you know, firsthand business is going to have ups and downs. It’s inevitable. It’s gonna have highs, it’s gonna have lows. And I believe that when the lows are there, like you better have a really strong passion that’s kind of grounding you right to keep you anchored in those seasons where things aren’t going so well.

Tom Ulbrich  23:06

No dead on. And I think our society too, we have to be really careful about that word, passion, meaning I’d like to talk, you know, flip that a little bit and say, purpose. Your purpose driven type of work. In our world today, I think we mix up sometimes passion and purpose. And I just wrote a blog post recently where I described a little bit – somebody had found that was very purpose driven in their work and what they did. And I’d said in the blog posts, I have a passion for music, I love music. And I, you know, I have four guitars, they can’t play any of them. Right? So am I really, really is is that a true passion? Or is it a like. So I think I think that’d be my first sort of tip to people make sure it’s not just something you’re interested in that you like, it really, truly is a passion. And again, in today’s world, I think we’re always told well, I’m passionate about this. I’m passionate about that. But making sure it’s a passion. And if it’s a true passion, you will never feel like you’re working because the drive that that purpose, that purpose driven drive, it just feeds you it gives you energy it gives you it builds you up even if you’re working full time you’ve got the juice to do something at night because you’re building something that you are truly passionate or purpose driven about.

Tim Ulbrich  24:30

I want to go back to your career journey. You know, it strikes me as you’re talking and you know, I kind of look at mine as the same and I don’t think that’s by accident. We talked about role modeling, and being comfortable with you know, kind of a staggered approach. It really feels more like a rock wall that you’ve climbed and you have climbed a ladder, meaning there has been exciting progressions but you’ve acquired the skills you’ve gone sideways, you’ve gone into different industries. You know, you started really what I would call if we over simplify your first half of your career. We are, you know, in a family business, starting your own business, then you had this time where you went back and got some additional training that led to other opportunities. You then were mentoring other business owners and coaching through the university. And now you’re in this stage where you’re you’re leading a large nonprofit organization. And so as you look at that journey, in hindsight, are there threads that you see that go across all of those, even though those roles are very different? You know, you’ve talked about entrepreneurship and problem solving, if you get a little bit more granular, are there things within those experiences where like, yeah, I see the obvious connections? 

Tom Ulbrich  25:35

Sure. I think one is leadership. I like to lead and I learned actually talking about role modeling early in life that I had some of those pieces that would make me a decent leader. And that was in high school, a coach actually making me Captain the team when I was nowhere near the best athlete. My brain said, always said, well, the captains are the the superstars, right. But somebody identifying early, seeing something where you can connect people you can, you can figure things out, and how people can work together. So I think leadership is one of them. The other is, I really enjoy fixing things and building things and building teams up. And I can see that connection throughout the way and very think the other thing, we also didn’t talk about what your mom and I started an e-commerce company that we sold a few years ago, that started as a catalog business, really out of necessity and seeing opportunity. So I think also, just the other thread is just opportunity seeking. So imagine in a stable family business, the stress that can put on things. Because in a family business, a lot of it is about stability, and everything’s okay. And then it’s not true, always I get that. But you have somebody that’s always kind of like trying to push the limits and looking for something new. And I don’t want to say never satisfied, but it might feel to other people, like you’re never never satisfied. But what’s the thread? I think a lot of it is building things, a lot of it is leadership. And a lot of it is seeing problems and wanting to solve them, thinking there’s a better way to do something.

Tim Ulbrich  27:25

You said never satisfied. And I know you hedge that and caught yourself there, which I agree with. But I want to go there for a minute, because I think one of the things that you and I share is very much an achievement mindset that I often say through my own work of counseling, other things, I’ve learned that it can be my greatest asset and my greatest crippler, meaning that like it’s an innate gift, that I can solve problems, I can see opportunities. I can, you know, build a vision, execute on the vision, get people excited about the vision, get things going, I like to build and create I’m not a sustainer, necessarily as well. But if I’m not careful, like that can get out of balance. And it can be the next thing. The next thing, the next thing without seeing kind of the bigger picture of like, what’s the purpose? What are we doing here? It’s not just about achieving one thing after another. So share with me your journey and that kind of never satisfied achievement and how you reconcile that I know you’ve done work on that yourself. And you’ve come to appreciate like, Hey, that’s a good gift and a skill, but it also comes with challenges.

Tom Ulbrich  28:29

It’s a great gift and a skill. And it comes with lots of challenges, right? So yes, we do share that. And I think that it’s probably not uncommon with achievers, I guess it’s what I would call it. It’s almost like overachieving. So I I didn’t really address this until later. But I I still work with the same coach and the coach I work with he really like nailed it for me one day and said, You know what, Tom, you’re really good at climbing small mountains, grabbing the flag as fast as you can, getting the top and then looking around for the next mountain, the next peak. But he’s like, why don’t you get on a big mountain where you can change the world. And it’s gonna take you years and years and think about their journey as a climb and a plateau a climb and a plateau and climb and a plateau, which is really, really helped me also to, you know, I, I went through thankfully, it’s no big problem, but went through some medical stuff, the last few months, which made me really really reevaluate like what’s important to me, and what am I want to do, what don’t I want to do? And unfortunately, most people don’t have those events until they’re in their 50s, 60s. It’s something we should maybe think about a little bit earlier, but let me go back to your thing about achieving so I think number one is if if it’s purpose driven, make that mountain bigger. So you’re gonna we’re wired to climb. I bet you most of pharmacists listening on here, didn’t get through pharmacy school without being a type A, at least some level achiever. If you’re going to be an entrepreneur, what I want people to do is to understand what type entrepreneur you and me are, we’re founders. We are founders were the, you know, we’re the people that are good at seeing a problem, seeing if there’s a market for it, identifying the resource, it’s going to take pulling together the finances, finding the team. And that is a skill set that’s super important to a startup. What we’re best to do, though, is to build a team and go on to the next business or the next idea, and not trying to manage the team, because our type of personalities get bored with management. And, and yeah, we could argue like, well, you need to fix yourself, no, we don’t need to fix ourselves. We need to lean in, lean into who we are, surround yourself with people. And my team, if they were listening here at Goodwill would start laughing right now. Because they know I’m going to be popcorning ideas all day long. And I have surrounded myself with with people that are good at operational excellence, I’m not. I’m good at identifying the opportunity of solving problems, ideas, but actually, you know, we as a company gets larger, putting that day to day operational management, and you have to surround yourself with people. Comes back to our conversation about diversity. Diversity, makes it all better. So you have a diverse group of, you know, managers on your team too, that bring different skill sets to the table, you never want to surround yourself with people just like you. 

Tim Ulbrich  31:44

That’s right.

Tom Ulbrich  31:45

Because you will be, what you’ll be doing is seeing opportunities, not properly implementing the structure to run the business, and you’re gonna be starting and failing, starting and failing starting and failing.

Tim Ulbrich  31:56

You know, it’s interesting, as you’re talking, I was just reflecting back on, you know, some of the experiences I’ve had within organizations where I’ve built and created things. And where I’ve gotten in trouble is when I built and created and then I haven’t had the resources to help sustain, maintain, or be comfortable and willing to let go, for whatever reason, and then all of a sudden, you end up in this phase where you’re trying to implement and continue to implement and sustain when you really are a builder. And that’s not good for you as the individual. It’s not good for the organization either, right? Because I would argue Goodwill is best when you are building and popcorning ideas. So how do we surround you, with people, as you have, that can help you implement. And good leaders, good managers will see that with their people, and really help identify and say, Oh, hey, Tom’s a builder, he’s an innovator. He’s not a sustainer. And that’s okay. Like, we need him building. We need him out there innovating for the organization. 

Tom Ulbrich  32:53

I think the way you attract people is the one thing you must have as a leader. In our organization, especially as you get into larger organizations, the difference between a small business and a larger business is really the complexity of what you’re doing. So I always think of management from sort of the team of team concept. We have all these little mini teams that come together as a big entity, right? Like a matrix, and it’s in a, in a larger business, you have that complexity, and how do you track talent, you attract talent, through leadership, but what the important part is creating a vision with a clear pathway for it says we’re strategy, strategic planning, and communicating that in an interesting way, not a book that’s it’s up on a shelf someplace that nobody’s going to read. But how do you tell the story? What’s the story about where we’re going as a company, and if you think of your role as a CEO, or leader, I always think of it as your the chief energy officer, the chief inspiration officer, you’re not the Chief Executive Officer, although that’s the title, right? Your job is to really rally the troops, create the vision. And I always say, carry that flag in front of everybody. And remember, just when you are sick and tired of hearing yourself, talk about where we’re going, people are only beginning to listen. And it’s really important that we stay persistent as leaders, and also find creative ways to talk about strategy. So what we do here, we actually take our strategic plan, and we put it into different types of journey that we can share with the frontline people. So the first three years of our strategy, we we took our strategy, overlaid it on a map and we created a journey from Buffalo, New York to Hawaii, and where they were able to show people like where are we at on this journey? So really gamifying it a little bit? Yeah, I think that’s a good way but when you have a clear vision, you can attract and retain top talent. You also have to invest in that talent. You can’t be afraid to spend money to bring talent in, right? You need the best of the best. And then how do you keep them, and you keep them through good leadership involving them. One thing you have to watch out as a, as a founder leader is getting out of their way sometimes like, again, if you’re a problem solver, you want to jump in, you can’t solve problems for everybody, you have to ask the questions and help them solve the problem. If you’re going to build a great business.

Tim Ulbrich  35:28

let me ask you a question. I think when probably I’ve never asked you before, but when I think of your journey, it really feels like the point you went to pursue your MBA went back to college. And I remember speaking of role models, I remember at our old house, you guys don’t live there anymore. I remember you at the computer in the living room, you know, going through the application process, doing pre-reqs that ultimately led to the MBA program that led to other opportunities. But that really feels like a transition point where you said, Hey, I’m going to really live my life versus, you know, this being defined for me, and I’m going to really take some autonomy and ownership of the next step, the next phase. And I’m just curious of how you arrived at that decision, right? Because that was an investment of time, it was an investment of money. And to be frank, it has to take some level of humility, because you have how many years of business experience and now I have to go back into a classroom. And I know you went to an executive program where there was more experienced individuals, but you and I both know that a lot of people go into an MBA program with zero experience, right? You had the experience. So what made you say, Hey, this is a skill that I need to acquire, this is a degree that I need to acquire. And that ultimately led you to pulling the trigger and making that decision. 

Tom Ulbrich  36:42

so I felt, excuse me, the, excuse me, the, it actually was a it actually was part of a journey. So multiple times, I started back as early as my mid 20s to go to school. I was gonna go back and become a teacher. I did a lot of coaching, like some significant coaching for a long, long time. And had lots of times that I was if I look backwards, right, it was a journey like gait gaining the courage to step forward. And where the transition point was, it was right when you were in college, because at that time, it felt like we had got our children to a point where they’re going to be okay. And I could now invent and do this. So the MBA was probably it. Why the MBA? The MBA was really more about credentialing, I guess, similar to a pharmacist getting a license. And it might have been a little bit of impostor syndrome, to be honest with you to feeling like, I don’t have something that says I have all this business experience. And in order to be a successful politician, or whatever it was, the next step was going to be I felt like I needed to credential myself at some level. Little did I know that that journey was going to be so much more than credentialing. To be exposed to other people that thought, like I did, felt like I did that were on these journeys. To do whatever they were in, quite frankly, I learned a lot. A lot of people my class were on that find that straight line journey that you talked about. And it was just another step. And I learned, yeah, I don’t think I want to do that I want to do I want to continue to have that freedom of doing my own thing. And what was unique about UB, UB hired me as a clinical professor with the understanding that I had this ecommerce business, and that I would continue to run that ecommerce business. Yeah, because it was a clinical contribution variance. Yeah, experience to what I was doing it, you know, in the classroom.

Tim Ulbrich  38:42

So let’s talk about the e-commerce business. You know, we talked about the family business. So if listeners are curious, it was Ulbrich’s Tree Farm and then Ulbrich’s Tree Farm and Garden Center, that my grandfather started that my dad and his brother took over. Ultimately, you started in ecommerce business called Mow More Landscape Supplies. And let me paint the picture for our listeners. Because this goes back to role modeling experience. I remember, in our old home, I probably was, I don’t know, eight 9, 10, something like that, maybe a little bit younger, a little bit older. I remember I can see the carpet in the basement, I can see in the back of our basement where there were storage area, you had built shelves, that you had white index cards, I see the black Sharpie, that was the inventory for the distribution of the business. I can see the desk where you would do the financials, and eventually that would go into a warehouse and what you created in the business became a much, much bigger business. So why start that business? And how did you come to realize that that one in particular, was an opportunity? Oh, and by the way, I’m going to take this on in addition to another business I have, and I’ve got a young family that I’m raising. 

Tom Ulbrich  39:55

So I think one of it was seeing an opportunity. So we started the business or was related to the garden center business, we had a large landscaping business, we were buying so many parts to repair our mowers and all of our equipment, I decided to go directly to manufacturer to try to save some money. Was successful in negotiating with them to buy some parts and parlay that into selling those parts to other people. So it started, I remember that, you know, if your mom was on here, a lot of this was, thanks to your mom’s hard work. 

Tim Ulbrich  40:26

And I remember that, too. 

Tom Ulbrich  40:28

Yeah. But the first catalog you created, we can’t create a catalog on a typewriter in our basement stapled together, and was really successful for that. So that grew, we ran it out of the house until it got big enough that it was disruptive to the neighbors. And quite frankly, it was a bit unfair to the family business as this is growing. So I sold it to the family business. And we grew it then within the family business. I bought it back years later, and then we exited it back in, in 2019. But that started out of the thrill of building something, seeing the opportunity for it. And the energy came from just building something, like it was fun. It was an opportunity. It was a way to make some extra money. And you know, along the way, as I as my journey increased, really your mom ran that business if I’m being honest. Once I went to University of Buffalo, she managed it, ran it with the team. And until we were able to exit, I had some involvement in it, but not on the day to day. But there’s another example right, the founder, the founders gets excited starts, then walks away and goes and does something else. So that backs up your other other part of our discussion.

Tim Ulbrich  41:47

Well, thankfully, mom’s an implementer. So there’s a good, good and a sustainer. So there’s good, good connection there. Do you think it was fair, as you look back on that. You said that you started this, you had the idea. You felt like hey, there’s some rub here now with the family business. So you sold it to the business to then come and buy it back? Which I’m assuming you buy it back at a premium and then you grow it and eventually sell the business. Like, as you look back, like was that fair? Or? Or was that just some of the dynamics that were there with the with the family business? 

Tom Ulbrich  42:23

No, maybe a little dynamics, but I think in the big picture, it was fair. You know, I think the discussion with my dad was and actually he helped started, he invested in it. 

Tim Ulbrich  42:34

So cool. 

Tom Ulbrich  42:36

He was supportive of it. I borrowed $10,000 from him and paid it back over three years. That’s how we started the business. But I think it grew to the point and in all fairness to him as the leader of the family business, right. I think the rub was or not rub, but the question was, are you know, you’re taking a salary from here, you’re doing that and taking a salary from there? Is this fair to the rest of the family? And I think the answer was, was getting big enough that the reality was it probably wasn’t fair. So the discussion was, you can pack you can either come here and do this. Or you can leave, you know, and it wasn’t done in a negative way. It was just like, here’s the options. And so I went back and said, Well, how about, we fold it into the family business? And and that’s what we did. And so I don’t think it was unfair. Looking back, I think the entrepreneur in me wants to say it was unfair, like, why can’t I do all these things at the same time, but thinking as a leader of a business, I would certainly hear if I had somebody moonlighting, building something, there’s going to be a point where it gets big enough that I’m like, are you really doing everything you need to do to do your job? Well, so not unfair at all.

Tim Ulbrich  43:50

That was exactly the thought I had, there’s a combination, right? If someone’s looking at this, like as an investor, they would say like, No, Tom, it was your idea. Like you’re you, you were working your butt off, you came up with the idea. But if you think about as a leader, if you think about as a family, you have to put all these factors into play, right, when you’re making these decisions.

Tom Ulbrich  44:06

You do and I had the option to take it off on my own right. Yeah. So that was one of the options was to just go down that path and grow it. But what happens again, safety plays in, right. So that’s a safety decision, what would have happened if we would have taken it off on our own? I don’t know. But I know we were scared. It’s not big enough yet to give us a security back to our security discussion, right? And building up that courage over many, many years to step out on your own.

Tim Ulbrich  44:34

Which is interesting, because you would then take those experiences, right? You live this for two decades plus, and you would then apply and implement those and coach hundreds, thousands of entrepreneurs in their own journey as they’re as they’re navigating some of these things. So there’s the direct influence and impact from business. There’s the indirect and obviously you’re doing it and leading an organization right now. I’m curious as you look back now, you know, making the decision to work for the family business. Right? Ultimately, you’d kind of pivot made mid-career. But if you go back to those those first couple of decades making the decision to work for family business, that you then ended up starting your own business. As with all family businesses, there’s challenges that come into play. Right? So as you look back at that journey, like, would you do it all over again?

Tom Ulbrich  45:20

I think so. There’s pieces I’d like to eliminate for a bunch of different reasons, the struggles part of things. But looking back of who I was, at the time, I wouldn’t be who I am today without all those experiences. And sure, I could go back and say off, I would have went to get my MBA when I was younger, but a whole bunch of things can change. But would I ever have learned all the pieces that make me who I am today? And the answer is, probably, well, not probably the answer is no. I’d be a very different human being. And the truth is, I would probably be because of the safety factor, have been stuck in something I don’t like to do. So this has been a long journey. And you know, God works that way, sometimes. That you have to learn, you got to put your time in, and maybe mine’s longer than most people. But I’ve never been happier than where I am today. And I feel like all those little pieces of making this world successful today, and enjoying what I do, came from all those struggles and all those learnings, all the good and bad when you went through. And if you wouldn’t went through them, you wouldn’t have the skill set that you have today. 

Tim Ulbrich  46:40

I love that because I think sometimes when we make pivots in our careers in our lives, we run the risk of throwing out the experiences of where we’re going into the future. And I think so often the story is, you know, one that you’re sharing right of, hey, you know, sure, could this have been different, or I would have loved it, this went smoother, whatever be the case. But those experiences journeys, led to the moments that are here led to the development, the resilience, all the skills that you’ve learned along the way that are allowing you now to do the work that you’re doing. So I think that’s a great, great reflection. I want to come back. We talked a little bit about this. But Mike and I both started in very traditional career pathways, and now are both in entrepreneurial career pathways. So Mike, I alluded to this earlier, graduated as an industrial engineer, went into corporate finance, very successful, ended up leaving that work at the time, he was living in London, doing some international banking work, just had my niece, Annelie, decided they were going to move from London back to Buffalo without a plan. And he just kind of knew, hey, this is a point we need a pivot, ultimately would lead an advanced manufacturing company for several years, and then has since launched out to have a successful consulting business. And he also owns a business as well. So he’s got a couple of different things there. So went from a very traditional pathway to a non traditional, you know, my story is somewhat similar as well, starting in a very traditional pathway of pharmacy, you know, I’m still connected to the profession, but in a in a very indirect way, having an impact and in a way that maybe I didn’t necessarily think at the beginning. So as you look at that, from your experiences, and kind of where we’re going and you think about your own journey, we’ve talked about safety, like, does that scare you as a father? Does that excite you? Like, what, how do you think of that?

Tom Ulbrich  48:30

There’s times when it scares me, there’s no question, right? And I think there’s that safety baked in as a as a parent, right? Like, you want to make sure everything’s okay. But if you look at the, the, the person, you and Michael as a whole as an individual, and you look at the happiness level, and you know, even when there’s struggles, you’re doing things that you love to do. So it’s actually quite interesting and rewarding for me to watch it. I can’t speak for your mom she might be a little bit more nervous, but I can it’s fun to see that entrepreneurship as part of your lives in your you’re experiencing some of the struggles, but a lot of success from it. And I think about you, I know you’re you know your your time with family and everything and the flexibility that comes with being an entrepreneur, you would never have in a traditional career. Right? And I know you work really hard, but your your work when you need to work and you build time in to support the family when you need it. So I think seeing you do what you love to do is the more rewarding part, even though it can be scary at times, like Is everything okay? Is everything gonna be okay? But luckily you both have done fantastic jobs and with your businesses that are doing, you know, great work as well as seem to be loving what you’re doing. So it’s not, it’s rewarding at this point.

Tim Ulbrich  50:02

I think one of the hardest things I think about this a lot with the boys is like, how do we hold the space to not project our desires onto them, whether that’s a desire of safety, or, you know, it’s easy for me to project, my interests, my skills, but to really try to see them, each uniquely and individually, so hard to do. So hard to do. And I think that, you know, not projecting our desires. What we determined success may or may not look like, is so hard. But I know one of the great joys that I have, is whether or not the boys decide to pursue entrepreneurship. I don’t know, like, if it’s for them, great. If it’s not, that’s fine, too. But there’s a thread that you can see across generations, which is so cool, right? So they’re not in the house with you. But the behaviors, the skills right are being transferred from the role modeling that I had, and now the role modeling that I’m giving them the good and the bad, you know, it’s something I often think about that they hear Jess and I talking about business every day, and I’m trying to be careful about, you know, that that’s not just complaining, but they also hear the wins and the successes, and hey, this happened and this transformation with a client, and this happened with a team member, the highs and the lows, right? Because I think that I don’t want to give them an over glorified image of it. I don’t want to give them a gloom and doom, you know, vision that what it could be as well. 

Tom Ulbrich  51:23

Yeah, I think holding space for we were talking about this the other day, you and I were talking about this, is holding space for the individual gift that God made in each child, right, is really important. And it’s something I very much appreciate in today’s parenting, it seems to be much more thoughtful than, than we were parenting is like thinking like what makes that person unique? What are they truly interested in? What, what jazz’s them, what gets them excited? And also what are the things that maybe are going to derail them because of their personality and the people they are. But I, I really appreciate that, that thought about giving kids space to be who they are. But you also hit on something like many things, and I’m not an expert on all these but many things you can look back and you can see there’s generational like generational curses, generational blessings, 

Tim Ulbrich  52:20

Totally. 

Tom Ulbrich  52:21

You look back, like in our family. There was it goes back even further. So your grandpa’s dad, so your great-great grandpa, he actually worked for American Airlines. But he was very entrepreneurial, he was an intrapreneur within the industry. So that’s another thing you can do. Right? You can be entrepreneurial within a bigger business. He was at the very, very early stages of flight and worked his way from sweeping floors to being the lead of all mechanics in the country at one time for American Airlines. So and very, you know, in aviation was like this new industry…scary. Nobody wants to do a plane, planes used to fall out of the sky sometimes. Right? And prior to that, on your grandmother’s side, so your great-grandmother’s dad was an entrepreneur and had a giant jelly factory. 

Tim Ulbrich  52:28

Brinkman’s Jelly.

Tom Ulbrich  52:51

Brinkman’s yeah. So it, you can see it and I’m sure it goes back earlier than Yeah. So I think role modeling back to yes, that happens. But I think it happens more frequently than we see. And we’re not forcing that role modeling. It’s people wiring to it, right, it’s a young mind, seeing it, wiring it and normalizing something. So your life would be really scary to some other kids that were brought up in a very traditional family with so they’re going to be even more risk averse. I don’t mean traditional family, I mean, traditional career path, right? Where dad goes to work, mom goes to work, they work 8:30-5 o’clock in a big company, whatever it is, where your children are seeing, there’s another way I can do things too. So it’s likely they will do something creative or entrepreneurial, I would say. There’s probably a high propensity and part of their journey back to 50,000 chunks of experience might be that they work in industry for a period of time. Yeah, they may always have that itch. Want to go do something else and they’ll see an opportunity and they’ll you follow it.

Tim Ulbrich  54:32

So let’s shift gears and talk about some financial aspects. After all, this is a financial show. And I’d love to pick your brain, you know, as relates to your own financial journey, I think a lot of wisdom to share with our listeners. And one of things I want to start this conversation with is we often talk about the importance of striking the balance between saving for the future, right planning for retirement, taking care of our future selves while also living a rich life today and I know as someone who’s a saver and he does a good job of thinking about the future. You know, there is that balance for you. And I think that’s something you’ve probably been working on throughout your career. And so my question is like, how have you approached that balance? And like, as you think about this for you and mom, like, what does that rich life look like? What does that mean to the two of you?

Tom Ulbrich  55:17

Yeah, that’s, that’s a hard and interesting question. The, yeah, the fact is, I think you can get caught up in the extremes of both like, not understanding finances, and maybe never saving for anything and living paycheck to paycheck. And you can go the other extreme, of over saving, if that’s such a thing, you’re the financial experts, over saving and never having life experiences with your family, with your spouse with that, and also never having the thrill of philanthropic giving, and supporting other things, with your money, depending on what you what you personally believe you should be doing with that. So we I think we found a good balance, I’m not gonna lie, I still think we’re fine at this point in our lives. But I’m always thinking like, man it’d be nice to have a little bit, you know, bigger nest egg, a little bit bigger nest egg. But I think we found a really good balance many years ago, of starting to make sure we created experiences with family, your mom and I, you know, we do stuff with all of you, right? We try to create those experiences with family vacations. We also do vacations on our own to be a way to recharge, to spend time with each other. And we do a significant amount of that, we do, you know, some philanthropic giving, that we think is really important, supporting causes that are important to us. But I do think finding that balance is important. And I’m not sure, I think where are you find that I believe it’s just like the other topic we’ve been talking about. It’s a learned skill that can be taught. But it’s probably modeled and learned because one of the things I have noticed is, human beings all have a different relationship with money. 

Tim Ulbrich  57:04

Totally. 

Tom Ulbrich  57:05

And a lot of it is what they experience, if you grew up in poverty, you may be really, you know, risk averse about spending money, or you may be the opposite. I’m going to spend everything I make because I saw somebody lose it all, or I live with nothing for so long, I want to make it up. And you know, a great example, this is your grandmother, or great-grandmother lived through the Depression. So her dad was the Brinkman’s Jelly, lost everything in the stock market. And to the day she passed away, if she had a cup of tea, she would reuse the tea bag two or three times because that was how she was wired. Like, why would I waste this when there’s still something good in it, and I think those are situational, they’re how you grow up. But again, financial literacy and education, and the work that you’re doing, and the work that people are doing that, or, um, you know, listening to this super, super crucial that we understand how we’re wired around money, and the pros and cons of our genotype or whatever you want to call it, that that is who we are around money. But back to us, I think we found a good balance, you know, now we’re thinking about the point will come time soon, like, how do you spend it down? Yeah, and how much do you want to pass on to the next generation, but, you know, all those decisions, and I think for me, that’s more the hardest part gonna be. And I think that’s where your company or your business’s type of work, I believe where you really earn your money is probably working with people that are spending money down because that can be complicated. What go, what do I spend first, how much can I spend, I’m gonna run out of money, you know, all those type of things. But I it’s a real thing, right? people’s relationship with money. And it’s all very different. I don’t know it to be a fact. But I can imagine it can be very stressful in a relationship too. If you have people that come at, if their relationship with money, as a child was very different than that mean, then coming trying to manage finances together. So important work you you all are doing in your company. 

Tim Ulbrich  59:19

I’m so glad you mentioned the relationship with money. You know, it’s, it’s until we get real with that and honestly, self reflect what is our relationship with money? How healthy is it? Where did the behaviors come from? Does it cause anxiety, fear, shame, guilt? Do we have an open hand a closed hand without judgment as soon as we can actually understand and assess that we can get real with the financial plan? Because as much as we want to say it’s all objective X’s and O’s. It’s not. It’s not. I mean, that’s all important. Of course it is. But there’s so much behavior, so much emotion, so much learned experiences. Great-grandma’s a great example. It didn’t matter if she had $100 in the bank or $100 million in the bank. She was going to reuse that tea bag, right? The objective numbers didn’t matter, like and we have to think back to what was the dinner table experience, like, you know, what were those and we can’t change those experiences and the things that were great, we take gratitude for the things that weren’t, we can take responsibility and make changes for. But that’s where we start to learn these behaviors that really impact how we relationally connect with money. And the better we understand that, especially when you’re doing this with a significant other/partner/spouse, the better we can start to make progress and doing what we’re talking about, which is finding the balance of the objective side of it and finding the balance on the emotional relationship side of it. And you might not know this, but actually there’s a book called Happy Money we’ll link to in the show notes. There’s a researcher PhD that that’s what she does, she researches the connection between happiness and money. And what the research has supported is the connection, is there really on two things, on giving in on experiences. And when I think about what you and mom have done really well, it’s those two things. You have an open hand and a philanthropic mindset, right. And I think it’s natural that when you have an open hand, and you’re willing to give, you know, I think that you look at the rest of your financial picture in a different, in a healthier way. And when you look at experiences, right, those are memories, you talked about, you know, we take an annual trip as a family to the Finger Lakes. You know, next summer, we’re looking at a trip to Norway with a group of all of us, you and mom go on several cruises a year, you’ve done that, since we were, you know, in middle school. So like, I think the experiences and the giving are key components of the financial plan. And we really want to build the plan around to support those areas, if those are areas of goals for the individuals. 

Tom Ulbrich  1:01:42

That’s interesting. Two points you make that I think are super important is we forget about the motions part of my right, we want to do the X’s and O’s. But also when it comes back to parenting, if those two are really, really important, right, those two things, when it comes to parenting, we have to teach our children that really, really young, right? Like how do we teach our children that giving’s important? And there’s a bunch of ways that you all talk about how you do that. How do you teach that it’s healthy, to invest in experience, experiences that create memories, and it’s also healthy to save. And it’s not all one or the other. It’s all those aspects of what a successful money plan looks like. An even if we’ve talked about this month ago, but even decisions like what type of car you’re going to buy, like, you know, I often once in a while I get this itch, like I want to buy this really, really nice car, mom will say you really want to drive around in a car that’s cost more than people’s homes? And I’m like, no, I don’t want to do that. But t’s okay, if somebody does want to do that if they have the resources that that that is really an individualized decision, all of those decisions. And I think we have to be careful not to pick on our whole pigeonhole ourselves into it’s one or the other or the other. We’ve also seen people be philanthropic to the point that they’re, they’re punishing themselves. 

Tim Ulbrich  1:03:09

That’s right. 

Tom Ulbrich  1:03:09

They can’t, they can’t do anything because they give it all you know, they want to give everything away because it really jazzes them, but they don’t think about what their personal needs are, what other needs are, what long term needs are.

Tim Ulbrich  1:03:22

Yeah, and I think what I’m hearing there is individual. I think so often when it comes to finances we’re, we get caught up whether we know it or we don’t know it and kind of what other people are doing, and really evaluating like, what do we want? What what are the things that are most important to us, not what other people say we should be doing? What do we actually want to be doing and Ramit Sethi in his book, I Will Teach You To Be Rich, he, he talks about this as money dials. So find the things that really mean a lot to you and derive significance. And like prioritize them, dial them up and find the things that you don’t care about, that you’re maybe spending and dial him down, right. And for some people, the dial up might be a car, for others, it might be a dial down, right, everyone’s situation is different. So I love that. Let’s talk about pursuit of retirement. And I think this is interesting, because we just, we throw that term around. And for whatever reason, I think as a society, you know, people if you ask, Hey, when are you gonna retire? 62, 63, 65, right. And that’s kind of a vision they have it’s, it’s sort of this idea, this number, this age that we’ve just thrown out there and we kind of blindly accept. And again goes back to the individual aspects we’re talking about. But when I think about you, right, it’s someone who’s healthy, who enjoys their work, who has the flexibility within your job to do the things that mean the most to you. It really challenges that idea of retirement, like how are you thinking about the next stage in retirement? 

Tom Ulbrich  1:04:53

It’s interesting, because the world does. I think think like this magic number is 62, 65 years old. Again, I think it’s what I’ve learned it’s very, very individualized. Some people have to keep working, because they have to. That’s not my circumstance. I keep working, because I love what I do. And I imagine, I can’t picture the word full retirement, like not doing something everyday. So I don’t know what that means. But I know that at 64 years old, I’m not thinking of even thinking of leaving Goodwill for another four or five, six years, assuming I stay healthy, because I love what I do. And what’s also is really important. Your mom’s retired, but she supports me in what I do and my passions, and we work that out. Because I think sometimes that could be a challenge for couples, right? Yeah, one person’s retired wants to do this, and that, I’m fortunate to have a job, they do have a lot of flexibility in. Significant vacation time. And the most important if you work for somebody else, I have an incredible, we’re nonprofit. So I have a board of directors is my boss, an incredible nonprofit, that we talk transparently about who I am as an individual, what the goals are the company, for the board of directors, what my goals are, and they lean into other things I want to do. So I recently went to them and just went to the chair of the board and said, I thought about leaving to do more consulting, but like, why do I want to do that? And I asked myself, why do I want to go into consulting, I used to do it, I enjoyed it. The reason I wanted to do it is I miss that interaction with entrepreneurs and problem solving. And I found an outlet with that, and the board supported it. So I created a LinkedIn newsletter and launched it and I talk about entrepreneurship. And I talk about social innovation. And I have got so much feedback from people that said, I had you in class or I worked with you that is feeding that part of me that I was missing. So I hate you know, I don’t want to yeah, I don’t want to oversell, you know, I don’t want any of you coming for my job, but I got a really good, I got a good gig, that works for me. And I’m not I am not putting a date on retirement. If it’s not fun anymore, if it’s too challenging, if there’s a health situation, there’ll be a different discussion. But for now, I’m taking that word off the table. I’m gonna live and create, you know, maybe do more experiences, maybe take a couple extra vacations, we try to get down, you know, away to see the boys and do things with the girls. All that’s important. And I think retirement would afford more of that. But not enough to walk away from a job to just think you’re going to do that full time. Because we’re not.

Tim Ulbrich  1:07:49

Yeah, and not everyone right is lucky enough to be in a position where you love the work that you’re doing. And you feel a sense of contribution, right? Because we know I mean, it’s pretty darn clear. Like, you’re getting out, yeah, you’re working, you’re getting paid, but you’re getting a lot of intrinsic value because you feel like every day you’re making an impact and contributing, whether that be to the larger organization, whether that be down to the store level because of the efforts that you’re doing. Whether that be because of the impact you’re having of other entrepreneurs, or leading their staff, like if you just pull the plug on that, because of this illusion of like, I want to retire and do my own thing. We often underestimate what a gap that can be a contribution that you’re making, right? So I think there’s just a ton of wisdom in what you’re sharing there. And really making sure again, going back to the individual aspect, like what do you want, what provides value Oh, and by the way, you’ve put yourself in a position financially, that if something changes, whether that be health, whether that be something with the organization changes, something where you’re no longer, whatever, you have a choice you can make. And I think that that’s such a message we try to convey to our listeners that you want your financial plan to be designed in a way that gives you options, choice and flexibility. And that takes time and hard work. You’ve saved for a long period of time. But you now are in that position of choice as long as it’s going how you want it to go. You keep doing what you’re doing. But if something changes, that’s okay. Like you’re gonna be okay. 

Tom Ulbrich  1:09:18

For sure. And we’re, it’s certainly nice. I’m sure there are people that are trapped because they they didn’t plan successfully, right and or maybe even trapped and have to work longer. That’s not our, my position. You know, I’m fortunate that I could walk out today and we’re fine. Everything’s fine. But that did come through lots of planning and in you know, when we talk about financial planning, it’s not just about money. It’s about other things like health care and long term care and all those type of things that build safety nets around you are things that are getting probably very individualized to what the needs of the person is or what they feel safe around. But, but we’ve got all that. So we’re in a spot where we we could, you know, just stop which which that freedom allows you to really dive in deeper into what you’re doing. Because you’re not worried about all I have to do this or that, to sate to make sure I keep my job or, you know, I don’t want to do something that that might push the envelope a little bit. Because I can’t afford to lose my job and that and being surrounded by people that support you is really, really critical. 

Tim Ulbrich  1:10:31

Yeah. Well, this has been a joy. And by far, not even close, I mean it, that my favorite episode we’ve done in 363 episodes, so I can’t wait for this to get out to the community. I know. It’s one that I’ll be able to go back and listen to for some time. So thank you so much, Dad, for taking the time. I love you and appreciate you sharing your journey with us. 

Tom Ulbrich  1:10:53

You are welcome. I love you too. And Happy Father’s Day. The that will be here in in a day or two. Right? It’s coming quickly. So thanks so much. Appreciate having you again. Love you say hi to everybody. And we’ll chat again soon.

Tim Ulbrich  1:11:12

We’ll do and for our listeners if you want to connect with my dad, we’ll link in the show notes to his LinkedIn profile. Make sure to check out his newsletter as well. It’s great stuff. So thanks so much, dad, take care. 

Tom Ulbrich  1:11:22

Take care.

Tim Ulbrich  1:11:25

[DISCLAIMER] As we conclude this week’s podcast and important reminder that the content on this show is provided you for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. Furthermore, the information contained in our archived newsletters, blog posts and podcasts is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analyses expressed herein are solely those of Your Financial Pharmacist unless otherwise noted, and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward looking statements, 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 Pharmacists Podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

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YFP 360: Starting a Nonprofit: An Interview w/ Brentsen Wolf, PharmD Founder of RxTeach


Brentsen Wolf, PharmD, Founder and President of the nonprofit RxTeach, shares his journey of starting and leading a nonprofit organization.

Episode Summary

On this episode, Tim Ulbrich connects with industry pharmacist Brentsen Wolf, PharmD about his journey starting RxTeach, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing scholarships in the areas of advancing preventative medicine education and cancer research. Brentsen discusses the motivations behind starting RxTeach, how he was able to go from idea to getting it off the ground and shares the lessons he learned along the way. He also discusses his thoughts on the future of the organization and the efforts RxTeach is supporting.

About Today’s Guest

Brentsen Wolf graduated with his PharmD from the Southern Illinois University of Edwardsville in 2021. He then completed a 2-year post-doctoral medical affairs fellowship through the Rutgers Pharmaceutical Industry Fellowship Program at Merck. Brentsen currently works as an MSL in thoracic malignancies in the pharmaceutical industry.

Brentsen is the President and Founder of RxTeach, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to providing scholarships in the areas of advancing preventative medicine education and cancer research. Brentsen has a passion for health and fitness, professional development, and research. You can connect with him via LinkedIn and read all of his articles here.

Key Points from the Episode

  • Pharmacist’s career journey and nonprofit work. [0:00]
  • Nonprofit organization RX Teach, providing educational content for pharmacists and students. [4:32]
  • Preventative medicine and cancer treatment. [9:07]
  • Nonprofit efforts to create educational content and raise funds for scholarships. [13:23]
  • Brentsen Wolf avoids burnout by making nonprofit effort [14:45]
  • Nonprofit formation and legal requirements. [19:48]
  • Nonprofit organization’s mission to provide scholarships for pharmacy students and prevent cancer through education. [24:33]

Episode Highlights

“Starting the non-profit was based on passion. And I think if you can articulate well for yourself, what is actually going to drive you and prevent you from burning out. That’s how you make this decision.” – Brentsen Wolf, PharmD [14:48]

“If you’re thinking about doing something, whether it’s a nonprofit, for profit, blog, side project, whatever it is, there’s never going to be a perfect time.” – Brentsen Wolf, PharmD [20:51]

“I hear all the time, like, oh, once I get X number of dollars in the bank, or once I get to this place in my career, that’s when I’ll do this. And I can tell you, you know, ever since having my first child, you just, there’s no perfect time. It’s always going to be hard in some fashion, there’s always going to be some kinds of challenges, and you’re going to meet those along the way and overcome them and feel good about that.” – Brentsen Wolf, PharmD [20:59]

“So stop waiting is my first piece of advice, just take the first step. And if it goes slowly, if it takes a long time, or it’s really difficult upfront, that’s fine, it was never going to be super easy.” – Brentsen Wolf, PharmD [21:19]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich  00:00

Hey everybody, Tim Ulbrich here and thank you for listening to the YFP Podcast where each week we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom. This week I had the pleasure of sitting down with industry pharmacist Brentsen Wolf about his journey, starting the nonprofit, Rx Teach. We discussed the motivations behind starting Rx Teach how he was able to go from idea to getting off the ground, the lessons he learned along the way, the future of the organization and the efforts that Rx Teach is supporting. Now, before we jump into my interview with Brentsen, I have a hard truth for you to hear: making a six figure income is not a financial plan. Yes, you’ve worked hard to get where you are today. Yes, you’re earning a good income. But have you ever wondered, am I on track to retire? How do I prioritize and fund all the competing financial goals that I have? How do I plan financially for big upcoming life events and changes like moving having a child, changing jobs, getting married or retiring? And why perhaps am I not as far along financially at this point in my career, as I thought I would be? One of the answers may be that your six figure income is not a financial plan. As a pharmacist, yes, you have an incredible tool in your toolbox – your salary. But without a vision and a plan that good income will only go so far. That’s in part why we started Your Financial Pharmacist back in 2015. At YFP, we support pharmacists at every stage of their careers to take control their finances reach their financial goals and build wealth through comprehensive, fee-only financial planning and tax planning. Our team of certified financial planners and tax professionals work with pharmacists all across the United States, and helps our clients set their future selves up for success while living a rich life today. If you’re ready to see how Your Financial Pharmacist can support you on your financial journey, you can visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/learn to learn more about our services. Again, that’s yourfinancialpharmacist.com/learn. Alright, let’s jump into my interview with Brentsen Wolf, founder of Rx Teach. 

Tim Ulbrich  02:06

Brentsen, welcome to the show.

Brentsen Wolf  02:08

Thank you, Tim. Thank you. 

Tim Ulbrich  02:09

Well it’s been a treat for me, you and I connected a couple years back when you were doing your industry fellowship with Merck through the Rutgers program. And we collaborated on some personal finance sessions with the fellows which we’ve done now for a few years, which has been a lot a lot of fun and it’s been a joy. And before we get into the work that you’ve been doing with the nonprofit Rx Teach, and we’re excited to share more of that story and the journey that led to that work and the impact that you’re having. Tell us more about your career story in pharmacy, what led you into the profession? What led to the interest in industry and the work that you’re doing now?

Brentsen Wolf  02:43

Yeah, it’s a good question. Especially because coming from the Midwest, and I know we’re both Midwest guys, the kind of interesting opportunities for PharmDs outside of retail and hospital aren’t thrown at you in school the way they are in some of the coastal areas. So yeah, my, my journey to where I’m at now is, you know, convoluted and stressful in some ways, but also just, you know, I think I ended up where I needed to be. So I graduated from Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville in 2021. And like I said, Midwest thought retail, or inpatient pharmacy, I worked in both of those areas, and, you know, during school and just wasn’t sure that it was really for me. I learned in probably my P3 year that these fellowships existed. And I was glad to connect with you at some point to bring you into those folds. Because I know the fellows don’t know anything about personal finance. I certainly didn’t. So those are very helpful sessions. I’m glad we collaborated in that way. But yeah, I ended up at Merck, doing a medical affairs fellowship, and mostly solid tumors, the little bit of work in infectious diseases as well, and just absolutely loved it. I knew I found what I was looking for in a career, it actually drew me in. I was very passionate about all of the work I was doing. So I actually transitioned after fellowship over to AstraZeneca, which is where I’m at now working in thoracic malignancies as a medical science liaison, which again, couldn’t be happier. I’m back where I grew up, surrounded by family. I’ve got a one year old daughter now. So that part’s important. It’s cheaper living here than New York City where some of my colleagues live. So yeah, couldn’t couldn’t complain. And that’s kind of how I ended up where I am now. Hey,

 

Tim Ulbrich  04:24

You’ve got the sought after sweet gig, working in an industry position, but living in an affordable cost of living area. We work with a lot of industry pharmacists that make a great income, certainly, but often cost of living is a challenging part of the plan. So you’re certainly happy for you and where that career has progressed. Let’s talk about the nonprofit organization that you started RX Teach. And tell us about what exactly is Rx Teach and ultimately, how did it come to be? How did it get started? 

Brentsen Wolf  04:57

Rx Teach was a brainchild I had during fellowship, and for whatever reason, I thought I had enough free time to start this thing. So if that tells you anything about work life balance as a fellow versus maybe a resident, that might be a bit insightful. So I ended up, you know, just saying, screw it, I just want to do something. I wanted my own platform, I wanted to be able to say and talk about things that were important to me. And so I started this website. And honestly, the thought of it becoming a nonprofit organization was in my head, but was I was too busy. I didn’t know what I was doing. You know, it was it was down the line. So really, it started off almost like a blog, right? Just kind of writing member that I care about. I think you were one of the first people I talked to about it. So we really focused on a couple of different areas as a nonprofit, the two main ones that were preventative medicine, education. And the second one is cancer, essentially, broadly speaking. So we write a lot about those topics. But we also write about pretty much you know, across the board, anything that could contribute to pharmacists, or really any health care professions understanding of a certain topic. So we’ll do journal clubs, lifestyle management stuff. And we do all of that via essentially a weekly email, sometimes more than weekly. We’ve gathered a following and a community now that we’re very proud of. And like I said, we don’t keep a cent of anything, to be honest with you, it all gets donated. And that’s because our Rx Teach at its core, is still just a passion project and a hobby for the board, all the board members. You know, we we keep it very balanced. It’s in terms of work life balance. The second this feels like a job, we won’t do it. But you know, we’re very passionate about these topics. And so it’s been very easy for us to maintain this kind of work life balance with Rx Teach and still be able to provide scholarships and funds to students in the local communities like we’ve always sought after so.

Tim Ulbrich  06:58

So the website will link to this in the show notes, rxteach.com. So our listeners can check it out as well. Brenton, you mentioned we when you talked about some of the content, the articles is that you and the board? Are there other people that are contributing? Tell us about what that model looks like. I know content creation can be a labor of love. So I’m curious to hear more.

Tim Ulbrich  07:16

You know, it’s funny, you mentioned that. I was just thinking about this. I’m listening to a six part podcast series, one of my favorite shows the Huberman Lab podcast. And he did a six part series, his content is just fantastic. But he did a six part series on sleep with Matthew Walker, and it was one of the things I’m listening to and it’s like, Okay, think of all the things we learned about in pharmacy school about prescribing sleep medications and mechanism of action. Is this going to help, you know, latency and onset and people falling asleep versus, etc. We know nothing about, like prevention to the actual, like mechanics of sleep and is like, yes, yes. What you’re saying so true. Right. It’s, it’s that you know, we have such a strong focus, obviously, on the treatment, makes sense for pharmacists, but, you know, it’s like wow, the preventative aspect. And all in I remember even learning some of those things where it’s like sleep hygiene and, you know, self care, and we’re like, yeah, yeah, yeah, like maybe there’ll be a question there. Right. But what do I need to know about the drugs? Right?

Brentsen Wolf  07:16

Yeah, it’s definitely a it is a big week. So I frequently write for the website and my co-founder Kristin Lindauer, who’s a PGY1 trained pharmacist and is now an HIV ambulatory care pharmacist over in Virginia, also frequently writes. But we highlight student work constantly, it was one of the things that was important to us, because I didn’t think I had opportunities to really showcase my work or understanding or maybe some niche topics that I cared about as a student. So now we have students write for us all the time, you can go look at the website and see who has done that in the past. Oftentimes, if they write for us once they write for us, again, because it’s a decent experience. So students write for us, we also get other residents writing pharmacy residents, current fellows will right health care providers in any field. So we have Day in the Life series of like a veterinarian pharmacist, a retail pharmacist, and oncology pharmacist, etc. So we really highlight the full gambit. But we like I said, we do have particular interests in preventative medicine, and cancer, just because that’s where all of our money goes to. So content on that is obviously a big part of it. So for instance, we have a whole series on how to prescribe exercise, which I think is a big you don’t get that in pharmacy school now, right? Not to get on my soapbox, but honestly, like if a patient were to ask any given pharmacist or physician, like hey, I want to prevent cardiovascular disease, how do I do that? You’re not going to get a very in depth answer. Generally, you’re gonna get 30 minutes, five times a week of moderate intensity exercise. And that’s just to me not a good enough response. Right. And that’s the purpose of this whole thing, is how do we hash that out and really educate people on how would you respond to that patient in a way that I think is sufficient? And I do say I, it’s subjective term, but that’s the point of the organization.

Brentsen Wolf  10:05

Yeah, I totally agree. And I don’t think the healthcare system is even currently set up to understand the impact that, you know, preventative education could even bring, which is why we’re so interested. It’s a huge gap, huge gap. And it’s not just pharmacists. I want to say that. 

Tim Ulbrich  10:21

That’s right. That’s right. 

Brentsen Wolf  10:22

It’s physicians, nurses, PAs, whatever, you’re not learning this in school. So really, people have to self educate at this point, which is a bummer. But we hope to help make that easier for those people. 

Tim Ulbrich  10:34

What is the passion behind the preventative medicine, the cancer focus? Those are really the two pillars that I’m hearing you share about? Where does that passion? Where does that interest come from?

Brentsen Wolf  10:43

Yeah, so I mean, for me, and you seem like a fit guy. I’ve always been in exercise and lifestyle management. And Kristin Lindauer, also has been too. She’s a I mean, she’s in better shape than me in certain ways. She just ran a marathon in three hours and 27 minutes!

Tim Ulbrich  10:59

No way! 

Brentsen Wolf  11:00

She’s a superstar. Yeah, I mean, I hope to get that fast eventually. But, you know, fitness has always been something that we have been passionate about and have felt, at least anecdotally, for ourselves, the incredible benefits. And then all of a sudden, you know, you start seeing these publications around longevity and what contributes, what contributes to it. So anything from how a VO2 Max can predict your overall survival over a 10 year period, and how grip strength is associated with preventing hip fractures in the elderly. And all of these things start to stack on top of each other and really paint the picture of how important fitness lifestyle management is to preventing disease. And so it’s an area where I can easily nerd out in and you know, just dive very deep into the data. And I write about it frequently. So it was an obvious pillar. And plus, I had identified it as unmet need. I really think we need more of this information out there. And we need to encourage students, current students to look for this type of data so they can incorporate it into their practices once they once they graduate. As for cancer, you know, I think about it in my head is we’re attacking the two sides of healthcare: preventative, and then the sickest patients, right. And I started doing breast cancer genetics research, before I ever even got into pharmacy school. So oncology was a huge passion of mine, I had a mentor named Dr. Ronald Worthington, who really drove me towards that kind of thing. It’s why I almost went and did a PhD, right. And so I just, you know, you know, anyone with cancer, you know, what this is, like, it’s a tough field to be into a lot of the times. I think biologically, it’s, it’s extremely interesting. So again, it’s easy for me to write about because I have so much passion for it. But we need people that are willing to go into this space forever gonna take care of cancer, and cancer is not something you just cure, right? There’s 1000s of tumor types. I mean, it’s not it’s not how it works. And the general public thinks, oh, what’s the cure for cancer, it’s not going to be one thing, I can guarantee it. But you know, we need pharmacists, we need physicians, nurses that grow passion for oncology early, and then are willing to really put in the time down the line and hopefully, start kicking away at these patient outcomes, which are historically not I mean, you take you take metastatic lung cancer, five year overall survival rates of less than 10%. And I mean, that’s, you know, not not great, obviously, still unmet needs. So these are the areas we’ve chosen to focus on, again, for passion and impact. 

Tim Ulbrich  13:23

I love what you’ve built, because to me, I can hear the passion in your voice, I can hear the energy and excitement, right, you’re building something that’s taking an area of interest for you, one that you’re naturally going to be excited about create creating content getting others involved in, that you’re then able to teach others of which has more impact, right, and I would assume that’s energizing as well, as you see, hey, people are learning about things that maybe they otherwise wouldn’t have learned about. And it’s written in a way that you can connect from a pharmacist to pharmacist perspective, and an immediate need, right, and ultimately leading to scholarships and other efforts that are having a benefit. So that has the the ingredients that are so important, that we often talk about on the for profit side of a business, but yeah, here we’re talking about the nonprofit side, which is, you know, equally if not more important. I’m curious to hear more about, you know, you started, I heard you say, Hey, I just got started, right. You know, I just got started, I knew I wanted to create my own platform. I didn’t necessarily think, or I couldn’t see all the dots connect of how this would become a 501 C3, maybe that was an idea that loosely you held. But ultimately, you went that direction. And it very much could have been a you know, blog site that turned into a for profit membership community, a lot of different models that are out there. What was that juncture decision point where you said, Hey, I’m going to keep forward with this educational mission. But I really do want to make it into a nonprofit effort. 

Brentsen Wolf  14:44

Yeah. You kind of You briefly mentioned it and it was it’s based off of passion. And I think if you can articulate well for yourself, what is actually going to drive you and prevent you from burning out. That’s how you make this decision. For me if I knew that if I was trying to do this stuff, you know, as in a for profit matter, just to make money for myself, which I honestly don’t I see no issues with that I just know that I would have personally burned out on. It would it’s it would have become work instead of a passion project, I would have been chasing metrics that, you know, as a nonprofit, if I don’t make a million dollars, it, it does not bother me, I’m giving as much money away as I possibly can. And if I don’t hit a specific number, it doesn’t hurt me personally. I think if it was a for profit model, those numbers would have gotten into my head a little bit more, would have affected my mentality towards Rx Teach in general. And I was just trying to avoid that. And so, you know, getting the board together, a group of people that were on the same page is like, Hey, we’re just doing this in our free time. This is passion driven 100%. And whatever, however many dollars we can donate. That’s the goal. And we’re going to get that number as big as we can get it, but we’re not going to kill ourselves doing it. And that’s kind of how we landed on this model. Because, you know, I’ve got a one year old daughter at home, I got a full time job, all these things you got to you got to make sure it’s it’s driven by the right motivation, or you’re not gonna make it. 

Tim Ulbrich  16:08

I like that, because I think I was sharing with someone recently that when we think about a lot of the burnout that we’re seeing in our profession and to be honest, it’s not just pharmacy, right? I think the healthcare workforce at large, obviously, the impact of the pandemic and, and other factors in there as well, I think something like this, not to suggest you to go out and start your own nonprofit, but be being involved in an effort, whether that’s an investment of time, money, both, right, I think that participation in something bigger than the grind of what you’re doing every day, even for those who say, I love my job, great. There’s still a lot of stressing me evolve. You’ve got a one one year old child at home, like life’s busy, right. And I think, you know, for us to kind of go back to our roots and say, Hey, why did we get interested in healthcare in the first place? I think we lose that sometimes over time. And just an encouragement to listeners, you know, whether it’s getting involved in Rx Teach, whether it’s getting involved something local in your community, or both great, like, what are some of those initiatives and opportunities where people can get involved? And I think that naturally can be in part an antidote to some of that burnout that we so often see. So curious, certainly to hear you tie that directly back to that decision, that strategic move you made to go into the nonprofit direction. Yeah. How do you, not make money, right, that’s for profit language. But how do you ultimately raise funds that get delivered in the form of scholarships. Is it individual donations? What what is the predominant ways in which you’re raising money as an organization? 

Brentsen Wolf  17:34

So right now we do it in three different ways, right. So the first way is, what we started off at the beginning is that this is gonna be a free resource for anyone to read and do with what they want. And we’re gonna go deep into data, we’re gonna do all these things. If you care about our mission, and you want to get this content with a small monthly donation, we’re gonna let you do that. And so we just set up a couple of different subscriber levels. Yeah, paid members get some extra stuff, you know, maybe an extra article here and there. But really, it is like, hey, if you find value in this and care about what we’re doing, it’s always going to be free. And we have because we want to change the community, right? i If you can’t afford it, I’m not going to make you pay for it. But if you want to contribute, feel free to do that. So we have a subscriber base model, which is probably where we get the most of our money. We also have a couple of digital assets, which are pretty new that I actually have enjoyed this process a lot. So we have some cheats, cheat sheets on things like cirrhosis, sickle cell disease, we have a how to guide for Journal Club which I absolutely love.

Tim Ulbrich  18:33

I could’ve used that one in pharmacy school! 

Brentsen Wolf  18:34

Yeah, I totally agree with that thinking back to pharmacy school days! Kristin put that together, which I think it was important for a resident or someone with residency experience to do that, because she puts Pearls in there, but like, what, what questions can you expect your preceptor to ask you, so that you can prepare for this journal club where in an article can you find this information? You know, whether it’s New England Journal medicine, or general oncology, whatever it is JAMA? So that’s a great resource. And we’ve also paired up with Dr. Alex Popin, and who wrote a book called High Powered Medicine. Yeah, so we sell his book on the website, and we have an agreement in place. And we split the profits for that, which we’re very thankful to him to, you know, contribute to Rx Teacg in that way, as well. So digital assets is the second piece. And then the third piece is just like you said, one time donations, anyone who wants to give money based off of, you know, hearing this podcast, or you ran into me at a bar, and I was telling you about grip strength. Right. And they were like, oh, that’s you know, that’s interesting. So people can certainly do that on the website, just one time donations. And of course, we appreciate that. And then like I said, we have partnered with local universities to actually allocate the funds in the form of scholarships and those areas I’ve already mentioned, but that’s how we actually bring the cash in.

Tim Ulbrich  19:48

So one of the things I’m always curious to hear from people at start anything for profit, nonprofit is, you know, it’s one thing to have an idea it’s another thing to execute on an idea and it’s a big step and for some people, it’s the actual mechanics. For others. It’s the fear of, hey, you know, what if nobody kind of likes the idea of what I have out there, what if this isn’t successful? You obviously took those steps, which you know, are great that you did it led to the platform and what you have here now and certainly something you can continue to build off of. But talk us through some of those early mechanics and decisions. You know, you’re talking about a board, you talked about 501C3, like, I think sometimes even though you haven’t been doing this that long, sometimes we blow past those things like, hey, those happened. But those are big milestones that often give me barriers. So talk to us about those early stages involved going from idea to actually get into the point where you can meet someone at a bar or a conference or whatever, and say, Hey, you can make a tax deductible donation, right?

Brentsen Wolf  20:44

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, that’s a great, it’s a great question. And it is there’s, there’s multiple steps. But before I get into that, I just want to say that like, if you’re thinking about doing something, whether it’s a nonprofit, for profit, blog, side project, whatever it is, there’s never going to be a perfect time. You know, I hear all the time, like, oh, once I get X number of dollars in the bank, or once I get to this place in my career, that’s when I’ll do this. And I can tell you, you know, ever since having my first child, you just, there’s no perfect time, it’s always going to be hard in some fashion, there’s always going to be some kinds of challenges, and you’re going to meet those along the way and overcome them and feel good about that. So stop waiting is my first piece of advice, just take the first step. And if it if it goes slowly, if it takes a long time, or it’s really difficult upfront, that’s fine, it was never going to be super easy, right. So that’s, that’s my first piece. But in terms of actually doing the nonprofit stuff, specifically, you know, I was working with a lawyer in our family, which certainly helped me. But talking with someone who has done this in the past is definitely a first step and just feel out what you need. So things like your bylaws, your articles of incorporation, your employee identification number, application, your Conflict of Interest Statement, these are kind of that’s kind of the four core things, you really need upfront, to register with your state. You have to start at the state level, you don’t go straight to the federal government, you have to, you know, become a corporation in the state level. Once you do that, that’s when you can actually send in some of the documentation at the federal level. And hopefully, if again, if you’re working with people who have done this before, when you actually put in your stuff with the state, you’re putting in there that you intend to be a 501C3, you’re making sure that you meet the criteria for nonprofits. So you need to go do some research on. You have to be in certain areas in order to qualify for nonprofit tax exempt status. So you want to word everything from your mission statement to your bylaws to support the fact that this is going to be a nonprofit organization, you do all that stuff upfront first, before ever talking with the federal government. For us, we were able to send in what’s called an EZ application, literally capital E capital Z, because we were bringing in less than $50,000 a year annually. That’s kind of the cut off. Even if you are making less than that you can do a full fledged application if you wish to. But certainly if you’re bringing in a million dollars in your first year, you have to you can’t use this EZ applicant is one piece of paper front and back and you’re just checking, I just checked no for everything right? It was very easy. But once you get back your EIN and your the, you’ll get an official letter from the government saying like, hey, we recognize you as a 501 C 3, that’s when you can start to reap some of the benefits of the nonprofit. So things like we use Stripe, to bring in money from our websites and Stripe has nonprofit rates that we can utilize. A lot of these third party vendors will have nonprofit rates. And sometimes it’s not public. Go look on Reddit like hey, is there a special rate for so and so and go take advantage of that. But after that you are going to file some stuff, even once you hear back from the federal government. And that’s going to be annually. It’s like federal income tax your state and income tax. In Illinois, you have to at least register with the Attorney General. You know, stuff like that is it’s paperwork. You know, that’s always going to be a small part of this. And I think staying organized is important. But again, just take a breath if you’re new to all this legal stuff like I was, it can seem a little bit like, I don’t even know what I’m doing. But at the end of the day, it’s it’s just paperwork. You know, if you’re an organized person, you’re gonna be fine. And I certainly don’t think it’s anything that should prevent you from doing this. Again, if things get off to a rocky start, like, especially in a nonprofit sense, who cares, you’re doing this for a very good reason, right? Like be easy on yourself. Just get there eventually. And let things let things sort them out as they will. 

Tim Ulbrich  24:32

I’m with you on the you know, I’ve kind of gone down this twice now in the last six months you and I talked a little bit about this. We started the nonprofit YFP Gives and your overview was great by the way from state to federal level. So anyone’s looking for like a checklist or at least just a frame of reference of the steps involved. That was fantastic! The first time we went through it we used an attorney. So helpful, right because it seems so overwhelming until you can see it. And to your point, there’s, you know, shortened forms based on your projected revenue and other things. But just to see the process from a state level up to the 501C3, okay, now that you’ve done that, you’ve got to register with the Attorney General on the state level, you got to file this solicitation format. For someone to just be able to say do XY and Z, I can assure you as well worth the fees, but I respect that that can be a barrier. Yeah. Second time I went through it, which was something not nonrelated on the pharmacy side, we EZ application was the form I had been through it, I kind of saw all the steps and I felt comfortable, like navigating that part myself seeing all that, but I couldn’t have wrapped my arms around it the first time. So I think that’s something as folks are thinking about this, you know, anticipating those legal fees, and I think it is something that certainly does add a lot of value, you’re growing through it. So great, great overview.

Brentsen Wolf  25:52

Actually, I want to add one thing to the one of the values that the attorney can can bring in is not only make sure you file the right paperwork, but oftentimes these folks have worked with corporations in the past, and they kind of know, over the years, what you know, what problems might arise. And so they will give you recommendations on how to maybe word bylaws and this kind of thing to prevent an issue that would happen if you wouldn’t have taken this step up front. So that’s a very important thing. I talked about preventative medicine, you might as well be preventative on this front as well. And an attorney can do that. 

Tim Ulbrich  26:25

That’s great. Let’s talk about the future, Brentsen. So as you look out over the next 5, 10,15 years, however long you want to go for the vision, you know, what does success look like for Rx Teach?You’ve taken this important step from idea to going through all the mechanics, the legal stuff, we just started, getting to the point where you can take tax deductible donations, you’ve been creating content for a while. What is the next iteration look like for RxTeach in terms of the work that you’re doing? And and how you would measure success?

Brentsen Wolf  26:55

Yeah, so you know, I think we’re constantly trying to assess community change, at least locally. And so that has started to happen already. RX Teach, you know, I think influencing folks locally. And that’s, that’s great news, and it’s specifically on these topics of interest. But like big, big picture goal in the next 10 years, would be to essentially expand our scholarship availability to more or less every pharmacy school in the country, but also get outside of pharmacy school. So we started with pharmacy just because that’s our background, but we’ve already started working with some schools of Exercise Science, mostly because, you know, in my perfect world, those two things come together a lot more than they currently do, you know, taking that preventative side of healthcare, into the healthcare providers, actual education. Again, that’s an area of unmet need. So scholarships across the country is what we want to be known for, to where if you can show that you’re actually interested in these very important topics, we’re going to give you money. And I feel no guilt at all about putting dollar signs in front of certain topics in order to drive people towards, well, maybe I’ll at least look up what that means if I want to get the scholarship! That’s fine with me, you know, I that’s I have no guilt on that kind of thing. And then, of course, building out the types of people who are willing to write for RX Teach and, you know, just help get our message out there. Cardiac disease is the number one killer of Americans. Kills more people than liver disease and diabetes and stroke, and it combined, it’s ridiculous. So, you know, the more we can prevent these types of things, and however, we’re going to do that, whether it’s scholarships, putting out putting out more content, selling more stuff to fund these types of events. That’s what we’re going to do. And again, I guess the number one thing for 10 years is don’t burn out, right? So it’s right, you know, keep finding that passion, make sure I’m keeping me and the rest of the board ignited about what we’re doing. And just following that passion.

Tim Ulbrich  28:48

As my partner Tim often says, you know, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. I think that’s true here as well. Right? You’ve got an important mission that transcends not only 10 years, but transcends your career. Sure. And to me, what I hear you doing, which I love is you’re getting others involved. This is not a Brentsen initiative. This is a board. This is a bigger initiative. And as those tentacles get out further, you know, it’s not about you and the face and the name. It’s about the impact, right that you can have. And that impact, I presume, isn’t going away. So when you say in 3040 years, like, hey, it’s time for someone else to take the reins like you’ve got other people that you’ve delegated, and gotten involved with on the way. This has been awesome. I appreciate you taking the time again, Rxteach.org. Make sure to check out the website we’d love for our community to not only learn about what you’re doing, get involved financially. You know, reach out to Brentsen, the team if you’ve got ideas for content that you’d like to contribute, make a donation if there’s a connection or relationship that you think could be helpful. Make sure to reach out to do that. As Brentsen says on the website, “Every cent will be given to students as merit based scholarships in cancer research and preventative medicine education.” So if you make Rx Teach a part of your giving plan, know that that’s going to be going to good use. So Brentsen, thanks so much for taking Time to come on the show. 

Brentsen Wolf  30:01

Thanks, Tim. Really appreciate it. 

Tim Ulbrich  30:04

[DISCLAIMER] 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 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 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 359: Pharmacy Innovators with Jamie Wilkey, PharmD


Dr. Jamie Wilkey shares her entrepreneurial journey of building and selling a business on this episode of the Pharmacy Innovators series hosted by Corrie Sanders.

This episode is brought to you by YFP+.

Episode Summary

In our YFP Podcast Pharmacy Innovators with Corrie Sanders series, Dr. Jamie Wilkey joins Corrie to discuss her entrepreneurship journey, emphasizing the importance of thinking big, pushing boundaries, and utilizing education to achieve success. Dr. Wilkey shares her journey of transitioning from a community pharmacist role to building a successful pharmacogenomics practice, highlighting the importance of validating ideas, leveraging scrappy methods, and empowerment through helping others. Dr. Wilkey also shares her experience with selling a pharmacy business and valuable insights on their professional journey, emphasizing the importance of adapting to the changing landscape of the pharmacy industry and embracing digital business ownership.

About Today’s Guest

Dr. Jamie Wilkey is a PharmD who loves what she does and brings passion and happiness to the pharmacy profession.

Jamie has had a varied career from working retail pharmacy, to owning, scaling and selling her own company, and to working as a consultant for top universities and companies. Jamie is optimistic about the future of pharmacy and knows great things are in store for those pharmacists who are willing to push boundaries, to think big, and to use the full extent of their education. 

You can find her happily living debt-free with her 4 boys being outside as much as humanly possible and enjoying Utah’s National Parks. Or reading. A lot.

Key Points from the Episode

  • Pharmacy career paths with Dr. Jamie Wilkie. [0:00]
  • Building a pharmacogenomics business as a side hustle while working full-time as a pharmacist. [2:27]
  • Entrepreneurship, pharmacogenomics, and career transition. [9:11]
  • Transitioning from pharmacist to content creator, with insights on building a business with vulnerability and transparency. [16:19]
  • Selling a business after two years of growth and scaling. [21:34]
  • Selling a pharmacy business, including the importance of mentors, due diligence, and a clean break. [26:32]
  • Adapting pharmacy businesses for success in today’s world. [31:40]
  • Embracing growth and personal development as an entrepreneur. [36:18]
  • Various income streams, including coaching, teaching, and pharmacy work. [39:40]
  • Entrepreneurship and pharmacy practice with a focus on finding joy and success in the field. [42:39]

Episode Highlights

“And so it was really cool seeing that, like it’s not the smartest person or the most qualified person who can build their own thing.” – Jamie Wilkey [3:47]

“Saving gives you such a buffer. And I really think it’s kind of a secret sauce for succeeding in entrepreneurship. When you don’t need your business to turn a profit the next day and aren’t white knuckling it saying, I have to have a paycheck by the end of this week. It becomes more fun and a creative pursuit like a hobby that I’m going to figure out. But I’m also going to get paid too. And it’s so different and so fun.” – Jamie Wilkey [16:57]

“In a way being vulnerable and saying like, I hate retail, I gotta get out. And I’m passionate about precision medicine so I’m doing this one way or another, makes it easier to jump on board because people can see themselves in you when you’re first starting.” – Jamie Wilkey [18:57]

“Just start, just do the thing. Put yourself out there, start solving a problem in the world and don’t overthink it. Put your energy into action.” -Jamie Wilkey [31:42]

“I feel like it’s riskier just to stay in your job with no other revenue options than to build something on the side a few hours a week and think in terms of years and decades rather than needing a quick buck tomorrow.” – Jamie Wilkey [33:29]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

Corrie Sanders 00:00

Hi YFP Community. Corrie Sanders here host of the Pharmacy Innovators segment of the YFP Podcast. Pharmacy Innovators is designed for pharmacist navigating the entrepreneurial journey. In this series we feature stories and strategies to help guide current and aspiring pharmacy entrepreneurs. Today we have Dr. Jamie Wilkey, a PharmD who loves what she does and brings passion and happiness to the pharmacy profession. Jamie has had a varied career from working in retail pharmacy to owning, scaling and selling her own company. She also works as a consultant for top universities. Jamie is optimistic about the future of pharmacy and knows great things are ahead. For those pharmacists who are willing to push boundaries, think big and use the full extent of their education. Today, you can find her happily living debt free with her four boys and being outside as much as humanly possible while enjoying Utah’s National Parks. I’m excited to share so many points of growth from Jamie’s optimistic perspective and hope you will find this episode to be inspiring from not only the lens of pharmacy, but how Jamie’s attitude and perseverance has served her work life balance. Please welcome to the podcast, Dr. Jamie Wilkey. Jamie, welcome to the podcast. We’re excited to have you here.

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  01:10

Thank you, Corrie! This is gonna be so fun!

Corrie Sanders 01:13

And I know that you’ve done a lot of podcasts in the past, you have a very public content platform. So we won’t go too deep into your background. But for those that don’t know you, why don’t you just start with briefly describing your path in pharmacy with school and training and any additional certificates you might have.

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  01:29

Sure, Cory, so I grew up in Wyoming. So I went to University of Wyoming pharmacy school, which was one of the best decisions I ever made, graduated as a 24 year old and I started making a six figure salary. And I was like over the moon like, this is why I went to pharmacy school. So I could be a girl with a doctorate degree earning like $130,000 a year and not have a career ladder. I could just do that and go part time when I had kids. And so that’s what I did. I worked full time for a few years. And then I ultimately had four little boys. Two years apart, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. And it really helped to have a pharmacy job where I could just go part time during all those years of having babies and toddlers. And so I worked part time for many years at Walgreens. Ultimately, after 10 years, I had still been at Walgreens and I felt like, Oh man, this job that I thought was like so perfect. And it really did serve me well for a decade. Ah, there’s no career ladder, there’s no growth. I’m like on the hamster wheel doing the same thing. And I’ll probably keep doing it for another 30 years unless I change something. And so Corrie, really the thing that changed my whole career was just getting on LinkedIn. Until then I didn’t even have a LinkedIn account. In the summer of 2020, I created an account to look for a new job. And once I saw other pharmacists on there, like doing their own thing, not just working retail, hospital, or as an MSL, it felt like I was coming out of a dark cave into like the light of potential. And it was just so exciting to me to see that like, oh, I don’t have to rely on getting a new job or getting more certifications to build a dream life like, these other people are doing it themselves. I’m gonna jump in the race, I can do it too. I have no idea what I’m doing. But clearly, like your future is determined by you. And I want to just try my hand at it. So I just got on LinkedIn and started writing on there everyday kind of documenting, like, what the heck I’m doing like, here I am this retail girl, I have no residency, no fellowship, no certifications, I’ve literally just been clocking into a job for a decade, and only doing CEs required to keep my license like, I loved my job. But I was not overly engaged in being a pharmacist. And so it was really cool seeing that, like it’s not the smartest person or the most qualified person who can build their own thing. It’s just the person who thinks they can. And so also I saw the pattern very quickly that like the people who have an audience who are teaching other people who are like monetizing their knowledge in some way, are very consistent at writing online, was like, well, that’s free. I don’t know what I’m doing. But I’m like, such a nerd for habits. Like I will set a habit every single day to write online every day. So that’s what I did. And it ultimately turned into me turning into an entrepreneur, and starting my own business because I writing not only on LinkedIn, but I was like on Instagram, the only social media account I had and learning about pharmacogenomics. I started like posting to my friends like hey, did you know a genetic test, like change prescribing for the rest of your life? I think this is so cool, but I want to try this on someone, does anyone have trouble with like medicine that you want to like let me practice on? And so many of my friends raise their hands and neighbors came out of the woodworks that like oh my gosh, I’m struggling with medicine. Can you help me? That I started buidling a business before I even had a business before I had an LLC or done any of the paperwork. And so it was really cool to like validate ideas out of the gate in a really scrappy way that was totally me to just start earning money and Corrie, I tell you, once you like actually charge for your services as a pharmacist, oh, really lights a fire under you that like, wow, I just earned way more helping one patient on a zoom call, then, like a day in the pharmacy. And so it was really cool and empowering to one, see how working in a new way, like lit a fire in me that I wasn’t just like a robot, checking the boxes that I like, help people in new ways. And two that, like, what it was like to help someone and to get a raving review and like really feel like I helped their life. So once I did that, it felt like, okay, the time is ticking on my retail career. It’s been cool, but I can’t do this forever. And so I just, it was so scrappy, Corrie, like just talking to friends and neighbors reaching out on LinkedIn to prescribers out here in Utah. I built my own consulting practice where I saw patients remotely and in their clinics, and just was like a pharmacogenomic pharmacist. And how did I become that from a Walgreens girl, I got a certificate. I did like the 16 hour CE certificate like yeah, now I’m PGX certified like, it took a week. It was not hard, because we’re drug experts, and we just so undervalue our expertise. And the biggest learning you get is like by actually doing it. And by helping and people don’t care. They just know like, you’re a drug expert. If it takes you a while to figure it out behind the scenes before you meet with me, I don’t care, just help me. And so that was really cool. Okay, that was kind of long. I’ll start I’ll start to speed up now. And so as I’m like helping people, one on one, I’m also building on LinkedIn, and sharing like, all of all of the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. And a number of people started keep repeating, reaching out to me on direct messages, and like, hey, that’s, I love what you’re building. Can you teach me how? And so ultimately, like, guys, I’m still at Walgreens, because you can’t just quit your job overnight, unless you’re completely financially independent. And I’m working in the cracks on my time. And, oh, I have four kids, you know. So I have no time. But I want to teach other pharmacists this. And so one of my friends gave me really good advice. She was like Jamie, just create a little mini online course, that way you can teach people at like, their own speed, it doesn’t take your time, create it once. And just help them that way. And so that was awesome advice. So I just did and Corrie, I tell you what that first course was like, so awkward and bad. I just like got on Zoom and recorded, like 12 different lessons without like a PowerPoint or anything, it was just me talking. But it had the core of what they want it and I sold that to 11 people for $500. Like, here you go, tell me what you liked to tell me what you hated. Tell me what I could have improved. And they were really candid and honest and saying like I loved this. This I could have used more of. Don’t include this. And so what turned out is my scrappy product, then I could polish and redo like rerecord with good visuals and resources, then I could turn around and sell it for $1,000. And so that’s what I started doing in mid 2021. Started selling my online course, just through my LinkedIn posts, not like ads or anything because I still didn’t know how to do ads. Started selling that. And it grew and grew and grew and grew and grew and grew. And ultimately, after two and a half years, I’d earned more than a million dollars in revenue from that little course, which was just wild to me to see how like one digital asset can grow in value and in reach. So ultimately, we helped more than 350 pharmacists understand and build like their own pharmacogenomic practice, and it was really cool. Where do you want me to go with this story?

 

Corrie Sanders 09:11

I’m gonna I’m gonna break it down even further when I say that that was a great bird’s eye view to start with with, you know, where your training was where you spent a lot of your initial pharmacy experience, then ultimately, where you saw a gap and a need in care and how you pivoted to something that could be monetized in a sustainable working way over time. So I want to I’m going to chunk it up just because I want the audience to really learn about your mindset and the steps that you had taken at certain points during that story. Let’s start with your path to entrepreneurship in general. So it sounds like you heard about pharmacogenomics through some kind of source and you’re like, Wow, this is something that’s totally applicable to practice. And while you were still practicing in retail, you started building out a pharmacogenomics consulting company, is that correct? 

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  09:57

Correct. Yes. 

Corrie Sanders  09:59

So reaching out to different providers on LinkedIn. And then ultimately, were you working for part time at Walgreens at that point, or and you were able to take on a couple additional days in clinic? How did that transition look like between your retail position and taking on consulting and either a part time or eventually a full time manner?

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  10:18

Yeah, so I was at Walgreens mostly full time, it was probably like 30 hours a week. And so in my days off, I would see patients when I was not at Walgreens. And then when I ultimately got into a clinic, and they wanted to have me there, I just gave them my schedule on advanced and said, like, got it most Fridays, I will be here, like, fill it up with my patients on Fridays and just batch it like, I would love to be here every day. But until then just batch it on Friday. And they’re like, great, we’re happy to have you. That’s when you’re available. Patients don’t know. 

Corrie Sanders  10:52

Like you’re not there, Monday through Friday!

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  10:53

Yes, behind the scenes like we’re next available is this Friday or next Friday, when would you like it? And so it made it easier to batch things and to like, validate that this is working and see the revenue coming in. Because although it wasn’t thrilled with my Walgreens job, it still has an awesome paycheck. And it’s still a good job. And so I was not about to like just burn the bridge quit and then hope entrepreneurship works. Because I have no experience. I’ve never done this before. I do not come from an entrepreneurial family. So it’s definitely like figuring it out. But while you’re balancing a job, like a job is such a good resource to give you the safety net, to build something on the side that it felt like other than missing time watching Netflix, there really wasn’t a downside. Because I’m getting experience and learning when people said no or no thanks, like it it taught me something too. It wasn’t like, Well, this has to succeed, or it was a waste of time.

Corrie Sanders 11:46

And then at what point did you make the formal transition? So you’ve got four kids at this point, it’s not like you can walk away from a job without a proof of concept going into this new consulting journey. So at what point did you decide okay, this is it, the model on the side is now something that’s worth taking on full time. What did that breaking point or tipping point look like for you? And when did that happen?

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  12:08

Once I crossed about $75,000 in revenue, it took probably eight months. I was like, oh, okay, in eight months, I earned more than I would have earned at Walgreens over that time. So then I the next step wasn’t quitting it was like, okay, just put me on PRN, like, keep me on the books, but I don’t want to be scheduled regularly anymore. So then I would fill in like, a couple times a month like for, that’s back when like COVID clinics were thinking and like, I was still in the system for a long time just to like, keep that as a safety net. And still just keep cash flowing too.

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  12:56

Which I think that’s a great way to put it is that this now your full time job has become your side gig. And your side gig has transitioned into your full time job, and any other elaborations on what chapter of life you’re in at the moment. So when we talk to pharmacy entrepreneurs, I mean, there’s a million reasons under the sun, why you shouldn’t be making this transition or taking something on whether it’s student loans or kids or it doesn’t meet your retirement goals or your risk. If you’re risk averse or risk tolerance, whatever risk strategy that you have any other insight into the chapter of your life, besides having four kids you were in at that moment that you think was helpful in making that transition, or that would be useful to know. 

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  13:33

So at this point, we have four kids, we’ve had bought our house a number of years ago, right after graduation. And so between and my husband is working, he’s working full time. So there’s dual income, which is really helpful to get a solid financial foundation. So at this point, we had our house and we’re heavily paying it off quickly and had been maxing out our 401ks every year ever since we were like new little workers, and have a really good six to 12 month savings of both of our incomes so that like if neither of us works for the next year, could we pay for life, assuming that like we both lost our job and like, couldn’t get one for a year because I am very risk averse, Corrie. I love like stability, and I love money and I love being able to make decisions from a point of abundance rather than scarcity. And so it did. It took, let’s say this point, it’s like 10 to 13 years into my career. So it was not a new grad. I had my student loans paid off. We had no debt other than our house. And my husband has a good job. He’s an accountant. And so we both are professionals. We’re in a really good place financially because we’re savers too like, we don’t have the super big house and like all the new cars and stuff. So as savers it felt like okay, we’ve been killing ourselves off like saving and working. My next big crazy goal, Corrie, was that like, I want to pay off this house, I just want to be completely debt free before I turned 40. And I kept like crunch every time I’m at work. I’m like crunching the numbers like, Okay, how many more years at Walgreens? How many extra shifts doing overtime? I felt like okay, I could do that in five years. But after I got on LinkedIn, it kind of ruined me seeing that like, but you can also make money other ways. So I just got to try this, like, can I maybe get there faster, or in a more fun way than like physically being at that retail store. While like, I don’t want to leave my kids, especially with COVID. It made it very apparent that like, white collar workers can grab their laptop and go home. Everyone else, like you’re on the frontlines, you’re a hero and like, I don’t want to be a hero. I want to be with my kids and earn money in a new way. Because I’m kind of jealous of all, like Utah. The point of view time in it’s called Silicon slopes, because there’s just like so much tech and software development that it feels like it’s in the air that like work in new ways, do cool things. And here I am, like an antiquated pharmacy job. So it felt like I just got to a point. I just got to try. I don’t have much to lose other than nothing. There’s always a job at big box stores.

Corrie Sanders  16:19

No, and that was really insightful, insightful. I love how you shared how much savings you guys had between you and your husband and the risk strategy that you had taken on. And not only some of your already accomplishments with your debt, but what were your debt goals long term? I think that that’s so important to outline prior to making a career transition, where there’s a lot of risk involved is knowing what the backup plan is, or how much time you have before that backup plan needs to be activated. So it sounds like you and your husband had a lot of healthy conversations prior to that jumping point in which you already had a proof of concept. 

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  16:51

We’re both savers and really like yes, since this is the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast, like truly saving, saving saving gives you such a buffer. And I really think it’s kind of a secret sauce for succeeding in entrepreneurship is that you don’t like need your business to turn a profit the next day, you don’t need and are white knuckling it saying like, I have to have a paycheck by the end of this week. It becomes more fun and like a creative pursuit that’s like, this is a hobby that I’m going to figure out. But I’m also going to get paid from, too and it’s so different and so fun.

Corrie Sanders 17:25

And I’m sure that your clientele and people that you talk with can also tell when you’re coming from a place of abundance versus scarcity, as you said earlier, like having to make that next sale versus making the next sale when it fits into their timeline, not necessarily yours. It’s such a big difference. Yeah. So the next question I want to talk about is when you made the transition, so we talked about how you started transitioning into content creation, creation for pharmacogenomics for other pharmacists. When did that happen? You were consulting for how long? And then when did you notice on LinkedIn? Okay, this is something that other pharmacists are looking for. And I’m gonna start now doing this on the side, in addition to consulting, what did that look like?

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  18:05

Probably be like between three and six months. 

Corrie Sanders  18:07

Oh, wow. 

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  18:08

So it was still pretty fast. So it was still new ish. But I think that’s part of what made it work was like, I’m new with you. But I figured out the next three steps, and we’re doing this together, and I never wanted it to be like, I am the best. I know the way I am perfect. More like, here’s what I’ve learned, here’s general principles. Now, within this program, we’re all coming together. And we’re all precision pharmacists. And we’re all going to help each other and teach each other because there’s not only like one way to do something, what works for me in Utah may be different for someone in Arizona, and like we’re pooling knowledge and pooling resources, rather than, like, I must have everything figured out. Because I think that’s what stops a lot of pharmacists like, until I know everything and I have X amount of experience that no one will help me. In a way being vulnerable and being you and saying like, I hate retail, I gotta get out. And I’m passionate about precision medicine. So I’m doing this one way or another, like, makes it easier to jump on board because people can see themselves in you when you’re first starting.

Corrie Sanders 19:12

And I think that’s something I’ve always respected about you is the amount of transparency that you share with your audience and with the academy is, I’m not here to tell you I know every answer, but I’m here to tell you that I’m going to work through this with you. And I think that’s such a better business model than preaching you have all the answers. So I love that it’s so much more relatable with that transparency comes a lot of relationship and building abilities. But I just love the line that you said I’m here to learn with you and I’m here to learn alongside you and help you get to the same end goal. We have a similar goal in mind. So what did it and that was Arches, LLC is the LLC that you eventually started. What did Arches look like over time? So you start with just 11 minute video or 11 short videos, and then you started putting out more visual content, you started growing the audience? And did you eventually start growing employees? What did Arches evolve into over the next couple of years?

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  20:09

Yeah, so for the first year, it was just me. And then I hired my first VA – virtual assistant. Because being married to an accountant, I know all the details of like employees, and how complicated an employee could be. So I, I, we never did hire an employee, it was all contract work. And especially it was really just me, I hired one VA, it was a good learning experience for both of us. But then I found like my BFF VA, Alexa, she’s still like my best friend, six months later as a recommendation from a friend. And she and I just like tag teamed it and went full force ahead that she really was the one who ran the company. And I got to like, be the face of it and provide the content. And she did all the back end logistics that take a lot of time. And I’m not a detail oriented person. And so it worked really well. And hiring people from the Philippines are the best because they have an amazing grasp of English. They’re such hard workers. And they’re at a price point that new business owners can afford rather than someone in the United States. And I am a little afraid for the US workforce, because everyone I’ve worked with from the Philippines is like just such an incredible human and turned into a good friend that like, it was a great way to start hiring. So it was me and Alexa, it originally started with like, just pace yourself videos of like, what else do you want, I’ll create this video. And then we created a private group on Facebook. So we had a private Facebook page. And that way, we’re like talking to each other every day. And then we’d have live weekly calls, every week, we would learn something else or have like a guest come in and speak on something that was adjacent that I wasn’t an expert in, like nutrigenomics, isn’t amazing how nutrition is affected by your genetics and have like nutrigenomics speakers and lamps come in. And so I recorded all of those and added it to the course. So  by the end of two years, there’s more than 70 hours of material in there. Wow. Which was huge. But it was also really awesome. Because it felt really comprehensive to understand like how to start a business, how to work with a lab, and giving people like labs themselves to work with and how to understand state rules and regulations. And then we started creating like documents and templates, like, here’s a whole bunch of legal forms, you’re probably going to need to start. Don’t hire an attorney for $6,000, like I had to do. Here’s a good base baseline to start with and learn that like maybe legal advice can help tweak it rather than everyone starting from scratch. So we started like pooling, like what people needed and created group resources as well. That was really fun. 

 

Corrie Sanders 22:44

That’s amazing. That’s amazing. It’s worth joining the academy just to save on the legal. At what point did you start considering selling the business? So I think that this is maybe something that you haven’t discussed on a podcast just yet. So I’m excited to dive into this. But how long had you had Arches LLC, to where you hit a certain inflection point where you’re like, wow, this is now something that I can consider selling? This is a worthwhile brand. When did that come into conversation? And who brought that to your attention? Or did you bring that to the attention of others? I want to highlight on a couple of things that you’ve said, because I think these are so valuable to the listener. And I know that these things are not generally taught in pharmacy school. So you said I am just a scrappy starter, I like to start and build things. One, definitely not taught in pharmacy school. And then maturing and scaling of a business. Also not taught in pharmacy school. Two very, very different skill sets. But you also said, you know, we leaned into mentors into resources outside of healthcare, which a lot of pharmacists we’re just so siloed into our own little bubbles, our pharmacy bubbles. I think it’s important to view healthcare and view your services through the lens of someone who is not involved in health care at all. And it sounds like that was really instrumental, especially at this building and scaling and selling portion of your business, it would be hard to find a pharmacist, I think that was so successful. But I love how you took on the lens of you know, I’m going to use this as a an internship into how to build businesses, because that will be a useful skill set, I’m sure for you in the future once you decide what your next steps are. So throughout this selling and building process, you had these two gentlemen who it sounds like you met through different networks. Who else had your best interest in mind? So did you, your husband’s an accountant, but what other resources did you use to make sure that you as the seller, were doing your due diligence and your homework and this was going to be something that was beneficial not only to your academy, but to you as well? 

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  23:19

Yeah, so it was two years in two years in, I felt like I was working with a mentor who was helping me with like webinars and how to sell and I he wasn’t actually like a person who did that, he runs a company similar to mine, except it’s for finances. And I just met him through a friend. And so he didn’t, I was like, Oh my gosh, teach me how to apply this to my program. But he wasn’t like, I’m a guy who teaches webinars. I was like, No, I saw what you did teach me how to do how to do it. So it was really cool. And after that, he just said like, Would you ever consider selling this? Because what you have is such a smooth running machine. Would you ever consider selling it? And at first I was like, No, this is my baby. I love it. But then after planting that seed, and over the next couple of months seeing that like oh man like these students are doing so well. They’re outgrowing me, because I can’t keep seeing patients, growing my own practice and doing this own business they’re two. Although it’s the same topic, two very different businesses that it felt like it’s probably the most responsible thing for this group to bring in scalable leadership because I’m a very scrappy starter, Corrie, I love like starting things and building from scratch, but I don’t like maturing things and scaling. I’ve learned that about myself. I don’t even like working with teams very much. Because ultimately, so it’s me and Alexa, and then we hired a couple of the students to help with marketing and to help like nurture the relationships in there, which was awesome, but I also found myself like, I just don’t like teams, I just want to build my own thing. You know, and so that combination of seeing my personality characteristics come through and the sustainability of what I had, and wanting to like serve these people best rather than keeping it as like my pride, like, No, this is my baby, I’m gonna keep it. I really want to do what’s best for this group. And so I told him, I was like, I don’t know how to sell a company, who do I talk to? And so he introduced me to someone in Utah, who buys and sells companies. And he was awesome, turned into a really good friend. And he helped me list the company and talk to multiple buyers and sellers. Well, I’m the seller, multiple buyers. And it actually turned out kind of funny, because right before we had a buyer who was interested and was sending a letter of intent, and he’s like, Actually, can I just buy it with my friend, and we’ll run it together. Because I’ve seen the books like I love this, can we just run it together? I was like, Cool, I’m down with that, I still want to like, learn from you and hang with this group a little bit. And so we did it. And so we sold it. And we got a third of the company like an ownership. And it was really cool to work with two people outside of health care who sure have a lot of experience in scaling companies and multimillion dollar companies. And so I consider it like an internship into like, how business is done, and how to like, really help this group and scale it in a more sustainable way than like, me just trying to like Google and figure out like, Okay, how do I do this next.

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  27:45

My husband as a CPA is really good. Don’t underestimate accountants, I think they, you can use one instead of an attorney for most business questions, especially like reading contracts, and understanding like, if you’re getting your fair share accountants, oh, my gosh. Pro tip be married to an accountant, it as an entrepreneur, like it makes your life so much easier. And unless they give you the answer, you don’t want to hear! So I had him and then I did hire an attorney to help like, broker the deal and, and make sure everything looked good. But it’s I don’t know, I’m a very stress free person. And so it just felt right. And I was like, Yeah, let’s just, let’s just do it. So it was great, pretty simple and easy. I think it took like, two weeks from start to finish from like an offer to close. 

Corrie Sanders 28:47

So did you have a certain price point in mind? Was that something that that team brought to you? Is that something that outside evaluators have brought to you? Where did the price point come into mind? And then how did you guys if you don’t mind me asking divvy up ownership of the company? 

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  29:01

So the attorney I was working with helped navigate the price point. And my husband did his own math too, and was like yep, that seems very fair. So I got a six figure payout for selling my company which felt incredibly good as well as I got to keep the cash from the company which I’d saved up a ton of into too and then we just turned we created a new entity and all three of us owned it equally and then moved to the company to that entity so as a separate entity, so I still own Arches Health as my company I just run it under a different name now.

Corrie Sanders 29:37

Got it, got it. And so what are your responsibilities with this new company? So I’m assuming that’s Wealthy White Coat is what this has evolved into. What day to day responsibilities do you have with Wealthy White Coat or when you sold the company that was a clean slate and you are now free to roam and do something completely different?

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  29:54

Well, it was an evolution. So that was a year ago, we divvied it up 30,30,30 And then this January, February, I sold my share. So now they’re running it themselves. So over the course of the year, I was still like the one talking to the students and like keeping that relationship up. And they were the ones helping put in systems and to scale and to find like, partners and different income streams. Because all this time it’s, I’ve been through like one income stream like year long membership, that is it. And so they’re helping diversify different price points and ways to enter, and how to, you know, scale and bring more resources. So I had the fun part of like, being able to just keep doing what I was doing and like, have the conversations help people and keep giving them resources that they needed. So it was just fun.

Corrie Sanders 30:49

So still being the face of the company to some extent, managing the client relations. Okay, that’s interesting. 

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  30:54

Because those pharmacists are so great, I still like they’re just the best.

Corrie Sanders 31:01

You’re like, those are my babies. So this is my baby, and you have a special connection with each of them. So that’s easy to understand. And Jamie, any big lessons along the way? So we’ve covered a pretty extensive amount of ground in your professional career to this point, we’ve talked about your transition from retail to consulting, to creating something that can be bought and sold by other pharmacists, and then ultimately selling that business. Any big lessons learned along the way or big takeaways that come to top of mind when you’re thinking about an audience of pharmacy entrepreneurs, and I’m sure a lot of them want to get to this point of success. Any thoughts or any lessons that you think are worth sharing? 

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  31:40

Yes, two! One is just start, just do the thing. Put yourself out there, start solving a problem in the world and don’t overthink it, like, put your energy into action. I know our professional is so good at like overthinking and being perfect. And trying to like get all the education so that we’re the perfect person to help but like just helping and bringing your why you’re helping set you apart from anyone because everyone else is learning, learning, learning, stressing writing a plan. And if you’re out there doing you’re gonna run circles around people, so do, do, do. And secondly, I would say strongly I love digital businesses and online businesses, because there’s just not the risk there is with a cash intensive business like opening a pharmacy, you have to have the building, you have to have the products, you have to have the staff, you have to have the insurance, like the startup cost is half a million dollars, at least versus like a digital business, something you can do with just you and your laptop. You can start I think I funded myself $2,500 from my own checking account to start, and I’ve never had to like, put money back in because it’s all been profitable from there. There’s just no risk. And it’s a lot of reward. And even if it and don’t think of it in terms of like, will this win or lose? Will I succeed? Or is this a waste of my time think of it as like, I’m learning how to be relevant in today’s world, because it’s very different than anything in the past, especially with pharmacy and those who can adapt and like meet the needs of the world in a new way. You don’t have to have anyone’s permission, go do it. And it’s just really fun. And it’s not a risk. I feel like it’s riskier just to stay in your job with no other revenue options than to like, build something on the side a few hours a week and think in terms of years and decades rather than needing a quick buck tomorrow.

Corrie Sanders 33:46

I think that’s really valuable insight. And I completely agree with you, I think that the way that pharmacy is heading, it’s going to bode well for those that think outside the box. And that take on additional business ideas or opportunities that really leverage our clinical skill set. Because I just feel very strongly with the development of technology, that pharmacy is going to look very different in 10 years. So just starting and doing and cutting down on the Netflix and exchanging time. Outside I feel like the payoffs are really there. So Jamie, what do you see next for you? Did you when you sold this business? Did you have another idea in mind? Has that started coming to fruition? Or are you just really living in the moment and taking in the fact that you’ve built a successful business and been able to sell it at a price point that gives you some personal capital to do what you want what is next for you on the horizon?

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  34:43

So I’m gonna have the best summer of my life this summer with my kids and work very minimally and just really enjoy what I’ve built. I’ve always I’m such a high achiever and like always wanting to build the next thing and go, go go but I’m intentionally stepping back and like I just want to hang out with my kids and enjoy my garden and be outside all day, because I love being outside. I’m going to do that for this season. But then Corrie, this fall, my youngest goes to first grade. So for the first time in 13 years, all of my children will be at school all day. And there’s not like this huge interruption with like, right now he’s in half day kindergarten. So like, my whole day is broken up, I’m gonna focus and I want to build something big and awesome that I can really like sink my teeth into and like, be in it for the long run for pharmacy. And I’m actually really interested in communities, I feel like communities are the next. Not the next big thing, but like the next really effective way people learn and grow and change. As someone who’s built online courses, I know online courses are awesome, but almost no one finishes them. And it’s very up to like the person who’s doing it their impetus to finish. And I’m so intrigued with communities and bringing people together in like a private place that helps them grow and support each other because we’re all humans, and we just need connections with each other. And I don’t know, I’m, I’m figuring that out. But it’s gonna be something with a community and it’s gonna be awesome, Corrie.

Corrie Sanders 36:18

Yeah, I think that that it’s very natural to want human connection and human support. And I you are placed in a perfect position as someone who’s built a pharmacy community and a very niche area of what is that community look like and what worked well, and what didn’t work well, and being able to build off that I think will be a very successful starting point for you. So I’m excited to see where that goes. 

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  36:38

Well ,even if it’s not, it’s just going to be fun. Like, that’s how we figure it out. Like, and I almost want an element like, I need to doubt it’s going to work to do it anyway. Because if we you can’t wait until something feels like okay, this is absolutely a slam dunk, I think you have to have an element of like, is this more than I can chew? Is this a little too ambitious to be the right size of project for me or for you for anyone that like, if it feels so easy, then it’s, it’s, it’s probably not right for you like a little bit of growth and stretching and like that scariness of like, Oh, could I really do this is, is good for us and part of the thrill of pushing ourself.

 

Corrie Sanders 37:23

Jamie, do you think that that’s a characteristic that you always had? Or do you think that wanting to lean into growth and personal development was something that you realized is a priority once you took the transition into being an entrepreneur, because I’m thinking of the average pharmacist who is going to hear that and be like, I do not want that. I want something that’s a slam dunk, I want something that I know is going to be something that I can count on every month. I feel like pharmacists are just very risk averse in general. So do you feel like that’s always been in your nature? Or do you think that now you’ve had a taste of it? That’s what you want to do. And that’s part of your higher purpose and bigger purpose?

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  37:58

Well, I’m an oldest daughter, so I feel like it’s like baked into who I am. But also like seeing, really seeing what it’s like to earn money yourself, and how much you can earn and how consistent it can be that like, I just can’t go back to a job that’s out of my control. Again, like because I love not having risk. And I don’t feel like what I do is risky, it just takes time. So unless Netflix for me, it feels like the ultimate long term strategy that almost no one else is going to do because it takes work and a job is more comfortable. So like I I strongly believe I am like the least risky person. But I have a long timeline and willing to experiment because I know that like this is what it takes to succeed is like trying and being in public and doing in public. And most pharmacists don’t dare do that. It’s like the scariest thing to say, like, tell the world what you’re building. And I’m working with a couple of one on one clients right now. And that’s where some of them are at the point like okay, you’ve built your business, and I need you to create a social media post, just like on Facebook or Instagram, wherever you are, and just tell people what you’ve built. So they can celebrate with you. You’re not asking for like clients yet. You’re just saying like, Hey, I started a business like go female power. They won’t do it, Corrie! They’re like, oh my gosh, no, no, I’d rather just teach about diabetes than say I have a business because that feels salesy and like, I don’t want people to see me like, well, you have to be able to present yourself online to help people and it’s not salesy.

Corrie Sanders  38:21

Yes. And it’s in the world of digital digital business this is par for the course at this point.

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  39:45

Yeah. It’s par for the course!

Corrie Sanders 39:48

And I had a friend actually summarize something for me at one point, which is why I started looking into the transition of being an entrepreneur and working for myself as well. He does very well in something that’s not healthcare related, but He’s rewarded for how hard he works. And he told me as a high performer and a high achiever, I will never be in a salaried position because it would take away a lot of my drive. And I feel like when I heard that it was a lightbulb in my head of, I’m working so hard, and I’m not going to go anywhere, and a percentage increase of my income in a substantial amount of time. And so for me, that was such a lightbulb moment. And I think that’s kind of summarized by what you said is that I now that I make money for myself, and I know what that tastes like. That’s how I want to keep my income for years to come. So I also one of my last questions, Jamie is what other streams of income have you leaned into at this point in time? So I know that you have teaching experience, it sounds like you still have some coaching going on? Are you keeping your hands busy with anything else, aside from the pharmacogenomics business and Wealthy White Coat? 

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  40:47

So I have a couple streams of income that are pretty fun that I’ve built, kind of for myself, that is awesome that we hear about recurring revenue. And I’m like, Oh, I did that a few years ago. So now I get to enjoy it. So a couple of ways I earn money. Alright, I do have some one on one people that I work with that, like, have found me through through LinkedIn, and like we’ve just jivved, so I’m helping them one-on-one. It’s way less intensive than like, a full program, but it’s really fun and energizing for me. And for them. I also teach for the University of Florida, they have me help, help review, update their curriculum and proctor some of their courses within the precision medicine program in their school of pharmacy, which is awesome, it’s so fun. And my old boss, who he used to work at Walgreens. Now he works at the Student Health Center at the local college here, he asked if I would come Thursday afternoons from like two to 6pm to help fill in while he goes to choir practice. And I was like, You know what, I actually let my license lapse. So let’s see what it’s like to be a pharmacist and like, get a steady paycheck again. So I’ve actually started doing that again, just like for the fun of it. And it’s been really cool Corrie to have like W2 income and my own income all mixed together. That because there really is something to say about a job and like that you can clock in and clock out and earn a good salary. pharmacists have a good salary. And for me, I kind of ebb and flow with employment that I like like it, but then I can earn so much more myself. But then just that ease of like clocking in and out. So it’s been kind of fun to go back and forth. Because first I swore off pharmacy like I’ve done and now like, you know what, this is actually pretty fun in this environment with like these cute college students who just need birth control, Adderall, and antibiotics like, I could do this. So those are the main streams I have. I also do some advising and speaking but that’s anyway.

Corrie Sanders  42:44

But the underlying thing is that one, you can continue to pivot as a pharmacy entrepreneur. So you let your license lapse, who cares, you can go back and get it. And it’s not a huge deal. If you want to go back to something that you’ve known in the past with the W2 job, but to when you describe all these things, you’re saying it’s so fun, every single job you’ve taken on is so fun. And I think that it gets lost in this traditional education wheel where we go from undergrad to pharmacy school, to residency to certificates to additional training all these things you just continue on in this wheel. And it’s so much of it is performance based that you lose touch with why we really went into pharmacy, at least that’s how I feel is I got to a certain point where I just looked back and I was like, wow, I’ve done everything right. But it still feels wrong. And that is scary to me. And so I love that you’re at a point now where every job you’re describing, say it’s energizing for me, it’s fun, and that’s what ultimately keeps you happy and working overtime is that it’s this cliche sentiment where if you’re having fun, you never work a day in your life, totally get it. But that’s the freedom that you’ve given yourself is that work should be fun, it should be an energizing part of your life, not something that drains you for 40 hours a week. So I love hearing that you’re at that at that point. And I’ve got one more question and then I’ll ask where people can find you if they want to get in touch with you. But my last question is, what would you say to an aspiring pharmacy entrepreneur? So we shared those two lessons earlier of, you know, just starting and keeping moving. But if you’re sitting at the point of contemplating an idea within pharmacy practice and looking at something that’s in a non traditional setting, anything specific that you would share with that pharmacist?

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  44:25

I would say just get vocal and get online because you will stand out especially if you’re doing anything within any realm of health care, health care people are silent stalkers and scrollers. So if you have a voice and are consistent, you will stand out and you people will attract opportunities to you. And so the table start flipping instead of you like reaching out like Will anyone work with me? Will anyone want me? If you consistently stick to a topic and teach on it and just own it, people start coming out of the woodwork for you. And it’s just the best feeling that you don’t have to muscle your way into your own business, you find that like, just talk about something, help someone. And more opportunities come to you that like, oh, wow, I can work for this person or this person wants to hire me or like, it all comes together if you’re willing to like stand up and stand out, because few people are willing to do it. And so really like, that’s what magnetizes people to you, and get you out of this weird rat race of like applying to hundreds of jobs and getting more letters after your name, to feel like you’re the best candidate, don’t play that game. It’s an antiquated game, and you’re gonna get a position that you don’t want. And so even within entrepreneurship, like being willing to stand out, because you gotta stand out to be an entrepreneurship, and so just practice talking online every day, it might scare you to death, but really like that life skill, if you can get the hang of it. Like the right people will find you the world is your oyster. And just think of it as a skill and not as a personality trait that you either can or can’t do, because everything is learnable.

Corrie Sanders  46:01

I love that. Well, Jamie, this has been so great. I feel like we’ve covered a lot of ground. And you’ve done so much in the past decade that I think we broke it down into chunks that will be easily absorbed by our listeners. And this is coated with lots of different lessons. So thank you for being so vulnerable and transparent. You’ve been so gracious with your time and you do that online so well. Where can people find you if they want to learn more about what you’re doing? And about what you’ve done in the past or reach out to you independently? What’s the easiest way for our listeners to get in contact with you?

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  46:29

Oh, just on LinkedIn. That’s like, what social media I use. I love LinkedIn. You should be on LinkedIn. If you’re not, create an account. It’s the best thing you can do for your career. Find me there Jamie Wilkey LinkedIn, send me a DM I’ll talk to you. It’ll be fun. 

Corrie Sanders  46:45

That sounds great. Thank you again, Jamie Wilkie for being here. Congratulations on all your recent success. And we’re excited to see where you go in the next couple of years and even long term seeing where you end up.

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  46:57

 You too, Corrie! Thanks!

Tim Ulbrich  47:00

[DISCLAIMER] 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 to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. Furthermore, the information contained in our archive 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 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/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 352: Pharmacy Innovators with Kelley Carlstrom, PharmD, BCOP


In another episode of the Pharmacy Innovator series, Dr. Kelley Carlstrom, CEO and founder of KelleyCPharmD, discusses entrepreneurship in oncology pharmacy.

Episode Summary

On this episode, we have another segment of the YFP Podcast’s Pharmacy Innovator series! Hosted by Corrie Sanders, PharmD, this series is tailored for pharmacists venturing into entrepreneurship, featuring stories and strategies for aspiring pharmacy entrepreneurs.  

This week, we delve into the dynamic world of entrepreneurship within oncology pharmacy with Dr. Kelley Carlstrom. Kelley is a board-certified oncology pharmacist and CEO and founder of KelleyCPharmD, which addresses crucial gaps in clinical oncology training. Dr. Carlstrom shares her experiences working in traditional and non-traditional settings, healthcare technology, insights on her transition from employee to entrepreneur, her evolving business model, and opportunities in oncology for pharmacists. Kelley also discusses how to monetize your expertise and the value of communities when starting a business.

About Today’s Guest

Kelley Carlstrom is the CEO and founder of KelleyCPharmD, an education company that fills the considerable gap in clinical oncology training. She is passionate about democratizing oncology pharmacy education and increasing accessibility and inclusion through her unique L.E.A.R.N Oncology Method.

Kelley received her Doctor of Pharmacy from The University of Colorado and completed post-graduate residency training at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, MA. 

She is a board-certified oncology pharmacist that has worked in a variety of traditional and non-traditional settings including at large academic and small community cancer centers, as a consultant for a large electronic medical record implementation, and in the healthcare technology space helping create digital products for oncology clinicians and patients. 

Kelley is also a prolific content creator, sharing clinical and motivational pearls about oncology. She is part of the LinkedIn Top Voices program, an invitation-only program that recognizes and celebrates the most influential and engaging professionals on LinkedIn.

Key Points from the Episode

  • Entrepreneurship pathway in oncology pharmacy with Dr. Kelley Carlstrom. [0:00]
  • Career transition and business ideas for pharmacists. [2:34]
  • Starting a business in oncology and program design. [6:24]
  • Building a successful oncology pharmacy business model. [12:27]
  • Transitioning from consulting to entrepreneurship with a pharmacist. [18:00]
  • Leveraging clinical skills for business growth. [23:40]
  • LinkedIn usage and its impact on pharmacy businesses. [28:37]
  • Oncology pharmacy roles and opportunities. [36:07]
  • Oncology pharmacy training and business model. [42:27]
  • Entrepreneurship and decision-making with KelleyCPharmD. [49:35]

Episode Highlights

“You know, once you have a problem, it’s great. But then you have to figure out what’s the best way to solve it both for the both for the customer and for you. Like you don’t want to build a business that you don’t want to run.” – Kelley Carlstrom [7:44]

“So I think when the number one thing I would encourage pharmacists to do is to connect with people that are interesting to them, not just you know, other pharmacists.” -Kelley Carlstrom [30:20]

“When I got into entrepreneurship, I realized you need to make decisions very quickly. And if you’re always second guessing yourself, it’s not you’re you’re not going to be successful.” -Kelley Carlstrom [48:11]

“There are no bad decisions in entrepreneurship. It’s just you have to get off of the table and start walking and start doing things. And that’s how you learn.” – Kelley Carlstrom [48:55]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

Corrie Sanders  00:00

Hi YFP community, Corrie Sanders here, host of the Pharmacy Innovator segment of the YFP Podcast. Pharmacy Innovators is designed for pharmacists navigating the entrepreneurial journey. In this series we feature stories and strategies that help guide current and aspiring pharmacy entrepreneurs. Today we have Dr. Kelley Carlstrom, known on social media as the oncology pharmacist. Kelley is the CEO and founder of Kelley C PharmD, an education company that fills a considerable gap in Clinical Oncology training. Dr. Carlstrom is a board certified oncology pharmacist that has worked in a variety of traditional and non traditional settings. This includes a large academic medical center, small community cancer centers, and then the healthcare technology and startup space. Kelley is also a prolific content creator and was recently invited to be part of the LinkedIn top voices team, an invitation only program that recognizes and celebrates the most influential and engaging professionals on LinkedIn. Dr. Carlstrom is a returning guest the podcast and was featured in August of 2021 on episode 217. We will link to that episode in the show notes as it provides great detail about Kelley’s background and pharmacy journey. Today we speak to Kelley about the timing for her jump from employee to entrepreneur and dive into her unique business model how her business has evolved over time, and opportunities in oncology for both Kelley and the pharmacy profession as a whole. Kelley share some great lessons surrounding monetization of her expertise as an oncology pharmacist, to include the value of various communities and reflections on decision making both inside and outside of clinical practice. Now that we’ve set the stage, let’s dive into today’s main event. Our incredible guest, Dr. Kelley Carlstrom. Kelly, welcome back to the podcast. It’s great to have you.

Kelley Carlstrom  01:46

Thank you so much. I’m excited to chat again.

Corrie Sanders  01:49

Well, I know that you and Tim recorded in August of 2021. And during that time, you guys did a great job of really diving into your educational background, your pharmacy career path, what we want to really dive into today is that entrepreneurship pathway, and what exactly that looked like for you when that started in your career. And we’ll get into some details about your mindset and growth. So let’s start with really diving in to the consulting portion of your career. Before that you were in a large academic medical center, you were in an outpatient oncology clinic, and then you transitioned into consulting. So let’s talk about that consulting. How did you find that job? What important mindset shifts happened during that job? And how did that ultimately set you up for success with where you are now?

Kelley Carlstrom  02:34

Yeah, I love talking about this transition, because it was completely unexpected. In my career, I thought that I would be in a clinical practice role my entire career, you know, I spent a decade training in school and in residency to get that type of role I was in, and then all of a sudden, I was I was entertaining, moving out of that role. And I really had a lot of doubts and a lot of conversations with myself during that time about whether I really wanted to do that. And what it came down to was me kind of thinking through what’s the worst that could happen. You know, it sounded like a really interesting opportunity, this consulting. And being in clinical practice was kind of the safe bet. Like I knew I would always have a job that would be very, very comfortable. And consulting was a complete black box. I knew nothing about it. I didn’t really know what they were hiring me to do, which was a Cerner implementation, I had always worked with Epic in the hospitals I worked at. So it was very scary. And I just decided to jump in and see what doors it opened. And it opened a lot of doors both. From a job perspective, and like networking perspective, but also a lot of doors kind of, for me personally, kind of my mindset, how I thought about how I thought about where my career would be, because when I first started consulting, you know, they were paying me very well. And I didn’t, I had never seen a pharmacist in that type of role where I was there, essentially, for the knowledge I had. I wasn’t doing any of the building in the EMR. They had a whole team of analysts that were building, they were hiring me as that clinician, that liaison between their clinical end users, their doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and their Cerner builders, they needed somebody in between to kind of talk both languages. And that was really the first time I’d heard about that role. And that that led me to see like, man, there’s a lot of skills pharmacists have that we don’t talk about, we don’t recognize, we don’t market. And that’s that’s what really opened my eyes to thinking, oh, there’s a lot more out here that I could, that I could dive into. And so that’s how my business ideas kind of got started. I started having a whole bunch of ideas about how how else I could solve problems besides this kind of one specific problem I was solving during my consulting contract. And over time, I just started to iterate on that and lean into it. And it’s been a very interesting journey.

Corrie Sanders  05:06

Yeah, it’s great to hear you say that. Pharmacists aren’t very, don’t realize maybe some of the clinical or some of the skills that we had outside of our clinical training and our knowledge. And it really takes seeing the profession through a different lens to maybe bring that into fruition, and shine a light on some of the skills that we have that have nothing to do with clinical practice. But really what role we play in a team based care model, whether that’s from, you know, an electronic EMR perspective, or whether that’s from a direct patient care perspective. So I love that you highlighted that.

And then Kelley, let’s talk about how the company that you have now started to build off of that consulting practice. So you said you started getting some ideas for your company. What did that look like? Did you have people coming to you with specific questions? Were you getting questions from the company itself about oncology? How did the idea for your business really set a seed during that time?

Kelley Carlstrom  06:04

I was getting a lot of questions on LinkedIn for years where I’ve been active for years, but I honestly wasn’t paying that close attention, which is funny now that I look at it in hindsight. You know, you don’t pay attention until you start paying attention, right? And then the light bulb goes off. And you’re like, Man, why didn’t I think about this years ago? But I had a lot of ideas about about starting a business. You know, it was I had stumbled into a couple podcasts, a couple heard of people heard a couple of people talking about entrepreneurship. And I’m like, Okay, that sounds interesting. But I didn’t really there. This was kind of the beginning of the, of the pharmacy entrepreneur, kind of wave, if you will. And so there wasn’t a lot of people talking about it. So I had a couple ideas that were that were ruminating in my brain. But just all of a sudden, one day, I was answering a LinkedIn message. And everybody asked me the same question on LinkedIn, which was, hey, I’m new to oncology. You talk a lot about oncology on LinkedIn, can you point me to somewhere where I can learn it? And I was like, and I always I got this question so much, I had a copy, paste kind of ready to go of like, five resources that I send to everybody. And just one day, and I’m like, I’ve been answering the same question for a long time. Obviously, there’s a gap here, these people are not residency trained, they’re not going to go back to do residency. They’re working in cancer centers, taking care of cancer patients. And they should be, you know, they want to be better. And they should be supported in this. And I’m like, Alright, I’ve got the training, got the knowledge, how could I help them do this? And that that kind of started started the flow of of a million ideas. You know, once you have a problem, it’s great. But then you have to figure out what’s the best way to solve it both for the both for the customer and for you. Like you don’t want to build a business that you don’t want to run. Right? So I spent a lot of time at the beginning trying to figure out how the heck am I going to do this? Because oncology is giant.It’s not like where you can like set it and forget it, I’ll record a couple of videos and sell that and people will learn oncology. No, we get new drugs approved practically every week. It’s a it’s an ongoing thing. So it took a lot of design upfront.

Corrie Sanders  08:19

And let’s talk about that design. So when you touched base with Tim, it was almost three years ago now. And you were just about to launch the ELO program, which is enjoy learning oncology. So I know that that was going to be your first program within your business. How has that developed? What did that look like when you first put that out? And then ultimately, where are you today with the services and the products that you offer?

Kelley Carlstrom  08:46

Yeah, when I talked to him, I can’t believe it’s been three years – I feel I feel like I’m my mother when I say where does the time go? It goes by so fast. But I remember when I talked with Tim, I was at I was I had just finished my pilot version of my program. So when I had sold the pilot, I had reached out to the the people on my email list that I had expressed interest and I said, Hey, I’m gonna build this thing. It’s not built yet. I’m gonna build this plane as we’re flying it. And I had eight pharmacists that raised their hand that said, Yep, well, we’ll buy into this program, even though you have nothing built Kelley. I literally was building it as they were going through the content. And I took their feedback. And I took the lessons learned from that and kind of made changes and made iterations to it. And that’s kind of when I talked to Tim was when the the first official iteration was was rolling out. And it’s pretty much been the same from a structure perspective since then. So I’m going into the fourth year of that program. And it’s been when I think about the structure, you know, for pharmacists that are thinking about starting something, I really spend time take the time to spend time to really think about how you’re going to format the services that you offer. And one, you obviously want to think about it from the client perspective, like, how is the is the service that you’re offering, or the product you’re offering going to best suit the customer? But also, from your perspective. How are you going to design it? So, one, it doesn’t take up all of your day, because as a business owner, you actually have to run the business, which is, sounds like logical, right? But at the beginning, you don’t really think about how many kind of back end, if you will, things there are, you know, not just kind of bookkeeping, like the standard things. But also, marketing takes up a big chunk of my time and relationship building and just client support, customer success, things like that, like they, that takes a lot of time. So when I was building the program, I really thought about one, one challenge I have is oncology is rapidly changing. So I had to figure out how am I going to keep up with this in terms of content? And then two is, am I who’s going to do it? Is it me, or am I going to get other people to do it. And so I settled on a model where I hire other expert pharmacists to support the lesson content. So at any given time, I have 24 expert oncology pharmacists that are in my program, because I have 24 lessons. And they’re the ones that are reviewing the content, kind of making sure it’s updated. They’re the ones that are supporting my clients with clinical questions. And that takes that pressure off of me. But it also frees me up to do the operation side behind it, you know, I need to find those experts, I need to get them the content to review, I need to review their content, because the program is through my lens, it’s my kind of IP. And so just because an expert says we should include something doesn’t mean I necessarily include it, it’s just, you know, I know my customers very well I know what stage they’re at. And so I everything has to kind of filter through what the what the lenses of my client and my particular program. So when you’re designing your your business and your offers, I think it’s really important to think about all those different steps and not get bogged down in the really fun kind of sexy things at the beginning, which is like, Oh, I’m gonna, I’m gonna offer something for sale, it’s like, well, you have to, you have to really think thoughtfully about it and not not kind of box yourself in.

Corrie Sanders  12:27

And I want to highlight a couple of things that you said, especially at the beginning there about one, you had a very small cohort to start. You at eight pharmacists. And you were learning as you said, you were building the plane while you’re flying it, I think that that is instrumental to, it does not have to be a perfect business model. And it’s not going to be a perfect business model. And it is going to evolve over the course of time. So just getting started and realizing that yes, there’s going to be so many modifications and iterations of different things along the way. But all you really need is that small cohort or client base to launch yourself and to figure out what you need and the feedback and the evolution of a business. So I think that that’s really important to hold on is that it is going to not be perfect from the start. And you’re not going to have 100% market share or analysis from the second that you started your own company that will evolve over time. So let’s explain that that business model a little more just because I want listeners to really understand how valuable the business model that you’ve built is. And I think you’ve done such a great job. I mean, honestly, you are one of the pharmacy pioneers and really monetizing your clinical expertise. So you have these programs, and they’re sold directly to pharmacists that are practicing oncology. And how do they buy into that? Are they buying into each lesson individually? Are they buying into packages? Have you tiered them over time? Has that changed over time? What is ultimately the product that the consumer is buying?

Kelley Carlstrom  13:56

Yeah, great question. I have a essentially, I have a signature program, and I have a couple tiers to it. But I have one kind of main tier, one main offer that I want to sell. And the reason I want to sell it, it’s called my ELO Collaborative. The reason I want to sell it is because I know pharmacists get the best benefit from that particular program. When I was for and that’s that’s the one I’ve been building since my since my beta, my pilot project. And when I started selling it, I got people that would reach out to me and say, Hey, I don’t I don’t want this big program. I just want to do the content. And I’ll go through it on my own. And so I do have like a DIY path where people can access the program content, but they can’t access the experts in the program where which is where you can ask questions and get support and kind of hear, hear the experts talk through those real world nuances which are so important in oncology. And so that came about because people were asking the market was literally he asking me to sell them something. So that’s great when that happens, but I think you really do also need to know, how do you get your customers the best outcome, because at the end of the day, if they’re buying into your program or service, and they’re not getting an outcome, they’re not going to talk about you, you’re not going to have that word of mouth, which you do need and is beneficial in any type of business. So I think really, really honing in on on what that offer is. Because if you have a lot of offers, it’s hard to focus on one particular one. So I do have tiers to my main offer. And then over time, I’ve, I’ve considered other kind of smaller offers that I’m always kind of experimenting with, which I think is a really important part of entrepreneurship is experimentation, which I didn’t really understand. At the beginning, I wish I had done more of it initially. It’s easy to get kind of stuck in, like, Oh, this is what so and so guru says, or this is what some other entrepreneur’s doing, I’m going to I’m going to do it exactly for my business. But that’s our businesses, everybody, every business is different, particularly healthcare, clinician based businesses, I have found are very different, like marketing tactics don’t work the same as they do for, you know, other types of businesses. So I think experimentation is really important. But so I’ve got that name program, I’ve got tiers to that program, I also have some individual courses that I’m now starting to sell, I’m actually rolling those out now. And I also do, I also offer like one-to-one mentorship matching. So pharmacists that want to work one-to-one with an experienced oncology pharmacist, kind of like a preceptor and a residency where you can talk with them about maybe a QI project, or maybe you want to change roles, and you need to create a case presentation to present at an interview and you want some help with that. I also do some matching with things like that, but at the core of my business is this ELO collaborative program. That’s what I’m known for. And I help I help pharmacists that are working in oncology today, develop their baseline knowledge, and that’s a very clear kind of avatar or, or target client as well, you know. When I started, I was pretty broad. And I included people that were interested in oncology. But that is challenging, because if you’re not working in oncology today, and you’re trying to learn this really complex field, it’s much harder because you’re not applying it at work. So I would encourage listeners also to think, who is your best fit client, and it feels counterintuitive to narrow and to niche down. But it’s actually the best thing for a small business is be super, super clear. Because when people come across my website, when they come across my LinkedIn, when they meet me at a conference, it’s it’s very clear who I helped. And when it’s clear, that means other people can refer me very easily.

Corrie Sanders  18:00

And that is such an important point. I also love that you talk about experimenting a little bit. And not only using and leveraging experimenting to get to that target audience. But there’s no wrong and experimenting as an entrepreneur, trying to figure out who your ultimate end user is how that changes over time. And then it sounds like you’re doing a great job of also getting feedback from your clients to make sure that you’re providing the services that they want, you’re providing the services that they paid for. And that ultimately, you know, what they’re purchasing is, what they’re getting, and how you can help fill some more gaps and some more needs based off of those responses to I think that’s really great. So Kelly, I want to step back a little bit further. So we talked about the nuances of your business, and the tears and how that’s evolved over time. Let’s talk about the transition from that consulting role to ultimately stepping out and having your own business. Was there something that was very black and white, where the contract ended? And then you decided, Oh, this is the perfect time that I’ll do that. Were you kind of you know, one foot in each camp where you were doing both of them simultaneously, and then you eventually made the jump? What did that transition ultimately look like for you?

Kelley Carlstrom  19:12

Yeah, I straddled a lot for a long time. And I think I think most pharmacists could probably appreciate the fact that I was very risk averse. When I was in clinical practice. I think a lot of pharmacists are it’s probably a bias for who they let into pharmacy school or at least did when I applied you know, it’s just a natural tendency to be like, this is risky, I don’t want to do it. But when I jumped into that consulting role that kind of gave me that initial like zing if you will, of what it felt like to take a risk and it didn’t, it wasn’t terrible. Like alright, I survived this risk and I got a lot of benefit from it. So that that led me to think okay, what’s the next next risk I should take? Now with that said, I still I was very cautious at the beginning because I had so many ideas. I knew zero about business. Like in my pharmacy program, we had that classic, you know, business course, which was really an independent pharmacy course. So I didn’t take it because I wasn’t interested in it. So I knew nothing about business. And I was really nervous at the beginning, like, I don’t know anything about running this business. So I didn’t want to invest a lot of money into it, I was willing to invest my time, kind of my sweat equity, if you will. And that’s what I did. I had like, all the free tools, my email tool was free. I did pay, I did invest for some business coaching upfront, but for the most part, I tried to spend as little as possible until I validated the idea and people were paying me money. And then when that when I got that validation, and I started investing more, I realized, okay, if I can continue my day job and have the revenue, the income from that supporting my life, and anything extra that I make from my business is you know, is I don’t need to pay myself, I can reinvest it in the business. So that first pilot that I ran, I didn’t, I made zero money, I lost money on it, actually. But that didn’t matter to me, because I was getting a lot of feedback. And I was like validating the idea. And so I kept working I was I did consulting for almost three years. So during the pandemic, I actually had the opportunity to take a role in a in a startup. So a healthcare tech startup that was building oncology software tools for clinicians and for patients. And so what that allowed me to do was continue to straddle those things, I was building my business while I was still making a full time salary. And I did that for about a year and a half, and then transitioned into part time. So I actually got recruited out of that role. And this is a good little side caveat about LinkedIn. I always talk about how great LinkedIn is. And I will continue forever talking about it because pharmacists do not use it enough, we need to use it more. But I got recruited. And I was not looking for a job. But somebody reached out to me and said, Hey, I see you posting all this stuff, because I was posting a lot of oncology content for my marketing purposes. And he said, I want you at my company, what kind of job do you want? Essentially, essentially built me a job. And I said, well, I’m building this business, I don’t want to work full time. And he said, fine. So I got a, I got a part-time job in in a digital health company, and did that for about a year and then actually got laid off from that. So it was a lot of tech layoffs at that time, which was just about a year ago. And so that’s how I came to work full-time in my business, which honestly was a great thing. Funnily enough, when I found it funny enough, when, when I got laid off, I called a couple of people that day. And, two of them said immediately, congratulations. I said, I’m not sure you’re supposed to say that when somebody gets laid off. But they knew I was building this business and they were like, you’re ready to just like try it out and see how it goes full time. So I have now been full time in my business for about a year. So you know, suffice to say this, the summary of that is that I didn’t I didn’t want to go full-time right away. Because one I didn’t know if it could support me from a revenue perspective, I wanted to be able to invest a lot of my, my revenue back in the business, and to have it grow. And so I did, I straddled two, two roles for gosh, three and a half years or so before I went full time.

Corrie Sanders  23:40

But I think it’s important to recognize that that’s maybe the best path for most pharmacists that are risk averse. I think there’s a lot of validity to you know, jumping off a cliff and investing in yourself and sinking or swimming to see if you survive. But ultimately, that can have a lot of dark ends if you haven’t really pivoted to a model, if you haven’t established proof of concept, if you don’t have the confidence in yourself yet that you’re going to be able to run whatever business it is. So I love that you straddled both. To be honest, it sounds like you really built up something that was manageable and workable and scalable during that time, while you were you know, had one foot in each camp. And then eventually, when you were congratulated for getting laid off from your job. You already had that experience. And you already had that model and you already had that confidence to move forward with your business. So I love that. And I think that that’s a great growth trajectory and maybe a more realistic growth trajectory for some of our more risk averse pharmacists. So Kelley, what resources outside of LinkedIn and we’ll get into LinkedIn in a little bit because I want to give you some time to talk about this platform that you love so much. But outside of LinkedIn, what resources did you use? Was there any tapping into a small business community in your area? Did you have any coaches? Did you really just boot strap this thing independently all by yourself, or were there some outside community entities that helped you better leverage your clinical skill set and set up a business model?

Kelley Carlstrom  25:10

Well, nothing is ever done by yourself. There’s always a huge team, whether they work for you or not, but there’s always people that you lean on. And so my initial resource was the Medi-preneurs Conference, which I went to back in 20, I think it was early 2019. And that’s where I kind of brought like a bunch of ideas I had, and the education business is what kind of, you know, took root, if you will, in some of the conversations that we had, and that that’s what I ran with after that. But I have a software idea, actually, when I first start when I thought that was going to be what I what I went with at the beginning. So that’s a great tool I did, I did use some of the Score, resources. So everybody probably has a Score chapter near them. This is I forget exactly what it stands for. But it’s essentially retired executives that are that help the small business community and it’s a free service in your local community. I also did work with a couple different business coaches. And you know, that’s a whole conversation in and of itself, too. I’ve worked with many different coaches over over the past couple years. But I did work with a couple in the beginning that kind of helped me get some traction helped me understand the basics. So you know, I knew nothing about running a business. So business coaches, at least got me a little bit on the right fit about the right foot about finding like product market fit and who my clients would be and how I would need to talk about it. I also listened to a ton of podcasts. So when I was traveling for consulting, I was I was on a plane, like a lot. Listen to tons and tons of podcasts. And honestly, most of them were way over my head. I remember listening and them talking about acronyms or saying words that I had no idea what they meant. And I just kept listening and kind of absorbing just kind of throughout osmosis. Honestly, like I wasn’t taking notes or anything, I was just listening and seeing what little nuggets I could catch on to what strings I could pull a little bit and learn a little bit more. I didn’t do a lot of reading of business books at that time. But that’s something I use now I listen to a lot of audiobooks or read business books, I have a long list and in my queue of anytime somebody recommends a book, I drop it in my queue whether or not I can get to it right away

Corrie Sanders  27:28

I do the exact same!

Kelley Carlstrom  27:30

You can only read so many at a time. But and honestly something that I think we don’t value enough in pharmacy or not, I guess not that we don’t value enough, but we don’t know enough about it our communities. So how can you find a group of like minded people that are working towards a similar goal, so you all can learn from each other. I’ve been in multiple different communities. And I would encourage pharmacists to look outside of pharmacy communities as well. Because pharmacy, although pharmacy entrepreneurs and pharmacy, pharmacist run businesses alike, depending on your business, if you’re selling, you know, like a service to anybody. But if you’re marketing to healthcare clinicians, I think it’s really easy to get in a silo and forget about some of the general business practices. And I’ve learned so much from just a communities of regular entrepreneurs, you know, often I’m the only pharmacist in those groups. Sometimes there’s other healthcare clinicians, but usually, most of them are not in healthcare. And I’ve learned a lot from them.

Corrie Sanders  28:37

And I think that that’s an important differentiation, too. So you’re still learning a lot, but your end user is a pharmacist. So you can ultimately relate because you guys are seeing practice through the same lens, you’re seeing your service and your products through the same lens. But I think that’s even more important if you’re selling to non-pharmacists, is embedding yourselves in these communities and learning how to speak business to people that aren’t pharmacists or just how to speak business in general, right, like, we, one, don’t sell ourselves appropriately, normally, for what we can do as pharmacists. But really having to see your business outside of that pharmacy lens is something that I think you’re alluding to, and then I certainly found very helpful is having that communication line and having that vernacular to be relatable to someone that doesn’t know anything about your profession for the most part. So Kelley, let’s talk about the LinkedIn community. Because you’ve mentioned that a couple times throughout our conversation already, I want to give you a chance to really explain how LinkedIn has shaped and changed the trajectory of your business and your personal development. And then let’s talk a little bit to about the elite community that you’re a part of in LinkedIn and how you got invited into that.

Kelley Carlstrom  29:45

Sure, yeah, LinkedIn is, I think people underestimate it because they don’t know what it’s about. You know, I remember when I first joined, which was back in 2014, early 2014. And I remember looking at the feed and thinking like, oh, okay, this is sort of like the Facebook feed. But I didn’t see anything particularly interesting. So I’m like, this is kind of boring. Why am I here? And the reason I didn’t see anything interesting is because I didn’t have a network that I was connected with. So LinkedIn didn’t know what information to share with me. So I think when the number one thing I would encourage pharmacists to do is to connect with people that are interesting to them, not just you know, other pharmacists, but sure, other pharmacists. But also people that are, you know, if you’re interested in the technology space, you know, connect with technology leaders connect with if you’re in managed care to connect with people, you know, that are in that space that talk about problems and solutions in that space, because that means your feed is going to be interesting to you. So once I’ve been building up my, my network, they’re on LinkedIn for many years, I started to get much more engaged, because I saw interesting things, I connected with interesting people. And again, that’s where I got recruited into that consulting role, actually, the consulting role in the digital health role. So I’ve always, I’ve always known that that’s where people find me. But the key is, you have to be active. And what I mean by active is, you have to log in pretty regularly. I always chuckle when I send people a message, and I get a response, like three months later. And they say, sorry, I don’t really log in that often. And I’m like, okay, that’s, that’s fine, if you would, if you don’t want to do that, but you’re not going to be able to use LinkedIn, for the way that it’s been intended to be used, which is to have you be seen, and for you to see others and you have to log in, and you have to engage pharmacists are not engagers. We, we are lurkers by default, and by lurkers. I mean, you read the content, but you don’t click the Like button, you don’t message people, you don’t write comments, just lurk on other people’s posts. And I know this to be true, because I go to conferences, and people say, Kelley, I love your content! And I have no idea who they are. Because they never put a comment, they never send me a message, they just lurk on my information, which is fine. I mean, it’s free content I’m putting out there, but you’re I just had a post this week or last week about it where you know, those that those that speak up, stand up, like they’re the ones that if you’re saying if you’re putting yourself out there, and you’re interacting, and you’re commenting that you’re gonna get more kind of recognition, more help, like people are much more likely to respond to a message and answer a question you have when you’re when you’ve already engaged with your content previously. So I think those are the those are the big things like login regularly and really engage, even if it puts you out of your comfort zone, which it will in the beginning. But but push yourself, push yourself, you know, you don’t have to write this huge diatribe. Just write you know, think about one sentence comment on somebody’s post that’s insightful or something from your experience that could help not only the person that posted it, but also somebody else that comes across that post, you know, hey, think about this perspective, or this is what I have seen in practice when I’ve seen this happen that that goes a long way on LinkedIn. So that’s how I’ve used it, I use it today. I do I post a lot of content. So I post Monday through Friday. For our aspiring pharmacy entrepreneurs, I would not recommend starting there. It is a lot. I worked my way up to that. I first started posting infrequently, then I was posting once a week, then twice a week, then three days a week. And then when I went full time last year, I started posting five days a week, but content creation is is a whole is a whole thing. It’s a whole beast. It takes a lot. It takes a lot of time and effort to do it. So don’t don’t start there. But that’s how I that’s how I present on LinkedIn. I also do a lot of outreach. I connect with a lot of pharmacists, both individual pharmacists working in oncology and not, I connect with other healthcare leaders. And I use it to help not only kind of pharmacists find my program, because that’s a marketing effort that I’m putting in. I want pharmacists working in oncology that are new to oncology to see my content and recognize that I can help them learn this complex specialty. But I’m also using it to spread the word about oncology pharmacists. You know, I get a lot of people that comment on my posts to say, Oh, I didn’t realize oncology pharmacists could do that. And that that’s kind of a much more broad profession expansion when when people outside of our profession start recognizing what we can do. So I enjoy having that impact as well and that comes with when you have the ability to reach more people. So that’s how I use LinkedIn kind of on the regular and then you mentioned the group I’m a part of, which is called LinkedIn Top Voices. And this is an invite program, an invite only program that LinkedIn extends to people that are that produce a lot of content that is helping users of LinkedIn. And so I was invited into this program in January of this year, which is super exciting. It’s pretty it’s it is like, I think less than .5% of LinkedIn users are in this program. And what I have learned, from I’ve actually learned a lot about LinkedIn from being in this program just a few months. And what I’ve learned is that they it’s different than other social media platforms, they want their users of the LinkedIn platform to get better. They’re invested in helping professionals get better at their jobs, learn and develop themselves as they want people on the platform that are sharing content, that will help the users do that. So that’s how I got invited because I share a lot of content that helps oncology pharmacists get better at their jobs and develop themselves.

Corrie Sanders  36:07

And it’s great to certainly be rewarded for putting so much time into the platform and effort and energy over the past 10 years. And again, that’s something that was not recognized overnight, you gradually worked your way up from just sporadically posting to a couple times a week to every day, Monday through Friday. So I think that’s something too, that maybe entrepreneurs will lean into LinkedIn very, very hard at the beginning of their journeys, or maybe there’s a maybe they actually don’t lean into it at all. But really realizing what you can do with that platform. If you use it to the maximum extent if you’re cultivating a feed that provides you a voice and provides you information that’s relevant to your business, or relevant to your specialty area. There’s certainly a learning curve with LinkedIn. And there’s certainly a way that you can make the platform much more valuable to you than I think the average pharmacist realizes. So that’s great to hear that you’re being rewarded for the time and the effort that you put into the platform too. So Kelley, let’s talk a little bit now about what oncology is going to look like in the future. You are in the depths of oncology, you are the oncology pharmacist, as you’re known on LinkedIn. So what do you see for oncology in the future? And what do you see the roles for pharmacy specifically in oncology, and the next couple of years? So specifically for this question, I’m thinking of pharmacists that may or may not know if they want to dabble in oncology, or maybe they were voluntold to now be a part of an oncology program. Like where do you think the trajectory of oncology and pharmacy and oncology is going?

Kelley Carlstrom  37:43

I like voluntold. I have a lot of clients that kind of fell into oncology. I actually didn’t like oncology at school. It was not where I expected to be. And I didn’t get into it until my grandmother developed leukemia when I was a P4 student on rotation. So there’s kind of two components of this question. I guess there’s like the, the what types of jobs will there be, and like the tactical pieces, and then the outlook of, you know, where’s oncology pharmacy going? So the outlook is, is that it’s growing? It, I mean, it’s really the best specialty if we think about it. Yes, I’m biased, but it’s totally the best specialty for many reasons. Because we have the most drugs approved, we have the most clinical trials, we have arguably the most expensive drugs. And that means that and the most complex drugs, which all means that the pharmacist has a really important role in helping manage costs and toxicities from all these drugs that are hitting the market. So there’s definitely going to be lots of drugs, lots of opportunities, lots of jobs in oncology. And the types of jobs that there are and will be, are pretty vast. I don’t think people recognize how many different types of opportunities there are. So certainly, there are many positions in patient care. And this is where a lot of the jobs are right now. And that is because we are having similar burnout issues in oncology pharmacy as the rest of the profession is having lots of our experienced staff are leaving clinical practice, which is a bummer. Honestly. I think it’s great for them, because everybody’s entitled to you know, do jobs that,  do work that fulfills them, but it’s also leaving a big gap in patient care. And even if we can fill that gap with bodies, which we do, and they are all like centers are almost always recruiting and hiring for oncology positions. What what the missing piece is that we’re losing people with experience. So when somebody with 15 plus years walks out the door and they hire somebody with a couple of years, even if they’re residency trained, that’s a big gap in knowledge and experience that’s leaving. So I think that’s that’s a challenge we’re all facing and in all the oncology conferences we’re talking about it ad nauseam, because we haven’t figured out how to stem this kind of bleeding, if you will. So there’s lots of opportunity in patient care both in community cancers, in academic centers, inpatient, outpatient, individual private practices, even though there’s not a ton of those around anymore, there still are plenty. There are also patient care roles or specialty pharmacies. So this is particularly good for pharmacists in the retail community setting that want to do something a little bit different. Specialty Pharmacy is an excellent transition. Actually just heard about an opportunity in California where they, they ideally want somebody with a retail background, who also has an interest in oncology. They’re willing to do training in oncology, because they have legal requirements where they need a pick to dispense oral drugs and this particular legal situation, but they’re dispensing oncology drugs. So they want that retail background, but you need some, you know, they’re, they’re dealing with these complex drugs. So there’s a lot of opportunities there, we’ve got opportunities in managed care and the payer space. So think about every time you send a prescription, and it needs a prior authorization, those people on the other end at the insurance company that are dealing with those prior authorizations, they often have very little oncology training, which is not fun for getting approved complex oncology drugs, because we’re talking to these people that don’t know anything about oncology. And they’re the ones that are saying yes or no. So those people need oncology training. And there’s, there’s lots almost every oncology drug I feel like needs a prior auth these days. So a lot, there’s a lot of opportunities in managed care. There are certainly jobs in pharma. As with every specialty. There are jobs in tech, like I said, I worked in on the tech side of oncology for many years. And there’s there’s becoming more and more kind of non-traditional roles, I do get a lot of people that reach out asking about remote oncology jobs. There is not a ton, but there are some, there are some at companies like McKesson, for example, where they do still have patient interaction, but they also they also get to, you know, have the flexibility that comes from from being in a remote in a remote position. So lots of opportunity, lots of different types of roles. Again, this is why oncology is the best specialty. Yeah,

Corrie Sanders  42:27

I mean, I think you nailed the, or you hit the nail on the head with the funds are there. Unfortunately, cancer diagnosis is increasing. So the diagnostic component is there. And it’s really just going to be a never ending game, it seems of filling positions for a growing specialty area. So like, as you said, I think there’s a ton of opportunity across various different continuums in the care spectrum, for for people to jump into oncology, even if they don’t necessarily have the experience. And I also love that you said that you didn’t like oncology in school, I’m sure a lot of people will relate to the fact that oncology is a beast of a module in school. And it’s very, very intimidating. So comforting to know that there’s people like you that are creating content and creating different products that people can buy to bridge that gap between what was taught in school and what’s needed in clinical practice. I think that’s such a beautiful business model. So looking at your business model, specifically, what’s in the future for you? It seems like right now you’re doing a lot of direct to consumer products and advertising. Is there any component of a business to business model moving forward? What do you think the evolution of your business is looking like over the next couple years?

Kelley Carlstrom  43:35

Yes, I would love to, to continue to work with institutions. So I have started working with some institutions that enroll their staff in my program. So that’s definitely a focus as well. And that’s because, you know, they’re hiring people without experience, but they also need them to do the job. And what I have found from all centers, I talked to this, they have a very good onboarding, technical process. You know, when somebody’s newly hired, they show you the EMR, they tell you the workflow, this is how, you know, this is how we do this thing here. Nobody gives clinical training. They kind of expect you to learn that on the job or on your own, which I’ll tell you doesn’t work. There’s there’s not enough hours in the day to do it at work. You get kind of the bare mitts sure you’ll get comfortable with some of the drugs, but you won’t understand breast cancer. You won’t understand, well, why is the doctor blowing through treatment parameters for this drug, but not this drug? Those are things you have to learn from a clinical perspective, from a disease perspective. And so institutions are recognizing that they need to support their staff better. And I’ll tell you the main reason is because turnover is expensive to them. You know, I don’t think we realize as pharmacists how much money it costs an institution when you leave. Not only do they have to pull another FTE to cover that that role that you’re leaving, which leaves a gap open somewhere else that and they have to do that for however long the hiring processes and right now the hiring process is long because everybody’s hiring oncology pharmacists and they can’t find people. But then they have to onboard that person. So it takes months for somebody to get up to speed. So it is a it’s like tens of thousands of dollars for people to, to for to recruit. So it is a huge cost savings to retain employees. That means keeping everybody happy. And and also potentially promoting from within. So I have centers that have pulled retail pharmacists, they have pulled ambulatory care pharmacists, which is a pretty good kind of matchup to oncology because they understand the am care space. And there’s actually a lot of internal medicine issues in primary care as well. And then, you know, they have to learn the oncology piece. So I think there’s a lot of financial benefit for institutions to train up their staff. So I look forward to working with with more of those. I’m always going to work with individual pharmacists, because that is honestly what fills my cup. Like there’s nothing, there’s no greater feeling than when a pharmacist reaches out to me and says, I passed the BCAP exam. Or I finally had a conversation with my doctor and didn’t feel like an idiot. Or I made a recommendation about this chemotherapy dosing and the doctor accepted it. Like, ah, those feelings just made me feel so good, because that’s what it’s all about at the end of the day. It’s not only that pharmacist’s gets that, that when and feels like they’re doing good work. But that patient is getting better care because their pharmacist feels more confident and is better educated, and I can’t ask for anything better than that.

Corrie Sanders  46:43

I hope that you can see the ripple effect that you’re creating by training these pharmacists. I mean, it’s I love that the pharmacist gratification fills your cup. But I really hope that you can see not only are you changing so many pharmacist’s lives with the business that you’ve created, but ultimately, the end user and the patient, you’re just improving care for so many more people than you could ever do alone. I love it. I love your business model. I think that it honestly could be applicable to some other specialty areas. For pharmacists that may not be an oncology, there’s certainly a way to leverage monetizing your clinical expertise in different ways and providing that to different pharmacists or other health care providers. I just think what you’ve done and what you’ve built is just something to be very proud of. So Kelley, I will end today with any advice that you would give to any budding pharmacy entrepreneurs, any lessons that you’ve learned along the way or anything that sticks out in your head that you’d like to convey to the listeners.

Kelley Carlstrom  47:39

Yeah, something that I consistently remind myself to do, which is take action. It really makes a bigger difference than then you think it will make. And I remember when I was in clinical practice, I had mentioned that I was risk averse. And for me how that played out was that I would research things to the Nth degree, you know. Whether it was a purchase I was making, whether it was a job decision, it took me months to take a consulting role, because I just kept making pro/con lists. And when I got into entrepreneurship, I realized like that that doesn’t fly, when you’re running a business, it just the time that you need to make decisions is very quick. And if you’re always second guessing yourself, it’s not you’re you’re not going to be successful. So what I would encourage people to do is have that experimenters mindset, which is I’m going to make a decision, I’m going to take some action on whatever this thing is I’m going to pull the trigger on trying out this piece of content or talking to this particular client or trying this new software tool, and then reevaluate it, like nothing is set in stone. So you can think about it a month later, six months later, and decide did that experiment work? Did that decision I made lead to anything to those clients, I was potential clients I was talking to actually buy for me? If a lot of them did great. That was a positive experiment. If they didn’t, no. That means, okay, I need to pivot and change course, it doesn’t mean it was a bad decision. There are no bad decisions in entrepreneurship. It’s just you have to get off of the table and start walking and start doing things. And that’s how you learn. I can’t tell you how many how many times I’ve done something where I’m like, Well, that was unexpected. And if it if it just took me, you know, if it took me months to make that decision, it would have taken me months to figure out that thing didn’t work or that thing didn’t work, you know, you got to make faster decisions in this world.

Corrie Sanders  49:33

And I really enjoy the experimenters mindset. I think that’s a great summary and a great way to put it and also just how you’re alluding to how we make decisions in clinical practice and how we might research decisions and how we might look into those things to the Nth degree. And maybe that shouldn’t necessarily carry over to your business mindset and how you’re running your business and entrepreneurship. Those are two very different, maybe the same skill set, but two very different applications with how you’re going to think about approaching those decision making processes and the time that you put into them. So I love that. I think that was wonderfully said. Well, Kelley, for the listeners that want to find you, they can obviously find you on LinkedIn. But is there any other way that people can find you, your website and I would love for you to also spell out your name to make sure that people get the spelling correctly. We’ll link to it in the show notes. But where else can our viewers and our listeners find you?

Kelley Carlstrom  50:26

Yeah, definitely LinkedIn. Send me a message there, please. And my website is KelleyCPharmD. So that’s Kelly, K-e-l-l-e-y C PharmD. C for my last name. Yes, my mom spelled my name that way. And I always have to spell it.

Corrie Sanders  50:44

Well, Kelley, thank you for your time. This was a wonderful conversation. I think there were a lot of great nuggets built into this conversation, a lot of great learning points that our listeners can take. So thank you again for your time. This was wonderful and we look forward to keeping pace with you and watching you as your business continues to develop.

Kelley Carlstrom  51:01

Thanks so much, I appreciate it.

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Tim Ulbrich  51:03

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 to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. Furthermore, the information contained in our archived newsletters, blog posts and podcasts is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analyses expressed herein are solely those of Your Financial Pharmacist unless otherwise noted, and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward looking statements that are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward looking statements. For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/disclaimer. Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

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YFP 350: Monetizing Your Clinical Expertise with Dr. Gauthier (YFP Classic)


Tim Gauthier, PharmD, creator of two learning platforms shares advice for pharmacists seeking to monetize their clinical expertise. Episode sponsored by APhA.

Episode Summary

This week on the YFP Podcast, YFP Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, welcomes antimicrobial stewardship pharmacist and fellow pharmacy entrepreneur, Tim Gauthier. Tim is the creator of IDStewarship.com and LearnAntibiotics.com. During the show, Tim and Tim discuss the genesis for creating these two learning platforms, how Tim has monetized his clinical experience to create passive streams of income, and how he manages to stay consistent in entrepreneurship while balancing a full-time pharmacy career and fulfilling personal life.

Listeners will hear about Tim’s pathway to pharmacy, what drew him into the profession, his passion for infectious disease pharmacy, and what he was hoping to accomplish with his learning platforms, IDStwardship.com and LearnAntibiotics.com. Tim walks us through the content and resources available on his websites and how he has monetized them while providing a wealth of free content to his community.

Making things passive and generating passive revenue streams is crucial to Tim, and he shares the tools and systems he has put in place to make that goal possible while balancing other obligations. Tim also discusses the incredible value of community and how he has built an active, engaged pharmacists community that contributes to the platforms in multiple ways. Tim closes with advice for pharmacists looking to follow a similar path in monetizing their clinical expertise.

About Today’s Guest

Timothy P. Gauthier, Pharm.D., BCPS, BCIDP is a pharmacist trained in infectious diseases and antimicrobial stewardship. He is a clinician, researcher, educator, and author. He is an advocate for antimicrobial stewardship and pharmacy education.

Dr. Gauthier graduated from Northeastern University’s School of Pharmacy (Boston, MA) in 2008. He then completed a Post-Graduate Year-1 Pharmacy Practice Residency and a Post-Graduate Year-2 Infectious Diseases Pharmacy Residency at Jackson Memorial Hospital (Miami, FL). Since finishing terminal training he has worked in academia (Nova Southeastern University, 2010-2015), clinical practice (Miami Veterans Affairs Healthcare System, 2015-2019), and a leadership role (Baptist Health South Florida, 2019-current), all focusing on advancing the fields of infectious diseases pharmacy and antimicrobial stewardship.

He holds certifications from the Board of Pharmacy Specialties for Pharmacotherapy and Infectious diseases. He has completed the Making A Difference in Infectious Diseases Pharmacotherapy Antimicrobial Stewardship Training Program.

He is the creator and editor-in-chief of www.IDstewardship.com, www.LearnAntibiotics.com, and the many @IDstewardship social media profiles. He co-hosts the #ASPchat each month on Twitter. He reaches thousands of people each day on the internet and on social media, where he aims share reliable and relevant information from the world of pharmacy and healthcare in general. IDstewardship.com alone has registered over 5,00,000 page views as of November 2022.

Key Points from the Episode

  • The genesis for creating two learning platforms (IDStewardship.com and LearnAntibiotics.com)
  • How Dr. Gauthier has monetized his clinical expertise to create passive revenue streams
  • How Dr. Gauthier manages and leverages his time to be able to consistently put out good content while working full-time and fulfilling his personal commitments and goals

Episode Highlights

“So it’s been a really rewarding experience, and collaborating with others from around the world has been something an area of success, I think, to be part of kind of the community that I’ve built. But I have a lot of flexibility, and that’s one thing that a lot of organizations don’t have.” – Tim Gauthier

“But that’s what drives me because I just really am totally obsessed with infectious diseases and microbial stewardship, and I think people need help learning. I needed a lot of help learning. I see where there’s benefit. I see where there’s value. There’s some monetary benefit that comes with it. It’s not anything that’s extreme by any means. But by having that win-win, it’s really been something that I think has been worth pursuing.” – Tim Gauthier

“I think that’s kind of the most important thing I’ve learned when it comes to telling people you have something to share with them, showing them that it’s meaningful, getting them excited about it, showing them that you’re a reliable person that has the know-how to get them the resource that they need to succeed. That is really critical. So that’s kind of some of the messaging there.” – Tim Gauthier

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRO]

[00:00:00] T. ULBRICH: 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 antimicrobial stewardship pharmacist and fellow pharmacy entrepreneur, Tim Gauthier. Tim is the creator of IDStewardship.com and LearnAntibiotics.com. During the show, Tim and I talk about the genesis for creating these two learning platforms, how Tim has monetized his clinical expertise, and how he manages and leverages his time to be able to consistently put out good content while working full-time and fulfilling his personal commitments and goals.

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 250 households in 40-plus states. YFP Planning offers fee-only high-touch financial planning that is customized for the pharmacy professional. If you’re interested in learning more about how working one-on-one with a certified financial planner 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. 

All right, let’s jump into my interview with pharmacist and entrepreneur, Tim Gauthier. 

[INTERVIEW]

[00:01:21] T. ULBRICH: Tim, welcome to the show.

[00:01:23] T. GAUTHIER: Hey, thanks for having me. I’m really excited to be here. How are you, Tim?

[00:01:26] T. ULBRICH: I’m well. I’m excited to dig into the work that you’re doing and for you to share with the YFP community how you’ve been monetizing your clinical expertise. But before we jump into that, I’d love to learn about your journey into pharmacy school, into the profession, where you went to school, when you graduated, and what drew you into the profession of pharmacy.

[00:01:44] T. GAUTHIER: Oh, yeah, of course. So I went to Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts and graduated in 2008, which feels like yesterday, but it’s been four years now. I got into pharmacy because I really was interested in microbiology. It turns out it’s easier to transfer into microbiology from pharmacy than pharmacy to microbiology. So I started in pharmacy. I ended up sticking with it. I never thought I’d go into infectious diseases pharmacy, just because it didn’t really cross my mind, and I didn’t know much about that early in my years. 

Then later on, after PGY1, I had the opportunity to do a PGY2 in ID. Lo and behold, today, I’m an infectious diseases-obsessed pharmacist, who’s out there to defend antibiotics and promote clinical pharmacy. So here we are today.

[00:02:27] T. ULBRICH: So the Northeast, Tim, to Florida. This is the time of year in the Northeast. I grew up in the Buffalo area, where it’s beautiful. I always say six months out of the year, I’d live anywhere else. But the Midwest I’m at now or the Northeast. But the other six months, included this time of year, is absolutely gorgeous. So do you miss the seasons at all?

[00:02:49] T. GAUTHIER: I do miss the seasons, but the winter in Miami, Florida, where I live now, is just absolutely wonderful. I love the culture, as well as all the different types of food here. We do visit. Periodically, I go to Boston, Rhode Island, Connecticut and stuff. So it’s nice to be able to have a little bit of the best of both worlds.

[00:03:06] T. ULBRICH: Yeah, yeah. So we connected several years back, and I’ve been following your work for some time. I wanted to bring you out in the show, as I think what you’ve built is a really cool example of how pharmacists can monetize their clinical expertise. Certainly, as we’ll talk about, it’s not just about the money, but it’s being able to leverage the skills, the passion, the interest that you have to fill a gap in the market and to help people looking to learn more about a topic. 

Here, we’re going to be talking about infectious disease, of course, and we have featured a variety of individuals on the podcasts over the past year or so. So I’m excited to share your journey as well. So let’s start with IDStewardship.com. When and why did you start it? Who was it for? What were you hoping to accomplish? 

[00:03:49] T. GAUTHIER: Yeah. So IDStewardship.com has been alive since about 2016, and I just had a friend who knew how to build websites, and I wanted to build something on my own, and he offered to help and put it together. Then I kind of took off from there, and I do pretty much everything on my own now. When I have a technical problem, he comes in? But why did I do it? There’s a couple of reasons. 

One is I wanted to own my own space on the Internet, where I could have a voice, where I could publish things and not be restricted by a company or a manager or a group of people. Also, I just really enjoy your writing. So it gave me an opportunity to use a different part of my brain on the weekends and in the evening hours to share information that could be open access and someone else could benefit from. There’s a huge need in pharmacy. It has been for us to share our experiences and practical advice and insights so that others can learn and grow from it. 

Also, just sharing information about antibiotics to make it easier for people to understand what drugs can I use for MRSA or Pseudomonas. But then some deeper things like what are five things to know about, I don’t know, Stenotrophomonas or Acinetobacter. So really, it’s just a myriad of content these days. If you’re a pharmacy professional, if you’re a healthcare professional, there’s some stuff on there that you’ll be interested in. If you’re just looking for fun stuff, there’s a drug name emoji that people really, really seem to enjoy. 

[00:05:03] T. ULBRICH: So I’m trying to understand, Tim, the need you’re filling with this resource. So obviously, we all went through ID curriculums in our PharmD program. There are there are PGY2 residencies that focus on this fellowships who focus on this. Certainly, there are associations or interest groups within associations that focus on this. So what is different here that you’re trying to carve out to fill a need that you felt like either wasn’t being met for you or for other clinicians through those other learning pathways?

[00:05:32] T. GAUTHIER: Yeah. I didn’t do very well in ID in pharmacy school, ironically, and I didn’t feel comfortable with it until I was like halfway through my PGY2. Practical resources that are available that are insightful and that consider the things that are beyond just the obvious, those were lacking. That really motivated me to try to put out things that were interesting. But also, like when you go to practice, these are five things you need to know about [inaudible 00:05:55] come across [inaudible 00:05:57]. I think that the community has received it really well, but I use social media to amplify that voice in different social media platforms. 

So it’s been a really rewarding experience, and collaborating with others from around the world has been something an area of success, I think, to be part of kind of the community that I’ve built. But I have a lot of flexibility, and that’s one thing that a lot of organizations don’t have.

[00:06:21] T. ULBRICH: Yes, yeah. The digestible nature of the content strikes me. You’ve alluded to it a couple of times with examples you’ve given thus far in the show. It reminds me of one of the pharmacist we’ve had on this show, Kelley Carlstrom, on episode 217. Her business called KelleyCPharmD. She does an awesome job of this in the pharmacy space, specifically in oncology practice, making it accessible, no matter where you are. She trained at the Cleveland Clinic, an internationally recognized institution. Not everyone can go do your residency there, right? Has the time to commit, potentially has to travel to do that. 

Her vision really is what about all the other hospitals? What about all the rural healthcare settings that are trying to treat patients and get their clinical staff up to speed? Or perhaps different practice models that don’t have a lineup of board certified residency trained pharmacists with multiple credentials? How can we expand the accessibility of this content? That’s one of things I love about what you’re doing here, and it really does strike me as being much more accessible than what is out there and some more traditional training programs or those that are offered by other groups. 

It’s also written and presented in a way that is easy to understand. It’s relevant. It’s things that, Tim, you’re experiencing daily as a clinician yourself or encounters when you’re precepting residents or students. So you know the pain points. You know the questions, the problems, the points of confusion because you’re living them each day. I love the platform of what you built to address that. 

So take us, Tim, through IDStewardship.com, in terms of the content you have, the resources you offer, and how you’ve been able to monetize it, right? You give out a lot of great content for free. But you also been able to monetize the site and enable to reap some of the fruit for all the work that you’re putting in, and you’ve put in over the last seven years. So talk to us about what you offer and provide on the site and how you’ve been able to monetize that.

[00:08:14] T. GAUTHIER: Yeah. I offered way too much stuff for free, probably. But exactly like an altruistic passion project, it has to make some kind of money for my wife to allow me to continue it. So definitely, it’s a mixed bag. But the art of the IDStewardship.com offers articles, which are blog articles talking about the student experience, the pharmacist experience, clinical insights into common questions that we ask and that we see. Those are always written by content experts who have practical experience in the area, and I vet all that content to make sure it’s reliable, credible, and it goes beyond like the obvious content that you might find in a general article. 

Also, there’s a study guide section, which is free and open access that has a picture of the drug, some of my key points, which I think you might find on your pharmacy school exams or maybe the BCPS or BCIDP exam and then links to some of the articles or some of the guidelines that are really relevant to that drug. I have a list of resources, which is pretty cool. If you’re looking for anything about antibiotics, that is a very robust list of resources. So like hepatitis C screening for Child-Pugh score. There’s a calculator in there. Just pick one random example. Or even if you’re looking for regulatory content from the Joint Commission, it’s linked there. 

I also have the contributor section, where you can see who’s participated, and there’s really a lot of contributors to my website. So I do want to emphasize that that’s a really cool part of what I’ve been able to do, and it’s not just Tim doing it. It’s the community. But I kind of lead it because I’m kind of like the editor in chief of the content founder. The other part, though, which I really want to talk about for a second is LearnAntibiotics.com. So I’ve taken the opportunity to show people that, yes, these are articles that are available. But I’ve been able to produce content that you can use for learning. As a background in academia, I know that you have to go and be able to identify and define before you can analyze and assess and predict. 

So I’ve built content specifically to help people through that learning process. If you’re looking to identify and define, I have cheat sheets on different disease states, on different drug classes. Those can help people to say, okay, like, “Pseudomonas drugs, these are my drugs.” But then I also make more fun content that has like a word search or a Jeopardy game. Those can be applied to the specific area. Then the practice tests I’ve built so that if you are able to pass that practice test, you can practice pretty competently as a pharmacist and know what questions to ask for infectious diseases and even some of them I’ll give you. Here’s the question, here’s the answer, and here’s the rationale for why each answer is right, and each answer is wrong. So it’s pretty robust. 

[00:10:59] T. ULBRICH: I love that and I want to come back in a little bit to talk more about the LearnAntibiotics.com, in terms of what you’re trying to accomplish there. I think that’s going to give some folks some interesting ideas about as you’re considering monetizing your clinical expertise, there’s a lot of different ways to do that. I love what you’ve built there with that membership type of model. 

Two words, Tim, that really stand out about what you’ve built and the vision that you have going forward are passion and community. You mentioned community just a moment ago, and I love that you’ve brought together a group of people that are, obviously, passionate about learning more about antimicrobial stewardship, learning more about infectious disease, bringing in contributors to the site, taking them from just a passive learner, to engaging them in the conversation, contributing to the community, and then passion. Your passion for this topic and furthering individuals’ knowledge and, obviously, the more our healthcare professionals know about this topic, the better they’re able to serve their patients. 

I think this is so important for folks to hear, when you’re working on a side hustle or a business, especially when you’re working a full-time job, you have lots of other commitments, doing something that you’re passionate about, you mentioned that I probably got too much free content out there, right? It’s a passion project for you. Yes, you’re monetizing it. But that is going to really drive the energy and the enthusiasm to continue to build, especially in the early years, as someone who’s trying to get something off the ground. 

Tim, as people go to IDStewardship.com and they see what you’ve built over several years, how much of this is what you have built and maintained? And how much of this is what you have other people that are helping you in building and maintaining the site?

[00:12:36] T. GAUTHIER: That’s a great question, and it’s definitely changed over time. When I started to look at developing a website, I talked to one of my friends who’s in website development, and he said, “Tim, we can do a website. But this is not a six-month thing, and this is not a one-year thing. This is like a 10-year journey, and you have to think of it very long-term.” So taking small bites has been one of the keys to success. As I’ve understood the workflows on developing different items, it’s gotten to be more efficient over time. I do produce actually the majority of the content on my own when it comes to the background work. 

But the one thing that people send to the community of pharmacists, they’re willing to be a part of this journey. Them sending me articles and communicating with me and offering their assistance and trying to get their message out and share their passion, that really has enabled me to produce more content and put more information out there. But it is a tremendous amount of work. I do spend a lot of time between the hours of 8:00 PM and 11:00 PM working on this type of stuff. I think if you don’t have the passion for it, it’s probably going to be hard to do it long term. 

But that’s what drives me because I just really am totally obsessed with infectious diseases and microbial stewardship, and I think people need help learning. I needed a lot of help learning. I see where there’s benefit. I see where there’s value. There’s some monetary benefit that comes with it. It’s not anything that’s extreme by any means. But by having that win-win, it’s really been something that I think has been worth pursuing. 

One of the secrets that they say is not to do things alone, right? If you’re going to build a program like this, or you’re going to build a side business. I have mixed feelings about that. On one hand, I love the freedom that I have. I have total creative freedom to do whatever I want, whenever I want, with no one arguing with me. But at the same time, being in an echo chamber with yourself is not always a positive thing, and having a partner can push you in good directions. So I think partnerships are important, and you can choose to pursue things as a partnership or as an individual. 

Something else I want to note that as I built out what I have online with IDStewardship is I’ve really purposely tried to make it about the brand and not about me. That kind of protects me in a way because the voice is the voice of the brand and not the voice of the individual. Also, people can engage within behind that brand and be a part of the community again, rather than it being part of what Tim is doing. So that was actually very strategic in the development. 

[00:15:02] T. ULBRICH: Yeah, Tim. I think that’s a strategic move for the reason you mentioned also. I think about the passion and the mission of what you’re trying to do. Like there may be a day where maybe this isn’t only Tim who’s doing this. Or for whatever reason, you have others that are involved in the mission of advancing the education around IDStewardship and being able to have this information accessible, where folks can learn and perhaps be excited about learning it I think transcends just one person, right? So I think the contributors is another important aspect here of what you’ve highlighted.

[00:15:34] T. GAUTHIER: Like making things passive is also really important to me. I’ve learned that a lot during COVID because COVID has been absolutely horrible for all infectious diseases pharmacists and time management and when life was balanced. I mean, everybody in general. But I mean, trying to keep up with the literature and be engaged, on top of having this site and stuff going on, I need things to be able to put on pause, right? If I have no commitments that I’ve made, that’s not going to serve me well in the long term. So I really try to do things that are passive whenever possible and then only commit to like a couple of things at a time.

[00:16:05] T. ULBRICH: Yeah. One other thing I was thinking about, Tim, as I was looking at your site, that would be I think good advice for folks that are thinking about building their own, especially if they don’t have a huge budget upfront to be able to hire a web developer. If you’re building a content-based site, it could be blog articles that you’re adding, podcasts that you’re adding, e-resources that you’re adding checklists, guides, e-books, whatever, like you want to make sure you’re building it in a way that you understand and can add to it on a regular basis. 

So even if you’re working with a developer or a contractor to help you, making sure you have enough understanding of the back end so that you’re not spending a whole lot of money long-term or frustrated that each time you’re trying to add a piece of content to the site, whether that’s a blog, podcast, an opt-in guide, whatever be the case, that you want to be able to have something that’s nimble, and you can add to over time. 

[00:16:51] T. GAUTHIER: I’ve seen some people who built 20,000, 25,000-dollar websites, and they tend to be the people that follow a lot of podcasters in the space of like social media and engagement and business development. So I think if you’re committed to it, it can be worth the money. But you got to proceed with caution.

[00:17:10] T. ULBRICH: When I go to the site, Tim, and you mentioned already that LearnAantibiotics.com, www.learnantibiotics.com, we’ll link to that in the show notes, which takes you over to the IDStewardship site, that really is the membership portion of the site, where folks can be engaging with the community on an ongoing basis. Obviously, the goal there is that becomes some stability of recurring revenue that supports a lot of the time and effort and the free content that you’re putting out there. 

Talk to us about – I think in content marketing, and I hesitate to use that word because I feel like you’re leading with such good passion and education that sometimes that word can sound dirty. But ultimately, the value that you’re providing and really good free rich education is naturally going to make people aware of what you’re doing on the membership side, which has a recurring revenue potential. 

So what has your strategy or approach been to connect the free content with the membership model? Is it just that, hey, more eyeballs on the site and value that they’ll kind of find their way over there? Is it opt-ins that then point people to that resource? Tell us more about the strategy that you’ve employed to connect the free education people are viewing and receiving with some of the paid options you have. 

[00:18:24] T. GAUTHIER: For sure. As you’re saying, this, I’m thinking about how I need to be more strategic. Sometimes, just go with the flow. That feels good. That feels good. Sometimes, I think of things, and I’m like, “Oh, I wish I had done that.” Even right now, there’s a list of things that if I had the time in my life to do, I would totally do. 

But in general, what I try to do is capture a large audience and engage a large audience and do that through all these different ways that I think of, whether it’s something that’s like a clickable link on an Instagram story, or it’s a new blog post that I put out, or it’s putting a meme out there or just sharing like, “Hey, here’s like a part of my cheat sheet. If you’d like to see more of it like, shoot me your email address. I’ll shoot you a copy of this cheat sheet in full.” Then I have a way to communicate with those individuals. So if you’re just interested in the LearnAntibotics site or you’re interested in like all of IDStewardship, and you want to get our monthly newsletter, I’m able to reach you that way.

Another thing that’s important about having a mail listing is that if like tomorrow, Instagram decides to just delete my account, which they can’t, I have nothing. I’m left with nothing. Whereas since I have a Mailchimp account, they’re able to house my ability to communicate with my people. So in general, I provide something for free. I get the ability to contact these people. If you want to unsubscribe, I have no problem with that. Actually, when people unsubscribe, I don’t have to pay for you to be on my listserv anymore. I actually don’t mind at all. So if you don’t look at the newsletters we send out, feel free to unsubscribe. But if you want to subscribe, then we’d love to communicate with you. 

I think that’s kind of the most important thing I’ve learned when it comes to telling people you have something to share with them, showing them that it’s meaningful, getting them excited about it, showing them that you’re a reliable person that has the know-how to get them the resource that they need to succeed. That is really critical. So that’s kind of some of the messaging there. 

[00:20:18] T. ULBRICH: Yeah. I think one of the other things you’ve done really well, Tim, that I admire is you’re consistent in your content. We know and we’ll talk in a moment about how you balance time with other personal responsibilities. None of us are perfect and consistent in delivering the same amount of material, but you’ve been consistent over the years in terms of there’s not months and months of like quiet phases, and then you dump a bunch of content. 

I think that’s so important for any – If we think about communities we like to be a part of or content we like to follow, it’s a consistent offering that we’re engaging with that content. So as you’re getting started, as someone’s getting started, I think thinking about what is – Once you decide on the medium, is it a blog, is it a podcast, whatever you’re looking at, is it something like a vlog, what is going to be your rhythm roughly that you’re going to be delivering content and making sure you’re showing up on a consistent basis with your audience and those that are finding value from what you’re doing?

[00:21:10] T. GAUTHIER: Along those lines, I think listening to your community is important. I had someone email me recently and say, “Hey, Tim. I wish you had a malaria cheat sheet because I’m studying for the BCIDP exam or the BCPS exam,” I forget which. I made one that weekend, and I really enjoyed it. I thought it was super interesting. I learned a bunch about malaria. So not only does it like help people advance their professional goals. It helps me remember things. I use my websites all the time to remember some of these nuances that are details that are just – You can’t remember everything.

[00:21:40] T. ULBRICH: That’s where I think the community piece comes in well too. You’ve got a good social media following. I’m sure people reach out to your questions all the time. You have students on rotation. You start to put some of those repeated questions into content buckets, right? I know you have a list of running content ideas. I’m sure you do. But once you hear a question more than one, two, or three times, it’s like, all right, maybe there’s something here in terms of a piece of content that we should be putting out. 

Let’s talk about time and balancing doing this. You’ve certainly made a strong case that there’s a lot of passion behind it. But nonetheless, like you’ve got a family. You’re working a full-time job. You’re precepting residents, students. You have expectations at home and at work. Like what strategies have you employed time blocking, or how have you been able to really leverage time so that you can continue to put out content on a consistent basis while working full-time?

[00:22:31] T. GAUTHIER: Yeah. Well, in the early days, and I was working at the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Miami, and they’re very strict in terms of their hours. So when you’re off duty, you’re off time. So everything that I did in the beginning was during off hours. That’s still the same today, but it taught me that you should only work on these things when you’re not on company resources, etc. 

But then I didn’t have small children in the early days, which meant I have had a lot more time, especially in the evening areas of the day. More recently, I have a three-year-old and a seven-year-old, and the evening hours are much more strenuous. So now, since we’ve developed more of an awareness in the community about IDStewardship, I reach out to people. When I see an article posted on like Twitter about something new that I’m interested in, I’ll reach out to the person who authored the article and say, “Hey, I’d love to have you write five things to know about whatever the topic is.” 

People almost always say yes because they want to share their passion. But it’s not just about me getting content. They now have a way to share that information. Sometimes, it’s the resident or the student or the second or third author that I work with. So they get an opportunity to share their voice. Coming up with strategies where I don’t have to do all the work has been one thing. Then also, like when you look at the development of like research and scholarly work in an academic position, you kind of look at it like a conveyor belt, and you want projects in all areas of your conveyor belt. 

Some things are in – You’re designing. What do you think it might look like, and you have your concepts, your list of projects? Then other things are going into publication, going out on the newsletter. So you’re constantly just like feeding that conveyor belt and keeping it going in different areas, and that’s how you stay productive over a long period of time. It’s not about taking one thing and rushing it forward but just maintaining that conveyor belt. There might be different conveyor belts that go faster or slower, and some things might take two years to do. 

But I always move forward with projects based upon what I think is like fun and interesting, and I don’t put pressure on people. I’m not out there saying, “Hey, if you don’t get back to me in two weeks, you’re not going to be allowed to do this.” If you don’t feel like doing this later because you have a problem, whatever. Don’t do it. If you want to circle back in two years, circle back into years, like no pressure.

[00:24:39] T. ULBRICH: Take us a little bit behind the scenes. I think one of the barriers that folks run into is they’re just trying to get started, and they go to someone’s site. They don’t necessarily have a picture of what are some of the tools and the systems and the processes that you have in place. You’ve mentioned a couple things already. Obviously, you’ve got the website infrastructure. You mentioned the email list. So like for us, we use WordPress for our website build. We use Bluehost for our domain hosting. We use ActiveCampaign for our email marketing. Then we have several other tools we use for project management and other things. 

So what are some of the tools that you use or that you have found to be helpful as you’ve been working on IDStewardship?

[00:25:18] T. GAUTHIER: Yeah, for sure. I use WordPress, and then I use WPX Hosting. Then for like the memberships, it’s PMPro or Paid Memberships Pro. I’ve been pretty happy with those overall. The WordPress in particular, it’s just overall really easy to use. You add a plug in. It updates. It’s no big deal. WPX is really – Once a year, I pay a fee. Once in a while, I’ll have a bandwidth issue. So I’ve learned that I need to downsize the images that I use when I post, which I think a lot of people kind of learn that lesson. 

I mean, that’s really the gist of it. Outside that, I use Mailchimp for my emails. I don’t really love how much they charge. I think they’re charging me like 250 a month for like 25,000 subscribers. So it’s great to have that many subscribers, but it doesn’t feel good paying $2,500 a year for that. But it also motivates me to put out content to use that tool that I’m paying for. So those are some of the key things that I’m using now. 

Otherwise, I just maintained like Excel sheets for a while. In the beginning, when I didn’t have as much content, I would do a lineup, and I would remind myself of when I posted to Facebook about a specific blog post, and I would just keep cycling through them. So I was always posting like one thing a day on Facebook. But it’s gotten to the point that I can’t do that anymore. I’d need to hire like a social media manager or something like that. I think as you grow, you need to start considering how can you work with who can you bring in. 

Another thing is as I’ve kind of met people in life through my way or through other venues, I work with them. So I just met a guy over the weekend that he prints things for a living, right? So there’s so much opportunity for us to collaborate with printing things. My audience is interested in topics of pharmacy and infectious diseases. So being entrepreneurial is one of the definitely keys to success here and also not being stuck in your ways, being able to evaluate things, and then accept feedback. If it’s not going well and someone tells you it’s not going well, take that advice and see how you can make it better and ask them, “Hey, how can I make this better?”

[00:27:13] T. ULBRICH: Yes, great advice, Tim. I think for people that are listening, and they hear 25,000 people on an email list and again not getting paralyzed from Jump Street. I think I love what you shared of it was a spreadsheet to begin with, right? I’ve shared before on this podcast that the first 100 subscribers on our email list were a combination of text messages and Facebook messages and LinkedIn posts that I had, and that eventually got added to an email software. Eventually, we added automations. Eventually, we added opt-in funnels and all those things, project management, social media management tools, things like that. But just getting started, you can do a lot of that manually. Get some of the things off the ground. Then as you get momentum, you can build out the systems and the processes that will help with efficiencies. 

Tim, if someone is listening and they are on the very front end of this, so let’s just pick another specialty that’s out there, and they’re thinking, “I’d love to build something in this domain, similar to what I see Tim doing with IDStewardship, Kelley doing with oncology. I also think about what Jimmy Pruitt’s doing with acute care out there in pharmacy,” like what advice would you have with them at the very beginning of their journey? If you think back to where you were when you started in 2015, like now looking back seven years later, like what piece of advice would you have to share with them as they get started on this journey?

[00:28:33] T. GAUTHIER: Well, I mean, first of all, not just because I – If I say something, it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily true. So it’s just my opinion on some of this. So feel free to disagree. But one thing I feel is that, especially when it comes to social media, people go on Twitter, on TikTok, on Facebook because they’re looking for things for themselves. So if you’re not putting out things that are going to be interesting to your audience, then your audience is not going to grow like they should. 

So everything that you do, no matter what you’re doing, should be aligned with why your audience is going to that area, and that’s going to help to get them to like it, get them to share it, which is very, very difficult in the pharmacy profession. We’re like 90% passive users. We love to learn. 

[00:29:11] T. ULBRICH: That’s right. 

[00:29:13] T. GAUTHIER: I’ll post something on Facebook, man, and it’s like five likes. But then I’ll see that I got 250 link clicks. So it’s very interesting. From an outside, you might look at my Facebook page or something and say, “Oh, I got a couple of likes or clicks,” and you can’t see the clicks, but you’ll only see a couple of likes, and they got lots of clicks. So it’s kind of one thing that’s important, I think, as you’re starting off. 

Another thing about starting off would probably be considered like long-term how you’re going to grow, and you’re talking about the design of your product. I think that core message and that core what am I doing here is really important. Over time, is that going to change? Because if it’s focused on something that’s relevant now like COVID, for example, or moneypox, maybe that’s not relevant in two years from now.

[00:29:59] T. ULBRICH: It’s pretty cool. Yep, absolutely. That’s great stuff, Tim. I’m excited for our listeners, if they’re not already aware to follow the journey, and I hope they’ll opt in your newsletter. Where is the best place that folks can go to follow you and the journey and the work that you’re doing?

[00:30:16] T. GAUTHIER: Yeah. I mean, definitely IDStewardship.com, and you can sign up for our newsletter there or just follow along on Instagram or our Facebook or goods areas. Twitter, you can find me there as well. It’s a little bit more focused on infectious diseases and as a whole and staying up with the literature on Twitter. So either of those but the newsletters are really a good place to start.

[00:30:37] T. ULBRICH: Awesome. Thanks, Tim. Appreciate you taking time to come on the show.

[00:30:39] T. GAUTHIER: Oh, it was my pleasure. We’ve worked together for so long over the years. It’s really a wonderful opportunity for me, and I appreciate your time.

[00:30:46] T. ULBRICH: Thank you. 

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[00:30:47] T. ULBRICH: As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. 

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

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

[END]

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YFP 332: Lan Ho Founder of Fat Miilk


On this episode, sponsored by Pyrls, Lan Ho, PharmD, Founder of Fat Miilk, shares her journey going from pharmacist to full-time entrepreneur featured on Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars.

Episode Summary

Joining us this week on the YFP Podcast is Lan Ho, PharmD, Founder of Fat Miilk Vietnamese Coffee Company based in Chicago, Illinois. Tune in as we dive into her career journey in pharmacy before she shares why she started Fat Miilk, what she learned after appearing on Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars, the most important thing she’s learned about herself since starting the business, and what lies ahead for Fat Miilk in the coming years. We discuss every step of Lan’s incredible journey to full-time entrepreneurship which began with an unexpected furlough from a retail pharmacy position in in 2020. We explore the rewards available when you are willing to take a risk, the biggest areas of growth she has experienced along the way, and why she is choosing a clicks-to-bricks approach to building her business.

About Today’s Guest

Lan Ho is a first-generation Vietnamese American who made a bold career change from pharmacist to beverage entrepreneur after being furloughed during the pandemic. She pivoted to pursue her dream and successfully launched Fat Miilk – Chicago’s first Vietnamese CPG coffee company. The brand saw instant global recognition when Bon Appetit listed Fat Miilk on their “Highly Recommend” list. Fat Miilk can be found in publications, including Eater, TimeOut, Thrillest, Roast Magazine, and more. Lan is recognized as a thought leader in consumer branding, customer experience, CPG, and the coffee industry. She was recently a finalist on Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars on FOX network, where she represented her brand, leadership, and entrepreneurial story. Lan is currently expanding Fat Miilk’s reach through e-commerce and with Chicago’s first Vietnamese coffee bar showcasing a full cultural experience. She aims to inspire more minority representation in mass media, entrepreneurship, and executive roles.

Key Points From the Episode

  • Introducing Lan Ho, PharmD, Founder of Fat Miilk Vietnamese Coffee Company.
  • Her start in pharmacy fuelled by her parent’s goals for her education and career.
  • Why it is so important to embark on self-discovery work before committing to a career.
  • What motivated Lan to start Fat Miilk, the first Vietnamese CPG company in Chicago.
  • Benefits and challenges of entering a saturated industry. 
  • How Fat Miilk is merging two industries together.
  • What it means to protect your energy as an entrepreneur.
  • Lan’s experience on Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars and what she learned about herself.
  • The rewards of taking up space and being willing to take a risk. 
  • Feedback Lan received from experts on the show. 
  • How the creative agency, Truffl, challenged every branding decision behind Fat Miilk. 
  • How Lan’s 2020 furlough led her to take the plunge into entrepreneurship.
  • The biggest areas of growth and learning while transitioning into entrepreneurship.
  • The clicks and bricks business approach that Lan is adopting for the product. 
  • Engaging customers to make a difference in climate change.

Episode Highlights

“If you hit on that unique proposition, you will stand out and you will win big.” — @iamlanho [0:10:17]

“In entrepreneurship, you have to protect your energy, especially in the beginning.” — @iamlanho [0:14:54]

“Do an audit about what you’re telling people and until you’re at a place to invite their opinions or their feedback into your life, keep it to yourself. Do yourself that favor.” — @iamlanho [0:17:09]

“When you transition from you know, going from a corporate structure into anything on your own, you are the corporate structure. A lot of people don’t know that.” — @iamlanho [0:36:02]

“[Having] their online presence but they also have this in-person on-the-ground brand experience [which is] so necessary for an emerging market.” — @iamlanho [0:40:07]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:00.8] 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 welcome pharmacist turned entrepreneur, Lan Ho, founder of Fat Miilk Vietnamese Coffee Company that’s based in Chicago, Illinois. We discuss her career journey in pharmacy, why she started Fat Miilk, what she learned after appearing in the finale of Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars, the most important thing she’s learned about herself since starting the business, and what lies ahead for Fat Miilk in the coming years. 

Let’s hear a brief message from today’s sponsor, Pyrls, and then we’ll jump into my interview with Lan.

[SPONSOR MESSAGE]

[0:00:38.3] JW: This is Justin Woods from the YFP Team with a quick message before the show. If you’re tired of relying on shared passwords or spending hundreds of dollars for drug information, we’ve got great news for you. Today’s podcast sponsor, Pyrls, is changing the game for pharmacy professionals. Pyrls offers top drug summaries, clinical teaching points, a drug interaction checker, calculators, and guideline reviews, all in one user-friendly resource.

They also recently added free weekly quizzes to test your Pharmacotherapy knowledge. Whether you’re on your web browser or accessing the mobile app, Pyrls has got you covered. Visit pyrls.com, that’s P-R-Y-L-S.com, to get access to more than 25 free Pharmacotherapy charts to get you started. Upgrade your drug information resources today with Pyrls, don’t miss out on this game-changing resource.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:01:33.3] TU: Lan, welcome to the show.

[0:01:34.9] LH: Hi, happy to be here.

[0:01:36.8] TU: Well, it’s an honor to have you. I ran across your entrepreneurial journey after a former student of mine reached out and said, “Hey, you’ve got to check out this pharmacist turned entrepreneur, she’s going to be on the final of Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars.” Of course, I said, “Heck yeah, pharmacist, entrepreneur, I’ll be following that.”

[0:01:55.1] LH: Yes.

[0:01:55.2] TU: As I learn more about your story, I was fascinated with the work that you’ve been doing, why you’ve gotten into this area of work, and I wanted to introduce it to our community as well. And so, we’re going to spend most of our time on your entrepreneurial journey but let’s start with your career in pharmacy. What drew you into the profession, where did you go to school, and what area of practice did you find yourself in after graduation?

[0:02:18.5] LH: Yeah, absolutely. I’m happy to dive into all of that because it definitely is quite the story. My start in pharmacy, I will say, look, I probably did it for all the wrong reasons, right? And I say that because of multiple things. One, I come from a family, both my parents are Vietnam refugees, right? So, they are always pushing us to go for that really secure and stable career path, and the only thing that they really know is education is the kind of the only way to do it, right? 

And so, you know, me and my siblings were all in healthcare and I think when you’re at a young age and you don’t have a plan B and you didn’t grow up having role models and people to show you that there are other ways to kind of live life and go about your careers, the only thing that we really knew was to go to school and do something that’s secure and stable and get that degree, right?

So, if I had a backup plan, if I kind of knew what I wanted to do, I’m sure I could have you know, really posed a really good argument to my parents and be like, “This is what I want to do instead, I want to start my business, I want to go into the creative arts, I want to – you know, all these things” but I didn’t have a plan B, right? So, I was easily persuaded into doing something that my parents wanted me to do and at the time, that was pharmacy, you know? 

Pharmacy in Vietnam is considered like the gold standard for like one of the best career paths and just lifestyle and so, I really conform to that, made my dad really, really happy. The only pharmacist in the family and you know I was good at school. I’m good at learning, I’m good at teaching myself anything and I excelled in education and in higher education and went there, got my pharmacy degree, and had a great relationship with the district manager at Walgreens and I always thought I was going to do a fellowship but during my rotation…

[0:04:14.2] TU: Interesting.

[0:04:14.6] LH: Yeah. During my rotation with the district manager at Walgreens, we just vibed, it was all about relationships, right? And we just had a really, really good time together, really loved that he offered me a job after I graduated and so, that’s how I ended up in community pharmacy.

[0:04:32.3] TU: I love that story man, and I think it’s so important that we share, we all share our collective stories, right? You know, I think sometimes, going into pharmacy school, which could be true of medicine and I’m sure other health professions, you know sometimes, there’s the internal motivation, sometimes there’s external motivations, sometimes people have external motivations that you know over time, they fall in love with the professional work that they’re doing, other times, they don’t, and there is no one right path, right? 

And I think for everyone that’s on their own journey just as you are, just as I am, so important to do that self-discovery work and really, to find the path, you know, that’s most meaningful and I think as your story highlights so well, you know very rarely is one’s career path a straight line, right? I think sometimes in pharmacy school, I graduated in 2008 and I often felt the pressure and I can tell even graduates today, they feel this pressure that you know, there’s graduation, you take that first job or fellowship or residency, and that you know, from there on, it’s going to be one straight path.

And my career has looked like left turns, right turns, some straightaways, right? But – and there’s a lot more to go and I think as your journey, you know, that is the case as well and just a lot of wisdom there to share and I think as you continue on your entrepreneur journey, perhaps this is just one of many twists and turns that you’re going to take, you know, throughout your career. So, let’s talk about that entrepreneur or business journey. Give us the information on your company Fat Miilk. What is the product and offering and why did you start it?

[0:06:03.0] LH: Yeah. So, Fat Miilk is the first Vietnamese CPG and for people who don’t know, CPG stands for consumer packaged goods, we’re the first Vietnamese CPG coffee company in Chicago, right? And so, a lot of people don’t know is that you know, Vietnam is the number one producer of Robusta in the world. We’re a huge player in the coffee industry and what you’re seeing now is just a wave of first-generation Vietnamese entrepreneurs who are really showcasing that and really trying to put Vietnamese coffee on the map, right?

I think prior to like, the last couple of years, like one or two years ago, you could not walk into any major retailer, Walmart, Whole Foods, whatever, and find Vietnamese Robusta beans on the shelf. It just didn’t exist. And so, I’m really playing in an emerging category right now and we’ll say, prior to launching Fat Miilk, you know I’ve conceptualized this idea forever. You know, Vietnamese coffee in my household was a staple. 

You know, we grew up on that stuff and I just always thought, “You know, why do you have to go to a Vietnamese restaurant? Like a pho restaurant or a bánh mì restaurant to really get Vietnamese coffee?” and sometimes you don’t even know if it’s really Vietnamese coffee, right? It’s just – it’s just the way that it’s you know, presented and so, I saw this opportunity, not just to use Vietnamese coffee as the medium to what I want to present out there but also, like, if you look at what I’ve built with Fat Miilk, you know, you see so much of the story there.

So much of like, the story of the people behind the bean and just the culture, right? And that’s really what I enjoy. I really enjoy creative writing, creative strategy, and I love connecting with the consumer and that’s where I thrive. So, long story short, Fat Miilk is a coffee company, we sell whole-bean coffee. I import it directly from Vietnam and we have some really other exciting product lines that we are pushing forward as well but on top of that, we’re building out our first Chicago flagship storefront at the same time.

[0:08:07.6] TU: Ooh, that’s awesome.

[0:08:09.1] LH: Yeah, a lot going on.

[0:08:10.9] TU: And we’re going to talk about that as we head towards the end kind of, what is the next stage, where do you see the future and I think that’s obviously an important part of that and I hope our listeners will go check out what you’re doing. I’ll link to your website, fatmiilk.com. That has two “I’s” Just so people know as they’re looking that up. Please grab some coffee, you know, you’ve got some other product on there as well.

My wife and I have been working through a five-pound bag over the last few weeks, it’s delicious and I would just highly encourage you know, our listeners to check it out, and I will say, Lan, one of the things that really stood out to me is I did some background research on what you’re building is the strength that you have in storytelling and branding and marketing. You mentioned that creative pursuit, that is obvious in the work that you’re doing. So – 

[0:08:52.5] LH: I appreciate that.

[0:08:52.9] TU: You know, lean into that strength. I know you are but it’s really an incredible one to watch. Now, I’ve got some questions. You know, coffee, beverage, it’s a big industry, right? And for those that watch Shark Tank, you know that the Sharks are quick to object to beverage companies knowing that this is a crowded space. So, I think you answered this in part when you talked about the Vietnamese heritage of this product. But tell us more about what makes this product unique, especially as you think about coffee and beverage being such a big industry.

[0:09:22.7] LH: Yeah. You know, I think when people see such a big industry, they get a little intimidated by it, right? And there’s some major players in the coffee industry but I almost see it as an opportunity, right? Like, I’m not reinventing the wheel here, I’m playing in an industry that already has demand and it’s actually pandemic-proof. Like, if you look at coffee industry, I think it drastically increased during the pandemic, right? 

And so, this is something that people see as a daily necessity, it’s a commodity. I mean, you know, and if you’re able to enter a market that already is going to stay you know, and create something that’s niche but also, unique you can really, really stand out, right? So, when I look at really saturated markets, even in pharmacy, it’s community pharmacies or independent pharmacies, there’s always a way. 

There’s always a way and if you hit on that unique proposition, you will stand out and you will win big, okay? And so, I think we’re playing within the coffee industry at large, which is like a 130-billion-dollar worldwide industry by the way but the Vietnamese coffee category is new in the US, right? Obviously, you know, overseas and in Vietnam and Australia and a lot of the other neighboring countries, Vietnamese coffee is very known and popular. 

But here in the US, I have an opportunity to really be a first mover and I think that if done right and you do it with intentionality, you do it with heart and you do it with community, that to me, you can create a legacy brand out of that and that’s what I intend to do.

[0:11:05.0] TU: Yeah, I love that, right? Because I think that you know, in this example exists in pharmacy, you’re spot on. You know, we tend to speak in generalities, right? You know, independent pharmacy is dead, community pharmacy is changing or evolving but there’s niche markets, right? And you talked about, in your space, you know, obviously, there’s a niche. You know, what’s your differential advantage, what are you bringing that’s different?

Obviously, you know, you are in what you’re building and I think that’s so important, you know, that we kind of get away from some of those generalities, especially speaking about business, and really trying to figure out, “Okay, what’s the problem that we’re trying to solve, what’s the opportunity and how can I bring something that’s different or new or unique or serves a niche that may be otherwise hasn’t been served as it relates to this product?”

[0:11:46.4] LH: Absolutely. I think that’s just business in general, right? Like, you can’t go into a market and just do something that everybody else is doing, right? That’s not good business. You have to look at the market and see what you can bring to the table and what makes you unique and I will say with Fat Miilk when I look at – I will say, right now, being a Vietnamese coffee company is and can be enough, right? Because we are so new to the market. 

But I will say, that’s not what I – that’s not the angle that I’m taking. What I bring with Fat Miilk is a lifestyle, you know? And so, when you look at it, and we’re launching our new website actually on November 15th in this whole Fat Miilk 2.0 situation is, I really been able to capture the last, first, you know, two years of Fat Miilk, analyze what was working and what wasn’t working, and really determine who we are and who we’re not and got down to the roots and realized we need to exist for more reasons than to just make Vietnamese coffee accessible.

And so, when you look at Fat Miilk and you know, our intention to expand, what really makes us different is a whole lifestyle approach to Vietnamese coffee but we’re also merging two industries together. There’s this streetwear, very hype culture that exists in you know, a lot of sneaker and streetwear brands into a food and beverage company, you know? And so, at the core of all of that is this hustle mentality with a lot of humility, right? And that’s how I grew up. 

You know, both of my parents coming here and that’s something that I always wanted to honor, like, I don’t want to be this incredibly luxury brand but I’m going to be something that’s relatable to the times, right? And at the end of the day, me going from pharmacy to this was something that was so intentional about taking a bet on yourself, right? Which then everyone says, and really doing it with humility and doing it with intentionality, with value at its core.

[0:13:42.5] TU: Yeah, I think that’s really interesting, Lan because I think that concept, you know, the hustle mentality, the taking a bet on yourself, I think a lot of pharmacists struggle with that, you know? And part of that goes to – you know, we often talk about it in the show. The golden handcuffs of you got a doctorate degree, you got a six-figure income, you got USD 200,000 of student loans.

[0:14:00.1] LH: Yeah, yeah. 

[0:14:01.0] TU: It’s hard to take that risk, it’s hard to you know, have that hustle mentality when obviously, you’re making that kind of income and I think you know, as you alluded to, that goes back to in part, your upbringing and some of that entrepreneurial experience that you obviously have, and one of the things I want to dive into a little bit deeper, and you mentioned at the top of this episode was some of the family impact on your journey, not only the pharmacy but obviously on entrepreneurship as well and you’ve talked about publicly on Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars. 

I’ve also seen it referenced in other articles that have featured your story that you didn’t share your business pursuits with your family until after you have launched the business for some time. One article I read said, “Long story short, I started an entire company, pretending to be a full-time pharmacist and later came clean on national television while competing for Gordon Ramsay’s partnership.” Tell us more about that.

[0:14:52.3] LH: Yes. Look, in entrepreneurship, I say this over and over and over again, you have to protect your energy, right? And especially in the beginning. Look, Vietnamese coffee, I went from being a pharmacist to you know, dealing lattes and so for my parents, you know, especially my dad, he didn’t understand that and for me, I was like, “I don’t think you need to understand it right now, you know?”

Like, I think when a lot of people have their opinions and tell you, you know, “Oh, I like that idea, I don’t like that idea, why are you doing this?” It’s exhausting and it’s taxing too. Like just the emotional capacity that you have and the mental capacity, and when you’re starting a business, you need your best self, you know? And there are just so many moments where I would kind of try to bring it up, you know?

And kind of talk about Fat Miilk and how like coffee, there’s this huge opportunity in Vietnamese coffee in the US, blah-blah-blah, like all this stuff and I was just presented with so much resistance, you know? And that to me was something that was so evident, that as I’m building Fat Miilk, I have to build it to a stage where there is no turning back, you know? And so, I was going to do it no matter what because I mean, look, we don’t have to go into it but I was a pretty miserable person when I was a pharmacist.

And I just knew that this was not the career choice for me and that I was going to do something creatively and I was going to do it without my parents and that was a big secret that I kept to myself and a lot of it was for me, more than anything because if I knew I invited that kind of energy into just the building stage of Fat Miilk, I would have had to not only find the strength to keep going but find the strength to resist that feedback, right? 

Like, that negative energy that I just did not need in my life while I was trying to make something happen and it all comes from a good place. I don’t – you know, the people who tell you, who are going to challenge you the most are the people that probably love you the most, right? So, there’s no ill feelings there. It’s just, for me, it was so important, and I always encourage people, watch – do an audit about what you’re telling people and until you’re at a place to invite their opinions or their feedback into your life, keep it to yourself. Do yourself that favor.

[0:17:22.1] TU: Yeah, you have to protect your energy. I love that. Such words of wisdom, you know, that you shared there and so important. I got that vibe, right? When I watched the show and I followed some of your journey, read some articles, I got the vibe that it was coming from a place of love and you know, I think that for the entrepreneurs that are listening, like, they know that well around the need to protect their energy. 

It’s so important and I think you also shared very well that also, you know, when you think about who is around you and some of the energy that you’re surrounding yourself with and you know, there’s a place to be challenged, certainly but especially early in that journey, you know, the momentum that you’re sustaining. You talked about, you know, the hustle mentality, the energy that you’re going to need to sustain that to see through the vision and the idea that you have, so important, especially early on in the journey.

Let’s talk about your experience on Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars. What an incredible opportunity, and for those that are listening that are not familiar with the show, can you just give us a quick, general premise of what that show is all about?

[0:18:22.0] LH: Yes. So, Gordon Ramsay’s food stars, it is his brand new show, season one. It’s on FOX but essentially, he invited 15 of the most promising food and beverage entrepreneurs to compete for USD 250,000 of his angel investment, yeah.

[0:18:41.2] TU: And the 15, one thing I was wondering and maybe this was mentioned early in the show and I missed it but how did you get selected as one of those 15, was there an audition process or what did that look like?

[0:18:53.3] LH: So, me, personally they reached out to me on Instagram.

[0:18:56.2] TU: Oh, cool.

[0:18:56.8] LH: So, I got recruited to be on the show and there’s a casting director who reached out and said, “Hey, let me know if you’d be interested in this show. I think you’ll be a good fit.” And so, I – you know, for me, I thought it was fake news from the beginning. I like literally went to Gordon Ramsay’s Instagram and saw that he was promoting the show as well. So, that’s when I knew it was legit.

So, there is – you know, there was an application, you know, kind of on the Internet that you could go and apply. I think only one person out of the entire cast actually applied and got the position – or you know, got on the show. Everyone else was recruited.

[0:19:34.1] TU: Okay, that was cool. I was wondering about the process to get there and we’re not going to spill all of what happened, we’re going to make people go watch it if they haven’t watched it. We’ll just say that you were in the final three, we’ll leave it at that. One of the things I’m really curious about is you know, what you see on TV and obviously the thing that you experienced, I know those are two very, very different things.

And you know I’m curious, as you reflect back on that experience, what are one or two things that really stand out to you? Of things that you look back and say, “Wow, because of that experience, I learned this about myself.” What really were some of the takeaways that you had from that show?

[0:20:10.6] LH: Yeah. One of the biggest things that people tell me that I – maybe I didn’t know about me, I mean, I really didn’t know this about myself was how poised I am, right? That is probably – so, I learned a lot about myself based on how other people perceive me and that was like, probably the number one feedback when people would DM me, comment on my Instagram, Facebook, send me messages, emails, everything, they were just like, “We’re such a big fan of you, we felt like you, you know, held it together, you’re very professional, very poised.”

And then, you’re just like, “Wow, I didn’t know that I actually am like that” you know? So, you start to kind of think like, “You know, this is how I present myself and unknowingly, how people see in business, right?” So, that was kind of something that I learned about myself just being on TV and I think, another thing is that you have to take risks, right? I remember when they reached out to me, I had no intention on being on television, and I may have unlocked some other opportunities because of that.

But I remember telling myself, “Look, if you’re going to do this Fat Miilk thing and you’re going to build this to be what, you know, a global company or whatever, the potential you think it is, you have to go out there and put it all on the line.” You have to take that risk, right? And I remember telling myself that this is what it takes when you want to turn that big corner in your career, your life, whatever it is that you’re doing, you got to go out swinging and you have to be able to step up to it when that opportunity comes along and that was not only evident in some of the challenges on the show where I really took up space, right?

[0:21:53.0] TU: Yes.

[0:21:54.3] LH: This was going on the show in it of itself once an example of that and I think sometimes, a lot of entrepreneurs probably – maybe they reach out to so many people seeing if, “Hey, do you want to go on the show, do you want to do this?” And a lot of people are like, “Oh no, me on television? No.” You know?

And so, a lot of people, I think a lot of businesses probably turned that opportunity down, you know? And I think for me, the biggest thing was it does pay off when you not only stay prepared but you are prepared and you’re willing to flex that preparation, you know? Because I had one month to leave my life in Chicago and go to LA to film this thing and that’s exactly what happened and made it all the way to the finale like you said. So, I mean, you know it paid off.

[0:22:41.7] TU: Yeah, and I think just saying yes to that opportunity, you know, I think sometimes we see those opportunities, we’re like, “Oh, it would be so nice, right? If I had that kind of break.” But I think you’re point is a really good one. You have to have a willingness to say yes, you entered into an unknown territory. I’m sure there are fears and anxieties, you know, surrounding that, and just what you shared in the wisdom of taking up space, right? 

I think a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with that, I would say, pharmacists, entrepreneurs, you would struggle more, which is that concept of taking up space not only by being on the show but then, within, you know, the show and the interactions, making sure that you’re taking up the space that you need as well to grow and hopefully, you know, there’s a promotion, there’s other opportunities.

But what I’m also hearing from you which I love is the personal growth that happened to the experience because I firmly believe that often, the ceiling, how high, how far a business can go is directly correlated to the mindset of the leader of that organization, which is you, the founder, and the CEO, and what I’m hearing is this vast expansion of the mindset of what you believe is possible and where you can take this brand and where you could take this business, so I love that. 

I recall Lan, one of the experts and I can’t remember his name, I think he was from maybe Albertsons, Wholefoods, you can point me back in the right direction that I would say he was somewhat critical of the branding and the disconnect that he was seeing in terms of the coffee and the product being in a carton, maybe somewhat around the naming as well. 

So, refresh us on what happened there, and then I’m just curious as you reflect back on that, how did you take that feedback in the moment, and then what have you done or what have you processed since that feedback as well? 

[0:24:25.4] LH: Yeah, absolutely. So, in the finale, you know Gordon Ramsay brought on two experts, both of them very well-versed in retail distribution and CPG, right? And so, one of the biggest feedback that I got was the confusion of our coffee beans being in a milk carton and the name of the company being Fat Miilk. I will say this is nothing I don’t already know, right? In the case that I launched the company in 2020 and we did so many pop-ups. 

I mean, we did pop-ups all over Chicago. I mean, anywhere and everywhere, you know, gyms, Chinese restaurants, parks, everywhere. I mean, and we got all of that feedback, right? And people would say the same things you know? And I definitely took all of that into consideration and a lot of people don’t know that when I was filming for the show, I was already looking to address those concerns and I was also negotiating the lease for our first storefront, right? 

So, I was doing all of that because we all are there and we all have businesses, that’s the whole premise of the show is that we’re all entrepreneurs. We’re all still working on our business, we still have to keep the business afloat while we’re filming for this show in full anxiety mode. I mean, it was like a whole flex from mental, emotional, everything, physical, and I will say you know, those were – it was definitely confirming when he gave me that feedback that this was definitely something that we needed to address. 

And so when I came back from the show, you know I found my dream creative agency who was going to help me rebrand the entire business, right? And I am someone that has incredible intentionality maybe to a detriment sometimes, you know? I want to understand every decision we make with intention, like if someone tells me, “Oh, these are our brand colors” I want to know why.

[0:26:19.5] TU: Yep. 

[0:26:19.8] LH: You know, like it has to have a reason, it has to have some kind of intention as to why you made that decision and it can’t just be because you like it. In my opinion, you’re missing out in a huge opportunity, right? And so a lot of people don’t know that you know, I named the company Fat Miilk because when people think of Vietnamese coffee, the most popular way to consume Vietnamese coffee is with a little bit of sweetened condensed milk, right? 

And so when people say, “Oh, have you had Vietnamese coffee before?” they’re like, “Oh, yeah. I don’t like it, it’s too sweet” or it’s like, “Oh yeah, I do love it. It’s sweet and this and this and that” and I’m like that’s just one version to enjoy Vietnamese coffee but Vietnamese coffee is just beans from Vietnam, right? And it is a very bold nutty chocolatey two times the caffeine content type of bean that when you add a little bit of sweetened condensed milk to it, it just is the perfect balance. 

So, when I named the company Fat Miilk, not only do we intend to do some exciting things with condensed milk but also I get to educate people like, “Look, the reason why it’s called Fat Miilk is because you probably think sweetened condensed milk equates to Vietnamese coffee, right? But let me tell you why it’s not” and so I need to educate consumers and tell a broader story as to why Vietnamese coffee is what it is. 

And so when I came back from the show and hired on Truffl, they’re an amazing creative agency out in LA, I had them challenge me on every single decision I have made up into that point, right? And I said, “Challenge me, why did I name it Fat Miilk? Why is the logo a water buffalo? Why the colors, why the milk carton, why this, why that?” And if I didn’t have a good answer for that now we needed to come up with the solution, you know? 

And so yeah, and so you know, we’re about to launch our Fat Miilk 2.0 is what I call it because I had a huge opportunity and a huge blessing to kind of redirect this whole brand in a way where now it’s viable to scale. It’s really good logistically, you know when it comes to complexity. You know just the packaging itself, it’s ready to grow, and just use all of that feedback over the last couple of years now put the company in a position to really play in the category. 

[0:28:37.8] TU: Yeah, and what I love about that, my takeaway there is your openness and receptiveness to be challenged, right? I think so often especially as a founder, right? It’s your baby, it’s your product and there’s moments where we have to set ego aside, right? And acknowledge and recognize like, “Hey, we’ve done an awesome job of getting the product to this point. I started this literally from an idea to a product that people are willing to pay for.” 

That is an amazing accomplishment, an amazing accomplishment, and then to say, “Okay, next level” you talked about you know, hiring an agency. You obviously have input and feedback and you know, it sounds like there is some consumer research going on there, probably formal and informal, and then to go work with an agency and say, “Hey, challenge me, challenge me on everything that I’ve done” and not in a egotistical, “I’m going to tell you why.” 

But in a, “I’m going to make sure that this is the best product that it can be and if there is a way that we can make this better I’m open, I’m receptive to that” and that is beautiful and that is hard to do, very hard to do. 

[0:29:40.9] LH: It is. It is and let me tell you, when I made the decision everyone was against me. My fractional CFO was against me, my team was totally against it. They were just like, “No Lan, we love it, we love the water buffalo, we love the carton, and look, it was a success in the sense that it got the attention of Gordon Ramsay.” You know, if you watch the finale, our old brand is plastered all over our pop-up and you know, that episode. 

And so like, it is beautiful but when you think about it from a business perspective, it didn’t put us in a position to really play, right? It was complicated, it was confusing, it was so many things, and so I will say you know, everyone was pushing against me to keep it the way that things were and I had to challenge everyone and be like, “Look, I’m making this decision. We need to address these issues because if we expand and we’re in Iowa and Nebraska, are we going to be able to it on the show and have and communicate exactly who we are as a brand and without us being there?” 

“If I can’t say that with our current brand though, we need to make some changes” and there were days, there were days, let me tell you, where I was genuinely depressed. Like I remember when we made the decision to nix our logo, which is a water buffalo, the national animal of Vietnam but it has no relevance to coffee because coffee is not grown in the water, by the way, that was a really dark day for me. 

Because I was like, “What have I been doing this whole time?” Like you know, I feel like I’ve built this brand, people really love it, they resonate with the water buffalo, it kind of looks like the Chicago Bulls, you know with the [inaudible 0:31:24.0] It was this whole thing and people were genuinely sad about it and I was sad about it and I had to stick to my gut and be like, “We’re letting it go.” 

[0:31:33.6] TU: Yeah, yeah. 

[0:31:34.1] LH: It’s not going to be our logo anymore, you know? And so that was really hard for me during the rebrand but I stand by what it looks like now and I know it can go the distance. 

[0:31:44.3] TU: Well, and that’s the key, go the distance, right? I mean, I think what you’re talking about there the vision, you know I think about me as a consumer in Columbus, Ohio going to the coffee shelf like that’s what you’re talking about next level, right? 

[0:31:54.5] LH: Yes. 

[0:31:54.9] TU: You are not talking about your inner circle or people that are you know, attached to the brand and from Jump Street and there’s risk in any one of those decisions obviously but you know, I think that you’re talking about, “Hey, how do I take this to the next level?” and the bigger vision that you can see, so much there to takeaway as you shared that. 

[0:32:14.2] LH: Yes. 

[0:32:15.0] TU: Let me go – I want to share with our listeners and talk about the timeline of what you’ve built because it’s really incredible in a short period of time. 

[0:32:22.1] LH: Thank you. 

[0:32:23.0] TU: So, April 2019, you incorporated, you got the trademark in July 2020, you are furloughed from your pharmacy job. September 2020, just two months after that furlough, you launched Fat Miilk as a brand, December 2020 you secured wholesale partnerships. April 2022, season one of Ramsay, Gordon Ramsay’s food show starts. August 2022, lease signed for the storefront, we’ll talk about that here in a moment. August 2023, you launched Kickstart. 

I mean, we’re talking about a very brief period of time where a lot was happening and if I am following correctly, you were furloughed from your pharmacy job and that really accelerated the growth of your business but the idea had been around prior to that furlough. Am I following that correctly? 

[0:33:06.1] LH: One hundred percent. 

[0:33:07.0] TU: Okay. 

[0:33:07.6] LH: Yes. 

[0:33:08.3] TU: Awesome and you – 

[0:33:08.9] LH: That some people will say – just to quickly plug in there, people say, “How did you launch this company in two months?” It’s like I’ve been conceptualizing, which is the longest part by the way, when you’re thinking about how you’re going to do it, what it’s going to look like, and execute. I’ve been doing that for years, you know? And so when it came to the opportunity to actually put it in motion, that’s how we were able to launch in two months. 

Business, you know what I mean but like if I just thought about this in two months and launched it, I mean, that is – I just want to make that clear that you know, this was something that was brewing for a while. 

[0:33:41.2] TU: Do you think you would have pursued this regardless if the furlough happened? Would it have just been a delayed timeline? I’m curious to hear your reflection back on how much of the furlough was an accelerator or an initiator or you know, if you would have grown in that role or maybe pursued a fellowship industry pathway. Like is there a place where this idea maybe never sees the light of day or it would have just been maybe a little bit more down the road? 

[0:34:08.9] LH: Yeah, Fat Miilk was 100% going to happen. Yes, so 100%. I will say that furlough was the biggest blessing in my life because I told myself, “You know, once I get to this point I’m going to quit and go all in on Fat Miilk” and then that timeline started to get pushed back. “Once I get here, you know? I’m going to do that” and so that furlough was just like I took that as the sign, the universe telling me it is time to go, you know? 

And so, I think when I got furloughed I didn’t have a choice. It was I was furloughed, you know I had no choice but to make my dream come true as opposed to like go and look for another pharmacy job, you know? So that was a big sign for me and I ran with it. I saw that opportunity and I’m like, “This is it. This is the world telling me you need to go and do this” and so when they asked me to come back two months later I said, “No, I already launched it.” I already launched the company, so I’m just going to focus on this now, yeah. 

[0:35:08.1] TU: Lan, I’m curious as you think about all the different aspects involved in starting and growing a business, running a business, right? Marketing, sales, building a team, culture of the company, finances, distribution, supply chain management, when you think about all of the different pieces that you’ve been involved, what has been the area that’s had the biggest learning curve and growth for you over the past few years? 

[0:35:32.8] LH: Yeah, it’s a good question because I think everything has been a learning curve. I will say, just to transition from going from a very regulated structure and lifestyle with not only being a student in higher education for 10 years but then going into pharmacy to then going into entrepreneurship, that has always and still is a very big challenge in my life, right? I think when you transition from you know, going from a corporate structure into anything on your own, you are the corporate structure and a lot of people don’t know that, you know? 

They’re just like, “Wait, what am I supposed to do, you know?” Like you’ve been told, you know, I’ve been told exactly how my seasons look. You know, you have your fall semester, you have your spring semester, you have summer break, you know? And then from there, when you go to work, you have your schedule, you have your shifts, you have your you know, things that you know you can and cannot do, especially a very regulated industry like pharmacy. 

There is no creative flexes in there and so when I went from my entire life of living in structure to then going on and starting my own business, I had to wake up every day and sometimes I didn’t know what to do. It’s like, “Wait, you have so many things you need to do” and you have so many things you need to learn and you don’t actually know where you put your time and energy into what is going to convert for you the most. 

So, it’s so much trial and error in just learning, learning how to prioritize your days and sometimes, you don’t even move the needle an inch, right? Because you’re just like, “Okay, well, I guess I realize you know focusing on this email newsletter or what” you know, trying to cold call a bunch of other brands, it didn’t go anywhere but you have to keep trying and see and I think even until this moment, you know I still have to segment and learn that structure in my day that I thrived in corporate culture to then apply that to my own life. 

And being able to deliver and execute for my team and for the future and grow Fat Miilk and like you said earlier, you are your biggest asset to your company, you know? Like truly how you operate and how you structure your days and if you feel good about that day, you feel productive about how you structured that day, all of that is such a big influence in how your company ends up doing, right? 

And so, I always say like you, the only person that’s getting in the way is me, you know? I feel like I can teach it to myself, I can teach myself supply chain and customs and importing beans and all of these things but if I am not feeling it that day, that ultimately is my business is going to take a hit, you know? It’s like now you have to learn discipline to a T and that is the hardest thing. 

[0:38:24.6] TU: Yeah and I think to give yourself some grace like you know, you gave the example of like you can spend a day making cold calls or working on the newsletter and you’re like, “Hey, I thought that was going to be a high impact priority day where me as the founder and the CEO can move the needle most” and sometimes it’s not or you say, “Okay, that work, that didn’t work. Now, I’m going to bob, now I’m going to shift.” 

But giving yourself some grace in those moments of, “Yeah, maybe I didn’t tangibly move forward the business today but I learned something and I learned that hey, this doesn’t work or I’ve got to iterate” and you know I think sometimes, you know the wins need to be reveled in and enjoyed and celebrated but also there are those days, there are the seasons, there are the weeks where you’re grinding or you’re like, “I don’t even know where to start on the list of things to be done.” 

And like those moments, those seasons, those days are going to happen. They’re just going to happen and you know I think to recognize them and obviously, you’re speaking from experience there, it’s so important to give yourself grace in that season. 

[0:39:20.0] LH: Yes, that’s real. It’s real. 

[0:39:22.9] TU: As you think about the future of Fat Miilk, you’ve mentioned Fat Miilk 2.0 a couple of times, you mentioned at least once or twice getting ready to open a storefront. Tell us about what’s next for Fat Miilk in this 2.0 iteration and where you see the brand going here over the next couple of years. 

[0:39:39.8] LH: Yeah, absolutely. You know, we’re such at a pivotal time in the company right now in the sense that we had an opportunity to really restart the brand and do it with intention. A lot of brands don’t get to do that and not only that but we just had raising credibility from the Gordon Ramsay show, right? And so I’m really adopting this clicks and bricks business model. You know, if you look at businesses like Warby Parker and Outlaw, you know you have – they have their online presence but they also have this in-person on-the-ground brand experience, right? 

And I think that is so necessary for an emerging market and so, you’ll be seeing a lot of us double downing on our digital footprint but also expanding our community outreach, right? Through different storefronts throughout Chicago and expanding to major cities but also what’s really important to me is approaching Fat Miilk with the utmost respect for the farmers and the coffee industry, right? 

And if – you know, I don’t want to bore people with the history here but you know, just due to climate change, the Robusta bean is actually going to be the biggest shift in consumer just brands in general when it comes to coffee and what is going to be readily available, right? And so we have an opportunity to really be a huge player in the impact of climate change and I’m really looking into upcycling every single layer of the coffee bean itself because a lot of people don’t know what’s a cherry. 

So, there is a fruit around it and the seed in the middle is the actual coffee bean and so I’m working with farmers right now to see how we can upcycle parts of the pulp and the skin of the cherry to use in some of our other verticals and that’s been really exciting for me and maybe that’s the compounding part of pharmacy that I really enjoy and being able to take something and make something new out of it. 

So, that’s kind of the approach for Fat Miilk moving forward is having consumer experience in multiple channels but also doing something with the coffee cherry itself and having an impact on just the industry. 

[0:41:55.0] TU: And I think that connects so well to your strength that you talked about, you know, towards the beginning of the episode, which is your strength around the branding, the marketing, the creative side, the storytelling, right? Bringing the cup of coffee to individuals as an experience and I think we’ve come a long way as a consumer but I would argue we have more to go and you are obviously tapping into that. 

That you know, I think people, some people maybe just want a cup of coffee every morning they want to think about it but I think there is a big market of people that are very interested in where is this bean coming from and what is you know, the story of the farm, what is the story of the roaster and you know, how can this really come to be an experience and not just something that’s a functional part of the day that I don’t really think a whole lot about, right? 

[0:42:38.2] LH: Yeah, I absolutely agree, and I think a small part of people, I will say a minority group of people really, really geek out about that stuff but I think there is an opportunity for you know, mass appeal for people to care about that stuff. 

[0:42:52.8] TU: I agree. 

[0:42:53.2] LH: You have to do it, you have to do it with lifestyle. You have to do it where it’s a party and not a protest, right? Because climate change can very easily go into this protest mode, right? Where we’re not doing things right, we’re contributing to it like you know? And kind of playing this blame game but if you can create a brand where people just really resonate with you know, the packaging and what you’re doing.

The vibes you’re giving off, they naturally are inclined to care more about why you exist, and that is the approach that I am taking. I think a lot of brands go so far right or one way or the other about you know, going deep into climate change, going top of really, really using these big words and things that people get really bored about when it comes to the impact of the pulp and you know, just the coffee production and how that can impact just the industry and the you know, the world. 

And so, I think the best people to do it are brands who have a way to engage customers without them actually even knowing that they’re engaged. 

[0:43:58.1] TU: That is fantastic and this has been a real treat. I am so grateful for you coming on the show and sharing your journey and I’m really excited to follow what’s ahead. I have a feeling you’re just getting warmed up here. So, where is the best place that our listeners can go to follow your journey and learn more about what you’re building? 

[0:44:15.1] LH: Yeah, absolutely. We’re pretty active on social media. So, it’s you know Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, all of that is @fatmiilk with two Is, so Fat Miilk. The best place to just get our coffee, experience the brand, we’ll always be fatmiilk.com, and then for people who are in Chicago or visiting Chicago, we are building up our Chicago flagship storefront and that is in uptown at the corner of Broadway and Arga. 

[0:44:42.4] TU: Awesome. Well, thank you so much again and when you decide to expand into Columbus, Ohio you have to let me know, Lan. 

[0:44:48.7] LH: Absolutely. 

[0:44:49.5] TU: Great market here as well but in all seriousness, thank you so much for coming on the show. 

[0:44:53.6] LH: Yes, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. 

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:44:56.1] JW: Hey, this is Justin again from the YFP Team. Thanks for tuning in to today’s podcast. If you’re a pharmacy professional, you know how crucial it is to have access to reliable drug information. That’s why we’re excited to tell you about Pyrls, today’s podcast sponsor. Gone are the days spending hundreds of dollars for access to drug information. Pyrls offers top drug summaries, clinical teaching points, a drug interaction checker, calculators, and guideline reviews, all in one user-friendly resource.

Whether you prefer accessing information through your web browser, Chrome extension, or mobile app, Pyrls has got you covered. Plus, for a limited time, you can visit pyrls.com to get access to more than 25 free Pharmacotherapy charts to get you started. Upgrade your drug information resources today with Pyrls, visit pyrls.com, that’s P-Y-R-L-S.com, to learn more. Thanks again for listening. 

[DISCLAIMER]

[0:45:50.3] 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 on the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. 

Furthermore, the information contained in our archived newsletters, blog posts, and podcasts is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analyses expressed herein are solely those of Your Financial Pharmacist unless otherwise noted and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward-looking statements, 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 091: How to Become a Fit Pharmacist


Becoming an Entrepreneur: The Fit Pharmacist

On this episode of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast, Tim Church interviews Dr. Adam Martin about becoming an entrepreneur for another edition of the side hustle series. Adam has been practicing as a pharmacist in the community practice setting for over 7 years, in addition to being a certified personal trainer, licensed nutrition consultant, author, speaker, and competitive natural bodybuilder.

About Today’s Guest

Graduating from the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy, Dr. Adam Martin has worked as a full-time pharmacist in the community practice setting for over 7 years, in addition to being a certified personal trainer, licensed nutrition consultant, author, speaker, and competitive natural bodybuilder.

His passion and focus is empowering pharmacy students and pharmacists
to overcome the barriers we face in pharmacy to make self-care a reality. He outlines how to do this with practical and realistic tips in this book Rx: YOU! In his book, Dr. Martin dispenses his Rx for success in how to simplify nutrition, fit in fitness, and manage stress so that you can become The FitPharmacist and put the health back into healthcare.

Summary

It’s easy to hear Dr. Adam Martin’s passion for self-care, pharmacy, fitness, and life. While Adam’s mother was sick with cancer, he spent a lot of time with her going to pharmacies and noticed how compassionate pharmacists were in caring for his mother. He wanted to continue that care and empathy for patients as a pharmacist and was driven to become one, despite not being accepted to pharmacy school at first.

Adam’s been a practicing community pharmacist for 7 years and loves his work. He enjoys being able to build a rapport and relationship with patients and feels that every interaction is important and directly impacts someone’s life.

His passion for his pharmacy career floods into every other aspect of his life and is apparent in his entrepreneurial journey. In college, Adam started helping his colleagues with their fitness and health journeys. This ultimately formed a community and inspired him to create an Instagram account (@thefitpharmacist) which currently has almost 30,000 followers.

Now, The Fit Pharmacist business has 3 tiers which include nutrition, health coaching, and physical fitness. In his business, Adam continues to help pharmacists and pharmacy students put the health back in health care and truly take care of themselves so they can better serve their patients.

Adam’s also been in business since 2013 with Dr. Joe Klemczewski and Dr. Kori Propst of The Diet Doc. Adam is also a speaker, author, and coaches other pharmacists and pharmacy students to become health coaches.

Mentioned on the Show

Episode Transcript

Tim Church: Adam, thank you so much for taking time to come on the show and for being a part of this side hustle edition.

Adam Martin: Tim, thanks so much for having me. Been a big fan of you and other Tim, especially since reading the book you guys created, which is phenomenal. “Seven Figure Pharmacist,” so much value in there. It’s just really a masterpiece for the profession. So thank you so much and congratulations on that production.

Tim Church: Oh, thanks, man. We really appreciate that and, you know, that was really the goal in mind is to get that information out there so that people don’t make the same mistakes that we did. So definitely appreciate you for the shoutout on that. Now, being into fitness and weight lifting, I want to know, did you get your workout in today?

Adam Martin: I actually did. You guys can’t see on the video, but I’ve got my “Deadlifts and Chill” shirt on. It’s the same thing as “Netflix and Chill” but “Deadlifts and Chill.” So yes, sir, I worked at Club Pharmacy this morning and then went right to the gym. But yeah, that’s my life is pharmacy and fitness.

Tim Church: Awesome, man, me too. I got mine in, so I felt good going into this podcast, you know, making sure that I was ready. Got my workout in. So before you kind of do your workout, is there anything that you listen to? Any kind of music that gets you pumped up for a workout?

Adam Martin: Oh, absolutely, man. Throughout the whole time, not like a specific song, but a high BPM. If you guys have satellite radio, BPM is an awesome station. You guys can use like Pandora for free, but yeah, any high beat. I actually studied Spanish in addition to pharmacy, so I love like upbeat Da Miel (?), Yummy (?), all the awesome people out there that are doing like mixed reggae type stuff. So any like high beat, high energy. But then I also like some rock. If you guys listen to Disturb, they’re legit for really getting your mind in the game. For sure.

Tim Church: After I read your book, I thought maybe Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz maybe as well.

Adam Martin: Yeah, you got that reference. Well it’s funny, I actually play that song to keep my techs engaged at work. Whenever they say like, we need a mix for reconstituted amoxicillin, every then and now I’ll put “Shake it Like a Salt Shaker.” So yeah, man, you’ve got to bring in the fun. And that’s why I call it Club Pharmacy is because, yes, it’s very serious, we’re taking care of people’s health. We’re literally impacting their lives. But you have to have fun and enjoy that because if you don’t, that stress is going to eat you alive. So finding some sort of way to create that environment or joy, happiness is going to allow you to give to your full potential, and that’s why I do what I do.

Tim Church: Even if it’s with Lil Jon.

Adam Martin: Exactly. And actually, he’s really intelligent. So I know he’s making millions of dollars for saying three words, that being “yeah,” “OK,” and “what,” but this guy, he’s actually pretty intelligent — I don’t know if you’ve ever read up on him or not, but he makes some good mixes.

Tim Church: Yeah, that’s cool. I’ve been into like ‘80s montage music lately. So like all the Jean-Claude Van Damme and the Rocky movies. Those have been kind of my jams lately.

Adam Martin: Nice, man. Yeah, that’s what’s cool is it really depends on each individual, which is the whole approach that I have with health coaching that I do is there’s not a cookie-cutter plan where everyone fits into one category. It’s what are your goals? What do you like? What can you stick with? Because a lot of people fall into that trap of I want extreme results, so I have to make extreme sacrifices. Just like what we’re talking about with working out, like, oh no, I have to suffer. This is not going to be fun. Like this is punishment for the food I wasn’t supposed to eat. No. This is a celebration for what your body can do. Life is meant to be lived. And why walk when you can dance, man? So make it a party. So find that music that you love. I have some friends that really like classical music when they lift. That really juices them up.
Tim Church: That’s interesting.

Adam Martin: I don’t know how the heck they get through their workout, but that’s them, and you know, to each their own.

Tim Church: That’s how they hear it, yeah. Well, I’m really excited to kind of get your entrepreneurial journey and how you’re delivering value to other pharmacists out there. But before we kind of do that, can you talk a little bit about your career path as a pharmacist?

Adam Martin: Absolutely. So my career path as a pharmacist was my — I guess I’ll start with my why. My mom — actually, I love animals. We’ll start there. I love animals, so of course, the clear choice was I’m going to be a vet. Right? I want to take care of the puppies. I want to do all those things. So I very fortunately went and chatted at a vet clinic to kind of see what really went on. And it was not at all what I expected. I hated it, so luckily, that was in high school, so I was able to make a pivot to something else. Unfortunately, around that time, my mom got diagnosed with very aggressive cancer. I didn’t know it at the time, but she was given less than six months to live. And she was very determined, had a very strong mindset and ended up fighting for over five years in that battle. But during that time, we were in the pharmacy most days of the week. I don’t know any pharmacists personally at this time in my life. We don’t have any neighbors or family friends or anything like that, and all I knew was these people were really smart, and they’re crazy busy, like running around, short-staffed, all those things. But amidst that, a total stranger, my mom and our family, they would go above and beyond and really show that care and dedication and just say, like, “You know, can we drop this off for her? How is she doing?” Just genuine questions that just like caught my attention, like this is amazing that a total stranger can care so deeply for a stranger. So that really is what got me looking towards pharmacy in the first place. And then the more I looked into it, the more it was very clear I was meant to do this, like with absolute certainty. So I applied, I went to Pitt undergrad. And I applied to pharmacy school, super excited, and then I got rejected. “Your grades suck, this and that, you don’t” — whatever the reasons were, I didn’t get in. So I could have used that and said, “You know, this is crazy. I wasn’t meant to do this. This is too competitive. Blah blah blah.” But I really had my why. Like I was meant to do this. And instead of being discouraged, I got resourceful, I got involved in organizations, I was in the pharmacy school so much volunteering and learning, people thought I was a student. So I used that as my strength.

Tim Church: Wow.

Adam Martin: And then I actually the next year, applied again. I didn’t get accepted; I got waitlisted. I was the last person to get in my class, in my class of pharmacy. And I was like so excited and blessed. I’m like, oh, this is amazing. At the time, I was like, “Woohoo! This is great.” And we had orientation. And they talked about, don’t do this, don’t get in trouble. If you have a problem, talk to someone. And then the very last thing they said is, “By the way, you need to elect a president for your class.” And dude, it was a moment I’ll never forget. Like I was meant to do this. My parents really pushed leadership skill development. I was an Eagle Scout, all these things. And it was like, everything that I’ve done has now come to this point right now. So I ran for office, and I got elected president of my class. And I was like, you know what, I worked so hard to get in this, it literally took years plus one to get in here. I’m not going to waste this opportunity. So because it took so much, I overcame so much pain and rejection to get in there, I looked at this as such a gift. So I became like, how am I going to maximize this? Around that time, I also got into fitness. I’d been lifting for a few years, but I really got focused in the nutrition aspect. And what I found was if I went out and partied, I wouldn’t be able to concentrate in the classroom, and my workouts would suffer. But if I ate well and rested and did all the good things, I would be really focused in class, I’d make really good conversation, I’d take good notes, and my workouts would be amazing. So it was this dichotomy of fitness and pharmacy that really catapulted my success — not necessarily grade-wise, because I wasn’t a Rho Chi, I was more of a back-Rho Chi or a no-Rho Chi, so the grades weren’t all there. But the relationships, the learning, being involved in the community, volunteering. I went to seven conferences while I was in pharmacy school. So really just putting my energy in learning and connecting and networking and really making the most of all these amazing, brilliant people in pharmacy that I was blessed to have access to as my professors and colleagues. And whenever I graduated, it was right when the market started to shift. So when I was a first-year student, I was in Phi Delta Chi, and the people that were graduating in my fraternity were all talking about, oh, about a sign-on bonus or relo bonus, all those things that, you know, were the glory days of pharmacy. Well, that was literally the last year of that. That was I think 2008. And then it started to shift. Sign-ons were gone, relos were gone. And whenever I graduated, those didn’t exist. And it was really competitive. The job market really got tight. But because I networked and showed value, went to conferences, I ended up getting like six job offers when I graduated. Whereas people that just went through the motions didn’t even have any. Like there were some people that they didn’t know what they wanted to do, which is fine, you’re still looking to figure that out. But they didn’t have any job offers, so even after graduation, they were really struggling because that market shifted. So that really gave me an idea to not only help pharmacy students maximize pharmacy school but to help pharmacists and people in healthcare to live and give to the best potential possible because as you guys know listening, you’re probably in pharmacy, either a student or a pharmacist, there’s a lot of stress. Like a ton of stress. You’re trying to do 30 things at once, you’ve got flu shot quotas, you’re trying to give drugs that are off-market, and people are yelling at you, all these things. But you still want to give. You still have your why for why you got into this. But if you don’t have clear focus on that, it can really wreak havoc. And then you can fall into this trap of I’m here to give and serve, so me taking a lunch is selfish. Me giving up my time to work out instead of working out and taking care of myself, I’m going to give it to my patients. That’s really what it’s about. But short-term, that might work. But over the long term, that’s where it gets us into trouble. We start gaining weight, we start getting really overwhelmed with stress. And then it comes to a point where we’re not able to perform at our highest level. So by “giving our own self-care away,” we’re literally creating a detriment to the service of healthcare we’re providing. So self-care is not selfish at all. It’s the most selfless thing you can do because by investing in yourself, you can give more. And that’s my whole purpose is how to help people give their full potential.

Tim Church: I think you’re story of getting into pharmacy school and that path that you took is such a cool story just of resilience but inspiration on how you got into the field. And then I think you also made just a huge point about healing the healer, and that was always a point that was brought up when I was in school that you really have to take care of yourself. And I want to get into that a little bit more, but talk about what you’re doing as a pharmacist right now in your full-time job at a community pharmacy.

Adam Martin: Sure. So I love community pharmacy because it’s based on relationships and really having that rapport with your patients when they come in, you know them by their name, they know you by their name, you can follow up and say, “Hey, how was your graduation?,” sending them cards, just having genuine conversation and caring about people. That’s why I love going to work, and I can stand for 13 hours without a break and dance out of there like I just got there. So just having that level of impact and the relationships with the people to really just give and help them in their darkest moments because guys, when people come in the pharmacy, they’re most likely not having a good day. So if you can come to that interaction with energy and support and just being there for them, you’re going to impact their lives in so much — like it’s indescribable, the level of impact that you have the potential to make. But if we ourselves are facing issues that are controllable by diet and exercise, we’re doing a disservice. So by investing in ourselves, we can really make each and every interaction high-level. And I know that might sound like ridiculous or unrealistic, but I mean, I’m not at a slow store. We do over 500 a day without overlap. And you know, I go through the same stuff, tech call-offs, all the things. I’ve been doing it since 2012, so living in the trenches to give practical advice that’s realistic to help you with nutrition, fitness, dealing with stress, that’s kind of where that passion came from, unfortunately, through seeing so many other pharmacists succumb to that stress and the pressures that can take ahold of you if you allow it. So that’s where my one book came from, “Rx You: The Pharmacist’s Survival Guide to Managing Stress and Fitting In Fitness,” to take all those best practice tips and help you to overcome that and really invest in yourself.

Tim Church: Wow. I think you hit on so many points there that are just so key because you nailed it that pharmacists are so accessible and have the opportunity to really help people in multiple ways. But just even taking an interest in them when they’re at their worst can make all the difference. And I think sometimes, realistically, like you talked about, it can be difficult when you have all of these other things competing for your time and attention and just your own general energy and exhaustion. And so I think that other people probably listening are thinking, yeah, I get everything Adam is saying, but sometimes, I bet it’s difficult to maintain that same level of service and attention that you can give throughout your entire shift there. So I think that although it’s something that we should all strive for, it’s probably not always easy, right? To do that all the time during your entire shift.

Adam Martin: Oh guys, I’m not perfect. Like I make mistakes. But being able to do that the majority of the time and set yourself up so it’s easier — it’s not that it gets easier, it’s just that you get better. So it’s not that over time, stress goes away. Quite the opposite. You guys know, like they cut hours, more quotas, now there’s Shingrix on top of flu shots, and that’s on back order, so we just can’t wait ‘til that drops back again. But yeah, I mean, it’s not that it gets easier, it’s just that you get better. And you’re going to have days where life happens. If you’ve got kids, they kept you up all night or you’ve got relationship problems or you have a flat tire on your way to work, yeah, life happens. But being able to roll with the punches and bounce back from that, that’s what that practice. So what you practice in private is what you see in real life. So being able to do those rituals and prepare yourself so that when those things come up, you can face that adversity head-on and use it to strengthen you as a kind of overcoming a challenge.

Tim Church: Well, I mean, it’s cool, like I love the energy and the passion that you have just around the profession but your job and how you’re impacting patients every day. And I think that’s awesome, and you know, unfortunately, I don’t think that’s always the case in our profession. And it depends on your own ability to control your emotions and the things that are going on, but also there are some factors within the profession that do make it challenging to kind of come with that same level of passion and intensity. But I want to shift gears a little bit, and I want to know how did you become interested in entrepreneurship and creating this business, The Fit Pharmacist? How did that all come into play?

Adam Martin: That’s an awesome question, man. And I don’t really consider myself an entrepreneur because I have a full-time job, but I guess I’ve got like two jobs, like the entrepreneur gig. But it started out by literally just people coming to me and saying like, “Hey, how can I do this? What tips do you have? What suggestions?” and just helping them. And it literally created a community. What started off as an Instagram handle became a community and then a business, and now like this movement in pharmacy where there’s pharmacy students and pharmacists that share their story every Friday. I’ve been doing it for 2.5 years now for Fit Pharmacist Friday, where that’s a source of inspiration and motivation for others who are exactly what you said, going through these challenges. And we all have our seasons where we feel down or it’s not going to happen or tough times. But having that community, much like what you and Tim have with Your Financial Pharmacist of support and mentorship, is just so phenomenal that it just kept growing and I kept getting more and more people and then the followers started growing, and I just kept creating content because I love it and I’m like, hey, here’s an issue that I see all the time in pharmacy that people complain about. This is something that I’ve used and others find helpful, let me share this. And that’s how it spread is just creating value that works and is practical because you can want to be healthy and talk to a nutritionist, but they don’t really get pharmacy world and how we don’t have a break and we have to do 30 things with the manpower to only do five. So when they tell you to eat a salad for lunch and chew 30 times before you swallow, it’s not practical. So if it’s not practical, and you’re not going to do it, and then you’re going to be right back where you started. So having simple solutions that are actually, you know, going to be effective in your work environment is really where I thrive to cut through the crap. But it’s still using stuff that’s research-based, effective, scientific, but translating that to pharmacy world, whether that’s nutrition, fitting in workouts, mindset mastery through meditation or self-development through reading, seminars, things like that. That’s where my niche came from. Then it just became so many requests for people to do one-on-one coaching. As a competitive bodybuilder, a *drug-free* — pharmacist, but drug-free bodybuilder, yes, that just fueled my passion. And I just created this community, and it turned into a business, and I just started to think, you know, this is something. Like I get messaged every day by people all over the world — literally. In India, Spain, Africa, I write for a magazine in South Africa, like it’s literally a global community. So in order to do that effectively, I need to figure out how business works. Because I wasn’t trained in that, I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just creating value with stuff that I love. And to answer your question, that’s kind of how the entrepreneurship worked is I just did what I love, did it from good reason, with good intentions to help people to overcome the struggles that I myself went through and see others doing and just kind of extending a helping hand. And that created the book and the community and the business. So that’s what I do now is I help pharmacists and pharmacy students do the same thing in creating their health coaching business. I’ve been in business since 2013 with the godfather of flexible dieting, Dr. Joe Klemczewski, and his partner, Dr. Cory Probst (?), who is literally the best health psychologist in the world. I actually joined them as a client when I first graduated pharmacy school, and I asked them like, “Hey, I have this passion for nutrition. There’s all these certifications. What do I do?” And he said, “We can train you to do what we do.” And that’s what I looked at for awhile just to kind of see time play out, check out was what they’re doing legit, get referrals, just doing all those things to make sure it’s all good because he was an idol in natural bodybuilding world. So I knew he had a huge following, really great integrity, everyone has awesome things to say. But you know, money talks, as they say. So I really wanted to play that out, and it was one of, if not the best investments I’ve ever made in my life. So I’ve been with them since 2013. I’m actually flying to Nashville this Friday to give a talk alongside them. So they started as my mentors, now they’re my colleagues and business partners.

Tim Church: And so what it sounds like, Adam, is that it took some time to sort of grow that community, put out a lot of great content, and then people were catching on, really seeing that value that you were bringing to the table. And it almost seems like they sort of naturally became something that you could monetize, that you were solving people’s problems that they were having.

Adam Martin: Exactly. And straight up, like I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the awesome people in our community of the Fit Pharmacist movement. Like they’re phenomenal. Literally, you had mentioned earlier that not everyone’s always at the top of their game or so enthusiastic. Yes, that’s true. But I want to come back at that and say, there are so many that are, that they have hard days too. They’ve gone through those things, and that’s why I started that Fit Pharmacist Friday is to let people know that, you know, your colleagues, your students, might be Debbie Downers, I don’t know. But you need to know that there’s a community of people who have gone through some serious crap, whether it’s emotional or abuse or relationships or financial, and they’ve come out being so much stronger, creating strength from their struggle, making their mess their message, leading by example and being just a source of inspiration. So that’s why I do that. And it’s created this awesome community of pharmacists that are all about, you know, helping others. So that’s what it’s about, and I wouldn’t be who I am or where I am without you awesome people. So thank you. Thank everyone who’s listening and been with me on this journey because like you said, it did manifest naturally because — and it’s picked up momentum, so I guess a value point for those listening is very simple: Clarity creates power. So when I started, I had all these passions, you know, nutrition, working out, pharmacy, and it was like all over the place. But then finding my message and tying that all together, being an advocate and really resource to put self-care back into healthcare, particularly in the pharmacy profession, that’s when things really exploded because I got so clear and focused such that every action, every article I wrote, everything was tied to this one mission. And when you get clear on what you’re trying to do and the value and purpose of giving that you’re really on a mission to create and give to others, that’s when you’re going to take off. And I’ve read many books on this, I’ve gone to seminars with Grant Cardone, with Lewis Howes, with Tony Robbins, all this year, and it’s just getting those mentors. And I hear the same message, clarity creates power. Really get connected with your why, and stay true to what you’re looking to accomplish, stay true to that mission, why you’re doing it and the outcome that you want, and that is going to drive so much more success. And if you stay with that and be consistent and put in the work, you’re going to get results beyond what you could ever imagine.

Tim Church: It kind of reminds me of that quote from Zig Ziglar where if you help enough people get what they want, eventually, you’re going to get what you want. And that’s just really what I kind of hear as you’re going through that and talking about that because it’s easy to see that your passion and the power that you’re putting into this movement and parts of your business is really encouraging others but just having such a huge impact, and it’s really cool to see that. And to get a little bit more practical about the business itself, can you break down the different layers on how you’re bringing in additional income?

Adam Martin: Absolutely. The business is the Fit Pharmacist. And I have three main tiers with that. It’s expanding to a fourth right now. That being nutrition and health coaching, really helping people to live their best lives through helping them, specifically through mindset coaching, so how to deal with stress and anxiety, really have that attitude and practice of constant, neverending improvement, to really have those mentors and learn those things. The second being physical fitness, finding something that you enjoy because I love to deadlift, but you might not. Or you might have some physical ailment. So all my clients that I have, not one of them is interested in bodybuilding, and I am 100% OK with that. So just because I am a bodybuilder, that doesn’t mean that I expect you to be. That’s my passion. But you might like Zumba or something else. So it’s finding what you love and enjoy and doing that because it’s different for every person. And then the whole nutrition aspect. I do not believe in supplements or scam shakes or being reliant on a product because what’s going to happen when you go on vacation and don’t have the product or you go to a birthday party, and there’s no product there. It’s not living. It’s relying on an external thing. But when you really focus on education and being able to make those decisions and knowing nutrition, the science behind it, in a simple way. Not like a crazy, you know, professor-type deal, but practical knowledge, that’s going to allow you to become your best nutritionist. And I don’t throw you under the bus; I guide you through the process because everyone is starting from a different point. So that’s why I do very extensive in-taking with each of my clients to figure out what their goals are, what they’ve tried before, where they are right now and then where they’re looking to go so that we can create a realistic action plan.

Tim Church: And so do they pay you, is that like a flat fee for a service that’s over a certain period of time? Or how does that work?

Adam Martin: Sure. So the payment structure is based on time. So it depends on the individual because some people, you know, they’re at their healthy weight, they’re just really looking for more mindset. So I have a three-month program for someone that has that experience and they’re just looking to take that to the next level. I have a six-month program, and then I have a year-long program. So that’s why that intake is so important to really get to know the individual and based on where they are and where they’re looking to go, based on what their goals are, I can really make a recommendation for what would best allow that to practically happen. So that’s how that pricing structure works.

Tim Church: And then, so that’s one aspect of the business is doing basically consulting, helping pharmacists and other people get on a great nutrition plan, a fitness plan, and then what’s the other aspects of the business?

Adam Martin: So there’s a lot of pharmacists that feel like they’re not fulfilled. They feel like they’re just clocking in and just keep dispensing medications. It’s not their jam. They’re looking for another way. They’re really into the nutrition; they see the benefit for themselves, and they want to do that. They want to be the pharmacist that, you know, dispenses fitness to their patients and leading by example. But there’s so many internet programs and things like that, how do they do that? And how do they learn the business side? Because yes, there are pharmacy schools that offer PharmD-MBA programs, but you know, specific for fitness coaching, health coaching, things like that, that’s my other business is helping pharmacy students and pharmacists really do that practically from someone who actually does it. So it’s cool to get the inside business from like you guys do with your finance book, mistakes you made for investing and frivolous spending and so forth, just like me. Like I’ve made mistakes in building my business, spending money where it didn’t need to be, spending too much time doing this where it should have been that, so guiding them through that process with that whole plan and allowing them to do it at a faster rate with more success and I’m with them through that whole time so that, like I said, it’s different for every person, things are going to accelerate at a different pace. So being their coach through that process. I’ve been doing that for two years now, and it’s honestly one of the most rewarding things in my life because once you see someone really realize their potential and say things like, “Wow, I’ve always seen people do this, and I never thought I could do it. But I just did it, and it feels amazing.” I had one of my current clients for the 2018 course just closed his first health coaching client on a six-month program last week. And you should have seen him. Like he was so happy. Like it made everything, like all the work, all the late nights and everything that I had put in, it made it all worth it. That actually leads to the third layer of business, since you might pick up on I can’t shut up, and like I really done that for a long time, and that is speaking. I love to speak. It’s a passion of mine, it’s a natural gift. But really learning that and honing it so it can be effective in helping people to get those simple solutions to really empower themselves, whether that’s a mindset thing, staying in their element and overcoming stress at work, nutrition, social media, all of the things that I do and practice myself in a talk. So I speak at several businesses in the Pittsburgh area and all over. I’m actually flying to Nashville on Friday to talk about social media. But it’s a passion. I love it. And pharmacy schools are my jam. I’ve been working on a book for three years now to help pharmacy students master their whole experience in pharmacy school because I had an amazing education at Pitt, I love that school so, so much. But there’s some things that I wasn’t taught. Maybe I was not paying attention, so it could be my own fault. But there’s some things like building your personal brand, how to network effectively, like the ins and outs: what to do before a conference, after the conference, how to follow up, all of those types of things, I made a book. The first half is those practical skills that looking back as a pharmacist for eight years now, looking back in pharmacy school are my highlights, what were the things I wish I knew, that’s the first half of the book are those skills that will really set you apart and give you a competitive advantage in your career. And then the second part of the book is what took all the time. There are a collection of interviews from the best people in our profession, each chapter being a niche. So I have a chapter on specialty pharmacy with one of the best people in the industry. I have someone in research. I have someone that does PGY1 residencies, and all of those different things, those different avenues you can go, that are literally the top of their game. And I had pharmacy students do the interview so that they could get the experience asking them questions like, “Right now, you’re at the top of your game. If you knew you were going to end up here, and you were on Day 1 at pharmacy school, what things would you have done differently? What resources would you recommend diving into if this is your niche? What connections — where would you spend your time so that you would end up where you are, but at a faster rate so the value of that knowledge is really what took the time?” But then I took it a step further and what I told the dean who is a part of this project, Dr. Kroboth at the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy, a phenomenal individual, so inspiring, I told her, “What I want to do is create this book, sell it. I want it in every pharmacy school in the country. But I don’t want to keep $1 from the sales. I want all of the money from the hard copy book sales to go to an endowment fund for a scholarship for a pharmacy student who is overcoming adversity and looking to make an impact in our profession.” Because I want to give back, I want to pay it forward. So that was my innovative way to create that. And that’s kind of why I’m so juiced about it, why I love going to pharmacy schools and talking, because it was the biggest gift I’ve ever gotten is a chance — a chance to get in and to really put my passion into work to make the most of that time. And I want to help others do the same, so that’s the why behind all my energy and talking and all the stuff that I do.

Tim Church: Wow. That is awesome, Adam. I didn’t know about that book. Is that out already?

Adam Martin: No. That has been in the works.

Tim Church: OK. So that one’s coming.

Adam Martin: That one’s coming in 2019. So it’s funny. I started that book three years ago. But then in the time, I was like, people really want like self-care tips. Like I keep getting messages every day, Instagram, Facebook, so I need to create a resource for that. So that’s where that book came out, and the response was, “Oh dude, you always say like the business is determined” — I forgot how this quote goes, but the market determines your success. That book came out, and 60 copies in 24 hours, it was a bestseller on Amazon, like it was incredible. I had people from Abu Dhabi buy it, Mexico, Canada, China, like amazing. Like literally worldwide reach. And I was blown away. Like I made this, I’m like, this will be like a cool e-book. And one of my mentors was like, no, no, no. You need to make this a hard copy book. I’m like, OK. So I did that, and I was like, I’ll sell like 10 copies. It’ll be cool, you know, to publish a book. But dude, it was amazing. And that just fueled and reinforced like hey man, you have something here. You need to keep going because you’re providing value, and it’s actually effective. And people are messaging me, saying, “This helped me so much.” Tony — Tony Guerra had me on his podcast, like dude, I lost 5 pounds from your one tip. I’m like, cool man.

Tim Church: Which tip was it?

Adam Martin: That was the water test, which I actually —

Tim Church: Oh, I love it. I love it. I do that all the time.

Adam Martin: Dude, I created that at work. So that’s in the trenches tip because I kept getting hungry because I was so busy, I would start feeling hungry. But I knew I wasn’t hungry, but I had this feeling. So I just chugged a bottle of water, and then 5-10 minutes later, the hunger feeling was gone. So I started looking into it, and I come to realize that the brain does not know the difference between hunger and thirst. So literally, if you feel hungry, it could be that you’re just thirsty. So in order to determine that, you’re probably dehydrated running around like a chicken with its head cut off at Club Pharmacy trying to answer all the 50 phones and the people trying to get their script filled ASAP. So chug a water, and it’ll likely go away. And 99%, dude, like I use this every single day. I used it this morning like three times. Almost every time, it goes away from drinking water. So that will save you unnecessary eating, extra calories, so it’s simple math. Like you guys are numbers with finance. It’s simple math. Calories in, calories out. If you can cut that stimulus so you don’t keep putting more calories in you don’t need, you’re going to get to your goal faster and not be walking backwards or not walking at all as we’re talking food.

Tim Church: Yeah, no, I love that tip. And there’s definitely some others that are really key in the book. I really like one of the lines that you put in there, and it was about that a lot of pharmacists, just based on the nature of the jobs, whether it’s community pharmacy or the other type of position, that a lot of times that excuse is, “Well, I don’t have to eat right. I don’t have time to exercise, you know, because of my job and because of my kids and because of all the other things I’ve got going on.” And then what you came back and said is, it’s not that you don’t have time. It’s that you haven’t figured out a system, a routine, the habits that work well with your lifestyle. And when I read that, I thought, wow. That really is the key is you’ve got to find something that works for you. So I think that was such a cool point that you put in there.

Adam Martin: Thank you, man. I appreciate that. It comes to the main concept of how I conduct my life, how I help my clients really find that “Aha!” moment for the system that you just described. It comes to something coined by my mentor, Dr. Joe Klemczewski, and business partner, that being structured flexibility. So you need a plan of what to do, things to cook, workout strategies and whatever, but you don’t want to fall into the psychological trap of black-and-white thinking. Like it’s this way or the highway. You need that flexibility component because as we know, life is not black and white. So if you try to do it in a black-and-white manner, you’re going to give yourself more frustration and anxiety when you’re trying to succumb those at the same time. So it’s going to be counter-productive. So if you have a plan, the structure, but you also have flexibility to kind of roll with the punches when things aren’t exactly as planned because such is life, you’re going to have a much easier and enjoyable time, whether that’s saving for finances with paying off debt, whether that’s mastering your mindset, nailing your nutrition at work and days off, and just like you said, finding the time to work out. I bring that up again in the book for pharmacy school, relating it to Beyonce. Like look what she does, like amazing things. But she has the same amount of time that we do, right? So she has a system to just be efficient, and she’s been doing it for so long, she’s putting in the reps, literally. It’s about reps — being good and building that skill by being consistent and practicing those things. So yeah, it’s not “I don’t have time” but it’s that “I’m not making it a priority to find that time. So and that’s different for every person. So you might have five kids, you might have a job where you have to drive three hours one-way. It’s different for each person, so really looking at your life to see where it can fit, kind of like how you guys do in “Seven Figure Pharmacist.” In the beginning, you talk about having that money checklist of really — the “vitals check,” that’s what it’s called, the “vitals check” of what am I working with? Where is my starting point? And then once you know that and have that awareness, you can know where you want to go and how to get there.

Tim Church: Well, Adam, there’s no question that what you’re doing is delivering a lot of value to people. I mean, I think everybody can hear that in your passion. But one of the questions that I wanted to know is certainly, you’re running a business and you’re monetizing a lot of what you’re doing, which is great because you’re providing good value. But what are you doing with the additional income that you’re earning from the Fit Pharmacist?

Adam Martin: Putting it back. Literally. I have a separate business account where all of my money goes in, and goes back into the business, creating value, creating better content. So now, that’s shifted into upping my podcast. I have a podcast, the Fit Pharmacist healthcare podcast, but I actually just interviewed your colleague, other Tim.

Tim Church: We need to talk, which Tim? Which one?

Adam Martin: Yeah, yeah. Other one. So increasing the quality of that, so the equipment to do that. I’m now getting really into videos, so creating that production. The other thing is I love, like you said, to give and use my passion and skills to make an impact. So I’m going to Panama in February on a medical mission trip with, actually, a girl that I met in the Fit Pharmacist community, who is just — that’s her niche. That’s her passion. She’s on an advisory board for a nationwide mission trip organization. And I had her on the podcast, I think it was like six months ago. And we were talking about how to go on a mission trip, like what to expect, how to get started. And in that interview, she said, “Oh yeah, we’re going to Panama.” And I’m like, “Oh, do you need another pharmacist?” She’s like, “Actually, yeah.” I’m like, hmm. That’s it. So that’s not cheap. You’ve got to fly, investing with travel and all the stuff and vaccines. Plus, it’s the opportunity cost, so as you guys know working at work in chain pharmacy, you don’t really get that much vacation time, but I’m investing my vacation time into that. So that’s literally how I spend. I reinvest it. I put it back into the business, into myself. So that’s going to seminars. Like I literally tried to think, how can I invest $15,000-20,000 in my personal skills this year? What am I passionate about? What am I looking to do?

Tim Church: I think that’s so good, Adam. I love that you’re reinvesting a lot of the money in yourself and in the business just because you believe in it so much. And I think that’s awesome. But I think a lot of people, they’re probably listening and just like on other episodes, that you’re doing a lot in addition to working as a full-time pharmacist. How do you practically manage the Fit Pharmacist with your personal life and your full-time job? And how many hours — what’s a typical week like in terms of how much time you’re spending on it?

Adam Martin: So that’s an excellent question. And there’s a really big dip that you can fall into of not knowing when to say no, not knowing when the cutoff is. So it’s not having a “To Do” list, but it’s having a “Not To Do” list that’s really going to help you in the long term because I see so many times people get into this niche of health coaching, and they go all in for 2-3 months, and then you don’t hear from them again. And they’re like, “Oh, I went through some stuff, blah, blah, blah,” or “Oh, I got too busy,” or “Oh.” But if you pace yourself — so that’s not saying, let off on the gas. But really having time blocking and chunking in your day. So again, it really depends on your schedule, whether you’re married, you have kids, being realistic with that. For me, — so Gary Vee, if you guys listen to him on entrepreneurship, Gary Vee talks about that magic — what is it? 10-2 hour, which my colleague and friend Richard Waithe practices. 10-2, he’s all about that. For me, that doesn’t work for my lifestyle because some days, I work mornings, some days, I work nights, so I kind of sandwich it. So I call it my power hour in the morning, which is really two hours, which is reading, daily devotion, just going on a 20- or 30-minute walk while listening to personal development videos or things like that. And then prepping for the day, setting my goals, setting my intentions, going through my gratitude list. I start every day, two hours, with that routine, and it really fuels me and sets me up. Then it depends on how my days are structured with work because I’m on a rolling two-week schedule. Sometimes, it’s two hours after that. But getting that two- or four-hour window in every day, but knowing when to quit. So it’s so tempting — and I did this for years when I started way back in the day — of I’m going to go to bed at 9, but then you get this idea and you start writing an article, and then it goes into another thing, and it’s 12:30. And you don’t want to “quit” or be lazy, but you have to know when to say no. And you have to really put your priority in real-life relationships. Social media is a huge trap. It’s a great tool, but it can really suck the life out of you.

Tim Church: Definitely. Definitely.

Adam Martin: I’m serious.

Tim Church: No, I know. Yeah.

Adam Martin: So really seeing what it is. It’s a tool, it’s social media, and putting priority on real-life interactions, literally like in person. That’s where it’s at. So being fully present with that person is the best compliment you can give them. So I love my family, I’m very blessed to have an amazing dad. He’s such a role model. Like he’s a missionary, he is building a library in Africa. Just the most giving and loving man of God I’ve known, and I’ve modeled my life after him. So I want to spend time with him. So I do that on a consistent basis. But it’s doing him and me a disservice by being there and being on my phone. So when I’m with him, my phone’s charging in the corner. I don’t see it. Or just having that promise to yourself that this is special time. I am going to be fully present with this person because I don’t know if he or she is going to be here tomorrow. I don’t know what the future’s going to bring. But I know right now, I have the gift of being with them. And I don’t want to waste that on some Instagram post or whatever. So time blocking and chunking is the best advice I can give. Practicing deep work, which I have a whole chapter on that in the pharmacy school book. If you guys ever read “Deep Work” by Cal Newport. He also wrote a book, “So Good They Can’t Ignore You.” Phenomenal author. But really chunking your priorities into times that fit your schedule but knowing when that cutoff is. So again, coming back to what I started with, it’s not making a “To Do” list but a “Not To Do” list. So have those non-negotiables. When 9 p.m. hits, it doesn’t matter what you’re doing, it’s time to stop. It’s time to be with your loved one and spend that hour that, yeah, you could write an article, you could do whatever, but you might not have that tomorrow. So really be present in that moment, and the best investment you can make is in the present with the people that are in your life. So that’s my advice as to how to keep it all together is know where your non-negotiables are, really invest in those that love and support you, and give back. That’s really the key. And it sounds so cliche. And I’ve heard that all my life, but in the past year, I’ve really practiced that, and it’s transformed not only my personal life, but my business life. And it’s been an amazing journey.

Tim Church: That’s so good, Adam. Thank you for those tips. I think that’s really great, and it just kind of highlights how important it is that, you know, you don’t have to be going 100 miles an hour in your business to be successful all the time. You know, there’s obviously going to be times, and it’s going to ebb and flow when you’re working hard, but also just making sure that you’re dedicating quality time to the people that matter most to you just because that is such an important thing to keep in mind as you’re going through that. So last question I have for you is, what advice would you give to other pharmacists or even students out there who have an interest in becoming an entrepreneur?

Adam Martin: So consistency is key. So what I mean by that is you’re going to read a book or see a movie or YouTube video or go to a conference or listen to a podcast where you get super inspired and want to go all-in. That’s great. That’s what we call motivation. The difference between people that stay in the game, that make an impact, that turn their passion into a business is shifting that into commitment. So motivation comes and goes. You know, it ebbs and flows with how you’re feeling, your interaction, your environment. It can be totally different from one day to the next. But commitment is you are tied to this goal. You have a why, and you’re tied to it. So you might not feel like going to the gym tomorrow. You might be exhausted or have a list of so many other things that you could do instead. But you’re committed to your fitness. You’ve turned your should into a must, a non-negotiable. This will happen, regardless of how I feel because I owe this to myself. When you make that commitment to yourself and to your goal, that is what is going to set you ahead. They say so often, go the extra mile. It’s not crowded there. Here’s why. That principle. Motivation vs. commitment. Everyone wants to go all-in, they want to grind, and you know, no sleep, like all work, all day, like no play, all work, whatever that is. And in the beginning, you’ll find that. And that only lasts a couple months. But the longer you stay in the game, the less and less people are there. So if you’re in the game for 4-5 years, there’s not going to be much competition there because it gets hard. Guys, it gets hard. Entrepreneurship is a lonely route. It’s not guaranteed. You’re going to eat crap. You’re going to sleep on couches, you’re going to have adversity you never saw coming. But if you are committed to that goal and that why and your reason, then that is how you’re going to succeed. So delayed gratification is another thing with that. It’s kind of a paired relationship. So you might be networking and putting out content for months without many likes or comments or shares. Keep going. Do not quit because everyone quits. But if someone comes on your article, and they see you’ve been consistently writing one a month or whatever, they’re going to be like, “Oh, wow. You’ve been in this a long time. That shows that you’re committed.” It’s looking at your track record. So those two principles, if you can like put those into practice, you’re going to make it. So be consistent. And be patient. They’re very simple but very difficult to put into practice. And I think if you do that, that’s what’s going to keep you in the game, and the longer in the game you are, it’s not a guarantee because you have to adapt and innovate with time and change and so forth. But that is really the secret sauce because so few people do it.

Tim Church: Adam, that was awesome. And thanks for sharing those tips. And I know that your story and what you talked about today is really going to inspire at least somebody out there to kind of go down this journey but just to pursue their passion. And I want to thank you for coming on the podcast. And what’s the best way for someone to reach out for you or to learn more about what you’re doing?

Adam Martin: So the ‘gram is my jam. So if you’re on Instagram, guys, that’s where I’m most active. @thefitpharmacist. DM me, comment on my posts. I get back to every single person. I pride myself on that because I feel like every interaction, there’s a reason behind it, regardless of what that is. I also have my website, TheFitPharmacist.com, where I have all my articles there, resources, that’s where I highlight all of the Fit Pharmacist Friday features that you can get inspired and connect with them.

Tim Church: Adam, thank you again for sharing your story, for coming on the show. It’s just been a real pleasure.

Adam Martin: Thank you, Tim. I appreciate what you and other Tim are doing. The other thing I say is, guys, get their book. It’s incredible. Seriously. Like I love to read, but it’s — I love how the book is structured. It’s just so simple and practical, so I can’t say enough good things about it. I love what you guys are doing with Your Financial Pharmacist, such a valuable asset to our profession. So it’s such a pleasure to finally meet you, meet you and talk to you, Tim, and I just can’t wait for what the future holds.

Tim Church: Thanks, Adam. Really appreciate that.

Adam Martin: Thank you.

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