Growing a Brand Through Memes, Products, and a Podcast
Richard Waithe, PharmD, joins Tim Church on this episode to take a deep dive into discussing his unique career path, his non-traditional pharmacist role and how he’s helping improve patient adherence and health literacy, and some of his side hustles to create multiple streams of income.
About Today’s Guest
Richard Waithe, PharmD, is passionate about patient engagement and advancements in technology that improve adherence and health literacy to ultimately improve outcomes. With years of experience on the front lines in community Pharmacy, Richard is committed to helping individuals better manage their health and medications.
He is currently the President of VUCA Health, a company that has the largest library of medication education videos that serves to enhance patient engagement and provide an on-demand extension of pharmacists and other healthcare providers. He is also the host of the Rx Radio podcast where he interviews Pharmacists practicing in a vast variety of fields and discusses the future of our profession. Richard is the author of the book First Time Pharmacist: Everything you didn’t learn in school or on-the-job training.
Summary
Richard Waithe, PharmD, joins Tim Church in Miami to discuss how to grow your brand with memes, products and a podcast.
Richard graduated from the University of Florida with his PharmD in 2014. He worked at Target pharmacy first as an intern and then a pharmacist. When Target was bought out by CVS, Richard learned the importance of branding and saw first-hand how branding changed behavior through patients reactions to the buy out.
During his P4 year, Richard felt the desire to become an entrepreneur. While on rotations, Richard saw that it was a mess and needed to be better, and knew that he could do more beyond his current role. He began a MTM practice, MedVise. His journey starting and running MedVise taught him a lot as he had to learn about website building, marketing, and branding.
He also created the RxRadio podcast which targets all pharmacists. The podcast discusses themes of exploring different ways pharmacists can have an impact through various careers and paths. His biggest challenge in getting the podcast running was the editing, recording, and building a listenership.
Richard has been able to monetize the podcast through merchandise like mugs, t-shirts and onesies and the book he wrote, First Time Pharmacist: Everything you didn’t learn in school or on-the-job training. Richard built his a social media following around memes that were created out of his experiences in community pharmacy.
Richard took on the position of President at VUCA Health in 2018 which focuses on medication education and providing content to healthcare providers and health plans. When Richard was a P3 student, he volunteered for VUCA Health when the company was a start-up.
Getting to this point with his brand was not easy. For two years, Richard dedicated time everyday from 10 pm to 2 am, while working as a community pharmacist full-time, to work on what he was passionate about.
Mentioned on the Show
- Refinance Student Loans
- RxRadio Instagram
- VUCA Health
- RxRadio Podcast
- First Time Pharmacist: Everything you didn’t learn in school or on-the-job training. By Richard Waithe
- Richard Waithe on Instagram
- Richard Waithe on LinkedIn
- Richard Waithe on Facebook
- Richard Waithe on Twitter
- Richard Waithe on Reddit
- Email Richard: [email protected]
Episode Transcript
Tim Church: Richard, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show and for being part of this side hustle edition.
Richard Waithe: Thanks for having me, I’m excited to be here.
Tim Church: Well, I’m excited to be here because I’m hanging out with you in Miami in your house, where we’re recording this episode, which is pretty cool.
Richard Waithe: Yeah, yeah. The weather, luckily, played out to be a really nice day.
Tim Church: Yeah. I didn’t know for the longest time that we were actually neighbors, you know, which I call us south Florida neighbors because it’s really not that far down the road, which is cool.
Richard Waithe: Yeah, there’s not a lot of pharmacists kind of building a lot of brand down here and kind of vocally. Most of the time, I’m connecting with people that are doing similar things to us, they’re like living out in Pittsburgh, California, and all these different states.
Tim Church: Shout out to your friend Adam Martin.
Richard Waithe: Yeah, Adam Martin, there you go. And it’s cool to know that someone’s kind of in the backyard that we can kind of chop it up with.
Tim Church: Yeah, it’s great. Well, I want to jump in and kind of learn, have our audience learn more about you and your career path. But one of the things that has been, keeps popping on my social media is all these amazing memes that you create. So talk a little bit about what you’re doing with those and how — what I want to know is how do you have so much time to get these going?
Richard Waithe: Yeah. So it’s funny about memes, and you’re actually the first person to kind of bring this up I guess really vocally, which I’m really excited about. And the reason is because I’ve been able to build a pretty solid community on social media purely off the back of those memes. And the inspiration from them, I think they’re — I mean, not to boast, but the memes are hilarious.
Tim Church: They are.
Richard Waithe: And I’m cracking up. And I make a lot of them. Like, if it says RxRadio on the meme, I made it. But it’s from pure pain. Like it’s from pure struggle of being in the community pharmacy and that like even to this day, I still kind of remember back about like the different interactions. But the great thing about it, though, beyond the fact that it was great I was able to build kind of a community around it, is that it lets us connect a lot. And it lets, like when people are seeing it, they’re seeing that other people across the country are kind of going through the same thing that they are. And then it also allows, it also drives team morale within the pharmacy. Like I have people that are tagging their team members in the pharmacy in these memes. And it’s great to know that they’re able to help get them through their day. People are messaging me saying, “Hey, this is just happened to us in the pharmacy. It would be a really funny meme.” It’s just great to kind of build that sort — I don’t want to say if it’s a coping mechanism but just build that community to help everyone get through their days usually.
Tim Church: So one of the characters that commonly comes up in these memes is Samuel L. Jackson.
Richard Waithe: Yeah.
Tim Church: So my question for you is is that somebody you just like? Or you just feel like he’s pretty easy to put in many different memes?
Richard Waithe: He’s like meme gold, so I just kind of use him for that. I don’t have any particular reason other than that.
Tim Church: Oh, OK. Other than that. I noticed that that was a pretty popular one, along with Bird Box.
Richard Waithe: Yeah, the Bird Box meme killed it. Which, you know, it’s funny because luckily, everything that pops up that’s a meme could be applied to pharmacy, which is great. And so it’s great to kind of keep up with culture that way. But Sandra’s another one that like — I feel bad. So I always reference like Sandra picturing being like a customer that’s just kind of always annoying at the pharmacy, and I feel bad because I have people that are following that their names are Sandra. And they’re like, “Hey, my name’s Sandra. You’re always mad at me,” and stuff. It’s just super funny. But yeah.
Tim Church: So talk a little bit about your career path as a pharmacist.
Richard Waithe: Sure. So I went to University of Florida. I was at the Orlando campus for pharmacy school. And I was pretty involved there on campus. I was in a lot of leadership roles and got my career started actually with Target Pharmacy. I started as an intern in school, and I did that for a couple years when I graduated, went right into a pharmacy position. Did that for a couple years, and we ended up actually getting bought out by CVS. I was there during the time of that transition, which was super interesting. One of the biggest lessons I really learned in that transition, not only just from an operations standpoint and transitioning kind of cultures, but I learned the importance of brand from there because I literally had patients tell me that they’re super sorry, but they’re actually not going to be able to come back to the pharmacy anymore because of that brand that was changing over.
Tim Church: Wow.
Richard Waithe: And I thought that was really powerful because it had nothing to do with the product, which the product essentially was the medications and the service that my team provided to the patients, which was great at the time. It was the branding that really triggered something in their mind for them to change their behavior, and that was such a huge lesson to me in realizing that brand is everything, no matter how good your product is or not — I mean, don’t get me wrong. If you have excellent branding and marketing, but your product is terrible, like obviously, that might show at some point. But just the fact that the importance of branding was a huge lesson there. So after I did that transition for awhile, I went over to Publix Pharmacy, which I was there for a couple years. Also made it to a manager position there as well. And recently, last summer, actually, I fell into a role where I’m now the president of VUCA Health, and we provide medication education content to healthcare providers, health systems, health plans and things like that. Along the way, I’ve picked up a couple side hustles that we might dive into.
Tim Church: Yeah, before you jump into those, can you talk a little bit more about VUCA Health? Because I think this role that you have as a pharmacist is really unique and a really cool and exciting role.
Richard Waithe: Yeah, so we — so the funny thing is a lot of people ask me, how did you get this role? Did you apply? I get all these questions. But the interesting thing is that I actually — the role that I’m in now, while it being six years later almost, was the flower that grew from a seed I had planted when I was a P3, where I had met the founders of the company while they were just a startup, and they just needed students to help them build out some content, like to at least start it. And I was one of those people that volunteered for that. So it was a seed that I had no idea what that was going to potentially turn into, but the fact that I always just liked to take up new opportunities, and I took that, and it led to this, is pretty amazing. But in terms of the role itself, I did step away kind of from patient care, which was definitely a huge change and a huge transition. And I stepped more into kind of the business and business operations sides of things. I was able to also do a lot of the marketing for the company and lead a lot of those fronts. But it’s — the interesting thing is — and we’ve actually kind of talked offline about this — is that technically, a pharmacist doesn’t have to be in the role that I’m in, like anyone could kind of — I don’t want to say anyone could lead a company, but anyone with any sort of degree can essentially lead a particular company. But I think it’s extremely helpful to be having a pharmacist training to be in this particular type of role. One, we’re providing education content to patients, so it’s good to know that my absolute goal being that I was a pharmacist is to make sure that we’re delivering messages in a way that people can understand and actually help them improve outcomes and change their behavior. But it also helps in terms of being able to serve my potential business partners in the sense of being a pharmacist, our whole thing is about empathy. We do a lot of training in empathy. We’re trying to make sure that we’re caring as much for that patient and meeting their needs to help them with their outcomes. And applying that in the business world is actually, I think, imperative to success. And realizing that whether it’s your customer or business partner that you’re potentially working with is being as empathetic as possible to their situation, finding out how you can help them in whatever it is that they’re trying to do with the sets of tools that you have as a business.
Tim Church: And so the main thing that you guys are doing as a business is you’re really looking at pharmacies, organizations, and figuring out how to bring interactive media, video content to them and almost either supplement or replace the traditional monographs for drug information. Is that right?
Richard Waithe: Yes. So we have a couple different deliverables. But from an overarching standpoint, our goal is to help improve health literacy. So you look at the wave of digital media and the way people are consuming media with YouTube and Facebook and videos, Instagram, all this stuff. For the last 30 years, since OBRA ‘90 was enacted, it’s only been required that when a patient goes to the pharmacy, that you have to get counseling from a pharmacist and you had to give them materials about their medication. And those materials usually came in the form of paper. And it usually came in very small print, eight pages potentially, right? And not a lot has changed since that. And our company has been able to augment that in a sense where our videos are usually short, they’re usually two minutes in length. It can’t really essentially replace the monograph, but it can essentially help drive deeper conversations with providers. With our deliverables specifically for independent and community pharmacies is that we are not replacing the monograph but moreso, we’re providing the monograph in a digital way so they can actually get access to that same monograph that they get on paper. They can get it digitally through our platform. That’s platform’s called Meds on Queue, it’s one of our deliverables. But essentially, we also sell to health plans, we sell to health systems, independent providers in terms of like whether you’re at a clinic, we provide also just the medication education videos. Being a pharmacist, I’m not trying to replace provider interaction but moreso to allow providers to become confident after a particular interaction happens or even before the interaction happens that that conversation is going to be valuable, and the patient’s going to go home with the confidence that they can potentially watch a trusted video about their health or medication.
Tim Church: I think that’s so cool. And I just think about my own practice with patients in primary care setting that even though I discuss the information, medication changes, different things like that, I provide written instructions for them, a lot of times, it’s still not getting through. They’re still not understanding as deeply as they should be. So I think what you guys are doing is so cool because it really provides an enhancement for that health literacy and really to help patients use their medications better and understand them more because there’s a lot of statistics out there that, you know, so many patients, they either don’t take their medications because they don’t have all the education or they just have no idea basically what they’re doing or don’t want to take the medications because nobody ever took the time and provided that education. So I think it’s really cool. So you’re doing awesome stuff with VUCA Health, so at one point did you say, I have this entrepreneurial itch or I want to do something in addition to what I’m doing as a pharmacist?
Richard Waithe: Yeah, so that for me, that actually started when I was a P4, that itch, I would say. And it was because when I first went out on rotations, before that, all I knew was theory. All I knew was like, OK, this is how healthcare works, you’re going to be a pharmacist, you’re learning all this stuff. When I got out into rotations, I saw that, like, it was a mess. And I was just like, we need to be better at this. Like we need to do more. And I don’t think I’m going to be able to — while I’m going to have a great impact, I know that I can do more beyond than what I’m probably going to be my real, actual real is going to be where I’m going to make my money to pay my bills. And I actually started, at that time, I actually started kind of like a private MTM practice where I was going to do essentially MTM, but I was calling it “Personal Medication Management.” And it was through that I started realizing that this is how I’m really going to have an impact and do more. And I learned a lot, I got into website building, I got into the basics of what marketing was and marketing services. I learned about, again, kind of driving how to build brand, build a brand as a personal brand and also for the company. But that was where I really got my itch was just like, I know I need to do more and really turn — and I know that that was going to take some time to do that. Like I wasn’t going to be able to do it in my current role as just being a community pharmacist.
Tim Church: So what is the status with that company that you started there? What was the result of that?
Richard Waithe: So I learned a ton in that, obviously, in terms of what it was to get a company going, I had to get like a CLIA waiver and do all these things because I wanted to, you know, provide point-of-care testing and do all kinds of things in there. But that was moving along extremely well, and then the reason I actually stopped that was because of the role with VUCA Health came to be. And I felt that I was going to be able to have a very similar impact just on a bigger scale. And I thought there was more opportunity to grow, and so I ended up taking that role. But within that, during the time that I was doing — it was called Medvise at the time — during the time that I was doing Medvise, I also realized that not only do I need to do more, I need to help also inspire the rest of the industry to do more. And that’s when I kind of started the RxRadio podcast and RxRadio branding. So I started doing that kind of in tandem with being a community pharmacist and trying to build that brand to personal medication management.
Tim Church: So talk a little bit about the podcast, who you’re targeting, what is it all about?
Richard Waithe: So the podcast is essentially targeting anyone in pharmacy, but in reality, the general theme around it is exploring the different ways that pharmacists can have an impact. So it’s looking at, you know, pharmacists that are working in different avenues in the hospital setting, it’s pharmacists that are going into informatics and working with mobile apps, pharmacists that are at high level leadership positions in community pharmacies and health plans and things like that. So I wanted to really expose all the different ways that pharmacists can practice with their degrees. But in terms of like what the target is, a lot of them, a large part of the audience is community pharmacists. I mean, you just look at the numbers. It’s just kind of what the numbers of pharmacy are, but a lot of students are tuning in. But it really is for that curious pharmacist that’s wondering what else is out there, what are other people doing, what could I potentially find as my own niche, is kind of who the target is for the podcast.
Tim Church: So what challenges did you face with getting it up and running and then just the maintenance of the podcast?
Richard Waithe: So I had zero experience in terms of media before the podcast, and I think the biggest challenge was — so right now, we’re recording on a couple pieces of different technologies, and it was not easy to learn that. And I had to do a lot of YouTube watching, there was a large learning curve in figuring out how to do all these things, how to edit. I think just the details was the biggest challenges of like figuring out how to get things to places. Then it was, OK, how do I get people to listen? That was another thing. Like how do I build a community of people that are wanting to tune into this content and how to market that, and that’s kind of where the memes started coming along, you know, just building the community that way. But learning how to market and distribute media was a fairly, you know, steep learning curve, I would say.
Tim Church: Now, I know you’ve had a ton of episodes actually air over the past couple of years. Has that resulted in any monetization?
Richard Waithe: Yes. So in a couple ways, the podcast has done well in terms of monetization. So I have merchandise that’s on a the website, it’s RxRadio.fm. There’s merchandise there. And then I also have a book that I wrote that I wrote right before I actually transitioned out of pharmacy. The reason I wrote that book was because I knew, I actually at the time of writing it, I knew things were changing. And I had some time before that change was going to happen, and I wanted to get as much experience that I had just learned that were fresh that I was using in my day-to-day, I wanted to get that out there. So I did have that book in play. And the podcast was definitely a driver of the success of the book and drove to sales of the book. But I think the biggest thing that has so far come along with the podcast has been the ores — the ores — the doors that have opened up in business and in networking. I’ve found value that no shop merchandise sales or book sales are ever going to bring by having the value of building my own brand and content. That has been — it wasn’t a direct monetization, but that by far has been the biggest benefit of that. But don’t get me wrong, the side hustle of kind of having some extra income from the book has been helpful. You know, it’s helped offset a lot of different costs, especially whether it be student loans, insurance payments, like all these kinds of things.
Tim Church: Is that where most of the book revenue, where is that going? Is it mostly going to debt payments and savings?
Richard Waithe: It’s mostly going — so the funny thing about running this podcast is that the money that comes from that book is not paying for all the stuff that I’m doing.
Tim Church: OK.
Richard Waithe: So for the most part, like if you looked at where the direct money is going to, I travel to schools, and I go talk to things, I do a lot of different things for free that a lot of it at some point costs money. And I essentially, those funds that I’m using from the book would go toward some of those things, so whether it’s a flight cost or time I’m taking away from not making money somewhere else, I’d be using that as kind of the income there. But yeah, I mean, it could easily pay for my student loans on the month by itself. Like it could easily do that.
Tim Church: Right. That’s cool. So talk a little bit about this book, “First Time Pharmacist.” What’s the big overview and kind of what’s in it?
Richard Waithe: So there’s a lot of different things in it, and it’s funny that we’re on a podcast that’s kind of surrounding around financials. So we do have a very small part in there kind of about, that I didn’t do — I actually got a friend that was a financial planner to kind of come in and talk a little bit about that — but there’s a lot of different parts in there about fitness, diet, because a lot of times, those things kind of get put aside as you graduate. But the bulk of the book is really about things that you don’t learn in pharmacy school. And it’s ways to interact with patients that can really make a difference in your day day-to-day in terms of your quality of life. There’s a lot of little nuggets in there where it’s not filled with fluff. It’s not filled with like, “Just be nice.” It’s filled with tactical ways to build relationships with your patients to be able to make sure that you’re having a great day. For example, one of the nuggets I’ll give to you is the fact that when you’re dealing with customer service, a lot of times, people see you as part of the machine. So let’s say you’re working for like a community pharmacy, let’s say. If a problem happens, they’re going to think it was you that made that problem, right? But a way to combat that is to actually remove yourself from that machine physically. And what I mean by that is going outside of the counter and being on the other side of the register with that patient. That allows you to explain the, hey look, I’m here with you. But that machine really did us a disservice. Like I didn’t do anything to that, but the computer XYZ, whatever the problem was, or the doctor XYZ, whatever the problem was. It’s just a tactic that allows you to be on the — show your patient that you’re on the same side as them, both physically and kind of mentally, emotionally, all that stuff. And by doing that one time for that one patient, you might not ever have to do it again with them, but they’ll always know that you’re not a part of that machine. You’re their healthcare provider, hoping to take care of them as best as you can. And it really allows your day-to-day to go so much better.
Tim Church: I think that’s a great point and a great tip for pharmacists out there. But I agree. It’s filled with a lot of different kinds of nuggets that you’re not necessarily going to get through school or through on your rotations. And you know, you and I have been talking off air that there’s just so many things that experience really brings into play because you can’t teach all of these things until you actually deal with it or have to deal with it.
Richard Waithe: Yeah, exactly.
Tim Church: So you talked about merchandise as a result of the podcast. What are some of the things that you’re selling?
Richard Waithe: So it’s real T-shirts, mugs. A lot of it is not geared towards specifically branding like our logos and stuff like that in terms of RxRadio, but I think the most successful merchandise on there we have is like onesies, like the kids onesies.
Tim Church: I do like the onesies. They say like “I love my pharmacist.” And then it says, “Because she’s my mom,” right?
Richard Waithe: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. They’re really cute. Obviously, these onesies are for the little kids and toddlers. But we’re getting to a point now where either you’re having a kid potentially or you’re an aunt to someone else. And they’re just really nice gifts. But those have been really, really successful.
Tim Church: How did you — I mean, when I looked at that, I mean, at first, I thought it was kind of an odd mix in terms of things that you had. But in the back of my mind, I’m thinking like, what was the driving force to put that kind of stuff? Not that — I think it’s great. But how did you even come up with that or decide that you wanted to do that?
Richard Waithe: I mean, I just remember being that — the funny thing about RxRadio and like the whole thing, it’s all tests that I’m doing. And I’m all like kind of testing things and seeing what works. Like for example, the book. The book was self-published. I published it. I wanted to test how to publish a book. Like it was basically an experiment, essentially. And the same thing started happening with the merchandise. I wanted to see what works, like what do people like? Like what is something that would be also valuable to them? So now, I’m also thinking about value is like my whole thing and everything I do on the podcast is about how to bring more value. And I just started thinking about the fact that we’re at a point now, if you graduated pharmacy school or you’re about to graduate pharmacy school, there’s likely going to be a lot of children in your life at some point. And I feel like what better way to drive one, a fun interaction that you’re going to have with some family members or yourself and your kids that are involved in pharmacy? Like the fact that you’re wanting to promote your profession, and that just came to me. It was like, how awesome would it be if you can give your little niece a shirt that says, “I love my pharmacist because she’s my aunt.”
Tim Church: No, it’s cool. I like what you’ve done there because I think people are interested in those kind of things to really highlight that they’re in the profession or to share that with their family. So how many hours are you spending on, you know, creating Samuel L. Jackson memes, doing the RxRadio and everything else that you’ve got going on?
Richard Waithe: So when I was — my life now is a little different because of my current role. So I don’t want to give you that example. But I’m going to tell you about how I was doing the exact same thing while I was a community pharmacist because I had like essentially a “normal job” at that time. I had this thing called #10to2, right? And it was essentially to say, OK, I’m currently working at a job that’s taking 40 hours a week of my time. But there’s a lot of other things that I want to do. So I needed to find the time to do that because they were ambitious things I wanted to do. I wanted to run a podcast, write articles, and do all these types of things. So I essentially dedicated every single day, whether I was working that day at the pharmacy from 9-9 or I had a day off, every single day, I made sure that I was working between the hours of 10 p.m. and 2 in the morning. And it was on things that I was passionate about. It was on my brand, whether it be personal brand or whether it be for RxRadio, whether it be memes, so multiply that out, that was the minimum that I was doing, working towards just my personal brand. I don’t do math well. What is that? Is that 4 hours times 7?
Tim Church: Yeah.
Richard Waithe: That’s 28. So I was doing —
Tim Church: That’s a lot.
Richard Waithe: At least 28 hours. At a minimum.
Tim Church: Wow.
Richard Waithe: And this was not on — and proven in the way — go to Twitter right now, whether you have an account or not. Go look at the #10to2. If you look at the last two years — maybe with the exception of the last six months, only because like I’ve been working but just not on my personal brand, essentially — but the last two years, if you look at the hashtag on Twitter, I’m the only one that was hashtagging that. You can literally look back every single day. And this was like sometime between the hours of 10 and 2, I was talking about it, and I was doing that work and putting it in. So at a minimum, that’s what I was doing to get to that point where I was being, when I was able to run all that same stuff and still work at a regular job.
Tim Church: Wow. Was that hard to do?
Richard Waithe: It was hard, but the crazy thing is is that I would work from 9 — let’s say a Monday that I was working at the pharmacy — I worked from 9 to 9 p.m., right? The normal 12-hour shift at a pharmacy. It would suck to go home and work at 10, right? I would make it home, luckily, my commute wasn’t that bad and I would be able to spend time with my fiance at the time. But the 10-2, it was stuff that I was passionate about. So like that was actually not that hard. That was almost easy because I was excited about it, I really wanted to do things. That wasn’t hard, but it was hard to wake up the next morning and then go to work and do things like that. But that four hours, I loved it. And I’m still doing that today where I’m working like that and working as much as that, it’s just great because now it’s things that I’m all passionate about. If you’re doing something that you don’t like, you’ll easily get burnt out doing that amount of work. But it wasn’t that hard for me, only because I found something that I was really passionate about doing. So it really didn’t feel like work.
Tim Church: Is it hard to manage your personal life on top of everything that you’ve got going on?
Richard Waithe: It depends on how you mean “manage your personal life.” So I think that — and I’m sure that you, being that you’re in finances, when you’re talking to people and giving advice, it’s not a blanket type of advice that you can give. It’s so different between people because they have so much other factors that can play into how they can best manage their finances. And I treat my “personal life” a similar way in terms of my personal life is the happiness — because to me, work-life balance and personal life is like being happy, right? That’s like the ultimate goal of it all. It’s a completely different definition to what someone else’s is. So for my own personal life, it’s actually not that hard. But I feel like if I was someone else that had other types of goals and personal life meant a lot of different things to them, this would be impossible, really, to do.
Tim Church: Right.
Richard Waithe: But for me, I definitely had to make sure that I was really over-communicating with the people that meant a lot to me in terms of spending time with them to let them know kind of this is what’s going on and making sure I still put in the time to spend with them, but I also realized that I had specific ambitions that required work. And I love football. Football is my favorite sport. I know it’s dangerous, and there’s all kinds of things that are problems with it. But I love the sport. I grew up playing it, and I love to watch it. Basketball, same thing. I love basketball. I had to cut a lot of that out to make the time to follow my ambitions. But to me, my ambitions and my goals and my career were just more important than sitting and watching games. So that was hard to do, but it was an easy decision because I realized that I need to put my actions where my mouth and my mind was to be able to say like, you have these ambitions and these goals, you have to put in the work to do it. I think — but there was sacrifice involved.
Tim Church: Yeah. Definitely. It sounds like it. I’m just like, I’m sitting here thinking like, OK, well, when did you eat? When did you sleep? But I think it’s what you said is, you know, how passionate are you about what you’re trying to accomplish? And sometimes, in order to get to that next level, you’re going to have to make a ton of tradeoffs and sacrifices to get there. Otherwise, you may just be mediocre in what you’re trying to do.
Richard Waithe: Yeah. And mind you, I think within — I feel like it was an extreme. I’m not going to sit here and say, “Oh, it wasn’t that bad.” I know it was an extreme. But I think that not everyone has the ambitions to need that sort of extreme, right?
Tim Church: Right.
Richard Waithe: So there are some people that can say, call it #10to11. And they just do one hour a day towards something and see some significant results from that. But I think it’s just being able to dedicate a specific time block and a frame that works in your lifestyle to dedicate towards a side hustle, you’ll really see some results.
Tim Church: Definitely. I agree. I think that’s the key is however much time that is, is that consistency in making that happen all the time. And for me, personally, that’s what seemed to work. We’re going to go through different times when you have to shift your focus on your personal life or different things, but showing up and being consistent, even if it’s 30 minutes, I think can go a long way.
Richard Waithe: Yeah.
Tim Church: So Richard, what advice would you give to other pharmacists or students out there who have an interest in becoming an entrepreneur or starting a business? What would you tell them?
Richard Waithe: The first thing I would tell them to do is that like, first of all, it’s hard as crap to start anything on your own. And let alone start it and actually get it going, but to be successful, it is super hard. And because of that, the best advice I would give is to make sure that anything that you want to do as a side hustle or whether it be a side hustle or you’re actually trying to change your whole career, it needs to be rooted in whatever it is that you’re passionate about and not about what’s going to make you money. Because anyone tomorrow can go and study to take — especially if you’re a pharmacist, that means you’re extremely smart. You can study tomorrow and take a real estate exam and become a real estate agent and start selling homes and make a decent amount of money, but you hate it or you’re not passionate about it. And while you can make extra revenue in there, it’s going to be much harder to do if you’re not passionate about it. Now, if you love homes and interior design and all this stuff, you will be an extremely successful real estate agent, you know? Because of the fact that you love it. So I really think that people need to kind of take a step back and realize, do I love baking? Like do I love making cookies? Because there’s people making millions of dollars selling cookies.
Tim Church: There’s a need.
Richard Waithe: Yeah. And I think that you need to just find what it is that you’re passionate about doing. Because of the way that the Internet works now and social media, you can literally build a brand. You can make a cookie business, at some point, make a brand, write a book about it. Like there’s all these — there’s a model that you can follow, and you can apply it to anything. But it really does start with finding out what it is that you’re actually passionate about doing that you can do forever and not get burned out at because you love it, that’s what you should start with and then go from there.
Tim Church: Solid advice. I really appreciate that. And I think you’re right on there. So Richard Waite, master meme creator and entrepreneur, what is the best way for someone to reach out if they want to learn more about what you do but also see this amazing memes?
Richard Waithe: Yeah, so I’m on every single social media platform out there except for tiktok, I’m not on that thing. You might not have even heard of it, but a lot of teenagers love tiktok. But I am on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, now on Reddit as well. Any way, however you prefer to consume media, you can DM me on there, and I’ll respond and help in any way that I can. And then I obviously have an email, [email protected], which I’m sure they can probably put in the show notes because it’s hard to spell, but [email protected].
Tim Church: Great, thank you so much for coming on, Richard.
Richard Waithe: It was a pleasure.
Recent Posts
[pt_view id=”f651872qnv”]
