pharmacy entrepreneur

YFP 280: How and Why This Pharmacist Pivoted to a Writing Career

Posted on November 3, 2022March 14, 2023 by Caitlin Boyle

Dr. Warda Nawaz discusses what led her to leave her full-time pharmacy job just 3 months in, how and why she pivoted to a career in writing, and what she has learned about herself in the early stages of entrepreneurship.

About Today’s Guest

Warda Nawaz is a freelance medical writer and a creative writer of YA fantasy fiction. She is also the owner of her online medical writing business, Jasmine Medical, which empowers women to take ownership of their bodies by communicating health content that educates professionals and consumers. Warda also currently has a young adult novel set for publication, which discusses women’s experiences with misogyny, predation, and violence. Her goal is to promote the perspectives and experiences of minority women and to encourage other women to embrace creative endeavors by placing their narratives, fiction, and non-fiction, in the publishing space.

Episode Summary

In this week’s episode, Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, is joined by Dr. Warda Nawaz, a freelance medical writer and creative writer of young adult fantasy fiction. In their discussion, Warda shares what led her to leave her full-time pharmacy job after just three months, how and why she pivoted to a career in writing, and what she has learned about herself in the early stages of entrepreneurship. After walking through her pharmacy journey, Warda details how the start of her career aligned with the initial events of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, making for a challenging and unusual career kick-off. Just a few months into her pharmacy position, Warda experienced a life-altering event that changed her career and the trajectory of her life. No longer able to endure the physical demands of her pharmacy job, Warda poured herself into her passion: writing. Now, as a writer, Warda has found herself in the medical and young adult fantasy fiction spaces. Her new career in writing has afforded her more work/life balance and allowed her to focus on her health. While she may have more flexibility, this new pathway in writing has not come without challenges, which Warda explains. Warda details how, through entrepreneurship, she has grown along the way, taking courses and coaching to improve her online presence, mindset, and marketing in her new creative career.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRO]

This week, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Warda Nawaz, as we discuss what led her to leave her full-time pharmacy job just three months in, how and why she pivoted to a career in writing, and what she has learned about herself in the early stages of entrepreneurship.

Now, 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.

Okay, let’s jump into my interview with Dr. Warda Nawaz.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:01:10] TU: Warda, welcome to the show.

[00:01:11] WN: Hi, Tim. It’s so nice to be here. Thank you for having me.

[00:01:14] TU: Yes. I’m excited to share your story with the YFP community, and really talk about how and why you pivoted to writing for a living, maybe a more nontraditional career path. We’re going to talk about that journey, why you made that pivot, what you’re currently working on, some lessons that you learned along the way as well.

But first, let’s start with your pharmacy journey. Where did you go to school? When did you graduate? And what drew you into the profession of pharmacy?

[00:01:41] WN: Yeah. So I graduated in 2019 from pharmacy school. I went to California North State University. I’m from California. I’ve lived here most of my life. So I just went to a local pharmacy school, which was nice. It saved me money, somewhat. I originally had plans to do residency, but I didn’t do that. I got into pharmacy because I majored in neurobiology, physiology, and behavior. So I had a scientific background, a very strong one.

The next logical step to me seemed like, “Okay, let’s build on that. Let’s do something with that.” At that time, I was really struggling with either let’s – Do I go the writing route? Or do I stick with the sciences? I have loved writing all my life, and it was always a passion of mine. But I also come from a community and a culture where the arts and the sciences are kind of looked down upon, and they’re not really taken very seriously. So I didn’t know if I could build a very serious career out of that, and I was discouraged from pursuing it.

So it was a very big struggle right after undergrad to figure out, well, what do I want to do? So I stayed one extra year in undergrad to figure out which health profession do I want to go into. I chose pharmacy in the end because I ended up taking a class on the neurobiology of addictive drugs, and I got so fascinated by how drugs can change the human physiology and the behavior. I also noticed that there’s a really big problem in this country with substance abuse and drug addiction. I wanted to play a role with that as a pharmacist.

That’s where my initial interest sparked. So I decided to go work in the community setting, and that’s what I was doing for the past two years. I was working on the frontlines of the pandemic. It was odd because I started working right when the world changed. So I never knew what a normal work situation looks like because everything was changing by the time I had just been hired. I got hired in March when the pandemic was announced. So everything had already changed. So it was odd, but it was interesting. But, yeah, that’s why I got into pharmacy.

[00:03:48] TU: So you mentioned 2019, you graduated, worked a couple years in community practice, and made a transition, which we’ll talk about here in a moment. Obviously, you’re in the thick of it in the pandemic. I’m curious, though, you mentioned a culture where some of the arts may not be as highly regarded and, obviously, we’re talking here about a career in writing. Where did that interest in writing come from? Can you remember back to your youth, having that love for writing? Where did that come from?

[00:04:16] WN: So I grew up in Pakistan. As you know, Pakistan was colonized by the British. So English was part of our language. In our culture, at least, I know growing up, I did not grow up reading books or novels per se, not like fiction novels anyway. I mean, there are books, obviously. There’s books in every country and nation and culture. But I realized there was something missing in my culture in regards to self-expression. I just didn’t see as much of people pursuing writing careers or scholarly kind of pursuits, and I had this burning desire to write stories, to share experiences.

I remember sitting down when I was like seven years old, and I was like sitting right next to my mom. One of my assignments was to write like a story in English. My English then was very like broken and not very good. My mom had done a master’s in English, so she basically told me the story, and I just wrote it down. But it was all her ideas. I realized when I grew up, I want to have my own ideas. I don’t want somebody to tell me what to do or what to write. I want to create my own stuff. I want to write my own stories. I want to create my own material and then be able to share it with the world.

I just didn’t have that power growing up. Like I was told, “This is what you need to memorize. This is what you need to know.” Then you just spit it out on a test, and I didn’t like that method. I didn’t like that way of learning. I wanted to compile different pieces of information and put it together, but I want it to be my own idea. I got that critical analysis and thinking, kind of learning more so when I came to the United States because the United States has a very different educational system and, I would say, approach to learning.

It’s very different from my own home country where over there, it’s more about regurgitation and memorization, which that works too for sciences. You got to memorize some things. But over here, there’s a little bit more, I would say, freedom to analyze and to criticize and to create. There’s more opportunities to publish, to write, to do things. I needed that freedom, and that’s what I was seeking.

[00:06:37] TU: Yeah. What a great time in 2022. We’ll talk more about this. But when it comes to opportunities for publishing and writing, it’s a much more open space than it used to be in 15, 20 years ago. So you have this initial flame through this experience as a child that uncovers this desire to really tell your own story, to write your own story. Then you go down this path into the sciences in the pharmacy school. But sure enough, this flame would remain and would come back.

So a few months ago, on LinkedIn, of which I really enjoy following you, and I hope our listeners will as well, you posted about a brutal wakeup call that you had in 2020 that ultimately changed the trajectory of your career and your life. Can you tell us about that, and what shift started to happen career-wise through that experience?

[00:07:26] WN: It was actually kind of sad because I was only three months into my pharmacy, first professional job as an adult, first job. Just imagine, you’re entering, and you’re so excited, and all you want to do is go and help people. I mean, this is what I’ve been training my whole life to do, right, or at least my four years in pharmacy school to do. I was traveling as a pharmacist. I worked in the Northern California region, so I had to travel a lot. I got into a car accident while driving to work.

The accident ended up damaging my foot in such a severe way that I couldn’t stand or walk for a couple months. My job, obviously, required me to be on my feet and to be very mobile and to move around. It was a very physically demanding job, and I was like, “Well, how am I supposed to do my job if I can’t even stand? I can’t even drive.” I couldn’t drive for a very long time. So that was a bit traumatic and also just PTSD. I didn’t want to go out and drive anymore. I was like, “I’m done.”

I did take the time to, obviously, recover and do everything the doctor told me to do. But then I went back, obviously, because I wanted to get back in the game and do what you’re supposed to do. But I realized I kept suffering. My suffering had not ended. My pain was persisting. I was having more injuries at work. I was suffering with more stress and more setbacks. My car was vandalized, which was lovely. I mean, I was seeing like signs after signs after signs that like, “Maybe you’re not where you need to be because you need to do something where you can thrive and you can – You shouldn’t have to kill yourself for your job, essentially. You should be thriving and having a good time.”

That’s not what was happening. I was not having a good time. Every morning, it was like waking up to like some dark abyss. I was like, “What have I gotten myself into? This is not making me feel excited.” During that time when I was recovering and I was just immobile and just sitting on my couch, I picked up my manuscript that I’ve been working on for many years, and I started working on it again. I’m like, “I have nothing else to do. I’m going to just work on my book. I’m going to pick up my writing and work on it because it doesn’t require a lot of driving. It doesn’t require me to be physically like on my feet.” I’m like, “I’m being productive. I’m using my mind. I’m using my research skills. I’m creating something. I’m being productive. Why don’t I do this? Well, why did I like leave this? Why did I abandon this?”

That was wake up call. It was me realizing that you can lie to yourself about all that you want. About like, “This is not what I’m supposed to do.” But I think life will always try to push you back to where you need to be, sometimes in traumatic ways. But I think you need to listen to yourself and your intuition, and that’s basically what happened but in a more, obviously, very sudden way.

[00:10:23] TU: Yeah. I want to read for a moment from that post because one of the things I really appreciate about your journey is that, obviously, the impact that you’re having through your writing and will have through your writing but also the impact and motivation you’re providing to others. One of the things you said in that post was, “This, my friends, was a wakeup call and a much needed setback in my life that reset my life and career goals. Today, I no longer travel for work. Today, I write for a living. I wake up every morning, looking forward to having control of my life, building my medical writing business, and working on my debut novel, and feeling alive in the process. I don’t put myself in dangerous situations daily so that I can bring home a paycheck. I live my life with more uncertainty but also more freedom and reward. I also live with a greater appreciation for adversity and embrace it for what it has taught me.”

So as you hear those words now, a few months later as you’ve made this leap, what jumps out at you? I mean, I’m sure this has been a challenging season. It’s not all rainbows and butterflies, right? You made a significant jump from a very known entity in terms of the work that you were doing. But how have you reflected on that over the last few months, since you made that post?

[00:11:34] WN: I feel the same way. Everything that I said in that is 100% still true, still true, holds true. There is a lot of uncertainty in, I guess, my line of business, freelancing, because it’s not a set job. You’re not working for a company, and you don’t have set hours per se. You are your own boss. You have to go out and find clients. You have to take the initiative. You have to be constantly showing up for yourself. So you have to divide your time and block out your day and block out your schedule. There’s a lot of self-initiative that you have to take in order to do this work. There is uncertainty in that sense because you know that every day will look a little bit different, and you don’t know how much work that you’ll be given or that you’ll be blessed with.

Then for the novel writing, I mean, it’s something I have to block out time for that as well. Finally, after 10 years of putting it away and finally picking it up and doing it and I’ve actually tried to come up with a routine. I’m going to write in the morning, and I’m going to write in the evening, and I’m actually taking classes to help me learn how do publish authors who are successful and who’ve been in the business, how have they been doing it? Because I know it’s – How have they written like 50 novels? Like they must have a method, right?

So I’m learning from the experts, like what did they do to make themselves so productive? Because you only have so many hours in a day and so many years in your life, so I’m doing what I can to make my time most efficient. I also use these last few months to recover. I had surgery in June. So I was also taking this time to improve my health. All of that is in your hands when you are your own boss. I mean, you decide when do you want to take a sick day, when do you want to be like working like crazy. I mean, it’s all up to you. But you have to show up every day for yourself.

[00:13:26] TU: Warda, when you made this transition, was there any overlap? Had you been working on establishing some of the medical writing business or even perhaps some of the novel work? Or was this a hard like, “I’m out and I’m going to begin to build this thing from scratch.”?

[00:13:41] WN: No, no, no. Yeah, yeah. I was already – There was some groundwork already done. For the novel writing, I had already finished my novel or my book in pharmacy school. So that was already done. That was a said and done thing. That was something on the backburner. I neglected it because I was now in the sciences and had zero time to write. I realized I can’t be writing full time and doing my day job. So I had to pick something. Obviously, the accidents and all these other events made me eventually choose one or the other.

Then for the medical writing, actually, I had done coaching in 2021, when I was still in my pharmacy day job with Happy PharmD. That kind of helped me figure out and establish myself a little bit better on LinkedIn and also build my network a bit more. It also helped me connect with other medical writers. I met Brittany Hoffmann, an RX author, and I met Sophie Ash as well. I followed her for a very long time. I followed her content, her story, and I connected with her. I messaged her a couple times, just asking her questions about, “What is it like to have your own business, and how do taxes work? I don’t know what this is like. Can I actually make a living doing this? Do you ever find it struggling to pay bills?”

So I asked these kinds of questions before I totally jumped because I didn’t want to jump and then not be like, “Oh, my God. Now, I’m all alone. What do I do?” So I had kind of done the groundwork, and I was talking and asking questions, and I attended webinars for medical writing as well and on LinkedIn, through LinkedIn, through people in the industry to help me learn more. I was following all these successful entrepreneurs, and I saw what they were doing. I’m like, “Oh, my God. Why is everybody starting a business? I guess this is the thing now.”

But I was like maybe this is like the modern age. It’s like where you have to be your own boss because nobody wants to be in the pharmacy setting. Maybe everybody wants to create their own thing. But it wasn’t just for me like following a fad. It was also knowing that like I was being very honest with myself. I’m like, “If I do open a business, can I maintain it? And it also has to be a business I’m passionate about.” I was like, “What kind of business should I start?” I was like, “The only one I can think of right now is medical writing.” So I got into the medical writing coaching program in January 2022, literally January 1st, 2022, first of the year. A month and a half into it after I got one client, I know that doesn’t sound very successful now does it? But –

[00:16:14] TU: Well, yeah. You got to start somewhere, right? Yeah.

[00:16:17] WN: Right. So I actually started having people approached me and asked me for projects and things. So I was like, “You know what? I think I’m going to do this. But in order to do this, I need to let go of my day job because there’s no way in heck I can split my brain in like for my day job and do this.” At that point, I had to make the difficult decision of jumping ship and putting my resignation for my day job, so I can focus on my business. Because I was like, “There’s no way I can do both.”

I mean, I do like the income side that comes with that security of that day job. But then I was like, at some point, you have to take a risk. From every advice that I’ve been given from the people who are way ahead of me, for these entrepreneurs, they say that you have to take calculated risks. You have to take risks. There’s just no reward if you don’t even try. So I was like, “I have to try at least.”

[00:17:10] TU: That was part of the reason I wanted to ask that question was because I hear from a lot of pharmacists that may have an idea, but they’re caught in between. When do I potentially take that risk? Can I bridge this and do two things at once? You mentioned calculated risk. Did you consider at one point like a part-time role, and then you’d work on the business part time? Or apparently, if not, like what really led you to this path of like, “I’m going to go all in.”?

[00:17:38] WN: It was at that point, honestly, my health was suffering so much, my mental and my physical health. There was no way I could have kept going at my day job. I couldn’t drive for long periods of time already. I had work restrictions. Standing on my feet hurt my foot. My work condition actually got worse as a result. So I knew if I chose my day job, just in order to keep the income and the sense of security, I was only going to dig myself deeper. I had already done that for the last two years. So I knew at that point, I had to pick me, even if it hurt me financially a little bit in the beginning anyway.

So I had started to save up, and I was being very careful with how I was spending my money. Obviously, the coaching was an investment as well. So I calculated everything like, “Okay, how much have I spent? How much am I planning on actually making a return on this investment?” So I had to put all of that into consideration before I jumped. But at some point, you have to do it because there’s – You can’t predict all, everything that’s going to happen, right? You cannot. There’s no way. But you can just look at your bank balance and be like, “Do I have enough to kind of keep me going for the next few months? Is my lifestyle –” Like change your lifestyle. If you think you – You have to change who you are as well, right? You have to change your own lifestyle and habits that might be contributing to your financial distress.

I’m no financial expert. You are, so maybe people can come to you and ask you about that. But I don’t invest money or anything. But, I mean, I know people do. People go into real estate and things like that. I, obviously, am way too young and early in my journey to know about all that. But I just make smart decisions and know what you have and save some for the next few months or maybe even a year ahead. It’ll help you so much during times of uncertainty or during times when you’re not getting any work.

[00:19:37] TU: Let me follow up on that because one of the things I often hear from pharmacists I talk with that have an idea and that could be a different position, that could be a business that they want to pursue, it could be a variety of nonprofit they want to start, is I can sense the passion and the idea. Then it’s often their financial position that really gives them pause about whether or not I should move forward. I think for many 2019 grads, such as yourself, they have an idea. They might be thinking, “Yeah, I have an idea. But I’ve got $200,000 of student loan debt. I feel like I need to be saving and investing for the future. I’m trying to buy a home. I’m trying to do other things.”

So my question for you is how are you able to reconcile some of that tension personally when it comes to the finances? Obviously, position and community practice can afford some of that safety net and some guarantee to be able to overcome some of those concerns, financially, personally, to be able to make that leap into the business. Was it coming up with a certain amount of savings? Was it evaluating other parts of the plan? How were you able to think through that and ultimately make that decision, despite perhaps some of those financial stressors that were there?

[00:20:48] WN: So I’m blessed in that I do have family to support me. I don’t have to pay rent. I don’t have a mortgage. I didn’t buy a home. I don’t have kids. I can’t say that for everybody. Everybody’s situation is different. If you’re a single mom with kids, I know your situation will be totally different from mine, and my advice will, obviously, not be helpful. But it kind of helped that I was single, and I didn’t have tiny kids to take care of, and I had family to lean on to help me during this time.

That being said, obviously, it was still a decision I made, knowing that maybe my family will not approve because it’s a risky one. So, yes, in the beginning, I was getting resistance and kind of side-eye look like, “How could you do this?” But ultimately, it was about them knowing that my health matters more than finances ever will. There is no point in being alive or having a six-figure whatever job if you’re not alive tomorrow, and you’re going to spend your days in the hospital, or you’re going to be going back to the medical office again for an issue that was exacerbated by your job. You have to ultimately pick and choose what is most important to you, what’s important right now, and what’s going to be most helpful for you in the long run. In the long run, my health was most important.

Also, for me, writing is very important. I can lose my ability to walk. Fine. But I do not want to lose my ability to write. I don’t want to have like a hand injury. I don’t want to have a brain injury. I want – There are certain things I know I will not compromise. So you have to as an individual choose what are you willing to compromise and let go of and sacrifice in order to do what you truly love and what makes you feel alive. That even if you lose one of those things, it’s not going to like ruin your day, and it’s not going to ruin your life.

Did my accident ruin my life? No, I think it just set me on a better path, and it helped me realize and reset my goals like, yeah, this is fine. Yes, I’m kind of in a financial rut right now. I’m not – I don’t have a six-figure income right now. I am struggling financially, right? But I have put the steps in to connect with people, which people are your wealth, essentially, right? Like your network is your net worth. So you don’t know what opportunities might come through the people and the relationships you’ve built.

I look at it that way. If you just look at the balance sheet, then you’ll always feel disappointed in yourself. You’ll always feel like, “I’m not good enough.” I had a six-figure income, but I was not happy. So that, to me, was enough evidence to know that it’s not just about money. It’s about your quality of life. If you don’t have the quality of life you want, it doesn’t matter how much income or how much work is being sent your way. You could still be having a very bad day. So look at the quality of life, rather than just the balance sheet.

I know in business that’s when most people like to follow the paper trail. It’s like, “Oh, how much money?” But it’s like that’s exactly why I did writing because I’m running away from that. I don’t want it to be all about that. So I’m okay not making six figures, as long as I am getting by, and I can change my lifestyle accordingly, like stop living so lavishly, stop buying unnecessary things, and lean on others. It’s okay to lean on others. You don’t have to have it all figured out. People assume that you hit a certain age, you have to have it all figured out. That’s not true. It’s a myth. Society told you, you have to have it all figured out, and you don’t have to.

[00:24:25] TU: That’s right.

[00:24:26] WN: Lean on your tribe. Lean on people you love.

[00:24:29] TU: That’s right, especially people. You mentioned a couple of folks earlier, Brittany and others. We had Megan Freeland on the show in 259. But others who have been down this path that you can lean on and learn from that have been down a similar journey. We talk often on the show that a good financial plan really has to be able to, yes, we got to take care of the future and plan ahead and think about 15, 20, 30 years down the road. But we also have to live a rich life along the way, and part of living a rich life is doing work that you love and contributing in a meaningful way based on the gifts that, obviously, you’ve been given and the impact that you can have. I think our work is often a piece of that. That can be so important.

I’m curious, Warda, because I enjoy writing as a hobby. I won’t claim to be a great writer. I just – It really is a fun creative outlet. I like to do it. But there’s a whole different level in terms of like writing for enjoyment as a hobby to like going pro, right? This is like my main thing. So I’m curious, and you mentioned writers that have published 50 books and others. But how has that journey been where you’ve got to now have the discipline, the schedules, and making sure you’re writing so much per day? Like do you still maintain the energy and enthusiasm for the work? How do you build those disciplines and routines into the schedule each week to make sure that the production’s moving forward?

[00:25:54] WN: I’m actually part of a writing mastery academy. It’s basically a website created by a very successful bestselling author. She’s written like 20 novels, and she has a lot of content and coursework on there about exactly the questions that you asked like lifestyle, routine, things like that. But also like how to write quickly and efficiently so you can actually make a living out of doing this, how to sell your work, marketing because these are all these skills that, obviously, I did not learn in pharmacy school, right? These are new skills I’m learning and developing constantly.

I have talked to authors as well. Then I’ve talked to publishing experts about like writers conferences and where you can meet people and you can develop yourself. So it’s basically like in pharmacy, where you go to conferences. You network. You talk to people, right? There’s just like that with the writing industry as well. There are so many writers conferences. I was like googling it the other day, and there’s like a million of them. I’m actually scheduled to go to one in LA. God willingly it works out in August. There’s another one in Kauai in November that I’m planning on going to. It’s, obviously, editors will be there. Agents will be there. Published authors will be there. There’s webinars, master classes. There’s workshops. You get feedback on your manuscript. I already have a manuscript, and I’m like I’ve prepared a pitch. You just kind of prepare yourself.

For me, the daily routine – Right now, because my manuscript is done, my focus is more on preparing my manuscript, you could say, for sharing to an agent. So it has to be like polished and beautiful. So I’m like doing those last minute look through and read through on that. I’m also part of a beta reader and critique partner group in the community as well. So I have like a group of writers who are writing in my genre to read and provide me with feedback. All of that is happening simultaneously. So you have to start thinking of your writing as a business as well like, “This is my new identity. This is my career.”

Then you start developing yourself. Go to conferences. Connect with beta readers. Connect with other writers. Have them give you feedback. Improve your work. Don’t take it personally. It’s not about you. It’s about the work and the quality of work that the publishing industry expects you to produce. I used to be like that. In the beginning, I used to take everything personally like, “Oh, my God. They hate me.” It’s like, “No, it’s not about you.” There’s certain standards in every industry, and you have to know about them, and that’s what I’m building myself. I’m learning from experts. That’s what I’m doing right now.

[00:28:35] TU: Warda, a couple of weeks ago on LinkedIn, you posted something about reaching out to an author that you’ve looked up to and was somewhat surprised, I think, by the response that you received. Can you tell us about that story and what you learned through that interaction?

[00:28:50] WN: Yeah. So as an author, a teen fantasy author that I had read her books when I was a teen, and I reached out to her, basically asking her like – I’m not asking her anything, but just kind of telling her, “Hey, I’ve read your books my whole life. And, oh, my God, I really admire you. And now, I’m starting to also become a published author. And do you have any advice for me?” Then she told me that like, “The best advice that I was given was that you should never stop writing.” She also told me about writers conferences, and she told me to develop myself more and to meet people in the industry.

It just basically told me that even if you’re like the only person in your family or whatever who’s pursuing this path, don’t feel discouraged and just start. I think, for me, at least, I know I’m a perfectionist. I’m very hard on myself. I’m very self-critical. I’m like, “Will I ever be good enough?” But I think it starts with you not trying to compare yourself to people who are already well-established and knowing that everybody has to start somewhere. Yeah. I just loved her response because she was so supportive. It’s, obviously, a very big deal when it’s somebody that you actually read their works, and you really admire it. A lot of her stuff actually helped inspire me to get into this genre as well. So that was cool.

[00:30:15] TU: I love that that story because I think that for whatever reason, when I talk to aspiring pharmacy entrepreneurs, and I encourage them to do what you just did, reach out to someone who’s doing something, along the work that you, obviously, admire and can learn from, there’s this perception that like people are unreachable, untouchable. I think more often than not, not always but more often than not, people are willing to share. People are willing to be encouraging. That might mean other pharmacists. Or in this case, it might mean not pharmacists and, obviously, other people that are out there.

I think taking a little bit of a leap of faith to reach out to 3, 5, 7, 10 people, and get some input, feedback, someone that will be willing to take some time to bounce some ideas off and not necessarily just make the assumption that, “Oh, they’re too busy. They’re not going to take time to listen to what I have to say.” So I was glad to see that. That was a neat example.

Warda, when I think about the transition to starting your own business, it can be exciting, and it can be overwhelming. It’s, obviously, exciting as you explore an area that you’re passionate about. But it also can be overwhelming. That there’s just a lot of things that you have to do and to put in place, and that could be things like setting up the actual infrastructure of the business. That could be now you’re having to market yourself and sales and reach out to folks.

As you reflect on this journey and making this transition from employee to entrepreneur, have there been one or two areas that you can identify that have really been opportunities, whether you want to call them bumps in the road or opportunities to grow and to learn that you really have experienced and learned about yourself through this transition?

[00:32:00] WN: Yeah. There have been a couple of opportunities, where I’ve definitely learned new skills that I didn’t have before. Well, number one is, obviously, social media and being comfortable being on that platform. Figuring out, well, what’s the best platform to develop your presence? Depending on what kind of business you’re setting up, it will be different. For medical writing, I mean, LinkedIn is good enough. I could explore other options. But right now, I’m just staying focused on LinkedIn. It’s a very intellectual platform. I think, yeah, LinkedIn is just good for meeting other professionals because it’s focused more on your career development. So I like that.

Then for my author platform, that is something I’m still looking into. I know a lot of authors use Instagram for that and also Twitter as well. So I was actually going to enroll myself in a master class to figure that out. There’s also a conference in San Francisco coming up in which a couple of speakers talk about what is the best platform that authors can establish themselves prior to putting their book out there. But the important part is to promote yourself and to be constantly present. That is the best way to grow. If nobody can find you, nobody – You can’t grow and your business can’t grow. So you have to be comfortable being in this space, in the public space.

That is something that I, obviously, had to learn to do. It doesn’t come easy because I’m an introvert, and I’m extremely shy about being in this open space. It feels very awkward at times, but I know it’s part and parcel of just being in this business, even as an author. We’re very reclusive. We’re like, “Oh, don’t come near me. We don’t want cameras on us. We don’t want the attention.” But we do want our work to be known. But it’s not like – It’s hard. You have to eventually realize the focus is, in the end, not going to be on you but more on the types of work that you’re putting out there. So just learning about that, it’s a mindset shift as well.

Also, another, I guess, hard skill that I learned, besides just developing an online presence, marketing, learning how to sell yourself. I mean, that’s pretty – I’m still developing that. I’m by no means an expert. I’m still figuring out, okay, what software should I use, if I want somebody to like buy something from me? Setting that up and also website. I have built a website, but it’s a DIY, do-it-yourself website. It’s not by any means done by a professional or a graphic designer. So I was learning about like graphic designing a little bit, like what fonts work, what colors work. I was just tinkering with it. I’m not an expert, but I’m figuring it out. What really helped –

[00:34:52] TU: Got to start.

[00:34:52] WN: Yeah, exactly. That’s why I did the coaching program because it taught me all those skills. Week by week, we went and focused on different issues. So the first week, I think we focused on building your online presence. The second week, we worked on the resume. Third week, we worked on writing samples and portfolio, so having an actual thing to showcase. Then fourth week, I think we worked on something else. Then fifth week, we worked on building the website. So each week, we focused on something else, and that’s how I basically ended up building the infrastructure of my business like, “Okay, this is how I’m going to market myself. This is the platform that I’m going to use.”

It’s up to you as a business owner. Do you want to have a website? It is an investment. That’s why I say like save a little bit ahead of time, so you can prepare yourself for this. But just also know it doesn’t have to be all squared away in the beginning. You can always invest more professionally later. But at least I got the basic groundwork. Also, do you want to have a logo for your company? Come up with a company name. Figure out a logo. Logo is not that important. But, I mean, it helps. It kind of makes you feel good if you created something for yourself, right?

For medical writing, if you’re opening your own business or a company, it’s good to register it as an LLC, limited liability company, so you can protect yourself from liability. So all of that.

[00:36:15] TU: That’s great, and I admire your hunger to learn. I’ve heard you mentioned, at least three or four times, different courses you’ve jumped in to learn through new things, different communities that you’ve jumped in. So I think that hunger to learn, that motivation to recognize, it’s one of the gifts we have of living in 2022, right? We can pretty easily, if we’re willing to put in the time and the effort, go out and find opportunities where we can learn and grow our skills. So I love that mindset. I love not only the hunger to learn but also the hunger to just implement and get started, even if it’s not perfect, and really to step outside of your comfort zone.

I would encourage you, and I think you do an awesome job of this that as you continue on this mission and the work that you’re doing, on some level, it’s a responsibility to put yourself out there because, yes, it’s increasing the awareness of your work. But I can also assure you that it’s also motivating others in their own journey. I think that is perhaps equally as exciting.

This has been fun, and I look forward to continuing to watch your journey as you progress with the business. Where is the best place that folks can go to connect with you and to continue to follow your work?

[00:37:27] WN: Oh, that’s so sweet. LinkedIn, I’m on LinkedIn. I’m thinking of actually creating an Instagram account. I was told by somebody in the publishing industry like, “Oh, you should have that if you’re really serious about this.” I’m like, “Okay, cool. I’ll do that.” But, yeah, LinkedIn is a great way to follow me. I don’t have any other. I mean, I do have Facebook, but I don’t really use it. So follow me on LinkedIn. Email me. DM me.

[00:37:53] TU: Great. We will link to that in the show notes. We’ll also link to the website, jasminemedical.com, if folks want to take a look there as well. So thank you so much for taking time to come on the show. I really appreciate it.

[00:38:03] WN: Thank you so much for having me. This has been very fun.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[00:38:06] TU: As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment.

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

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

[END]

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YFP 279: Finding Your Pharmacist Voice: An Interview with Kim Newlove

Posted on October 27, 2022March 14, 2023 by Caitlin Boyle

Kim Newlove, founder of The Pharmacist’s Voice and host of The Pharmacist’s Voice Podcast, shares how and why she started her business in 2017, how she pivoted from her initial service and business idea, and what myths as a business owner she has found to be untrue.

About Today’s Guest

Kim Newlove is a pharmacist, voice actor, podcast host, wife, Mom of 2 teenagers, and volunteer.

She earned her Bachelor of Science Degree in Pharmacy from The University of Toledo in 2001, and is an Ohio pharmacist. Kim founded The Pharmacist’s Voice ®, LLC in 2017, and launched The Pharmacist’s Voice ® Podcast in 2019. Her website is thepharmacistsvoice.com.

Finding the right voice for an audio project is important. Kim brings her years of expertise as a pharmacist to her audiobook and voiceover projects. Her delivery style is confident and trustworthy.

The Pharmacist’s Voice ® Podcast is a weekly podcast. It’s available on her website (thepharmacistsvoice.com) and all major podcast players. Kim alternates solo shows and interview shows. She shares her journey from pharmacist to voice actor and interviews a variety of people who use their voices advocate for something, educate in some way, or entertain so that listeners are inspired to use their voices too.

In her spare time, Kim enjoys spending time with family, playing Ticket to Ride Switzerland, swimming, and riding her BMW motorbike.

Episode Summary

This week, YFP Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, is joined by Kim Newlove, founder of The Pharmacist’s Voice and host of The Pharmacist’s Voice Podcast. In this episode, Tim and Kim discuss Kim’s journey from graduation in 2001 to the start of her business in 2017, the student loan debt picture in 2001 compared to today, and the power of having a plan for handling student debt. Kim explains the reasoning behind working part-time in her career and the financial decisions she and her husband made that tie into the success of her business journey. Coming from a position of financial strength because of sound financial decisions early in her career, Kim was confident investing in herself and starting her business. Kim shares the motivation behind The Pharmacist’s Voice and The Pharmacist’s Voice podcast, what inspired the name of her business, and how she was able to distill a business idea that worked for her as a mother, wife, and pharmacist. While Kim’s original business idea of narrating continuing education journals has not yet come to fruition, she and Tim talk about the evolution of her business offerings and how she was able to pivot to medical narration, e-learning, and voiceovers. Kim and Tim wrap up the episode by busting some entrepreneurship myths and shedding light on the hard work behind what it is to produce a podcast and run a company.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRO]

This week, I had the opportunity to sit down with Kim Newlove, Founder of the Pharmacist’s Voice and host of the Pharmacist’s Voice Podcast. During the show, we discuss how and why she started her own business, the Pharmacist’s Voice, in 2017, how she had a pivot early on from her initial service and business idea, and what myths as a business owner she has found to be untrue.

Now, 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 to the pharmacy professional. If you’re interested in learning more about how working one-on-one with a certified financial planner may help you achieve your financial goals, you can book a free discovery call at yfpplanning.com.

Whether or not YFP Planning’s financial planning services are a good fit for you, know that we appreciate your support of this podcast and our mission to help pharmacists achieve financial freedom. Okay, let’s jump into my interview with Kim Newlove.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:01:15] TU: Kim, welcome to the show.

[00:01:15] KN: Hi, Tim. Good to be here.

[00:01:19] TU: Well, so excited to have you. Spent a long time in the making. We talked back in the winter, and then we had a chance to connect in person at Ohio Pharmacists Association meeting. I came on your podcast and really excited for the opportunity to talk several different things with you, entrepreneurship. We’ll talk a little bit about family. We’ll talk about personal finance. I want to start with your career and some of your career background. So where did you go to pharmacy school, when did you graduate, and what ultimately drew you into the profession?

[00:01:50] KN: Okay. If I leave anything out, remind me. I went to the University of Toledo College of Pharmacy. I graduated in 2001 with my Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy degree. I never got my PharmD. What was the next question, Tim?

[00:02:06] TU: So where you went to school, you answered that. Go Rockets, right? Toledo, 2001.

[00:02:11] KN: That’s right. Go Rockets.

[00:02:12] TU: When you graduated, you answered that. What drew you into the profession?

[00:02:16] KN: What drew me into the profession most was my Uncle Tom inviting me to shadow him when I was an eighth grade junior high student at Eastwood Junior High School in Somerville, Ohio. He invited me to watch him as a surgery pharmacist at St. V’s, which is one of the major hospitals in the Toledo area. I also, of course, love to help people, and I was good at math and science, and I really felt like I had all of those attributes that a pharmacist needed, being trustworthy and being interested in helping people and being intelligent and all the things.

[00:02:56] TU: So some of our listeners, they wouldn’t be aware but maybe interested to know. We share a Northwest Ohio connection. So my wife, Jess, is from the Bowling Green Perrysburg area. You’re, obviously, in Northwest Ohio as well. A little Rockets-Falcons rivalry that’s going on between Bowling Green and Toledo. So you came, and you snuck in right before the PharmD requirement, right? Because that would have been early 2000s. So you came in right before that.

[00:03:22] KN: Right. I was – One of the last classes to graduate was my class. I graduated in ’01 and, I think, in ’04. That was the cutoff. My brother, who’s also a pharmacist, graduated in ’03 with his bachelor’s. Never got his PharmD either. Yeah. It’s a great school. But, yeah, our cutoff didn’t end until ’04 for some reason.

[00:03:44] TU: And we’re going to talk in a bit about the Pharmacist’s Voice. For those that are watching this interview, they can see your background behind you. We’re going to talk about the business that you’ve created, what you’re doing, why you started it, what you offer. But before we get into that, give us some of the career journey because I think this is a really interesting part of your story and your family’s story, as we’re going to talk some personal finance here in a little bit. 2001, you graduate. It wouldn’t be till 2017, correct, that you launched the business?

[00:04:14] KN: Correct.

[00:04:15] TU: So give us the CliffsNotes synopsis version of your pharmacy career from graduation prior to starting the business.

[00:04:24] KN: Oh, boy. Oh, boy. There’s some retail in there, some hospitals, some compounding, and some behavioral health. I started off working at a small hospital. The schedule wasn’t right for me as a newlywed. I got married about six weeks after graduation in June of 2001. I passed the boards right away, like two days before I got married, which was kind of cool, yay me. Everybody was saying, “Congratulations on getting married. Did you pass the boards?” “Yeah.” “Okay. Congratulations on that too.”

Then after that, about a year of trialing out, working at a small hospital and the hours not working out, I switched to working for Walgreens, and I worked part time at that hospital for about five months to transition my replacement in. Then I was working full-time at Walgreens for not – Well, sorry. Not for nine years. I worked at Walgreens for nine years, only worked full-time for about one year. Then I had my first child.

While I was working part time at Walgreens, I worked at a small compounding pharmacy. If nobody would know the name, we got bought out by a competitor. But the focus was respiratory solutions for inhalation, and I coincidentally had baby number two, right, as we were getting bought out. I never went back to that job. I didn’t stop working for Walgreens until 2011. When I stopped working at Walgreens in 2011, our agreement, my husband and my agreement, was that I would stay home for one year. Then I would start looking for another job.

I started looking for another job immediately because I can’t follow my own plans sometimes. But I didn’t get the jobs that I tried out for, so I truly stayed home for that one year. It was after that one year that my husband started getting other opportunities in climbing the ladder, and I ended up staying at home.

Well, fast forward to the year 2015, I couldn’t just stay at home, Tim. I had to do something. So I started volunteering quite a bit. I had already volunteered some with the University of Toledo. While I was volunteering, I got connected with a woman who invited me to be her relief pharmacist in – I think it was October or November of 2015. I had been off the market for four and a half years. I felt a little rusty. But the job she offered me was really in line with some of my volunteer work, and it was at a behavioral health hospital.

I worked there for one year. She moved on. I was her relief pharmacist. I didn’t feel comfortable staying without her, so I ended that job, and I didn’t work again until I started my company.

[00:07:02] TU: So we’re going to come back to that in a little bit. My first question for you, though, is student loan debt in 2001. A very different picture than what it is here in 2022, unfortunately, even if we adjust for inflation, right, which is something that we’re all thinking about at the moment. The numbers are drastically different.

Our listeners know today, graduates coming out on average about $175,000 of debt. Often that will be much higher than that if we factor in undergrad debt and other expenses for those who go to private school. So tell us about, for you, even though that debt may have been a significant part of the journey, numbers were much smaller, right?

[00:07:39] KN: Numbers were much smaller. Yes. You know, Tim, every time you say that number, when I listen to your podcast, it moves up.

[00:07:46] TU: It does.

[00:07:47] KN: It used to be like 170. Now, we’re up to 175. For students listening to this, much respect. I know that’s a huge burden to take on. My student loan debt, I added this up before our interview here. From what my records show, I had $23,888.28 in student loan debt. I used 13,650 for actually paying tuition and all that. Then the disbursements were a little over $10,000, and I lived off that. I bought my books, my gas for my car at, what was it, 97 cents a gallon back then. I had to live off of that.

I actually went back to my earnings history too to find out how much I made as an intern. In 1999, I made $10,000 as an intern, which was pretty good. But you know you got to live and, yeah, the student loan debt is real. I paid it off, I want to say, in less than two years.

[00:08:47] TU: Yeah, yeah. I think for many graduates today, the number in and of itself is a lot to work through in terms of monthly payment. Obviously, right now, we’ve got a pause on those payments, which has certainly helped a lot of people. But it’s not only the dollar amount. It’s the paralyzing nature of the feeling that can come from that that can cloud the ability to make other decisions.

So one of the things we often talk with individuals about is, yes, we’ve got to attack the number or perhaps pursued something like loan forgiveness. But we also need to make sure we don’t underestimate the power of having a plan. Even if that number doesn’t change a whole lot next week, something is drastically different if we can start to put a plan in place, so we can begin to move forward and consider that piece of the puzzle as we also look at other parts of the financial plan.

I do want to come back to one thing that you mentioned because I think that we often assume that pharmacists are the breadwinner in the family. Pharmacists are the ones that are going to be making a significant income, especially if it’s two incomes that are in the household. You mentioned something that I thought was really important to touch on that others may be considering, which is you mentioned your husband and his income opportunities. Before we hit record, you mentioned several points of his career, where he had an opportunity to kind of level up to the next level.

I think that was an interesting approach that you guys decided on as a family together that there was going to be an investment in his career and some of the upward mobility and upward nature of that income, which may not have necessarily been there with a pharmacist income. Can you talk more about how you got to that decision and why that was best for your family?

[00:10:30] KN: Yes. If I leave anything out and you need clarifying details, please let me know. My story is very different. I mean, I come from a place of currently being a stay-at-home parent. Tim, you talk about pharmacists often being the breadwinner because they earn more money than their partner. I am a pharmacist by training. My husband is a mechanical engineer by training.

When we started having kids, which happened pretty darn quick after I graduated, within like 18 months of graduation, I started having the kids. We talked about who’s going to stay at home or what are we going to do about daycare. At the time, we lived in Toledo, Ohio, which some people may think of as, “Oh, it’s big urban area. How can you trust people?” There were plenty of great choices in Toledo. Did we have anything set up? No. I worked full-time, seven on, seven off as a midnight pharmacist. I made a great income.

As I mentioned before, when we started out, I also had a part-time job in the first five months of my employment as a pharmacist as a part-time hospital pharmacist. I had this income. My top earnings ever was like $97,000. I looked at my husband after we had this baby and I said, “I can make at least $97,000 working full-time as a pharmacist. Let’s look at how much you make.” Just disclosing how much he made in the year 2003 when our first son was born, it was around $60,000. He made significantly less than me. He said, “You know what? I don’t have a ceiling on how much I can make. But you kind of seem like you do.”

That was something I had never thought of. Being the mechanical engineer, a very data-driven person, and just somebody who I would actually listen to, I listened to him. What I did was I became a part-time pharmacist, full-time mom. Could I have gotten daycare? Could I have gotten somebody to care for my kids? Yeah, I could have. But we decided as a couple, that was not what we were going to do. Plus, we wanted to have another kiddo in about two years. That was just our plan.

So I thought it was pretty hard being pregnant and being a pharmacist, standing on my feet all day, with the challenges of going to the bathroom and eating and drinking. Why would I bring that upon myself, and I’m exhausted just having a newborn? So we decided his 60,000, plus my going part-time, we thought would be maybe anywhere from 25,000 to 50,000, that would equal what my full-time income would be if I just went out and was the sole breadwinner, and he would stay at home and make no income.

But you got to keep in mind. He had that opportunity to climb up the ladder, not just in title but in earnings. So I took that leap of faith, Tim, and I let my career take a backseat. I wasn’t that far into my career, and I haven’t accomplished that much. I didn’t have as much to lose, I guess you could say. So that is one of the factors that played into that.

[00:13:45] TU: Kim, what really stands out there to me is even in this case, you decided that for you and your family, it was going to be your career that was going to be a little bit on the back seat. Obviously, you mentioned your husband realizing that there was perhaps some more upward mobility in role over time. But even if those roles were flipped, right? Because I think there can be a lot of pride that can come through, especially for the pharmacist that may be listening. They can, “Hey, wait a minute. I just invested you know, $200,000, plus 6, 8, 10 years of my time,” and maybe this is something that they are considering as well.

But whether it’s like your situation or even if the roles were reversed and your husband were the one to say, “Hey, I’m going to let my career take a backseat because this is what we want to do as our family,” I admire the intentionality, and I’m sure these were in-depth conversations that happened at the time. But really just the openness and the transparency and the intentionality of saying, “Okay, what do we want as our family? What do we think is best for our family unit?”

That could be and is different for many different families, and there is no right or wrong answer. I think that’s so important for everyone to hear. But really, what is it for you that you and your family want and how do you ultimately be able to set up the infrastructure and the system that works best for you. So I really respect and admire that. My wife, Jess, and I have had a lot of those similar conversations along the way as well.

You know what’s interesting, though? So I’m reflecting in 2022, and we think about what a pharmacist is making today. Your theory held true, right? So has the pharmacist income gone up since? You mentioned the $97,000. It has. But if you factor in inflation and other things, it really has had a ceiling, right? It really has had a ceiling, and I think we’re continuing to see that with some exceptions, and there certainly are some areas of practice where that may not necessarily be the case.

So my next question for you is you decide in 2017 that you’re going to use your pharmacy background and degree in a very different way, in a nontraditional way, not only in starting your own business but in using your voice and under the brand what would become the Pharmacist’s Voice. My question here is what was the genesis of the Pharmacist’s Voice? I don’t know the answer to this question, so I’m excited to learn the answer. How did the idea come to be and what ultimately led you to begin down this path of starting your own business?

[00:16:13] KN: The genesis of the company name, let’s start with that. It came incredibly organically because I wanted to take my background as a pharmacist and my speaking voice or my voice and writing and combine them to do something in commerce, creating a company that did something. I knew I wanted to use my voice. Now, the why, why did I want to use my voice? That is like the best part.

I have a son with autism. He is currently 19 years old, almost 19 and a half. I can’t believe it. He is nonverbal, and the thing that happens to a lot of people who have a child with challenges happened to me. If you’ve ever seen people on the news that have a child in a wheelchair, and the parent becomes a marathon runner, and they run those marathons together, and the parent is pushing the wheelchair. Or if you meet somebody who has a child who ends up being a deaf child, a child that’s hearing impaired. That adult, that parent learns sign language and becomes an advocate, right?

Having a person in my life who cannot speak, he cannot read, write, or speak that we know of, it really inspired me to respect my own voice and recognize the power of having a voice and using it. There are so many people that don’t take their passions and their strengths and use them. You have a responsibility to use your passions and your strength to do something that matters. Why wouldn’t I take my background as a pharmacist and my speaking voice put them together and make the Pharmacist’s Voice? I’ll tell you, there’s so much more that I want to say about that, but I think I should probably pause and just let you ask your questions.

[00:18:10] TU: Well, I think what I’m really curious about is you just said that there’s so many folks that don’t take their passions and their strengths and take action on it. You mentioned responsibility. I love that challenge because everyone may have a different passion or strength or a different challenge and may feel that sense of responsibility and for whatever reason haven’t acted on it. That can look like a million different things. You we’re talking, obviously, about the Pharmacist’s Voice and the business that you started.

So my question for you is why do you think people typically are not taking action? Why are they not acting on that responsibility to be able to move forward with that passion, with that strength that they have? I mean, certainly a multitude of reasons. But if we distill it down to a couple, what do you think is typically blocking people from moving forward?

[00:18:59] KN: Man, Tim, you are so lucky I’m an ESTJ. I’m extroverted, right? So I’m not really shy about sharing, and I’m a little judgmental, meaning I’m great at making decisions. So why do people have that problem, that challenge? I want you to know, anybody listening, I’m not judging you if you have barriers to entry, if you have hang ups. I think it might be part personality.

My personality, if you look at the Enneagram, if anybody knows that personality test, I’m an eight. I am the challenger. I don’t want to say fearless, but I’m the person that sees a problem and takes it as a challenge and wants to conquer it. I’m not the perfectionist, which is the number one, which is my husband, and he has a hard time with his perfectionism. A lot of times, I have to point it out to him and say, “Are you doing this because you don’t understand the first step? Or is it because you’re hesitant? Or have you made a list of pros and cons? I mean, help me understand.”

For example, he lost his job at a company he was with for more than 12 and a half years in April of 2020. It was April 30th or May 1st of 2020, right as the pandemic was –

[00:20:27] TU: When it started. Yeah. Geez. Yup.

[00:20:30] KN: Yeah, yeah. So being the support person I am, I wanted to go out there and like a light switch, turn on the business and say, “Oh, I’m going to go out and make all this money.” But voiceover, what I do the voiceover industry, it’s not like having a light switch. You can’t just turn it on. But anyways, what gets in people’s way is – I want to use my husband as an example. He wants to play a matching game. He is a mechanical engineer by training. So when he thinks about getting another job, he wants to match the words mechanical engineer with somebody who’s looking for a mechanical engineer.

What I taught him about just all the things that I know from marketing and communications and storytelling is that what you really need to think about is all those things in the Ikigai. What do you love to do? What does the world need? What can you get paid to do? All those things. What do you value? Do you want to have to travel to Asia all the time, which is what he was doing two to three weeks at a time, up to five times a year? It was hard on our family. So anyways, that was one of the things, perfectionism.

[00:21:44] TU: Well, and we know that the matching game and perfectionism doesn’t go too well with entrepreneurship or starting something new. So my question for you here is I talked with many pharmacists, probably one or two a week that I can tell they’re on fire, and they’re passionate about something. That something could be another W-2 job. That’s something could be, “Hey, I’ve got this great idea for a book or a podcast or this nonprofit.” I had somebody messaged me recently about an idea they have for a nonprofit or a business idea, whether that’s a service-based or a product-based business.

But when the conversation moves to, well, what’s next, what’s next, I can tell instantly the tone of voice shifts. Fear starts to come into the equation. More often than not, there starts to be a paralyzing reality of like, “I don’t know what the next step is.” So I’m thinking about those number one Enneagram perfectionists that are out there versus the eight challengers, where you might have an idea, and it’s not all fully fleshed out. Great, I’m going to do one thing that’s the next thing, just to get momentum on this. Then it’ll be messy, and it’ll get better, and I’ll get better, and I’ll get better. I get that, but a lot of people are not comfortable with that.

So my question is for folks that are listening and saying, “I have an idea. I want to do X, Y, or Z. But there’s 15 things that I’m not sure exactly where do I go next,” like what advice would you have for them? I mean, even if you think about the Pharmacist’s Voice, and I’m looking at your background, and you’ve got nice logos, and you’ve got services and offerings and web things and courses we’ll talk about, that can be overwhelming. So like what is the next step, and how do people discern that?

[00:23:28] KN: Oh, Tim. This is such a great question. I’m so excited to answer this. I had to do this too. I have that problem too. In fact, I have a whole podcast episode about how I funneled all my ideas down to one, and it comes down to, okay, if you can imagine a funnel. Everybody listening to this has been to pharmacy school or their students, right? I mean, think about compounding lab, and you’ve got a funnel. In the top of the funnel, it’s broader than the bottom of the funnel. You put all of those ideas down in the top of the funnel, and you’re going to distill it down to just one. That’s going to pop out the end, and that’s going to be your one that you run with.

I had all these ideas, and I just put them in that funnel. I mentally worked my way through each of them to find out if they were even possible. In doing that, I figured out that my number one barrier to using probably four or five of my ideas was childcare. I have a child who, at the time, was only – Was he 15? I think he was only 15. But still, rapidly approaching adulthood, can’t read, write, or speak. I’m going to be taking care of this person. I’m going to be as guardian. I’m going to be his full-time caregiver, until death parts us. I’m not trying to be morbid. Sometimes, when you have those constraints, it makes all your decisions that much easier.

So when I found out that childcare seemed to be my biggest barrier, I realized I needed to find something I could do in the gig economy. It was just that easy, and I knew through my passions, through respecting the voice, and wanting to do something with my voice, that, heck, yeah, I could continue to volunteer when I have time. People don’t expect you to show up when you volunteer 100%. You let them know the expectations. If they can deal with it, they let you continue to volunteer, right? It’s okay to volunteer. You discover your passions that way.

But then in going through mentally all these ideas, I figured out that I could not go to people’s houses and help them with their medication lists and cleaning up their closets. What if they were running late? What if I was running late? What if there was a school delay or a closing or whatever? I had a sick kid. I would have to cancel on them, and then making it up would be so hard. So anyways, all those things really added up.

Then talking to other people, Tim, that’s so important. All of your listeners who are interested in entrepreneurship should really be talking to people who do the thing that they want to do. It’s common sense, but it’s also great advice because when you talk to people that do the thing – For example, I wanted to go to patients’ houses, help them clean out their medication closets, and help them make medication lists, just doing some basic MTM type stuff, then cash pay. So I wouldn’t necessarily have to use the insurance company’s definition of MTM.

I found out that in Ohio, we needed to have a TDDD, a Terminal Distributor of Dangerous Drugs license. I think it was a level two or something.

[00:26:40] TU: Two. Yeah, you’re right. Category two.

[00:26:42] KN: Yeah. In order to have patient data in my home or on my computer. Honestly, I didn’t want to deal with that. So in talking to Sue Paul, who we both know through the Ohio Pharmacists Association, she’s an Ohio pharmacist and pharmacogenomics queen, I learned some of the issues that she deals with. I didn’t want to deal with those issues. So again, just fleshing out those ideas like how would I actually make this happen? What are the barriers I would come across? Who already does this? What are the challenges and the rewards? Yeah. Just flushing everything out.

Out the bottom of the funnel came something where I would use my voice, and I didn’t know that I would be in the voiceover industry when I started. I ended up going into voiceover because my original idea didn’t even work. So I had to take that original idea that came out of the bottom of the funnel and pivot it to something else, which isn’t always fun because you have to admit failure. But you got to have a short memory about it. Kind of like when you’re up to bat and you strike out. You strike out. You still got that third pitch. You might fall or you might have a home run. So just keep swinging.

[00:27:52] TU: I love that. No, it’s great. I love the practical advice that you gave, in terms of the funnel and having the ideas and talking with others, which I think not only helps you speak out loud your idea, which gets you thinking about it more, internalizing it more. It clarifies your message. Sometimes, I’ll have a great idea. More often than not, the day ends, I go home, and I’ll, “Jess, Jess, Jess. I got this idea. I got this idea.” Then I hear myself say it out loud. Then 24 hours passes, and I’m like, “That was really not a great idea.” But it was in my head, and I started talking out loud.

Or sometimes, when I have those conversations, the ideas start to crystallize, or she’ll add to it. What about this? What about that? Have you thought about this? Those conversations of people that can help you build upon your idea, that can help you network with other people that have been down that path before, is so powerful. But you said something that the end that I think is so integral for people to remember, which is we have to, on some level, be comfortable with and accepting and embracing some failure along the way.

I think if we can shift our mind around failure typically has a negative connotation but an opportunity to grow and to learn, but being comfortable with that, and you mentioned the first idea that popped out of the funnel, right? You had to pivot and do something else. Perhaps a whole separate conversation about how we get comfortable with failure. But I think really good advice for folks that are looking to get started because even if you come up with the perfect game plan, guess what, it ain’t going to be perfect. There’s going to be things and bumps along the road that are going to come to be.

[00:29:27] KN: Yeah. You got to have that abundance mindset.

[00:29:29] TU: That’s right.

[00:29:30] KN: Like there’s more than one idea here, and it’s okay to flush them out. Write them down too and revisit them because, like you said, Tim, you may come home and talk to your wife, Jess, and say, “I have the best idea.” But then when it comes out of your mouth, that doesn’t sound so good. But she’s kind of like a good sounding board, and she’ll tell you what’s good about it, and maybe you can just write it down. So I hope everybody out there has their own Jess or even a notepad and sleep on it and look at it another day.

[00:29:56] TU: I love it. I love it. We’re now – I’ve got four boys at home. I’ve talked about it before in my podcast, but it’s been fun, as my oldest is now about to be 11, and he’s heard so many of these conversations with my wife and I, just in passing. Just this weekend, he came up with, “Well, Dad, what about this idea? Wouldn’t it save time if we had a toothbrush that had two different brushes, so you could brush the top and the bottom at once? And is that something that could be invented?” I was like, “That’s it, right? You got to throw ideas out there. The process, they evolve and see what happens over time.”

So as it relates to the Pharmacist’s Voice, what do you offer? What is the business, what’s the offering, and how has that evolved since 2017 to what you’re working on right now?

[00:30:39] KN: Starting in 2017, my original idea was to narrate pharmacy continuing education journals into audio. My original idea didn’t work. I approached all kinds of companies, for example, APHA. I approached the Ohio Pharmacists Association. I approached Pharmacist’s Letter. There were others too. I pitched it to somebody the other day, but I have a little bit more proof of concept now that I’ve been in the voiceover industry.

But anyways, I didn’t have proof of concept. I didn’t really know what I was talking about. I didn’t know how to record, edit, and produce audio at the time. Everybody said no, and that’s all I needed. It’s not like I gave up early or anything. I just thought if they don’t like this particular idea, let’s try something else.

What I did was I pivoted, and the first thing I did was when I pivoted, I went to talk to somebody who could teach me how to record, edit, and produce audio. Somebody who I thought could help me with that. I went to a local audio engineer, and he said, “Oh, yeah. We record people here. But I’m the one that records them. I’m the one that edits them. I’m the one that produces the final files and gives them to the client.” That’s a high ticket item right there. It’s expensive. So I thought, “Well, gosh. How can I do this at home?”

I went on a journey of learning how to record, edit, and produce audio. I’ll tell you, that’s, for me, the hardest thing about having a podcast, hardest thing about producing audio books, which is one of the services I offer. It’s the hardest thing about creating voiceovers. I had to spend a lot of time in the trenches. Believe it or not, pharmacists would be awesome at this. I mean, if that was like part of the thing like, yes, we dispense pills. We make IVs. We mix audio. Pharmacists are very detail-oriented people.

It turned out, I love it, and I’m great at it. So on my journey, I learned I can record, edit, and produce this. Great. What am I going to talk about? What am I going to produce? One of the things that the audio engineer that I talked to did for me was he connected me to my very first voiceover coach. I thought, “What’s a voiceover coach? I don’t know what this is. I don’t know if I want to do this.” But he said, “You need to learn how to talk and have good mic skills and all these things.”

So I went to Nancy Wolfson. If you’re going to write this down, just please know that she is more of an advanced instructor, which is what I found out when I started working with her. She focuses on commercial narration. Once I did – I don’t know if it was eight lessons or something like that. I realized I needed to do medical narration because my heart just wasn’t into talking about pantyhose and banks and things that are on the news. Or not on the news. Radio ads or television ads.

So anyways, I started working with a different coach, and his name’s David Rosenthal, and he’s with the Global Voice Acting Academy. Definitely look that one up because they do teach young voice actors, if you’re interested, and he helped me with medical narration. He’s like, “Yeah, you can say the words great.” I don’t want to paint him in a bad light, but he said things that I needed to hear. He said that, “You basically don’t know how to deliver. You know how to say the words just fine. You sound like you know what you’re talking about. But then other parts of the delivery are not so great.” During that whole discovery period and learning, I took group classes. I took private classes. I made my first demo. Moving forward, I have worked with other coaches too.

Now, how did audiobooks come into this? Audiobooks came into this because if you can do audiobooks, you can do e-learning, which is what I have learned. That is what I originally wanted to do. Narrating pharmacy continuing education journals into audio format is e-learning. So I learned how to do audiobooks and e-learning. At the same time, I’m an audiobook narrator. I narrate books that are on Audible, Amazon, and iTunes. They’re for sale.

Two examples are IMPACT Pharmacist: Start Your Own Wellness Practice and Leave Your Retail Pharmacy Job Behind by Asha and Eric Bohannon. I’ve also narrated Perimenopause: The Savvy Sister’s Guide to Hormone Harmony. So as I’ve been going through this journey, I have been figuring out what people want to pay me to do.

[00:35:18] TU: Well, I like that too because I think it connects back to what we were talking before. Now, you’ve got service offerings. But I’m guessing those have evolved and changed over time, as you kind of figure out what does the market need and want? What is the market willing to pay for? What are they not willing to pay for? Then, obviously, you start to spread that through word of mouth.

So again, just a great reminder that as folks are getting started with an idea, where you start and where it goes is going to be an evolution. It is, and you’re going to look back and say, “I can’t believe –” I remember back to my first blog post, November 6th, 2015. I read it recently. Yes, I had a great, great story of our journey. But, wow, like writing had a lot to be desired for. I think back to the first podcast that we did in 2017. So it’s a journey. It’s an evolution, and I’m hopeful that we’ll say the same thing five years down the road as well.

If folks want to learn more about the work you’re doing at the Pharmacist’s Voice and the offerings you have, they can go to thepharmacistsvoice.com. We’ll link to that in the show notes as well. You mentioned your summer project before we hit record, is you’re working on an online course. Tell us more about that.

[00:36:25] KN: Yes. Thanks for the opportunity. If you go to kimnewlove.com, you can see my current online course offering. It’s a drug name pronunciation course, believe it or not, and it’s called Pronounce Drug Names Like a Pro. The next online course, which I have not released yet, but it will be on kimnewlove.com, hopefully, by the end of August. That’s my goal. It will be a behind the scenes look at the Pharmacist’s Voice Podcast. The Pharmacist’s Voice, of course, is my company, but I am a business with a podcast, much like Your Financial Pharmacist.

So the name of my podcast is the Pharmacist’s Voice Podcast. A lot of people ask me all the time, how do I start a podcast? How do you make your podcast? So this is going to be how I make my podcast, not how you need to make yours. Because a lot of people just want to know what goes into it. What does it look like to edit audio? Because you’re taking a visual representation of something you can hear, and not everybody really understands how you can manipulate something that you can see, but you end up hearing it. It’s really something. So, yeah, that’s my summer project, Tim. Thanks for asking.

[00:37:38] TU: Well, I’m looking forward to that coming out because I have a lot of folks that I talk with. They have interesting ideas or thinking about starting a podcast, and they often get hung up in some of the, “Well, what equipment should I use, and what platform should I use to record?” There’s a million options that are out there, and I like your approach of kind of a behind the scenes of what you’re doing, which I think what will give people some structure and some hooks to be able to hang some things on but not necessary the only way to be able to do or release a podcast show.

[00:38:07] KN: Yes, I agree. Tim, just to add something real quick, that, hopefully, is going to feed into me training pharmacists or healthcare providers, small cohorts, at a time how to start their own podcasts, if there is interest. So send those people my way. I would love to help them. It’d be kind of like a white glove type thing, where you have an idea of what you want to do and you want to flatten that learning curve. I can totally help you do it. I mean, I have my own podcast. I’m on episode 160-something. I know how to do this.

[00:38:37] TU: I love it. I love it. I love it. One of the things I wanted to ask you about is I personally feel that we’re in a period of time where there’s somewhat of an over glorification of entrepreneurship, and I love entrepreneurship. I think it’s something that the skills that are within owning your own business and starting your own business are things that everyone can learn something from, whether or not you have your own business. So, obviously, I’m a huge fan and have really found great benefit in my own journey.

But I think there are sometimes some myths that come to be with owning your own business that people think, “Oh, well. If I just own my own business, like everything would be okay.” So my question for you is like is there a myth or two that you have found in your own journey and owning your own business that you’d like to share with the audience?

[00:39:33] KN: Oh, my gosh. How many do I get to share?

[00:39:36] TU: Go with it.

[00:39:38] KN: Okay, all right. Thank you for the opportunity to share this because with what I do now, which is voiceover, I do medical narration for pharmaceutical companies, biotech. I do e-learning, I do explainer videos. I do all this. People think you can just plug a microphone into a computer and talk, and the Brink’s truck will backup and dump a bunch of money in your driveway. That, I would say, is the number one myth about what I do now. What I do is voiceover, and it is not like that.

There are actual studies now for the voiceover industry to demonstrate the people who have been in the business, who are just starting out, who work part-time like me, typically make $8,000 or less when they first start out.

[00:40:22] TU: Per year.

[00:40:22] KN: I work very part-time, and I make less than $8,000 a year, and I will probably say that. But it is in increasing, and I have negotiated $10,000 deals, $20,000 deals, and just the projects never went into production. So I’ve had great opportunities. But, oh, my gosh, the ups and downs of the gig economy are crazy. So I just want to point that out, and I would say you’re not going to make $100,000 right away, for sure.

Then as an entrepreneur, I would say there’s a lot of risk, but you have to be smart about it. You have to not dump all of your savings into the shiny objects that you see. You got to have boundaries. If somebody says, “Oh, this microphone is the best in the business,” you find out what’s a starter microphone and see if you even like doing it. Yeah. If there’s anything else I can tell you, let me know because I’ll tell you. There are so many things, so many myths and misconceptions about voiceover industry alone. But entrepreneurship, I mean, gosh, I could go on and on about that, in general. Let me know what you want to know, Tim.

[00:41:36] TU: Smart risk resonates with me. I tend to have some shiny object syndrome myself. I think many entrepreneurs do, and it could be a new piece of equipment. It can be a new piece of software, right? And a new solution or course. I think one of the challenges as you continue to grow in your business journey and you grow your network and you talk with other people, inevitably, you come across conversations like the one we’re having, and someone may say, “Well, I use this tool or I use this software. I use this.” You’re like, “Oh, I need that,” right? I need that piece of equipment, that piece of software. So sometimes, the answer is yes. That’s going to be a valuable solution. But really taking smart risks and making sure you’re staying on course with the core offering and not getting distracted by that, I think, is really, really smart.

Related to smart risk, I want to wrap up our conversation by bringing together the personal financial journey with your business journey. When I talk with a lot of aspiring pharmacy entrepreneurs, one of the hurdles that typically comes up is the intersection between the personal financial journey and being able to start the business with confidence. That could be because of student loan debt. That could be because they have a young family, and there’s lots of competing financial expenses. That could be because they feel like they’re behind on retirement, and they don’t feel like they’re in a financial position of strength to be able to lean into their business idea.

So my question for you, as you started the journey in 2017, how did your personal finance plan intersect with your ability to start the business and to feel confident making that jump forward?

[00:43:10] KN: I love this question so much. When – Oh, boy. We took Financial Peace University, the Dave Ramsey class at our church in 2013, and that made a big difference in how we attacked debt. I would say that the mortgage payoff was in the horizon. Like we were almost there when I started my business. I started my business November of 2017, right at the end of the year. Then we paid off our mortgage March of 2019.

Having that financial freedom and really, honestly, extra space in my mind to let myself dream about what could be was huge. So I would say we started off investing in our futures through 401(k)s and Roth IRAs early. Okay. My husband as soon as he got a job that had a 401(k), I believe he was at least doing employer match and then eventually maxing out. Currently, maxes out. I think 18,500 is his current contribution per year, and that’s the maximum, I believe, he’s allowed per some law. Right, Tim?

[00:44:28] TU: It’s up a little bit in 2022. I think it’s a little bit north of 20,000, 20,500. But he may –

[00:44:33] KN: Okay. I’m sure he’ll be there soon.

[00:44:34] TU: I don’t know. But, yeah, he probably is. He probably is. Yeah.

00:44:37KN: Yeah. But then I had my Roth IRA that I started in college because we had a speaker come to class and during our management and marketing class. That guy, I just called him up afterwards and I said, “Hey, you want to be my financial planner,” and he did. He became my financial planner. His company is still my financial planning company 22 years later, and I have all that growth and that trust and that relationship.

[00:45:02] TU: So slow steps to building the financial plan. You mentioned in 2017, specifically, the business. Having that home paid off was a big part of feeling confident to have the margin to get the business off the ground. I think that’s great because I think some sometimes every business is different, right? If somebody is developing a product-based business or a business that requires a lot of inventory, there might be a lot more upfront costs.

I think of what we started at YFP. I believe of what you’ve done as well. Certainly, some upfront costs but maybe not to the magnitude of a product-based business, where you may need to have some more upfront capital. But nonetheless need to have a solid financial foundation in place to be able to make that journey and to do it with confidence.

[00:45:45] KN: Yes. Thank you for summarizing that. I feel like there’s so many little details that I could bring up. But, yeah, I don’t know how much into the weeds you want me to get. I think that if somebody is going to take a risk, a calculated risk, and start a business, you need to do your homework. I did my homework to find out. Once I discovered the voiceover industry, can I afford to do this? I found out that the microphone that I wanted was only like 199 bucks. I needed a stand. But I needed training. It was like $200 a pop for an hour. I needed a demo. It costs X number of dollars. Without a mortgage, we had that available capital, and we were still investing.

Yeah. Over time, the investments – I mean, if you are faithful and you have a good strategy, you will eventually get closer to your retirement goal. But you need to have a goal in the first place, and you got to start somewhere, and I highly recommend that Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University and also getting somebody that you trust to help you with your journey.

[00:46:50] TU: Great advice. Kim, this has been a lot of fun, and I appreciate you taking time to come on the show. Again, for folks that want to learn more about what Kim’s up to, you can go to thepharmacistsvoice.com and also visit kimnewlove.com, and keep up to date with the newest course that she’s working on starting a podcast. So, Kim, thanks so much for coming on the show.

[00:47:09] KN: Thank you for having me, Tim. Take care.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[00:47:12] TU: As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment.

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 266: How One Pharmacy Entrepreneur Started a Keto-Based Medical Practice

Posted on July 28, 2022November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

How One Pharmacy Entrepreneur Started a Keto-Based Medical Practice

Dr. Jodi Nishida shares what significant health event led her to a keto-based diet, why she saw an opportunity to launch her business and keto-based practice, and lessons she’s learned through helping over 1500 patients with medically-guided keto as a pharmacy entrepreneur.

About Today’s Guest

Dr. Jodi is a Doctor of Pharmacy and accredited Metabolic Healthcare Practitioner who’s been in healthcare for over 25 years. After experiencing the ketogenic lifestyle’s effect on her own autoimmune condition, she decided to build a keto-based medical practice so others could benefit from it, too.

Over the last few years, she’s helped over 1500 patients realize the benefits of clean, medically-guided keto.

With certifications in ketogenic nutrition, cardiovascular disease management, pharmacogenomics, and medication management, she works closely with each and every patient to tailor keto to their medications, medical conditions, lifestyle, and socioeconomic situation. She is also in training for processed food addiction recovery as this is America’s true pandemic.

Episode Summary

This week, YFP Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, is joined by Dr. Jodi Nishida, a Doctor of Pharmacy and accredited Metabolic Healthcare Practitioner who’s been in healthcare for over 25 years. They discuss a significant health event that led Dr. Jodi to a keto-based diet, why she saw this event as an opportunity to start a keto-based practice, and the lessons she has learned through helping over 1,500 patients with medically-guided clean keto.

Dr. Jodi talks about her diverse experience as a pharmacist and the impact that stress had on her health in a retail role. Upon leaving the retail space due to stress and its effect on an autoimmune condition she developed, she found keto by chance when looking for solutions for a family member who had experienced a health event. In support of her family member, Dr. Jodi started a keto diet. After seeing her condition go into remission, she knew she had found something, if done correctly, could benefit others. Through meticulous planning, including building up her emergency fund, Dr. Jodi started her business – now the first cardiometabolic clinic in the state of Hawaii – with the annual goal of helping her patients collectively lose 10,000 lbs. and come off of 300 medications. Listeners will hear about her business challenges to date, and what success looks like for Dr. Jodi in the next five years.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRO]

This week, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Dr. Jodi, owner of The Keto Prescription. During the show, we discussed what significant health event in her own life led to pursuing a keto-based diet, why she saw an opportunity to launch her own business and keto-based practice, and the lessons she has learned in launching and growing her business, where she has helped over 2,000 patients realize the benefits of clean, medically-guided keto.

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 to the pharmacy professional. If you’re interested in learning more about how working one on one with a certified financial planner may help you achieve your financial goals, you can book a free discovery call by visiting yfpplanning.com. Whether or not YFP Planning’s financial planning services are a good fit for you, know that we appreciate your support of this podcast and our mission to help pharmacists achieve financial freedom. Okay, let’s jump into my interview with Dr. Jodi.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:01:17] TU: Jodi, welcome to the show.

[00:01:19] JN: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

[00:01:21] TU: Well, I’m really excited for this interview. Cory Jenks, a friend of YFP, a guest on the podcast episodes 134, 196, we’ll link to those in the show notes, connected the two of us, and I’m excited to have our listeners hear about your career and your entrepreneurial story. So before we get into all of that, tell us about your background, where you went into pharmacy school, when you graduate, and what ultimately drew you to the profession.

[00:01:46] JN: Yeah. Well, I graduated from USC, University of Southern California. This was way, way back in 1996. I’m actually pretty old compared to you guys, and I did all of my schooling there. I did my residency out there in LA as well. I was just drawn to the profession because anything in medicine that didn’t require me to have to look at anything too gross or cut anyone open is what I was pretty much interested in.

[00:02:15] TU: It reminds me of my journey into pharmacy. I had a guidance counselor. I said, “Hey, I love science, love math. I don’t want to see blood, so point me in the right direction,” right? That was in part how I got down the path of pharmacy. Let’s jump in to 2011. You’re working at big box retail pharmacy in Hawaii, where you currently live. Tell us about your experience working there, and what happened at that moment in your life and in your career that really led you to be reliant on medications, and we’ll tie that to the work that you’re doing now.

[00:02:46] JN: Yeah. It takes a special person to work retail pharmacy, in my opinion. I give them so much props because it’s a grind, as so many of you out there know. I had a horrible boss. She was a little crazy. I’m going to be honest. I was just – It was very soul-crushing for me. Working in retail pharmacy, it’s so busy and it’s just – I didn’t enjoy it at all.

I was going through some stuff with my family, my parents, single parent, and just at work I was miserable. My health was deteriorating pretty quickly, and I got diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis. It literally was interesting because I woke up one day with it pretty much from head to toe. They say that because it’s autoimmune, it’s triggered by stress. So just all of these storm of events combined that happened at one time really is what led me away from retail pharmacy, really just to fix my health and reduce stress.

I did spend a little bit of time in Big Pharma. I actually did spend four years in pharmacogenomics and then by chance discovered keto, the keto diet.

[00:04:13] TU: Tell us about that discovery of what happened. We’ll talk a little bit later about what exactly is the keto practice, the model, and what you’re employing with patients. I think there’s a lot of preconceived notions out there about keto, and we can dig into some of that. But how did you get introduced to keto in that moment, which had become so critical,

not only to your personal journey in your health, but also to the work that you’re doing now? What was the introduction to keto? Where did that come from?

[00:04:40] JN: Yeah. One of my first degree relatives actually had a massive heart attack and almost died. His LAD, his artery was 99% occluded. Just in casually mentioning it to a colleague who’s a pediatric neurologist, he was like, “Dude, you should put your dad on keto.” I was like, “What’s a keto? I hadn’t even heard of it.” He goes, “I know how you are.” He goes, “You should research it.”

That just sat me down the whole rabbit hole. I mean, YouTube, books, everything. As I was doing my own learning, it was interesting because all of these things that I had learned in school way back when it started to resurface, and it made me realize like, “Oh, my gosh. We are completely practicing medicine backwards.” Just the whole western model of do labs, look at a number, write a prescription, right?

There’s not a lot of thought into that outside of, “Okay, am I going to use atorvastatin or simvastatin?” You know what I mean? Like that’s the degree of thought that goes into medicine right now. So I decided in that moment that I was going to try the keto diet. I was going to put my relative on it as well and do it together to support him. In doing that, my autoimmune condition completely went into remission. Where I had been injecting myself weekly with Enbrel for 13 years, I was now completely off of it, and it was just mind-blowing for me.

[00:06:11] TU: It’s interesting when you say, Jodi, do labs, look at a number, write a prescription. I was reflecting on this recently because I think for all the modern revelations that have come from medicine, which is incredible, and you worked in the industry. You know a lot of the research and development was done, and the advances that have been made over the last 75 years and much shorter is really, really incredible.

But I think we have forgotten about all of the time before any of that even happened. I think one of the things that I’m learning more and more in my journey, and I think keto here’s a good example, are the principles of keto or looking at other cultures in medicine and how there’s thousands of years of experience. When I think about the PharmD training and folks that are in school for six or eight years, we get very little, if any, on the foundation prior to some of the first medications in the 1900s.

We get a whole lot and, obviously, the advancements that have come in the last century, which have played a very, very critical role. But I think we often may be blind to some of those other opportunities and open to some of those other opportunities for how we may look at treating conditions. You mentioned kind of a backwards approach of do the labs, look at the number, write a prescription.

When you say keto, help me. I’m a person that I would say is probably lay understanding of keto. I’ve dabbled a little bit in keto diets and books, and I have found some of the science fascinating. But I have found there’s a lot of opinions out there. There’s a lot of definitions about carb intakes and monitoring the values. Like when you say a keto-based diet, tell us more. What do you mean by that?

[00:07:49] JN: Yeah. So let’s quickly differentiate. Most of what you see on social media I would call dirty keto or lazy keto. It’s like tons of bacon, huge burgers. Everything is covered in cheese. That, in my professional opinion, is actually not keto. So the definition of keto is a low-carb, moderate protein, high healthy fat diet. Healthy fat does not include eating a lot of cheese. The problem is that everyone is getting these ratios wrong of the carb, the protein, and the fat on their plate. So it’s giving keto, which –

I mean, I see it every day in my own private practice, is it has the power to literally reverse so many medical conditions from head to toe. It’s important that the right messaging about the diet get out there, and that’s why organizations like the one Cory Jenks and I belong to is on the leading edge of helping to define and validate this as a legitimate medical approach because it works. It really works.

[00:09:00] TU: So I find it really interesting that it’s one thing to try something in your own health or for the health of a family member, as you mentioned, to help keep them accountable and support them as well, and to see the positive impact and effects. It’s another thing to kind of share that story and that word with other people, get them excited. It’s a whole another level to say, “Hey, I’m going to make a business out of this. I’m going to start a practice, and I’m going to begin to really implement the transformation I’m having in my own life, but also be able to help serve other folks.”

It’s another, I think, great examples. We’ve shared other stories on this podcast of pharmacists that are using their degree in somewhat of a nontraditional way. But one of the things I’m really passionate about is that the PharmD is an entry point to many, many, many, many different pathways and opportunities. I think you’ve built out a really unique niche in practice. My question for you is what led you to make that transition from, “Hey, this is really having a positive impact in my own life,” to, “I’m going to take a huge step forward and actually start my own practice.”?

[00:09:59] JN: Yeah, which at my age, I’m 49 this year, that’s a risky thing. It’s a huge career pivot. Long story short, I started making these videos on Facebook about keto, how to do keto. What I did was I did 30 live videos in 30 days. It was like a contest that I was a part of, and I decided to do keto as my topic. I amassed like a pretty big following in that 30-day span. As people started messaging me and asking questions, that’s what made me realize like, “Wow, I think there needs to be an actual like keto clinic.”

Luckily for me, I’m out in Hawaii. If people don’t know that, it’s a smaller place. I’ve been in different facets of the healthcare industry for many years out here. So I know a lot of the right people, and I met with the head of Blue Cross Blue Shield Hawaii, and I said, “Hey, this is what I want to do. But I’m a pharmacist, and we are not recognized as providers out here. How do I do this legally?”

They literally sat down with me one day and helped me figure it out. Really, all I needed to do is partner with an MD, right? So I could bill incident to this physician, write up a collaborative practice agreement, and I got picked up. So just through word of mouth, people mentioned it to this one GI doctor who I’m no longer with, but that was how the whole thing started. Now, I’m with a cardiologist, and she is amazing. Like she has really embraced it. We just sent out a flyer to all the docs in the state of Hawaii that we are Hawaii’s first cardio metabolic clinic, and we’re using the keto diet to basically reverse metabolic syndrome in patients. It’s a win-win win-win all the way around.

[00:12:01] TU: So the business model there is partnering with a physician. You mentioned first an intestinal doc, now with a cardiologist, incident to collaborative practice agreements. You don’t need to share details, but I’m sure there’s some type of revenue share with incident too. You look at overhead expenses, other things at the clinic. But you’re operating in tandem with a physician incident to collaborative practice agreement. Is that right?

[00:12:26] JN: Yup. That’s the model. I mean, just I think pharmacists should know this because our pharmacists’ association out here, I am co-chair of our government affairs committee this year, and we are introducing a bill into our legislative season at the beginning of next year to be recognized and reimbursed as providers in the state of Hawaii. We’re using my clinic as one of the main examples of really the depth and the breadth of what pharmacists are trained to do clinically and how in something like diabetes, we make such a huge impact because only my clinic in the entire state is reversing diabetes. I tell people I don’t manage diabetes, When you come to see me, we’re going to reverse that sucker. Do you know what I mean? I don’t play around with that, so yeah.

[00:13:17] TU: Well, the audacious goal and the vision behind that. So that relationship with Blue Cross Blue Shield is you become all that more important, as you guys are able to move that provider status stuff forward.

[00:13:28] JN: Yeah. So that, hopefully, and you know what happens is the insurance companies will deposit my reimbursements into the cardiologist’s account, and all she needs to do is cut me a check for that. It’s pretty straightforward.

[00:13:41] TU: So I don’t want to gloss over. I talk with a lot of pharmacists that have really cool ideas. It could be for a side hustle. It could be for an aspiration of a business. Or it could be a product or service-based thing. But very few actually start, and I always talk with individuals about we get paralyzed in the big vision. We get overwhelmed. There’s fears. There’s insecurities, whole lots of reasons of why. But very few are willing to take that first step to say, “Hey, I’m passionate about this, and I’m going to see where it goes, and it’s okay that there’s some unknown territory ahead of me.”

When you say, “I put myself out there. I did 30 videos in 30 days. I met with Blue Cross Blue Shield,” like those are a big deal, right? So my question for you is what led you to the mindset? What led you to the willingness to take those steps? You mentioned, yeah, in your opinion, it was somewhat of a risky move. Knowing that, hey, maybe this succeeds, maybe it doesn’t succeed, like what allowed you to have that motivation and to take that step forward or those first few steps forward?

[00:14:48] JN: Well, of course, it was my own experience with the keto diet and what it did for me and having the ability to tell that story. Because of all the videos I had done on Facebook, this was five, six years ago, and people taking my advice or just I was saying don’t eat this, try to eat these things. Then I was getting all these testimonials through DMs of girls who had been deemed infertile are all of a sudden pregnant because they took the advice that I had shared and all this stuff. I started to see how much this would impact people.

Then it’s, of course, thinking it through, having mentors, right? What are the pros and cons? What is this going to cost me? Then having a basic business plan is really important too because you’ve got to understand the risks. I’m going to be honest with you. I was doing pharmacogenomics at the time, which I loved, by the way, that. I can’t wait to start doing that in my office too eventually. But I was doing really well, and I put away enough money in the bank to cover my mortgage and all of my expenses for 12 months. I made sure I had that in the bank before I did this, just in case it didn’t pan out.

[00:16:14] TU: I’m so glad you bring that up because, obviously, this is a financial podcast, and one of the things I like to ask aspiring entrepreneurs or folks that are looking to make this transition is I think for many pharmacists, good reason could be debt loads. It could be other expenses and things. Or there’s somewhat of a golden handcuff of being able to take a “risk” and make a transition. So that was your strategy, 12 months of savings. Give yourself some cushion so that you could really approach the business with confidence. Is that right?

[00:16:42] JN: Yeah. Because when you’re now billing insurances, and you’re working through all the medical billing, and Medicare doesn’t reimburse right away. Sometimes, it takes three months. Like these are all the things that you have to think that pharmacists don’t realize because if you’re not functioning and billing as a provider, and you work in a salaried position with benefits, you would never realize that. So there’s just a lot of pieces too to think about.

It’s interesting because Low Carb USA, they also go by the Society of Metabolic Health Practitioners, they have their annual conference every August in San Diego. The talk that I’m giving on stage this year is the four pillars of a successful low-carb clinical practice. Honestly, Tim, my hope is that a lot of pharmacists think about attending this conference or attending it at some point in their career because this model of PharmD is working with MDs in the low-carb space, and MDs are looking for PharmDs to partner with. It’s like one of the greatest segways that we can get into to get out of the pharmacy and get into clinical practice.

Like I was saying earlier, I graduated a long time ago, and I’m dealing with every disease state medical condition from head to toe now. It was amazing how much of what I had learned came flooding back. You know what I mean? Just in diabetes management and all of that. I tell people that I’m the luckiest pharmacist in the world because I have the opportunity to use every single skill that I learned in all of my schooling and all of my residency in my own business now and the ability to help so many people. So it’s a lot of fun.

[00:18:38] TU: Transformative impact on others, right? I mean, that’s awesome. Pharmacists love frameworks. So your four pillars really resonate with me. I think that partly why I asked you the question of what led you to take those first steps is that even when there’s a strong motivation, often we want something a little bit more. So a few things you said that really stood out to me, number one is that strong why and motivation. You mentioned your personal experiences, that sense of obligation to serve and help other people.

The second thing I heard you say was really some mentors that could be a sounding board, that could provide guidance and I think probably some accountability. That was there as well. Then the third thing was really having a strong business plan to be able to understand. Moving this from idea to projections is a really important step, right? Because I think we can all become somewhat naive and optimistic about our idea, but rubber meets the road in the Excel document.

Pairing that with mentors to say like, “Where did you come up with this number? That sounds great but like how are you actually going to generate that kind of revenue? Oh, okay. I got to get a level deeper, a level deeper, a level deeper. Well, what’s that going to look like cash flow for the next – Oh, I need to have some cash flow saved up because of delays of billing insurance.” I mean, these are the things that for folks that have an idea, so much wisdom there in what you shared.

I want to come back to the importance of a strong why. I wrote a blog article recently, talking about how your why has to be greater than your motivation. You why has to be greater than your motivation because there are days, weeks, seasons in business when things are going to be up and things are going to be down. I really believe the why is the anchor, and I’m looking behind you, as we’re recording this, and you have a sign up that said, “Our patients will lose 10,000 pounds and stop 300 medications in 365 days.” That’s incredible. I mean, that is a guiding anchor of what you’re doing. How important is that vision to you to motivate you to keep going during those seasons that might be challenging?

[00:20:40] JN: Yeah. That’s my annual mission statement. It’s always my goal every January 1 for the last three years. I’ve come very close every single time, and it’s okay if I don’t hit it exactly, right? I mean, shoot. Last year, I think we did 8,800 pounds collectively and 265 medications. But when you look at those metrics compared to what you see in every other medical practice out there, this is the type of data that the payers are going to need someday to see the value that our profession brings.

So kind of back to why statement, it’s not only about what this can do for patients. I’m also personally working very hard to transform our profession because I think if we don’t, it’s going to die out pretty quickly. It’s a very pivotal time right now for pharmacists. So I allow pharmacy students to rotate through my clinic. They do rotations. Something – You’re talking about framework and pillars. If there’s a word of advice I could give to a lot of the younger pharmacists out there is pharmacy can be very siloed. You’ve got MDs. You’ve got lab. You’ve got your pharmacists. You’ve got nursing. A lot of times, these silos don’t talk to each other.

You have to be that pharmacist that knows how to go out and network. Very honestly, it was time I spent in Big Pharma in different positions that taught me how to do that. That came in so handy when I was thinking of starting this clinical practice. Having the ability to bounce things off of all of these different areas of specialty in health care and having connection is such a critical part of being able to move forward because you’ve got to get buy in. You’ve got to get buy in from key people.

[00:22:43] TU: That’s right. Yeah. Building alliances, having physician advocates, having relationships with payers, having folks that can help speak on your behalf. So when you’re introducing a bill in Hawaii, you’ve got physician advocates that are speaking to that. So I’m really hearing two big buckets of what you’re working on. One is the practice, the business, helping individual patients. Then the other is really the impact on the profession and really elevating what pharmacists can do as providers. Sure, that helps the business. But ultimately, that expanded scope is going to allow for expanded services and a greater impact on patients.

My question for you is how important has your involvement been? You mentioned a role in the state association. How important has your involvement been in the state association and that work in terms of the connection to what you’re trying to build and do in a practice? Because I think we’ve lost some of the juice behind the value of associations, and I am able to sit firsthand on the leadership team of the Ohio Pharmacists Group and really see the value at the state level. So I’m curious to hear your perspective there as well.

[00:23:51] JN: Oh, man. I envy you. You’re with Ohio because you got a lot of great things accomplished out there. Hawaii is so far behind, and we are a dying association out here. I’m going to be very honest with you. What we’re working on this year for the next legislative session, and really at the end of the day, it always boils down to just three of us that are doing the brunt of the work and me calling on every representative and senator in the state that I’ve known or grown up with. Again, it’s that networking thing, partnering with professional organizations like the American Diabetes Association, to get their testimony of support at the right time, beginning of next year.

All of this is so intertwined. It’s fascinating to me. If we don’t fix it, I fear what’s going to happen, and it’s so interesting because I see a lot of this where we’re on our monthly call, and it’s that problem where the hospital pharmacists only know hospital pharmacy things. The community pharmacists only know community pharmacy things. But they don’t necessarily know people outside of that. So we keep hitting this wall, and I think it’s because I took such an unconventional path in my career that I have all of these connections, and I know who to talk to, at least, if we’re trying to figure out how to do something.

I would strongly encourage people to just get out of the pharmacy. Get out of the pharmacy. I love what you’re doing, by the way, your podcast. You’re really good at it.

[00:25:31] TU: Oh, thank you. Thank you.

[00:25:33] JN: To get people to think beyond counting pills and doing IVs is so important because we’re poised. I don’t know if our pharmacists realize how perfectly poised we are right now to make a giant pivot. But we have to collectively do this. It can’t just be three of us. Do you know what I mean?

[00:25:56] TU: Absolutely. Yeah, we have more than 300,000 pharmacists across the country that are positioned in every community across the country that is trusted by the – We are perfectly positioned to have a grand impact on the health and outcomes of the country. I think your comment about being able to kind of get out of our silos is so important because at the end of the day, like we need to talk with the payers and the legislators with one voice, right? We can’t be having a conversation with a payer or legislator about this from a community pharmacy, this from a hospital pharmacy. We’re not big enough to start to splice and segment those things. We have to have one voice of what we’re trying to advance and do for the population.

Obviously, when it comes to the payer perspective, can we advance the outcomes and the work that, obviously, you’ve been able to do in your own practice? So 8,000-plus pounds, I heard you say in this past year, 250-plus meds that you’re able to prescribe. What does that look like in terms of number of patients that you’ve touched? I’m trying to get a scope of what the week to week, year to year looks like. How many patients have you reached through the clinic that you’ve established?

[00:27:04] JN: Yeah. So in just under three years, I’ve now seen over 2,000 people. I see roughly 40 to 50 patients a week. I try not to work more than four days a week in clinic. The reason why is because I’m dealing with food and eating behaviors and a lot of food addictions because sugar is in everything now. I do quite a bit of psychology in each appointment, whether I want to or not. After 14 patients in a day, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s a lot.

[00:27:36] TU: That’s a lot.

[00:27:36] JN: It can be very draining. So my average day is 12 to 14 patients, and it usually takes about six appointments for me to teach them everything. Really, the people that come to see me, they are like ready to make a change. A lot of them have already had gastric bypass surgery. A lot of them have gone through different weight management programs, and they’re ready. They get it. That’s why through my social media outlets, I’m very thoughtful, and I’m very intentional of the words that I use and the vibe that I put out because it’s only those types of patients that I’m trying to attract. My saying is I don’t want lazy and I don’t want crazy. Those people can go somewhere else. I want the people that really want to change their health.

[00:28:25] TU: Yeah. It reminds me of the readiness to change spectrum that we all learned about in pharmacy school, right? Whether it’s weight loss, tobacco cessation, there has to be a readiness and a mindset. Obviously, you’re helping to facilitate that change there as well. What has been one of the more challenging or a couple of the challenging things of running and growing your own business?

If you think about the scope of things from you’re setting up cloud practice agreements, you’re working with payers, you’re trying to figure out the financials of growing the business, the referrals, provider relationships, your own mindset as a business owner, what has been one or two of the most challenging things as you’ve grown your business?

[00:29:05] JN: Oh, man. I already know the answer to this. Okay, the first thing is, you guys are going to love this, two doctors who run weight loss clinics filed a formal complaint against me with the state of Hawaii that what I’m doing is fraudulent because I am not allowed to call myself doctor. I am not a doctor, and so I guess they were so threatened by what I was doing.

[00:29:32] TU: I was going to say fear anyone fearful. Yeah.

[00:29:35] JN: Yeah. So that sucked because I had to – Luckily, I have a great attorney and just having to put all the dots. I mean, come on. Like we’re PharmDs. They were so upset that I was on social media. My patients, they call me Dr. Jodi, and I like Dr. Jodi, instead of Dr. Nishida. To me, it’s less formal. If feels more personal. So that was the first thing that really kind of threw me, and my attorney laughed. He goes, “Well, Jodi. This is how you know you’re doing something right because if –”

[00:30:09] TU: That’s right.

[00:30:10] JN: Yeah. If no one’s paying attention, that means you’re not making an impact. The second thing that happened that I want, hopefully, people can learn from this, is that first doctor I mentioned, the GI doctor that I partnered with, he ended up stealing over $50,000 of my reimbursement. So the incident to billing model is they deposit it in his account. All he has to do is write a check. Well, he stopped writing checks and was really such a jerk about it because – This guy makes like 2.5 million a year.

I remember, he looked me in the eye day and he goes, “What are you going to do? Sue me? You can’t afford it. I have all your money.” But if that didn’t happen, if that hardship didn’t happen – Remember now, luckily, I put enough money away in the bank for one year, and that floated me during this very difficult time. That led me to the cardiologist. So everything happened for a reason. But that’s a valuable lesson, and that’s why I’m working so hard on getting us that provider status here is so that it doesn’t happen to anyone else.

[00:31:24] TU: Yeah. What’s really interesting, and I want to call out for a moment, is your mindset through that difficult situation, right? Because I think that someone could look at that and say victim and tap, right? I say for 12 months, and I was going to start this business, and here I am this first big challenge. You know what? Like I’m just not cut out for this. This isn’t going to work out. I’m just going to fold it in, get my paycheck back, and keep moving.

So I think the financial foundation helped you be able to weather that storm. But despite those funds in the bank, you also had to have the resilience through that scenario to say, “My mission and my why is greater than my motivation and the situation that I’m going through in this moment,” right? Because you knew that you had a bigger mission to serve and, ultimately, patients to take care of.

[00:32:13] JN: It’s not just me, right? As pharmacists, we tend to focus a lot on medications. But our value and actual disease state management and what we do for people’s lives, I think we lose sight of that so many years after we graduate. But we can’t do that because we’re really good at what we do, whether we realize it or not. You’re not going to realize it in retail pharmacy very often. But if you can find these little niches, we are so valuable. I mean, really, we are.

[00:32:46] TU: So, Jodi, if we fast forward to 2027, five years from now, right now, you’ve got this bold vision. You’re obviously making great progress towards 10,000 pounds, 300 medications that you’re going to stop. What does success look like for you five years from now, as you continue on this journey?

[00:33:03] JN: Honestly, I also do a lot of restaurant collaborations here in Hawaii. So I help them keto-fy menu items.

[00:33:10] TU: Oh, that’s cool.

[00:33:11] JN: Yeah. Or have a keto section. For me, that’s the real fun part of what I do outside of the office. I really would love to have my own little keto cafe. It’s more so like I can just hang out there too. But I think it would go really well, and I think I’ve built enough of a brand and reputation out here. But that would just be something fun. So the clinic aspect, growing that, bringing more PharmDs on board, number one, so that I don’t have to be in the office all the time. Then I can build this additional thing as well, which is a dream for me.

[00:33:49] TU: I love that and, obviously, the advocacy efforts you mentioned, being able to train up the next generation of pharmacists on this podcast. I know you’re going to motivate others that are out there to consider options in their own journey as well. So I love that. If you get the keto cafe up and running, I’m making a trip out to Hawaii.

[00:34:05] JN: Please, yeah. Come out.

[00:34:06] TU: Count it. I’ve never been, so this will be my first trip out there.

[00:34:10] JN: You got to come out.

[00:34:12] TU: Well, this has been fun. You’ve been an inspiration to me, and I’m so glad Cory connected the two of us. Where can folks go to learn more about you and to follow your journey?

[00:34:22] JN: Yeah. My website is theketoprescription.com. I’m on Instagram @theketoprescription. You can also type that into YouTube, and I have a bunch of videos up there that talk about different things. I talk a lot about food and the origin of the food that we’re eating nowadays, so it’s pretty interesting. You guys should educate yourself on that because the food industry is pretty crazy.

[00:34:47] TU: Well, this has been great. I really appreciate you taking time, especially with the time zone difference and early morning for you. So thank you so much.

[00:34:55] JN: Yeah. Thank you.

[00:34:56] TU: Looking forward to following your journey. Thank you.

[00:34:58] JN: Thanks, Tim. Same to you.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[00:35:00] TU: As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment.

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

[END]

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

10 Lessons Learned: Employee to Entrepreneur

On this episode, sponsored by Insuring Income, YFP Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, shares ten lessons he has learned on his journey from employee to entrepreneur.

Episode Summary

This week, Your Financial Pharmacist Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, shares the top ten lessons he has learned over the past five years while taking Your Financial Pharmacist from a hobby to side hustle to a full-time business. Tim shares his most impactful takeaways on his journey from employee to entrepreneur and advice for those looking to take the same path. Tim shares how he found the motivation and inspiration to get started, the importance of the foundational why of the business that transcends motivation, the mindset required to move from employee to entrepreneur, and the incredible value of partnership. Tim shares ways to build on and nurture business partnerships and shares a helpful resource for maintaining successful business partnerships that help your business thrive. He shares why it is crucial to establish your core values early and how and why you must embrace the role of CEO. Considering growth and expansion, Tim outlines the need for implementing systems and processes. More specifically, he mentions having a system for evaluating the business. Tim shares a common theme he has discovered in the last five years interviewing pharmacist entrepreneurs, a passion for learning that drives entrepreneurial success. Lastly, Tim shares how identity and role differ and how embracing failure is necessary for business leadership.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRO]

[00:00:00] TU: Hey, everybody. Tim Ulbrich here, and thank you for listening to the YFP Podcast, where each week we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom. This week, I fly solo to talk through 10 lessons learned through the first five years of starting your financial pharmacist and making the transition from hobby to side hustle to business.

Before we jump into the episode, I’m excited to announce that we’re doing our first ever virtual summit, employee to entrepreneur building blocks for starting and growing a business. The Employee to Entrepreneur Summit is designed for pharmacists who are planning or actively working on a side hustle or business idea. The summit will be hosted live via Zoom the evenings of Tuesday, August 30th, and Wednesday, August 31st. Topics and activities will include how to hone your mindset and uncap your potential as a business owner, how to grow a business from a position of financial strength, retirement savings and tax optimization strategies as a small business owner, how to develop a system for achieving business financial goals.

We’ll also be featuring several examples of pharmacists that have made the transition to entrepreneur and are monetizing their clinical expertise. Some awesome bonuses for those that sign up by August 23rd, including a one-on-one implementation meeting with myself or certified financial planner, Tim Baker, access to a live goal setting workshop that I’ll be leading to help focus on setting and achieving big personal and business goals. Finally, on-demand access to several bonus expert interviews, including how to sell with confidence marketing strategies and how to evaluate healthcare insurance options as you make that transition from employee to entrepreneur. You can learn more and register at yourfinancialpharmacist.com/businesssummit. Again, yourfinancialpharmacist.com/businesssummit.

Okay, let’s hear from today’s sponsor, Insuring Income, and then we’ll jump into the show. This week’s podcast episode is brought to you by Insuring Income. Insuring Income is your source for all things term life insurance and own occupation disability insurance. Insuring Income has a relationship with America’s top rated term life insurance and disability insurance companies, so pharmacists like you can easily find the best solutions for your personal situation. To better serve you, Insuring Income reviews all applicable carriers in the marketplace for your desired coverage, supports clients in all 50 states, and makes sure all of your questions get answered. To get quotes and apply for term life or disability insurance, see sample contracts from disability carriers or learn more about these topics. Visit insuringincome.com/yourfinancialpharmacist. Again, that’s insuringincome.com/yourfinancialpharmacist.

On November 6th, 2015, I wrote the first blog post under the name Your Financial Pharmacist. That post was a chronicle of the journey that my wife, Jess, and I took into and out of $200,000 of debt. Furthermore, it was an acknowledgment that there was a need to develop a community of pharmacists that could encourage and inspire one another on their path towards achieving financial freedom. Fast forward to 2022, the YFP community is now 13,000-plus strong, but it started with a list of less than 100 individuals that I twisted their arms to say yes to receiving my first blog post. Those blog posts led to some speaking engagements and more pharmacists coming forward to share their own stories.

After that, I was invited to do some speaking engagements, which would eventually lead to relationship with a National Pharmacy Association that helped increase the awareness of the mission of the work that we’re doing at YFP. Shortly thereafter, I would co-author the book Seven Figure Pharmacist with Tim church. Not too long after that, I would connect with my business partner of now five-plus years, Tim Baker. Funny enough, we recently discovered that Tim began his work to start a fee-only financial planning firm for pharmacists within the same week that I wrote that first blog post in November of 2015. Tim Baker, after we met, we would decide to launch the YFP Podcast in July of 2017, which was the beginning of a friendship and a partnership that was essential to grow the business to where we are today.

When I reflect on the past five years and the ups and downs of going from hobby to side hustle of business to making that transition from employee to entrepreneur, here are the top 10 lessons that I’ve learned along this journey. Number one, start. In July of 2015, I was traveling to the AACP Annual Meeting in National Harbor, Maryland. The book I selected for the trip to read on the plane was Start by Jon Acuff. It’s a special moment when a book collides with your life path, and this was one of those moments. You see, at the time, I had been thinking about the idea of YFP but was struggling with what to do with the idea. I was reflecting on my first business venture, a company called Farm Forward, and the lessons that I learned from taking those initial baby steps into entrepreneurship. It was the words Jon Acuff penned in Start that would push me over the edge to formalize the initial idea of YFP to get the name established, to set up the legal entity to build the first prototype of the website. It was rough, and to ask 100 friends and colleagues to join the start of my email list and ultimately published that first blog post.

I needed the words of encouragement from Jon Acuff to just start. I knew I had to heed this advice because the idea of YFP would not leave me alone. I couldn’t stop thinking about building a platform for pharmacists to learn more about personal finance, to bring a community together. I knew it was needed, and I knew it could have an impact. But fear still crept in, with questions like, “What if it doesn’t work out? What if nobody likes the blog post? What if this is a good idea only in my head, and who am I to write on this topic, not being a financial planner myself?”

Speaking with many entrepreneurs over the last five years on the YFP Podcast, this theme of just start keeps coming up again and again. Those who have built something that is solving a problem and serving others all had to work through their own fears, anxiety, and unknown to take the first step. You see, many great ideas never see the light of day. Too often, individuals get paralyzed in the analytical phase where passion gets muted by excuses, questions, and doubts. Sometimes, you just have to jump in the deep end and figure it out. The idea of just start has stayed with me through the entire journey so far of YFP. It doesn’t just apply to getting a business off the ground.

As I reflect back over the past five years, we’ve evolved from three companies to one company. We’ve changed our logos and branding, we’ve redesigned our website multiple times, we’ve reformatted the podcast, we’ve identified better tools and solutions inside of the business, and we’ve taken the lead to grow our team. None of these were smooth-sailing, and the only way we were able to identify and grow is because we ended up in the first place of just starting. There had to be a beginning. So that’s number one is start.

Number two is a strong why, a strong why. In his book, Start with Why, Simon Sinek talks and says that every one of us has a why, a deep-seated purpose, cause or belief that is the source of our passion and inspiration. Making the shift from employee to entrepreneur will inevitably include bumps along the way. Challenging days and seasons are to be expected, but getting stuck and being a prisoner to your motivation is not an option. Motivation alone may not provide enough fuel during the challenging seasons. Therefore, it’s critical that the why of our business and its offerings transcend the level of motivation that we have on any given day. We need a strong enough why that drives us to commit the time and effort that the business needs.

One of my favorite podcasts over the past several years is How I Built This with Guy Raz. On this show, Guy takes the listener behind the scenes with a founder to hear about the movements that they have built. Many of these stories have trials and tribulations, and it was in those moments, in those trials and tribulations that the passion behind the idea and the problem the product or service was solving would help propel the founder through that difficult time.

At YFP, our mission has helped pharmacists achieve financial freedom. Why? Because having a financially well pharmacist workforce is in the best interest of the profession and, ultimately, the patients that we serve. Furthermore, the profession of pharmacy needs big ideas. We need disruptive ideas, ideas that are going to improve the health and wellbeing of our nation. But the problem is big ideas, disruptive ideas, these rarely come from someone that is living in a state of financial stress.

If someone’s overwhelmed with student loan debt, if someone’s confused about how to best save and invest for the future, if someone’s frustrated by the fact that they’re making a good income but not progressing financially, or if they’re anxious that they feel like they’re financially behind, any one of these is a killer of a dream, a killer of a big idea. So we’re on a mission to change this narrative and to empower pharmacists, to ensure that future generations of pharmacists are financially well, and to embed financial literacy into the core and fabric of our profession. I remind myself of this mission every day, and this propels me through the highs and through the lows. Our mission is greater than any one challenging season of the business.

Number three is mindset, mindset. Since leaving my work in academia most recently in a position at Ohio State to work full time on the business, I did not anticipate the growth that would happen and that was needed related to my mindset. Thanks in large part to an incredible coach and mentor, Chris Caldwell, I would begin a journey that dug into some serious self-reflection that was stimulated by some really deep questions, questions like why is achievement so important to me and my identity? Why have I struggled to just be present, without work or accomplishment? How could my life look if I embrace the purpose of just being the best version of myself? What do I actually want? What are the stories that are telling myself? In what ways am I showing up as an inauthentic version of myself? What artificial ceilings have I created in my personal and professional life, and why have I created these ceilings?

Over the past year, I’ve come to appreciate that I’m just beginning a lifelong journey of digging deeper. This journey of leaning into some hard questions with the goal of living to my fullest potential and being the best authentic version of myself that I can be has been one of the greatest gifts of entrepreneurship that I did not see coming.

Number four is the value of partnership, the value of partnership. In the summer of 2015 after meeting on Twitter, yes, that is a real thing, I had the chance to connect with Tim Baker in person. We met at a Bob Evans of all places off I-71, about halfway between Cleveland and Columbus. As Tim Baker likes to tell the story, he found me on Twitter and is wondering, who was this other Tim that was talking about personal finance in pharmacy? At the time, Tim Baker was living in Baltimore and was visiting his sister in Columbus, which provided the opportunity for us to connect in person.

The timing was perfect because at that time, I was struggling to connect the education piece of what I was doing around personal finance, with a sound financial planning offering. I knew that was going to be an important piece of the puzzle of transition to work into a viable business, and I knew that service was needed in our profession. I was in the process of talking with several planners in Northeast Ohio, trying to understand the lay of the land and how the industry works. You see, at this time, I was not aware of terms just fee-only and fiduciary, and I quickly realized the complexities of the industry after having several conversations with different planning firms. I was frustrated by the lack of transparency in pricing and how the industry historically has not served folks in the early stages of their career, since how much one has an assets was usually a prerequisite for a planning relationship.

When I met Tim Baker that day in Bob Evans, he shared his journey starting in the United States Military Academy at West Point that would lead him to a career in logistics for a major retailer and then a construction company in Ohio and California. After realizing that he wanted something different, he made a pivot to a career in the financial services industry. After working at a small independent financial planning firm, he decided to take the leap to start his own business, offering fee-only financial planning services focused on the pharmacy profession. At the time, the business was Script Financial. Through a friend at West Point, who was married to a pharmacist, he identified that there was a gap in the industry in serving pharmacy professionals.

Now, I was hooked when I learned about the meaning of fee-only and the fiduciary standard, and that combined with the alignment on values and growing a small business led Tim and I to start collaborating on the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast. This collaboration furthered our friendship and respect for one another, which led us a step further towards eventually becoming business partners.

Now, growing up in a family business, I observed firsthand the challenges that can come from partnerships, especially when it’s family members that were involved as partners. From that experience growing up and hearing many other individuals’ words of caution about partnerships, it shouldn’t have given me a pause, but it never did. I knew if there was alignment on vision and respect for one another, we could thrive and work through challenges. That has been exactly the case, and I’m so grateful for the friendship and partnership that Tim and I have.

One resource that’s been key to our partnership is the Book Partnership Charter by David Gage. This book takes two or more individuals going into business together through a series of activities and challenging discussions that lays the foundation then for the operating agreement. Tim and I have made it a priority to annually review and update our charter and check in on the health of the partnership.

Number five is establish your core values of the business early. Establish your core values early. When starting a business, it’s easy to be off and running in the day-to-day such that activities like strategic planning or vision setting or setting core values might not be the priority that they deserve to be. I’m so grateful that early on, we decided to set a set of core values that several years later serve as the guiding path for the culture of our company, for the benefits that we offer our team, for how we hire, and for how we evaluate our team members. One resource here that was really helpful was the book Delivering Happiness by the late Tony Hsieh, the Founder of Zappos.

Number six is embracing the CEO role, embracing the CEO role. I can easily fall victim to squirrel syndrome. As the founder and leader of a business, it’s a fine line between identifying new opportunities and getting sidetracked and losing full focus on the core mission. A couple of years ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Samm Anderegg, CEO of DocStation, and he would provide some advice to me that has stayed with me and helped me to refocus when I’m feeling overwhelmed or sidetracked. The advice he would share that is at the end of the day, the CEO has three main responsibilities, and that is vision, people, and resources.

For vision, it’s the CEO’s responsibility to ensure there is a compelling vision and that the vision is core to the business and well-understood and accepted by the team. The products, the services should be aligned to the vision, and new opportunities should be evaluated for alignment to that vision or perhaps lack thereof of alignment. When it comes to people, as a business grows beyond its founders, the success of achieving its mission is dependent upon the people that are hired. I’ve come to appreciate how important it is to build the right team and to ensure those team members have alignment with core values. Beyond the minimal technical expertise for one to be able to do their job, it’s the other things that matter most. For us, that includes alignment with our core values, including be kind, value team, optimize, you serve the community, and embrace ownership.

When it comes to the third component, that third main responsibility of the CEO, in terms of money and resources, the CEO has to have oversight to ensure the resources are sufficient to keep the ship moving forward. Cash money in the bank to keep the lights on, pay the payroll, and keep that vision going in the right direction. Now, depending on the nature of the business, one may have cash flow, decide to cash flow the business, or they decide that they’re comfortable taking out some type of debt or additional capital from investors to be able to fund the business.

Number seven is implementing systems and processes, implementing systems and processes. When starting a business, it’s all hands on deck and all roles. It’s natural to wear every hat there is, and the energy behind the idea typically sustains us through this phase. Whether it’s content creation, marketing, sales, finances, HR, IT, we do our best to wear every single hat. But at a certain point, if the goal is to expand the mission and reach of the business beyond yourself, naturally, two things need to happen. One, you have to be comfortable delegating that work to someone other than yourself. Two, you have to download that information in your head in such a way that a process or service can be replicated and built upon by someone else.

Let me give you great examples. I think my business partner, Tim Baker, has a really good mind in this area of the importance of systems and operations and being able to document those systems and operations. In 2020, we realized that in order for us to achieve our mission of helping as many pharmacists achieve financial freedom as possible and being able to transform the financial wellness of the profession of pharmacy, we were quickly going to run into a barrier if Tim Baker remained a full-time financial planner. That was eventually going to be a ceiling for us.

One problem here is that was going to quickly lead to burnout, as he was trying to be an owner and a full-time planner. Two, him stepping out of that seat was going to force us to develop the systems and processes to replicate the financial planning model and approach in a way that could be scaled. This was really our first aha moment of needing to fire ourselves from various roles, and that has been our mantra ever since. What should we be doing next to make the business less dependent on us so that we can further expand the mission of the offering?

Not only does this mindset allow the business to grow, but it also makes the business more valuable because it’s not just dependent upon you. It also increased the likelihood the business could go on when you decide to retire or take an extended break, and it reduces the risk that you will become a prisoner to your own business. Two books that have really helped shape my mindset on the value of systems and processes inside of a business are The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber and Traction by Gino Wickman.

Number eight is developing a system for evaluating the business. Now, building upon the previous concept, which was implementing systems and processes, once you begin to systematize and process the processes and operations and bring others into the business, we need to make sure that we have a system to regularly evaluate the success of the business. Now, this will naturally evolve over time, but this would include things like key performance indicators, KPIs, and a method to track and review those.

In the book Traction by Gino Wickman, he recommends developing a scorecard that has 5 to 15 of the most important metrics that can help you quickly identify the health and direction of the business. Now, naturally, the question is, well, what are those metrics, right? He proposes a great question in the book to get you thinking about what those 5 to 15 metrics might be, and that question and scenario who presents is imagine you’re on a desert island somewhere. All you have is a piece of paper with a handful of numbers on it. These numbers must allow you to have an absolute pulse on your business. What are all of the numbers that must be on that piece of paper, right? That activity is designed to help you come up with what those 5 to 15 metrics might be for that scorecard.

In addition to Traction by Gino Wickman, I would also recommend here the book Profit First by Mike Michalowicz. We’ll link to all these books in the show notes. The Profit First methodology has really been instrumental for how we handle our business finances and really helps expose whether or not you are accounting for all of your expenses. It ensures that as a business owner, you’re taking some amount of profit home each quarter, even if that’s just 1%, that you’re putting aside money for your taxes, and that you’re paying yourself a sufficient wage for your time and efforts. For many, this model helps expose the true financial health of a business and often can shine a light on a business that is not as profitable as it thinks it is or that is not charging enough for its services.

Number nine, become a voracious learner. Become a voracious learner. In conducting over 200 interviews for the YFP Podcast, I’ve noticed a common thread among the entrepreneurs that I’ve talked with. Those interviewed often demonstrate humility in knowing that no matter what credentials they carry or success that they’ve had, there is always room to learn and grow. They are hungry to learn. This is evident in the books they’re reading, the professional development courses they’re taking, and the time and money they’re investing in services to grow personally and professionally.

In the book, The End of Jobs, author Taylor Pearson argues that we are rapidly moving into a time period when one’s credentials and degrees have limited value, thus requiring continuous learning and growth. The good news is that we live in a time in history when learning is more accessible than ever, and I’ve come to appreciate that one of the greatest things I can do for my company, our team, and the community we serve, is to continuously learn and grow.

This has led to a constant growing list of podcasts and audiobooks, and here are some of my favorites from the past year. The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, Procrastinate on Purpose by Rory Vaden, The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster by Darren Hardy, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer, A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, and Changes That Heal by Henry Cloud. Again, we’ll link to all these books mentioned in the show notes.

Number 10 and perhaps most important is identity versus role, identity versus role. I alluded to this a little bit in number three when talking about mindset, but it’s worth coming back to this one a little bit further and another shout out to Chris Caldwell for bringing this concept to my attention. Based on the IR theory, identity and role theory, it’s common for us to believe that our identity, our self-worth can be derived from how well we perform in various roles. That could be as a spouse, as a parent, as a pharmacist, as a business owner. If we can’t separate our identity and our roles, our self-worth can ebb and flow with how well we have or have not performed or a perception of that in various roles.

This is natural, considering that we are taught from a young age, many of us, to tie success to the affirmation we receive from others. But here’s the problem. We are naturally going to experience failure in our personal and professional lives. Experiencing failure and being a failure are two very different things. Experiencing failure and being a failure are two very different things. But if we’re not careful, through experiencing failure, we can convince ourselves that we are a failure, and this can lead to a shake in confidence. This can lead to playing it safe and avoiding future risk.

But in my mind, that’s not the biggest threat. The biggest threat and tragedy is when we let failure escalate to a feeling of less than and a feeling of having a diminished self-worth. Without the right perspective and accountability, these feelings can quickly creep into every corner of our lives, and we must not let this happen because experiencing failure, again, is not being a failure. That does not equal being a failure. As many leaders and entrepreneurs know, experiencing failure is to be expected and can be welcomed with the right mindset. Albeit painful at the moment, through failure, there can be great growth. If we can begin to accept that there is growth in failure, we can entertain the idea that failure is essential.

I’ve struggled with this mindset shift, which is also true, I suspect, for many of my peers in the profession because it’s drilled into us from our education and training that mistakes should be avoided to prevent medication errors as close to 100% accuracy as possible is the goal. This makes sense for patient care, but this mindset of getting it right all the time shouldn’t carry into all aspects of our work and our lives for that matter. That mindset of 100% accuracy all the time is exhausting, and it prevents real growth because it doesn’t embrace failure. But if we can anticipate and welcome failure, our mindset shifts from disappointment to learning and minimizes the likelihood that we’d let the experience of failure creep into our identity and our self-worth.

So those are the 10 takeaways, the 10 lessons that I’ve had in this journey of starting YFP back in 2015 and making the transition full time and reflecting back on the past five years, from hobby to side hustle, to business, from employee to entrepreneur. That’s why I’m so excited. We’ll be digging into these points and so much more during our upcoming virtual summit, employee to entrepreneur building blocks of starting and growing a business.

The Employee to Entrepreneur Summit is designed for pharmacists who are planning or actively working on a side hustle or business idea. The summit will be live via Zoom the evenings up Tuesday, August 30th, and Wednesday, August 31st. Topics and activities will include how to hone your mindset and uncap your potential as a business owner, how to grow a business from a position of financial strength, retirement savings and tax optimization considerations as a small business owner, how to develop a system for achieving business financial goals. Also, we’ll be featuring several examples of pharmacists that are monetizing their clinical expertise and have made that transition from employee to entrepreneur.

Bonus content for those that sign up by August 23rd, including a one-on-one implementation meeting with myself or certified financial planner, Tim Baker, access to a goal setting workshop, I’ll be leading to help focus on setting and achieving big personal and business goals, as well as access to several bonus expert interviews, including how to sell with confidence marketing strategies, evaluating health care insurance options, and more. You can learn more about the summit and register at yourfinancialpharmacist.com/businesssummit. Again, that’s yourfinancialpharmacist.com/businesssummit. As always, thanks for listening and have a great rest of your day.

This week’s podcast episode is brought to you by Insuring Income. Insuring Income is your source for all things term life insurance and own occupation disability insurance. Insuring Income has a relationship with America’s top rated term life insurance and disability insurance companies, so pharmacists like you can easily find the best solutions for your personal situation. To better serve you, Insuring Income reviews all applicable carriers in the marketplace for your desired coverage, supports clients in all 50 states, and makes sure all of your questions get answered. To get quotes and apply for term life or disability insurance, see sample contracts from disability carriers or learn more about these topics, visit insuringincome.com/yourfinancialpharmacist. Again, that’s insuringincome.com/yourfinancialpharmacist.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

About Today’s Guests

Ashlee Klevens Hayes

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

Chris Cozzolino

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

Episode Summary

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

Key Points From This Episode

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

Highlights

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

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

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

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] TU: Hey, everybody. Tim Ulbrich here. Thank you for listening to the YFP podcast, where each week we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom. What if I told you that you could interview 50 or more influential leaders within our profession? That would be incredible, right? Better yet, what if you could compile the key insights from those interviews for ongoing guidance and inspiration?

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

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

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

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

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

[INTERVIEW]

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

[00:02:30] AKH: What’s up?

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

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

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

[00:03:31] TU: Awesome –

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:10:29] AKH: Right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:20:26] AKH: Totally.

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

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

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

[00:20:54] AKH: No.

[00:20:54] TU: Right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:30:33] CC: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

[00:31:55] TU: Fun.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[OUTRO]

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

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

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

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

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

[END]

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

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

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

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

About Today’s Guest

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

Episode Summary

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

Key Points From This Episode

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

Highlights

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

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

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

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

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

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

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

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

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

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

[INTERVIEW]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[END OF INTERVIEW]

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

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

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

[END]

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

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

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

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

About Today’s Guest

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

Episode Summary

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

Key Points From This Episode

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

Highlights

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

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

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

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

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

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

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

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

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

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

[INTERVIEW]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[0:06:34.7] TU: Was that the CGP or –

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[END OF INTERVIEW]

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

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

[END]

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YFP 194: How Karine Used Her Pharmacy Skills to Create a Successful Healthy Dessert Business

Posted on March 11, 2021November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

How Karine Used Her Pharmacy Skills to Create a Successful Healthy Dessert Business

On this episode, sponsored by Insuring Income, Karine Wong, pharmacist, educator, and entrepreneur, joins Tim Ulbrich to talk about her journey starting My Guiltless Treats. Karine discusses how she uses her pharmacy skills in her entrepreneurial journey, how to determine whether or not a business idea is worth pursuing, why it is so important to have a clear purpose and vision, and why saying ‘yes’ is so crucial when starting and running your own business.

About Today’s Guest

Dr. Karine Wong spent her entire pharmacy career in the hospital pharmacy. She worked as a staff pharmacist, director, and clinical coordinator. Over time, she became frustrated about the lack of compliance with her diabetic patients. After countless hours of counseling at the bedside, the patients would return in a few short months with the same problem; uncontrolled diabetes. In 2013, Karine and a colleague had an idea to make protein candies. The idea seemed intriguing; simple and yet revolutionary. The company could provide a viable, sustainable solution to the non-compliant diabetic patient. By 2018, Karine has led My Guiltless Treats on a successful journey to popularity, sustainability, and profitability. To date, My Guiltless Treats is the only company that specializes in healthy desserts.

Summary

Karine Wong, pharmacist, educator, and pharmacy entrepreneur, joins Tim Ulbrich to discuss her pharmacy career, how she’s used her pharmacy skills on her entrepreneurial journey, and how she’s built a successful business, My Guiltless Treats, by going above and beyond the usual standards.

Karine has also learned how to determine if a business idea is worth pursuing and outlines practical benchmarks to evaluate when starting a new venture. She explains that great ideas can turn into great businesses if they can solve a problem that you care about and are passionate about, solve a pain point, have a market (with or without competition), and help people on a large scale.

Additionally, Karine shares her personal experience with the power of being positive, how the act of saying ‘yes’ can have a huge impact on your business, and practical ways to say ‘yes’ in your own business practices. Business owners, aside from providing free product (if the business can afford it), can also provide knowledge and time in various forms to their customers, building relationships that may potentially turn into lifelong sales.

Mentioned on the Show

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich: Karine, thank you so much for taking time to be on the show.

Karine Wong: Hi, Tim. How are you?

Tim Ulbrich: I am doing well, excited to have you on. We had a chance to meet virtually a few weeks ago and had an opportunity to learn a little bit about your pharmacy career as well as the work that you’re doing with My Guiltless Treats and said, “Hey, we need to get this in front of the YFP community,” as I know many folks may have an idea that they’re wondering about, whether it’s a business idea, a side hustle idea, and I think featuring other pharmacy entrepreneurs is really an opportunity for them to see examples of what others are doing out there. So let’s first start with your pharmacy education and career. Why did you go into pharmacy? Where did you go to pharmacy school? And what type of work have you done in pharmacy throughout your career?

Karine Wong: I went to pharmacy school right out of high school, straight into University of the Pacific in southern California and endured a 5-year program, the accelerated program to be a PharmD at the end of 5 years. By the end of the 5 years, I really loved the clinical field. I actually wanted to be a doctor at that point, but at that point my parents decided not to support me anymore. So I was stuck being a PharmD. That’s OK. At the time, pharmacy was — it’s a world that can be anything you want it to be. You can be a CVS pharmacist, a Kaiser, nuc pharmacy, ambulatory care. It was — the world’s your oyster. I chose to stay in the hospital field. I felt that was the best place for me to be surrounded by the greatest minds of Edison. And so I stayed in hospital pharmacy when I graduated in 1999. And I have worked up the totem pole. So I was a (inaudible) pharmacist, worked up to outpatient pharmacist, did some floating here and there, became a director of pharmacy at one point but stayed put as a coordinator, which is a fancy word for clinical manager. So I was in charge of all the PMT minutes, agenda items, formulary additions, deletions, and in these settings. I also got the precep student from West University for 8 years and I’ve also participated in rounds with the teaching staff of the hospital. So I’ve always been in academic settings in terms of the hospitals. I was always teaching nurses or students, interns or residents and pharmacy students. So that’s pretty much my journey. Always learning.

Tim Ulbrich: Always learning, which is a good connection to business. And we’re going to talk a little bit about how your pharmacy career has played a role in the work that you’re doing in running your own business. So My Guiltless Treats — and we’ll link to that in the show notes for folks so they can learn more, check out the website, learn about the products that you offer — give us the 20,000-foot view. What is My Guiltless Treats all about?

Karine Wong: My Guiltless Treats is not something I intended to start at all. If you had told me 20 years ago I would start a business, I’d laugh in your face. I’d be like, no, no, no, I’m going to live and die in my pharmacy office. That’s what I thought I would do. Kind of changed now, I think I got burn out in pharmacy. I was really good at what I was doing, and I was writing codes, I was helping the pharmacy staff with all the difficult cases we had at our hospital. When 2008 rolled around, I took some time off to give birth to my child and I came across this fitness director who wanted to increase my protein intake. But it did not taste good. And she complained about why does it taste awful? Now, as a pharmacist, I thought, that’s kind of funny. I don’t take protein myself, but don’t you think it’s odd that we can make steroid solution taste really great but we can’t make something as simple as protein taste better?

Tim Ulbrich: Right? Yeah.

Karine Wong: So I told her, I can make it for you. I’ll make you a protein candy. And that’s how My Guiltless Treats came to fruition. I did create a product that was a delicious treat. At the end of the 5 years of working with her with RMD and sales, we decided to split up. She went to pursue a different career path, but I stayed on board. The original treat that we had, they’re actually protein gummies, was not scalable. It wasn’t something that people wanted to buy. We had no sales to warrant the continuation. We had people who loved it, but it wasn’t like a lot to justify a $50,000 investment into buying a million gummies, OK? That’s a lot of gummies to sell. It’s almost like two pallets. And it wasn’t scalable, it wasn’t something that we could sell. So she took off, which is fine, but I stayed on with the company because I still believed it had so much potential for it. So I looked at Guiltless Treats as a vehicle to deliver treats or desserts to diabetics, to those who really need it. And this Aha! Moment came back to me when I was working at the hospital. I remember counseling at the bedside and doing diabetic teaching to our patients diagnosed with diabetes, and I would teach them how to use insulin and the syringes. One gentleman stuck in my mind because he was very noncompliant, his A1C was double digits. I had to tell him, “OK, senor, no more bread, no more rice,” and he said, “OK, I would love to do it. But senorita, I want my bread. I want my (inaudible) bread. I want that.” And I looked at him and go, “OK, I guess I’ll see you in 3-6 months,” you know? Right? What can I do? He told me he’s noncompliant. He’s not going to change. He gave me a dare. He said, “Unless you can tell me something that is good for me and delicious, I’ll eat that.” And I had no answer for him. That was the Aha! moment. That was the moment I realized, oh my gosh, he’s right. So I go downstairs, and I ask my dietician friends, my physician friends, “What do you tell patients what can they eat that’s good?” And you know what they all told me while they’re eating their Twinkies and their Ho-Hos, “You tell them to eat their kale.”

Tim Ulbrich: Oh gees.

Karine Wong: Quinoa’s good, brown rice is supposed to better. This is what they’re telling me. But they weren’t eating it. And I’m thinking to myself, OK, that’s — I can’t use that, OK? Because they don’t know how to make kale salad or quinoa rice. They don’t know how to do that. It’s not part of their culture. So I was up against the wall. So when my fitness instructor friend mentioned the protein gummies, I thought, that actually sounds interesting because I can take out the sugar and replace it with another macronutrient like protein. So even though the gummies didn’t come to fruition, there was a point to make the treats. There was a reason for it. I needed to make something for that gentleman. I needed to make a dessert, something that he can have that doesn’t taste medicinal, that doesn’t use artificial flavors or sweeteners, something that he can grab at the store, not have to make it, not have to thaw it or bake it but can eat it right out like a protein cup. So aha! Six months later, after intense RMD, I created or actually made a version of my own kind of pork bun, (inaudible) a type of dessert similar to flan or custard. It’s very soft in texture. I don’t use (inaudible) cream or eggs or gluten or milk. I just use coconut cream, which is better for you, doesn’t cause the same problems as animal fat. And I layer over real mango, pineapple, or guava. So it’s a tropical dessert. And then I fortify the dessert with protein from the protein. But it’s also filtrated, so there’s no lactose, there’s nothing that will make you bloated. I deliberately made my products allergen-free. I took the top seven allergens that we see in the States and took them away, so nuts, there’s no seafood, there’s no tree nuts, stuff like that. I avoid that. Coconut is not considered a same nut as a tree nut, so it’s OK to use that. And yeah. I’ve been successful with the panna cotta desserts, people love it, it’s a thing now. People know me as the kind of the panna cotta lady. I’m the only one that makes it. And I make it healthy. So it’s the only dessert that you can find that’s actually good for you. So you can eat it instead of your ice cream at nighttime, you can eat it instead of yogurt at breakfast or like my friends at the hospital, they eat it during their shift. So when they have a long shift, the protein sustains them for the entire 10-hour shift that they have. So it’s a great option for everybody. You don’t have to be diabetic or pre-diabetic to enjoy it. You could be anyone. It’s just a dessert that’s healthier. Other manufacturers can’t do that because they put lots of sugars in their products. They don’t really know what we know as pharmacists. And that’s why being a pharmacist really helps your product if you’re going for the food industry. Because you know so much.

Tim Ulbrich: Yes. Yes. Absolutely. That makes sense. And one of my favorite stories, Karine, from our conversation several weeks ago was, you know — and get the story right if I have it wrong, but you had mentioned at the gift shop of the hospital, you know, this being distributed and sold and how quickly it would come and go and that you knew you were onto something in terms of folks that obviously appreciated the product, the quality of it, and certainly those that could benefit from it from a health perspective as well. And it has me thinking, you know, we’ll take a little bit of an aside here, but many folks may be listening that have an idea, right? And so you had an idea of something that could be done better. You mentioned the protein gummies, which ultimately didn’t come to its full fruition. So what ultimately does make a good idea? As you’re thinking of this not only with your own business here and other experiences you’ve had but also potentially advising and giving input to other folks that have business ideas, what makes a good idea? What’s the framework in which you think of what is this idea and does it actually have viability going forward?

Karine Wong: That’s a great question. And I’m going to say lots of time and energy because I could break it down for you in this way. I actually have a lot of students or mentees that I work with who have ideas, and ideas come in and out of your mind all day long. Doesn’t mean you act on every single idea. So what makes a good idea, an idea that you probably want to sit on. First, the idea that you have, whether it’s a service or a product, should be there to solve a problem. And the problem could just be just to you, but if you find that this problem bugs you — let’s suppose that it bugs you that every year, your smoke alarm will run out of batteries and always at 2 o’clock in the morning, right? Every night.

Tim Ulbrich: Amen.

Karine Wong: I don’t know how they do it. And that’s the night that you can’t sleep, that’s when you jolt out of bed with almost an MI because it’s like, beep, beep, and it won’t stop, especially if you have like 5 in your house and you don’t know which one it is, right? What if that’s a problem for you? If it’s a problem for you, it’s a problem for someone else and probably many others that have smoke alarms. No. 2, if you could develop a product like a battery or a monitoring system that tells you when your battery is low, like if you can find a way to make an app that bluetooths the battery life to your smoke alarm, that would be superb. And you don’t have to physically make the app, you just have to hire someone that can code it for you. You tell them what you want, and they make it for you. It’s pretty simple. But you have to have the idea, you have to do the research and find out is there a market for it. So if I know every house in the United States has to have smoke alarms, right? That’s a law.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

Karine Wong: No. 2, so the market’s very big. No. 3, does anyone make that besides you? Like is there an option out there? Now if there is, it doesn’t mean don’t do it. Just know that if there’s no competition, you have a more difficult road because you have to pave the road for yourself. You have to do all your market research and find out how to get the pricing down, find the right coder, for example, and get the best pricing for that. But if you have competition, follow them and see how are they doing it? OK? I’ll give you an example. Protein gummies was my first skew. We had three competitors. That was back in 2010. Today, they’re all defunct. Why? Because no one wanted protein gummies. Interesting. They all went bankrupt. We didn’t go bankrupt, we just changed our name. Going into No. 3, you have to find out if there’s competition or not. OK? No. 4, if it’s a good idea, it’s an idea that will come back to you the next day.

Tim Ulbrich: Yes.

Karine Wong: So an idea that’s OK goes away the next day. You don’t remember. You just like, eh, whatever. I don’t remember the idea. It just came and go. It didn’t stick around. But if the idea is awesome and you find there’s potential in it because of what you know, whether it’s a pharmacist or a handyman or living your house and hearing that every year, the smoke alarm chirping, then that idea will come back to you. And you’re like, you know what? I won’t let it go. I can’t let it go. Because it’s a really good idea. And that’s how you know. So those are four benchmarks. And just like when you sig a patient, check them off, right? Do you have a problem that you’re solving? Check. Can you make a service or a product that will solve it? Check. Competition, is there any? Check, yes there is. That’s fine. OK? That doesn’t stop you.

Tim Ulbrich: Yes.

Karine Wong: It just means that, hey, there’s a market for it because so many people have tapped into it. Now if there’s too many competitors, you might want to like not do it because it’s too hard. Like I would never go into the beverage market now because it’s so supersaturated. I would not go into the frozen industry because you know the frozen aisle is very coveted shelf space because it’s frozen. So I can’t get in there if I had the best tasting item ever. I could not break into that. And No. 4, like I said, if the idea comes back to you and you won’t let it go, then you have a really good idea.

Tim Ulbrich: I love that, Karine. Very tangible advice. Checklists, we like checklists. We like thinking about things in sequential order. And I think your comment that resonates — several things in there — but you know, multiple ideas that may come to focus doesn’t mean we need to act on every one. What I actually do at home, my wife and I like to brainstorm various business ideas. And we write them down on a legal sheet, you know, 8.5×11 yellow piece of paper. It’s in my office. And then what I find is some of those we keep talking about, right? We come back two days later, four days later, six days later, eight days later, even some of those we may determine for other reasons in your four steps aren’t viable. But those that we find we can’t let them go, like that means you’re at least at the beginnings of something that obviously is important to you. The other thing I think about here, Karine — I’d love your input — is I think folks often struggle with is this an idea that I really care about solving this problem and I have a solution that I’m going to be really passionate about? And is it financially viable? Am I after the money? Am I after the purpose and solving this problem? Or both? And what advice would you have with folks, you know — here as I hear your story, obviously at the end of the day, you’ve got to run a business but also something that you saw could have a tremendous impact on patients. It was a problem that needed to be solved. And so the concern that folks might be chasing becoming rich or having a home run of a product and how important it is to be passionate about the problem that you’re trying to solve.

Karine Wong: The way I look at it is your company is a baby. If you’ve lost interest in your baby, the company, literally dies. So imagine yourself, like you’re in charge and you decide, you know what, I’m going to take a break and do something else. Guess what? The company that you built falls apart. It may take awhile, but it will fall apart because you are the glue that holds it together. So you’re the why. Why are you doing this has to be something that you will use every morning you wake up, every morning you clock in, you turn on your recording or you reach out to people for your interviews, that is your why, why are you doing it. And if you say, “money because I want to be a millionaire,” or “be featured on Ellen, the show,” you’re going to have issues, OK? Because the likelihood of that is almost as high as winning the lottery. It’s very rare. Just like people who want to be on TikTok and they want to make it big. That’s pretty rare. What’s your why? It should be because you’re solving a problem that is important to you, that bugs you. And you want to solve it. We as pharmacists I consider are problem solvers. Right? We fix people’s ailments with drugs and we tailor their regimens. And so the same thing happens with products or services. If I could fix your life to be better, even by a little bit, hey, that’s so neat. That is your why. I love that I know that my products help those that are enduring chemotherapy or those with the canker sores from the chemotherapy or has protein loss because of dialysis or they just can’t eat because they’re kekectic, be able to thrive. Hey, my stuff is better than Ensure+. My stuff is better than most medicinal foods. So that’s my joy. That’s my why. And if I stop my company, those customers are affected. And that’s why I don’t stop. And there’s more than one person. There’s a lot. In fact, in about a month, I’ll be celebrating my milestone — I had to tell you this, Tim — but I’ll officially have sold 25,000 units.

Tim Ulbrich: Hey, congratulations.

Karine Wong: That is not an easy feat. And I did it in about 18 months, so that’s a lot of panna cottas.

Tim Ulbrich: That is awesome.

Karine Wong: Yeah, I mean, I’m sure if I was a big company that packs and manufactures it, I’m sure it makes a lot. But a single person by myself using pharmacist-grade benchmarks, yeah, it’s not easy. It takes awhile to do because I’m very picky. When I make products, I go beyond, beyond the food safety measures. OK? Food safety measures are pretty low, OK? It’s like, don’t put stuff in there like debris. Yeah, I get that. But I don’t put piologens in there. I don’t put bacteria in there. My stuff is vacuum-sealed, sterile, no piologens. It lasts for six weeks without any bacteria count of significance. And I do this with technicians in laboratories, so it’s all certified. OK? So I go beyond the scope of a food manager because I’m a pharmacist. I don’t want to give people stuff that — it’s not a liability, it’s more like what makes you feel good? I don’t want my patients — or not my patients, consumers, to eat something healthy and that’s not dirty or have full of debris or particulates. That’s our nature as pharmacists, right? So going back to your question about your why, yes, your why, my why is because I want to help people be on the medicine. I want to help people at the marketplace, give them teaching, counseling. I do more patient counseling now that’s more viable, that’s more significant to them, than I would have at CVS. Because CVS is very fast-paced and you only have so much time. But at the marketplace, I’ve got time and they’re much more open to me. So when I give them advice or valuable tips, they love it. And they get to go home with that, and that’s going to help them from this point on. So I give them a lot of hope and insight into their management of their disease state, whether it’s diabetes or eczema or Crohn’s Disease. I’ve heard it all, so I am able to talk on that not as their doctor but as a pharmacist. And they trust me in that. And so it’s not about sales, but they end up buying it because they like who I am and what I represent. So the why for everybody should be that you want to help people or you want to solve a problem. Those are the best whys you can have in your life. But if you’re going to say money or stardom or fame, you can still do it. I won’t stop you. But your journey every morning will be so much harder because it’s tough. And so if you’re hoping to be on Ellen’s show and every morning you wake up and you make 1,000 panna cottas, you might go, God, is it really worth it? You’re going to be tired. You’re going to be kind of burnt out real fast. And that’s why those are really not good reasons to start a business. I’ll give you an example, Tim. I actually had an investor that offered me lots of money to make CBD gummies. This is right when the legislature passed the state law that legalizes like CBD and marijuana for recreational use. And he asked me to make it. He said, “You’ll make millions of dollars.” And I believed him. I would make a million dollars. And I said no, not because I couldn’t do it, not because I didn’t want the money, because it’s not my jam. It’s not my why. I could not make CBD gummies because it’s not like I don’t think it works. I think it works great, I don’t think it matters how much money you throw at me, I wouldn’t do it. It just doesn’t make me happy. It doesn’t solve anyone’s problem — at least, it does solve a problem, but it’s not a problem that I want to solve. Does that make sense to you? It is a problem. But it’s not my jam, it’s not my passion to solve that problem or to help those patients. It could be yours, maybe someone else’s, so that’s what I did. I deferred.

Tim Ulbrich: So important. And I can’t echo enough of what you just said there. Even thinking of what we’ve been working on at YFP, hearing your story here, hearing other stories of pharmacist entrepreneurs that I’ve talked with, you know, having that motivation and a why of something that you care about, a problem that you care about, that you want to solve is so critically important to invest in the time and energy that’s going to have an impact. Karine, I want to talk for a moment about the gap between having an idea and from there, getting to a minimum viable product and perhaps from there, being able to actually grow and scale something. Big separation, big gap between having an idea and actually being able to grow that idea perhaps into its full potential. And I think pharmacists may hear your story or hear other entrepreneurial stories and hear from folks that have been successful, however you may define success. And for you, selling 25,000 units in 18 months, that’s overwhelming. You know what, I have this idea and I hear Karine talking about RND, about growing, scaling, manufacturing, hiring a team, wow. Maybe I should just stop pursuing my idea right now because that feels overwhelming. What advice would you have for folks that are listening that say, “You know what, I have this idea, and I just don’t know where to go from here.”

Karine Wong: The fear of pursuing an idea is very common. It’s not unusual to hear an idea or come up with one and go, you know what, it’s a good one, but nah. It’s not going to work. And to have self doubt because you’re afraid. And I think as pharmacists, we’re more risk-averse. So we don’t want to take chances on something that we don’t know much about. That’s understandable. There’s a few things that I do in my career and my company that help minimize that risk. First, when you hear an idea, obviously we don’t put every single penny we have towards every idea. But look at the idea that you’re thinking about. A good idea is the idea that will solve a problem that is going to affect many consumers, not just you, not just your family, but other pharmacists or other people in your industry or your role as a mother or father, some of the frustrations you see as maybe a student. And that is a problem that if you have had it, and other people have had it, then that’s a good market. That’s why. You check that box, that’s a pretty good market, a pretty good idea. Second, you have to create a solution. An idea basically tells you that we need something to help fix that problem. Your job is to find a solution, and whether it’s a product like my product, a dessert, a snack, a service, or even a device that you create, then that is what you need to come up with. And that’s probably what you’re talking about when it comes to the minimum viable product. It is a product or service that will bring in people to buy your product or service in exchange for money to solve that problem. And that is what investors look for is how good or awesome is your end EP. Many pharmacists always tell me, oh, I’m not creative or I don’t know how to make dessert or I’m not a baker, I’m not an engineer. Neither am I. But you are resourceful. You’re a pharmacist. So you can easily hire a coder to perhaps make a software app for an iPhone that would track down smoke alarms in your house and find out when that battery is going to run out. You can hire engineers to create a device for you. My whole point is that designing, creating a product doesn’t have to be a solo mission. In my case, it’s a solo mission because oh heck, we’re always into compounding in laboratories and we’re always making something. And I’m a mom, so I’m always baking new recipes. It’s a small experimentation. So you don’t have to be a chef or a professional engineer or a writer or anything like that to pursue a product or device or something that solves a problem. So that’s No. 2 is find a solution, create it. No. 3, now you’ve got to test it. You’ve got to find out if your market that you’ve identified, like the other moms in your area, the pharmacists in your industry, like what you’re selling. And I don’t mean people like your mom or your dad or your brother or sister or husband. They don’t really count. Not to say their opinions don’t matter, but they’re really nice and they love us. So they’ll say whatever makes us happy. You want to know if your friend of a friend of a friend is going to buy your product or MVP. So this is a person that doesn’t know you, has no connection with you, and is more likely to give you an honest opinion. If they’re willing to give you money in exchange for that service or product you’re providing for a problem that you both share, you have an awesome idea that is worth pursuing. With that being said, if you get like a thousand ideas in a given month, maybe one or two might be feasible or fit all of those check boxes. To me, the ones that really require more attention are the ones that stick around. I have a lot of ideas, and I don’t always move on every single idea. But if an idea comes back to me in two or three consecutive days or weeks, like I just can’t let it go, I dream about it, I obsess about it, I think about it when I’m running, now that’s an idea worth pursuing because your subconscious knows it’s a good idea, Karine, don’t let it go. It’s something worth pursuing. That’s why if you look at my bio, I do more than just My Guiltless Treats. I’ve actually written a book, I have created an app for pharmacy students to help prepare for the board exam and medical students to help with their SEP boards. So I’m not just limited to the role of pharmacy. I’m not limited to the food industry. If I feel there’s a problem, in which I did, I hire coders, I learn how to write, I hire editors, I had a publishing team that all helped me get to my purpose.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s great. And one of the questions, Karine, that I’m thinking of as you’re sharing your story is when I hear 25,000 units in 18 months, obviously you are solving a problem that people are interested in that are raising their hand to purchase, but you haven’t scaled nationally into large retailers, despite the opportunity being there to do so. And that has been an intentional move, as I understand it. So my question here is how and why did you arrive to the decision that you wanted to control your growth?

Karine Wong: There are two reasons why I chose to control my growth. In the food industry world, there’s a saying, you go hard in your backyard. That means that all your marketing, all your efforts to brand, to market, should be in your local region. It doesn’t make sense for me to let’s say get in Costco or Whole Foods nationally when I’m here in California. Nobody in Chicago or East Coast knows who Karine Wong or who the Guiltless Girl is or what panna cotta is that’s made of coconut cream. They don’t know. So it’s going to be a very hard sell. And now with COVID, it’s even harder because I can’t hire marketers to go out there to demonstrate the product. That’s the first reason is to always market your product in your area. If you’re able to do a service remotely, that’s a little different. But the point is that people are more likely to buy your product, buy my product when they know you, heard about you, seen the car, seen your Instagram posts and are more familiar. So in California, in Orange County, I am very popular as the Guiltless Girl. Selling product is very easy, I sell in a few stores, and they sell through it, which means that nothing is left over. They always run out. That’s a positive sign. I’d rather have those benchmarks than to be in let’s say 200 Whole Foods stores and sell 10% of what I stocked. There’s no glory in that. There’s no fame or money to be made when you’re only selling a little bit at those stores. And eventually, those stores will discontinue you because you could not show velocity in their stores. So that’s the first reason why you want to go hard in your backyard. And the second reason is that there has to be a balance. If all I did was My Guiltless Treats and nothing else, then yes, I would go national. I would go and find investors and get seed funding to go national. I would even go on Shark Tank because that’s all I got going on and my role is to go national. And I would actually hire a larger team and brokers to get those milestones. But I am not just the CEO of this company. I’m also a professor. I teach remotely for PharmD students for PGI West University and Yogi (?). So I’m busy with that, and I do love teaching pharmacy students. I’m also a pharmacist. I’m doing remote pharmacy from my home, and I’m a pharmacogenomics counselor. So there’s a lot going on my plate. So I’ve got to be home, and this is a good balance because I can spend maybe three days a week doing Guiltless work, including weekends, and the other days are spent doing teaching, being a parent, working out, kind of having time for myself. And the balance is fantastic because I’m very happy and I feel successful because I do make money. I have enough money to pay for my staff. I have enough money to hire people to design logos for me, I can basically sustain — the company is sustainable on its own. So that’s a sign of success. And I don’t need to make a million dollars from this. I just need to make it run on its own, which it is. And I need to have time for myself, my kids, my family, and teach. If I lost all that, there is no glory. There is no fame. So controlling growth is about finding a balance where you have time for yourself and your family and your other hustles and passions but also time for yourself and the company. It’s a balance, really. And you know, I’m OK making what I’m making right now. I am making profit. But yeah, I’m not a millionaire. And that’s OK. I’m very happy with what I’m doing. You’ve got to be OK with all those things. Other entrepreneurs, for them, it’s all about, I want to get in Costco, I want to get in Whole Foods, I want to be in all these Krogers and Vons. OK? That’s your jam. It’s not my jam. Just because they’re saying it and they want it and their business coach is saying it doesn’t mean it’s for you. So you have to look at yourself and your life and see is that for me?

Tim Ulbrich: That’s great wisdom, Karine. I would encourage folks, you know, to spend some time getting clear on your personal goals and why. In addition to what we’re talking about here today, which is the business goals and why, as Karine shared her personal goals, the balance obviously informed her business goals and the direction that she is taking with the business. And Karine, I’m glad to hear what you said about controlled growth. I think we have glorified the grind and hustle and working hard at all costs. Perhaps it’s the Shark Tank effect, you know, I’m not sure. But I think it’s a good reminder of us each individually thinking about what success may look like. So Karine, tell us about a lesson that you shared with me before we hit record, which was the power of saying yes. Tell us about for you and your journey, saying yes to folks, why this was so important, even recently, in terms of the value and the power of saying yes as a business owner.

Karine Wong: Being positive and affirmative is an attractant to other consumers. Consumers, when they buy a product or service, they’re not just buying a product or service, they’re buying from you. They’re buying you. They love you. They want to be in your life, they want to be engaged with you. If you’re negative or cheap or frugal or penny-pinching, they’re probably not going to come back to you. One of the things I adopt is generosity is key. If I can do it, I will, whether it’s emotional support, physical support, knowledge, expert advice, I’ll do it. I have no problem at all. I consider ourselves a drug expert. So if someone asks me a question randomly in the aisles of Target, I’ll be happy to help them. I have no qualms about holding back information because oh, I don’t work here or I’m on break or whatever. If you need help, let me help you. It’s better that I help you than for you to find the answer yourself on Wikipedia, which is not something I recommend. So when you say yes, the rule is this: Say yes to people if you can do it. For example, when you have a product or service and especially in the initial phases of the company, a lot of the times will be giving away product for free. And that may sound counterintuitive because you’re trying to make money. But the first couple years, you’re not going to make money. And your goal is to let people try your product, even if it means giving it away for free. Most people will not try a product and pay for it just to test the waters. It’s better for you to give it away for free, gift it, donate it, mark it as a tax writeoff on your income tax returns. And that allows people to try your product and go, you know what? She’s quite generous or he’s quite generous. They let me try it for free, there’s no contingency offers, there’s no like alternative motives. They’re going to feel warm and fuzzy with you. And they’re going to love the product because hey, you know, this is a good product. And I like it. And yeah, I would come back and ask for more and I would probably pay for it. So offering the first dose or first service or first product for free actually is a really awesome marketing idea if you could afford it. And usually, you can because you have the capital for that. If you can’t afford it, don’t do it. The other things you can offer for free would be your knowledge. If you know something, if you are very well read up on gluten diet, gluten-free foods or celiac disease or eczema and they’re going to shift to dairy, definitely talk about it. A lot of consumers will come up to me, once they discover who I am, they’ll open up their hearts and tell me their medical problems. So I know a lot about their eczema, rosacea, diabetes and other problems. And I’m happy to help them. And they feel pretty much open because I’m not timing them, I’m not charging them, I’m not going to ask for their medical insurance. And it’s a great exchange of information. So they value my input, and they usually walk away with a panna cotta, they usually walk away with something that I provide because they like who I am. So there’s the generosity of knowledge. The other thing you can offer is your time. You didn’t know this, but when the COVID hit, a lot of my colleagues were being fired for obvious reasons. So I offered free CV reviews because I have experience hiring pharmacists and technicians. I said, “Submit your resume to me and we’ll help brush it up.” And it was great because people were sending me — I actually opened up publicly to everyone in my community, my neighborhood, and all I could reach. And I got so much response, and people even said, “I liked it because I don’t know who you are, Karine, but I love it that you’re doing it,” so they were referring me, shared my post, and I didn’t charge them for it. I just wanted to look at their CVs, make recommendations, and I send it back to them. So I do it now for pharmacy students and those applying for residencies. Just my opinion, just make it nicer, cleaner. And usually I could find one or two errors, and they’re very appreciative. ‘Oh my gosh, I forgot to add this,’ or ‘Oh my gosh, I didn’t know I had to add a header or footer.’ Those are kind of core things you look at as a director because we get so many resumes for one position in a hospital pharmacy. So it helps to have page numbers and footnotes and lists of references instead of me asking for it. So those are little things that I want people to see what I see. That’s what I offer is my knowledge, time, free product if I can do it, free service. At the end of the day, it makes the consumer, the other person, just like you more, like your company more and guess what? All those people I helped the first few years of my career, of my business, have come back as repeat customers. So I didn’t charge them the first time, but guess what? They’re total lifetime revenue for one customer is well over $100. So is it worth it? Yes.

Tim Ulbrich: Great advice. And the resume service is a good example of serving others, whether it’s product, whether it’s time, you know, I think offering and bringing something valuable and serving others without necessarily a return in mind but just providing that value in the moment, we know reaps great benefits. So I think you articulated the value of saying yes well. I try to follow that advice from mentors I’ve received before. And it’s not about being reckless. I mean, as you mentioned, being the face of the brand, folks are looking for that energy, they’re looking for that enthusiasm, they’re looking for that we’ll figure it out type of mentality as you go along and build some of those relationships. Karine, I really appreciate the time that you’ve taken, the wisdom that you’ve shared. What is the best way for our audience to connect with you to learn more about your journey as well as to follow the work that you’re doing with My Guiltless Treats?

Karine Wong: Very simple, just go to MyGuiltlessTreats.com. On the very bottom of the home page is “Send a Message.” That goes straight to me. All of my emails and phone numbers and even an Instagram/Facebook, you can go onto My Guiltless Treats, it goes straight to me. I don’t believe in hiring a third party marketing agency for that because I want to engage my customers. So if you want to engage with me, just go straight on board to the website, email me, run by your ideas with me or any questions you have about possibly starting a company or a product, and we’ll talk about the feasibility of it. It’s better to rule it out or rule it in as early as possible before you need to put money towards the product or whatever.

Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely. We’ll link to the website in the show notes. We’ll link to some of the social media connection opportunities as well. And again, appreciate you taking the time, sharing your journey and your willingness to also support and encourage other pharmacy entrepreneurs that are out there. So Karine, thank you very much.

Karine Wong: You’re welcome. It was a pleasure, Tim. If you decide to come up with that smoke alarm app, you owe me 10% of the royalties.

Tim Ulbrich: You’ve got it. It’s a promise. Thank you.

Karine Wong: Thanks.

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YFP 180: How Allyson Used Her Pharmacy Skills to Build a Natural Skincare Company

Posted on December 3, 2020November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

How Allyson Used Her Pharmacy Skills to Build a Natural Skincare Company

Allyson Brennan, founder and owner of Emogene & Co., a natural skincare company, joins Tim Ulbrich on the show. Allyson talks about her background in pharmacy, why and how she started Emogene & Co., how she has had success in such a short period of time, and what lies ahead as she prepares for growth in 2021 and beyond.

About Today’s Guest

Allyson Brennan is a pharmacist with 13 years’ experience specializing in Neurology and is now a hospital Clinical Pharmacy Manager in Nashville, TN. She received a B.S. in Psychology minor in chemistry/biology as an undergraduate from Millsaps College and then went on to receive her B.S in Pharmaceutical Sciences and her PharmD. from The University of Mississippi.

This year, Allyson founded and created her own natural skincare company called Emogene & Co. focusing on effective natural skincare and the science behind purposeful ingredients. She created this company after noticing the skincare industry producing products full of toxic and ineffective filler ingredients. As a child, she was inspired by her grandmother, Emogene, who had a remedy for every skin issue or ailment. Throughout her professional career as a pharmacist, she noticed how she was drawn to medicinal chemistry and how specific molecules affected organs in the body. After becoming a mother, she began to focus on what molecules are available straight from the Earth to provide nutrition for our largest organ, our skin.

In less than a year, Allyson has grown her company organically, filled over 5000 individual orders and is also available in 11 locations including dermatology clinics and medical spas, all while continuing to work full-time in Pharmacy Administration during the day.

Summary

Allyson Brennan, a clinical pharmacy manager, started using a vitamin C serum on her skin after having her daughter and looked at the ingredients listed in the product. She quickly went down the rabbit hole of researching natural versus synthetic ingredients and active versus inactive ingredients in skincare products. Allyson realized that because of her clinical pharmacy and compounding skills she was able to create a vitamin C serum using natural ingredients. She soon discovered that she had tapped into a passion that she never knew was there. Friends started asking what she was using on her skin and Allyson began making the serum for them.

In January 2020, Allyson created an LLC called Emogene & Co., a company focusing on effective natural skincare and the science behind purposeful ingredients. Nine months later (November 2020), Emogene & Co. carries 21 products, has sold over 5,000 individual orders, has an online shop and is sold in 11 locations, including 3 medical spas and a dermatology clinic. Emogene & Co. is made in small batches mostly by Allyson, however she has brought on two full-time employees to help with production and labeling. Allyson still works full-time as a clinical pharmacy manager and focuses on the business in the evening to the early morning.

Allyson believes that Emogene & Co. has an advantage over other skincare products because of her pharmacy background. She explains that she stands by natural products and ingredients and offers education to people about how effective her products are. On this episode Allyson also talks about becoming an entrepreneur, what the next year of the business will look like, and how she balances running Emogene & Co. with a family and a full-time pharmacy job.

Mentioned on the Show

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich: Allyson, welcome to the show.

Allyson Brennan: Hey, Tim, how are you? Thank you so much for having me.

Tim Ulbrich: Really excited to have you, been looking forward to this interview ever since you and I had met actually through Adam Martin, The Fit Pharmacist, and had a chance to learn more about the work that you’re doing at Emogene & Co. And really excited to share that story as well as some of your pharmacy background and to expose our listeners to I think what has been a very unique career path and obviously some success you’ve had with the business and would like to get an inside look into that. And so let’s start with your pharmacy career. Tell us about your background in clinical practice and then administration and management since you graduated with your PharmD from the University of Mississippi.

Allyson Brennan: Sure. So my background actually started before I even went to pharmacy school. I originally thought I wanted to go to vet school. I am an avid horse rider. I was a competitive horsewoman growing up. And so I wanted to start and go to vet school. And ultimately, fast forwarding through all of those decision-making pieces of my life, I shadowed a veterinarian. I wanted to be an equine leg surgeon, so that would entail about 16 years of post-undergrad study, a lot of time, a lot of decisions that go into pushing you into a different path because when times are tough, you know, people might take care of themselves before they take care of their animal ultimately. So I decided against vet school with the veterinarian that I shadowed, she just gave me so much amazing advice. And as I started to look into what I wanted to go into, I knew that a passion for me is really breaking things down — I wouldn’t say at that point to molecular structure but very much like how I build this but from a very kind of unpiecing things, if that makes sense.

Tim Ulbrich: Sure.

Allyson Brennan: So I love chemistry. I’m a total chemistry nerd. So I had heard about pharmacy, right? And so I’ve been out for 13 years. Back then, pharmacy was a very different ball game. And I heard that through kind of talking to people that knew about pharmacists, what really it entailed, and I was able to balance a family life with a career. And so I went for it and was accepted to University of Mississippi pharmacy school after I completed a undergrad BS degree in psychology with a biology and chemistry minor. And went into pharmacy school at University of Mississippi or Ole Miss, you end up with your PharmD, your doctorate, as well as another BS degree. So I was ready to go. Once I got out of pharmacy school, I was looking into residencies because I knew I ultimately wanted to be in clinical practice in a hospital setting. I applied to some residency programs in Nashville, Tennessee, because I had done some undergrad rotations there but ended up getting an offer from a wonderful hospital, Huntsville Hospital, in Huntsville, Alabama, a very large — I believe at that point they were 881 beds. And it was a clinical position without needing the residency, and it was everything I was looking for. So I interviewed, I was accepted, and the next year, they started to require residencies for this because it is so clinically based. And so for me, my career started with no residency in a facility, a large facility, and I started with an ortho and neuro kind of concentration. So I really built that niche of pharmacy in hospital practice for about three years there. And then I ended up moving to Nashville and practiced specifically neuro, neuro-endovascular, under surgery and just neuro intensive patients for close to nine years at Centennial Medical Center in downtown Nashville. From there, I really built a lot of relationships with the providers and physicians that entailed in that specialty. So the neurosurgeons, the neuro-intensivists, the neurologists. And once I built those relationships, they offered me a just heap of opportunities to build my clinical knowledge as well as build into things that were the building blocks for me to move into administration. So order set development, process improvement, committee-sitting, PNT, presentations, just a wonderful group of physicians and after about eight years, I was loving clinical practice, but I knew that I was ready to kind of push on. And Centennial, where I was, is part of the HCA, Hospital Corporation of America, group. It’s a large privately owned corporation that owns hospitals. So there’s several sister facilities in Nashville, in the Nashville area. And there was a clinical manager position at a smaller sister facility about 11-12 miles from downtown Nashville. And I knew the director. He actually was a resident under me that I trained him at Centennial. He is a wonderful guy, and he had called me and said, “I really think that you’re ready for this position. I would love to work with you.” And I ultimately went ahead and interviewed, uncertain that it would be a good fit because it was so much smaller. And when I went, I loved the staff, I felt very much at home there. It was what I was looking for because I had become a mother at that point, so it was very much a community feel. And working with that director was a goal of mine because he was a wonderful leader. And so now I’ve had my two-year anniversary as the pharmacy clinical manager at a facility. So I manage about 20 pharmacists and elevate the clinical program there to really help them succeed with their interdisciplinary rounds and their clinical responsibilities within the facility for patient care.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s great. And I appreciate you chronicling the journey. We’re going to come back here in a little bit as we dive into the work that you’re doing with Emogene & Co. as how that pharmacy management experience and how your pharmacy experience at large has helped you as you’ve been working to get that company off the ground and now continue to grow that company. Let’s start with kind of the basics around Emogene & Co. What is it? Why is it important? And ultimately, what problem is it solving? Because I really believe every business is ultimately trying to solve a problem. So tell us more about the backstory of Emogene.

Allyson Brennan: Absolutely. So for me personally, I was just chugging right along being a pharmacist and about two years ago, I was maybe 37.5-38 years old, and I decided I wanted to start to focus to take a little better care of my skin. I had taken care of my skin all my life, but you’re getting older and I was like, what can I do that I’m not doing that is good for my skin. And the interesting thing about this is that this journey is really a full circle of the creativity that I feel like I lost as a kid and really started focusing more on this logistical math and science, black and white kind of thinking. And I’m really loving this journey because I am at this place in my life where I’m opening up kind of the Pandora’s Box of creativity but in a very different way than I ultimately thought I would. So it started for me, honestly, Tim, with a Vitamin C serum. Vitamin C serums, for those that don’t know, is kind of your ultimate go-to that every female and male should have for antioxidant protection against environmental stressors and to prevent further aging. It’s natural. There can be synthetic versions of it, but it’s kind of your go-to for just preventing your aging, starting in your 20s. So I spent about $150 on a Vitamin C serum. And I turned it on the back and looked at the label and was like, what am I paying for? Just the chemistry nerd came out, and I usually don’t do that, which is crazy. And so I turned it on the back, and being a pharmacist with the chemistry and science background that we all have, I was like, well, I don’t see ascorbic acid. Where is it?

Tim Ulbrich: Right.

Allyson Brennan: I did notice an ingredient that looked like some sort of derivative of that. So I went to Google. And I Googled this specific ingredient and found out, you know, that it’s a synthetic ester version. So then before I knew it, I had dropped down into a very deep rabbit hole of synthetic versus pure of all ingredients and natural versus synthetic, active versus inactive, and really started to pull apart the skincare game, if you will. I started then. It grew arms. I started into essential fatty acid concentrations and what that looks like for your skin, yadda, yadda. And so before I knew it, I had tapped into a passion I never knew I had. When I looked at this Vitamin C serum, I was like, I can make that. Like I can make that. And I’m not a real DIYer. So I actually made some and didn’t tell anybody and started to apply it to my face. And I would say about two weeks later, I had friends that were asking me, what are you doing to your skin? Like something looks different. So I told them, I’m making a bootleg Vitamin C serum.

Tim Ulbrich: Good old compounding labs back, right, from pharmacy school.

Allyson Brennan: Yes. I tell you, I tapped into all this knowledge that you never think comes back. So I started to really appreciate that they asked me to make some for them. I was not charging anybody, it was just more of you know, friends sharing with friends. And then ultimately, in about November of 2019, I was like, maybe I should try something on the side. Maybe I should try to do this. Now, for understanding a little background on me, I am a very driven person. I’m someone who puts their head down and thinks well, I’ll do a little side project. If I’m going to throw my time into something, I’ve put blinders on, and I go. I’m all in. And if you’re familiar at all with the Enneagram or if anyone on that on this podcast that listens is, I am a Type 3.

Tim Ulbrich: I’m with you there.

Allyson Brennan: OK. I’m a 3w2, 3 wing 2. And I am the poster child for 3, The Achiever. And so I really think that learning the Enneagram helped me understand what drove me to this place. So I’ve never been an entrepreneur, I never, ever, ever, not even for a second, thought about owning my own business, my own pharmacy, let alone a skincare company. So I just went for it. So in January, I went ahead and created the company through an LLC. The name, Emogene & Co. speaks to, it pays homage to my grandmother Emogene. And I am named after her Allyson Gene, and my daughter is Parker Emogene. And that’s where the Co. comes in. But my grandmother was someone who could make something from nothing and had the most amazing skin. And that generation was very much a make-it-work type and create anything. And for me, I love science, I love chemistry, I love — as a pharmacist, we all know that there’s a time and a place for medication and chemicals. But I wanted to really focus on natural ingredients because I think that in the skincare industry — and I’m a baby in this — I think that the skincare industry can be extremely misleading to consumers. And the reason why is that there’s a lot of terms and titles that are thrown around without the knowledge behind that. I think that there is a time and a place, like I said, for chemicals. But if you can have things that come from the Earth naturally that are extremely effective, I want to focus on that. And that all came into play when I became a mother. What I started with a Vitamin C serum. And I started with a couple of other items that I actually made, a stretch mark prevention cream when I was pregnant, and I did a lot of tweaks to it and offered that. And then I offered a body scrub that is amazing for increasing the circulation in the blood to the skin, which creates a different kind of solution for your skin. I’ve been making that for three years just for myself. I offered that. And then I really focused on facial oils and essential fatty acid nutrition for your skin. So here I am, almost a year later, and I offer 21 products. And I’m offered in 11 locations as wholesale clients, so they’re my stockist list. And that includes three MedSpas and a dermatology clinic, which was kind of my moment for really taking this to a level where being taken seriously in a dermatology field, in a medical field, that it’s a natural product. I have done a little bit over 5,000 individual orders in this time. And I am still a full-time pharmacist and mom and wife. There’s not a lot of sleep in my life right now, but I am so driven by the passion for this, and it ultimately all comes down to I want to offer the ability for people to No. 1, age gracefully, No. 2, to improve the quality and the nutrition to their skin because we all take so much advantage of our skin. It’s the largest organ that we have. And I want it to be an accessible option for people. I don’t think skincare should be a luxury. I don’t think that people should not be able to afford to take care of an organ for themselves. And so my price points are at a place where I want people to be able to access that but feel good about the science that kind of marries the natural skincare for them. So it really boils down to a lot of relationship-building with customers. Anything starts out as a family-and-friend trying your items. And then once they are like, wow, OK, you really have something, they spread by word of mouth. And then word of mouth starts to go to the right people that are the really big word-of-mouthers, you know?

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

Allyson Brennan: And then ultimately, you start to have stores that want to carry you. And it’s based off of the fact that it is skincare, which is a very saturated market, but it is natural rather than stating it’s natural, it is natural. But I get to really flex that pharmacist science arm with it, so that is the solution I wanted to offer. Like I said, it’s a saturated market in the skincare industry. I’m learning that also it is an absolutely overpriced industry. But it really comes down to do you believe and trust what someone is selling you? And I, being a psychology background, I want to develop that trust relationship for people to know that I ultimately have their best interest at heart for what is best for their skin. So that’s the solution I wanted to offer. And I hope I do that and I continue to do that. And I don’t want to sacrifice the integrity of the ingredients or the integrity of that brand.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and that really resonates, Allyson, when you and I had talked several weeks ago, that really resonated with me is wanting to keep the integrity of the brand, wanting to focus on the natural and pure ingredients, wanting to bring this at a price point that was more affordable. And when I think of the timeline — and I know you mentioned and you honored it, but I don’t want our listeners to gloss over it — one year ago, November 2019, you know, if I heard you correctly, kind of idea was coming to be, that was starting to form, but it wasn’t until the beginning of 2020 that you actually formed the company. And here we are, just over 10 months into this journey, you mentioned 21 products, 11 locations, obviously an active e-commerce online, over 5,000 units sold, and so of course there’s a trajectory here. And my natural next question, which I’m guessing our listeners are thinking as well, is like, break down the operations. Like how are you doing this? You mentioned starting with the compounding. So are you up late at night and compounding? Do you have a team? Do you have a distribution facility? Like this happened so quickly, so tell us how you’ve been able to scale up to be able to fulfill those orders while also being an N of 1 when you started.

Allyson Brennan: An N of 1. I’m still an N of 1, but I do have maybe .25s on the side, and I’m so grateful for those. So for me, my first sale was — I formed the LLC and all of the background information you do to form a business in January — and my first sale was January 26. It started, you know, social media, no website, I had Square, which the majority of people are familiar with. And so it was literal orders coming through email, text, Facebook messaging or Instagram messaging.

Tim Ulbrich: Instagram, yeah.

Allyson Brennan: Yeah. And then invoicing them to their email. And then they would pay. So it started out really just grassroots. I don’t know how much more grassroots you could be. As far as the compounding goes, let’s say for instance, let’s speak of this Vitamin C serum. OK, there’s 21 products now, but let’s just speak to this. So I was starting only making batches of eight. Eight at a time. That was it. And I would say now, I’m making those in batches of 120. So in this amount of time, I’ve learned that scale because I was still white-knuckling it, you know, really holding those reins of wanting to know that I’m putting out — I mean, everything is made by me, filled by me, packaged by me, labeled by me, heat-sealed by me, sold by me. And that’s a lot process once you reach a certain point in time. So I was really only just, if you will, dog paddling through life. I was making what I needed to fill those orders and then trying to still be a mom and a wife and be a pharmacist manager. So I think at some point, I really had to stop holding onto that control and start to hire the right team around me. But I have a very specific thing I look for in that team. So before I got to that point, it really looked like let’s say — so I create a sterile field at my home in my kitchen. I am still working from my home. This was maybe one closet upstairs in my house that had, you know, the packaging, the raw ingredients, whatever. And then I would fill the orders literally fresh made, on the spot, and I would fill those orders. Let’s say three months into that, I was still making the same amount of batches of things, but I was maybe expanding to another closet, you know? So nine months in, I am in six closets, the entire garage, my dining room is my office per se where I fill orders. I have a shipping station in that room, and I have my entire dining room is not even used anymore other than Emogene & Co. I have complete shelving in the entire room. But I still create this sterile field in the kitchen, and so now the batches are larger, I finally — you know, I’ve had a lot, I’m so grateful for it. I’ve had a lot of females that love my products, offer to help. “I love what you’re doing, I’m so passionate about it, I see that you’re passionate about it, let me help you.”

Tim Ulbrich: Sure.

Allyson Brennan: And I’m grateful for that. But when you have something like this, you don’t want people to do it just because they like the products. You want someone who has the same drive and the same passion to grow.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s right. Yep.

Allyson Brennan: And those are very specific qualities that I look for. So for me personally, I have two women that are full-time employees that are — one is a pharmacy tech who’s a chemotherapy technician I’ve worked with for 10 years. And the other is a pharmacist who is on staff, and I’m her manager at work. She’s a workforce. These are people that don’t know how to stop. But it’s not a work that they grovel in. They love it, they’re passionate about it, they’re positive, their attention to detail and specifics is second to none, and that was ultimately why I chose to say yes to them. What they’re helping me with now is — the chemotherapy technician has six products that she now compounds herself. And these do not — the products that I offer, there are some that are just mixed dry ingredients, there are some that are mixed liquid ingredients, and then there are others that are very complicated where they’re a lot more chemistry lab type with an oil phase, water, phase, heat phase, cool phase. She mixes just the solid and the liquid ingredients. So she has six products that she makes. And she forms a sterile field in her home and does those, and she heat seals and labels her own. And then she passes them to me. The other employee, she is a mother of two and a full-time pharmacist, and so what she does for me is she does the labeling, which is crazy that she is — it’s crazy how helpful it is.

Tim Ulbrich: Oh sure, yeah.

Allyson Brennan: Yeah, so she literally does the labeling as well as now we have a holiday product with a local company that’s a big collaboration and it’s a dry ingredient body scrub. And she — I taught her that recipe and checked her off on a competency like I would a pharmacist. And she mixes that now. And we pass off bulk everything in the parking lots before we go into our day jobs. And it used to look like maybe staying up until 10-11, and now every single night, I’m up until 2 o’clock in the morning, and I’m up at 6-6:30, depending on what time I have to be at the hospital. So I look very tired. But I am so passionate about it, and so I very much have fallen into a routine of what pieces of the night are where I start certain products.

Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely.

Allyson Brennan: Yeah. So it’s a lot of compounding at the very beginning after putting my daughter to bed. It’s compounding if I’m low — I have PAR sheets. And we have margins, and we have all of the background that you need for those pieces. There’s ordering that happens every Friday, and I do all of the ordering. But I focus on their PAR sheets filled out, and they pass those to me with their time sheets. So yeah, I start with making the products while I’m still kind of fresh. And then once maybe 11 or 12 rolls around, I’m usually finished that compounding and I have put up, boxed them up for the pharmacist to pass off the next day that she’ll do the labeling. And then I start the admin of anything that’s needed, and I fill orders until usually about 2, and then I go to bed. And then I do it all over the next day.

Tim Ulbrich: Start over.

Allyson Brennan: Right.

Tim Ulbrich: And I love that, Allyson, because I think we all know the hustle that needs to be there. And obviously as you continue to build, you’re going to have an opportunity to bring more folks in and efficiencies will happen over time and obviously as you continue to scale. But when you’re getting something off the ground like this, like anybody listening that wants to get any company or initiative, side hustle, whatever you want to call it — this obviously is much bigger than that — you’ve got to hustle, you’ve got to work. And I think when you’re that passionate about the mission or the why of what you’re doing, I can speak from firsthand experience, I suspect you may feel the same way that as exhausting as it can be, it doesn’t necessarily feel like the type of work that somebody hearing it may think that it feels like because the mission is so clear on why you’re trying to do what you’re trying to do. And although you described it, Allyson, as being pretty homegrown and still distribution happening out of your home, kudos to you, I think you guys have done an awesome job on the marketing side, on the packaging side, my wife and I purchased and ordered several products before we did this interview — I wanted to get kind of a feel of the experience — and have really enjoyed not only the products but also kind of seeing the behind-the-scenes of how you have distributed and packaged and marketed those. And I think you’ve done a fantastic job, so especially when you think about this as 10 months into the journey, so it’s really, really incredible. One of the questions I have as I think about just purely from the lens of a business owner is help me break down a little bit further, like what is the differential advantage of Emogene & Co. And the reason I ask that is obviously you’ve had success, but when I hear you talk about like natural and pure, like that marketing of skincare products — while I certainly don’t consider myself an expert in the space — is out there already and even if it isn’t natural or pure, how do you overcome that perception from the consumer that you can separate yourself from those products? So what is the differential advantage for you and your company?

Allyson Brennan: Yeah. First of all, thank you so much for such kind words. That really means a lot to people that start out and second guess themselves and they go back and forth and they’re passionate and the next night they’re like, am I doing the right thing? So I really appreciate that. But ultimately, Tim, it does fall back on “seeing what got you there.” It falls back on my pharmacy background, and I’m very thankful, and that’s not lost on me that I would not have the knowledge base to do this and feel good about what I’m putting out and solid and confident of what I’m putting out if I did not have that medicinal chemistry background and the pharmacy background in general. So you’re right, the skincare industry, like I said earlier and like you just alluded to, you know, there’s terms that are thrown around that people just don’t know what they mean. And as consumers, we are drawn to bright, shiny objects. And in the skincare industry, that looks like wonderful packaging, it smells good, feels good, but you fall for it might state that it’s natural but it’s actually not natural. And so — and I’ve turned down opportunities for a couple of collaborations with larger medical-scale type opportunities of products because they — it was not going to be a natural product. It was going to be synthetic. Because I do stand by wanting to stay with the natural because there’s — it’s just a world that is just wide. You can cast a wide net and get some really amazing, effective skincare that way. But my goal with this company was to offer natural skincare that’s effective, right? So I don’t want it to just be something that’s another option for people to not know what to do with their skincare, but I want it to be accessible, like I mentioned, but I want it to not be fussy. There’s a lot of options for people to take care of their skin, and I don’t want people to be confused about how to best take care of their skin. The other piece of this that I’m hoping to offer and that I really do hang my hat on with my company is the scientific background of the natural ingredients. Just because they’re natural does not mean that they don’t have the science behind them. They come from the earth, there’s science behind them. So I want people to know that there is legitimate education that is there behind that and lastly, where I really thrive and where I really know that I thrive and I love it and I really try to build on this is to offer that education to people.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah.

Allyson Brennan: So as a small skincare company, which is sometimes labeled as indie skincare companies, you know, I’m not competing with the big guys. It’s an opportunity to really dial in with your customer base and with your clientele and to get personal with them. And the majority of how this business started was, like I said, those messages where people would say, “You offer these items. This is my skin type. Go. Like tell me what I need.” And for me, it is not about offering every item that I need them to buy. It’s really about building that trust. Honestly it is. So I will have women that will come and say, “Alright, I want the whole thing.” And I will say, “First of all, let’s talk about your skin type. But let’s start with these three things because I don’t want you to overwhelm your skin and then you might not appreciate the products or your skin might not just because it’s too much for you at one time. And then let’s build on it. So I want you to start with something that works for you, and let’s go from there.” So my goal is to offer yes, natural skincare, but that has a scientific background that can actually be spoken and related to but also there’s the education behind it. So to grow this company is not just to offer more products. It is to scale, that is a — it’s a pivotal point that I’m at now that is a new problem that I don’t know how to solve because I’m new at this. So you know, 2021 is a year of scaling. It’s a year of working efficiently, moving into a warehouse space, SEO and strategic marketing. I do have a girl that I’m about to bring on for that who is wanting to build a company because she’s worked for larger companies. I have a delivery lady that helps me part-time now so that gives me some time back in my day. But that still offers a customer experience for people to have the deliveries. So yeah, it’s really a combination of all of those things. But I want to separate myself apart by the pharmacist piece of it to speak to the actual education of what you’re putting on your skin.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, that’s great. And one of the things you said regarding scale in 2021, I mean, it certainly feels like that, sounds like that, based on the trajectory you’ve had for the last 10 months. But as you sort of alluded to and didn’t say directly necessarily is scaling can have its challenges for a variety of reasons. And so the question I have for you is if we fast forward a year from today and you’re now looking at wrapping up almost the second year of the business, heading into the third year, what does success look like for you and for the business as a whole?

Allyson Brennan: Oh, man. It’s so funny, I was recently on a podcast, and that same question was given to me but in five years. And you know, I feel like as pharmacists, we’re so — we’re trained when we’re students going into trying to get a job or maybe getting into a residency of answering that five-year question. It is a different ball game for me now.

Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely.

Allyson Brennan: So you know, I’m really back to that baby step, you know, of learning something brand new. So ultimately for me, where I find the most passion is the creative piece of this. Now, creativity is going to look different for me, like I said. I feel like I’m coming full circle to the little girl — I used to be an artist. Like I really loved to draw and paint and just be extremely creative in that sense. And there was some point in time, I would say maybe 8 or 9 years old, where something switched for me and I just became more math and science based. But I think what this company is really doing for me personally is opening back up that creative side. It looks at it in a different because I can tap into skills that I now have, right? So for a year from now, I need for me to keep my sanity to be at that place of efficiency. I want to always keep the creative edge. I always want to keep creating. There’s a lot of things I’ve created that just were terrible, you know, that I would never put on the market. But to really better streamline what I’m doing now, and that looks like a lot of things that are not in the lab creating. It looks like very much a business model, so having the right people around me that know that sense, that I trust and they really believe in this little company to grow, that’s a goal for me in a year. A year from now, a goal is to be in a third space because I’ve completely outgrown my house and also to create — still create that need and want. I mean, I’m tapping into a southern market here with my wholesalers and in clinics and my customer base. But it’s to continue to scale that. But I am only one person, and I only have 24 hours in a day, and I need about 30 hours, honestly. So

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, amen. Yeah.

Allyson Brennan: Yeah. You understand. And so I really want to learn how to segregate what that looks like for me but still continue that growth. And it might look like scaling back in pharmacy. I truly, truly hang my hat on pharmacy is what got me here. So I am not that person who is going to be cold turkey leaving pharmacy, you know? No matter how big the company gets, it’s a building block, baby step approach for me to step down as this grows. But I want to do it the right way. I don’t want to do it too fast. That’s very important to me.

Tim Ulbrich: And let me prod there a little bit because one of the things I’m thinking about this as, you know, I believe one of the challenges, especially of a successful business like this or for others that maybe have started a side hustle that grows quickly and can quickly outgrow the time that one has available to dedicate to it, you know, is that one of the risks is that it may not reach its full potential, which matters when you’ve got a really clear purpose and vision, right? Because ultimately, you know, there’s only so many hours in the day, and obviously you’ve got a purpose and a vision and a mission for why you’re doing what you’re doing. You’re not just selling products to sell products. So is that something that hangs on your mind, crosses your mind, that you’re not allowing the business to reach its full potential? Or is that an area, as you’ve kind of alluded to, that bringing the right people around you and putting you in the area that you can provide the most value to the company, that you’re going to be able to continue to see and scale that growth while also making sure the vision and the mission stays front and center?

Allyson Brennan: I mean, great question, Tim. Yes. It’s on my mind daily. Daily. And I would say it’s on my mind daily at this point because starting out, you know, last year or two years ago, you know, when I was literally just a consumer or even just January, taking my first order, I wouldn’t have known what to expect. I, like I said, didn’t go into this without really taking it seriously and growing and pushing. And I’m a hustler. I mean, I am. And that’s something that I understand about myself. So I use that to my advantage now, but I also really, really appreciate and thrive on relationships with people. So those are two things that are not something I do lip service to. They’re a part of who I am, and they’re a part of what this business is. So when I talk about am I doing a service, it’s funny, my dad — I’m very close to my dad. My dad is a farmer. And my dad knows how to grow something from the ground. It might not be skincare, but he knows what it looks like to start and then reach a certain level and then basically at the very end, reap what you sow.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah.

Allyson Brennan: No pun intended, really. So he told me, I would say seven months in, he said, you’re behind and don’t even know it. And that has stuck with me so much because I was like, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. And not even a month after that, it hit a whole new level. A whole new level. So yeah, it’s on my mind every day. I also have to say that I am the type of person, if I want to feel like — so there’s overwhelmed, right? And there’s underwhelmed or bored. And then there’s whelmed. And I think that everyone, everyone kind of thrives at a different threshold. For me, what I thrive is at overwhelmed for a lot of people. But I want to stay whelmed. Does that make sense?

Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely. Yep.

Allyson Brennan: I want to stay plugged in. I want to stay alive. I want to stay with my finger on the pulse of what is happening with this. So to do that, I have to feel like I’ve got a little bit of control with that, which for a lot of people seriously feels like they are spinning out, it is chaos — and it is chaos. I mean, it’s full-blown chaos.

Tim Ulbrich: Controlled chaos, right?

Allyson Brennan: It’s controlled chaos. 100%. So I’m starting to get much friendlier with the idea of bringing the right people in and making a team effort at this. And that is the way that me personally, I think that I can grow this and not feel like what you were saying where I’m not doing it a service because when I’m at work during the day in a hospital, I am 100% there. I am managing people, putting out fires, you know, provider and physician conversations, building formularies. And there is no time for all this. So then it is overwhelming when the minute I leave the hospital, right? So I want it to be something that when I leave, I am managing from that CEO perspective where I’ve got the right team underneath me that I trust, they’re just as invested as I am, but they are the people that will help that grow. And it’s not that they are employees of me. I want them to be a piece of what that is because they believe in it. So that is where I am now of looking at 2021 right now, I’m a baby in a product-based market. It’s the holidays, and I’m slightly terrified of what is coming. I’ve already had double the sales that I had last month at the end of the month.

Tim Ulbrich: Oh, gees.

Allyson Brennan: And we’re on — yeah. And I’m exhausted. And I’m overwhelmed, for me.

Tim Ulbrich: And for our listeners, it’s only Nov. 10 when we’re recording this.

Allyson Brennan: Right.

Tim Ulbrich: So.

Allyson Brennan: Yeah, so it’s — you know, it’s that Type 2 fun where it’s chaos in the moment and you look back on it and you’re like, wow. So I’m extremely proud of it, but I’m trying to stay very aware of what that is and then, you know, come 2021, I need to take a little bit of time to say, OK, we need to take some time, not do the logistics of filling the order, let’s gather my team and let’s look at what this looks like. And that is what is what my goal is for January 2021 so then we can approach the new year with the next products we put out are very smart, efficient products. I’m scaling back a couple of products that are my slowest movers, right? Hiring that SEO management, the marketing and strategic management, that is just not my forte. Hiring on a couple other girls that might not be full-time that I truly believe their attention to detail. And then from there, what happens? I did not see this happening with word of mouth in almost a year. So I really am so grateful but also very optimistic. But I do keep myself in check that if I reach a level that it doesn’t grow beyond that, I need to be OK with it. I need to know that I have exceeded what expectations were, and that’s a tough thing for me to swallow because I am not someone who celebrates the wins all the time because of how I am programmed. I tend to keep going and going and going and let’s keep building without sacrificing what your ultimate mission was in the first place. So I have to tell myself that, that’s a daily mantra that I tell myself, if this reaches a certain pinnacle and it wasn’t what you ultimately thought it would be, you need to be OK with it.

Tim Ulbrich: And I think, Allyson, as an outside observer, just kind of talking out loud as I hear you reflect on the journey and from our previous discussion, I think the business potentially gets bigger and more successful than it already has, which is incredible, and further achieves the mission and vision that you have with the business with less of you. And I mean that in the most sincere, kind way of like, you have built an incredible, incredible thing, but as I hear you talk about scaling up, bringing other people in, and I think putting yourself in the position where the company gets the most value from Allyson that nobody else can do as well, and then those other areas that maybe aren’t areas of interest or strength or that you have other areas of expertise you can bring in. But I think like the relationship piece, that certainly feels like a strength here, setting the vision, making sure you’ve got the right people on the team, on the bus, and bringing other people in that perhaps Emogene grows and will continue to grow and scale with more even balance of your time. And one of the questions I have for you is I know one of the daily struggles I have is pouring my time and energy into YFP because I believe its mission is that important but also balancing the time that I treasure, deeply treasure, with my wife Jess and our four boys. And so I suspect many of our listeners may be wondering what I’m wondering here, which is how do you reconcile how you spend your time and work on work and on the business and what that may mean for time away from family and friends, whether that’s short term or long term?

Allyson Brennan: Oh, man. This is the tough one for me. So we all have our strengths and our weaknesses and our opportunities for improvement. Let’s leave it at that. This is my opportunity for improvement with just who I am as a person. Let’s say — I’ll give you an example. I leave the hospital, it’s been a full day of meetings, committee meetings, building things, process improvements, yadda, yadda. And then my only alone time is the 35-minute drive home. That is it. I am not good at sitting. I’m not good at just listening to the radio, listening to a podcast. I am having business meetings for Emogene & Co. on the phone, I am — I shouldn’t say this — I’m texting and driving — but I’m still multitasking. And then I get home, I’ll pick my daughter up from school, and I will start with that piece of, you need to take — Allyson needs to take an hour, an hour to put the phone away, put all of the productivity away, you need to have a transition time between the first job and the second job, right? And I’ll say, OK, that means that I come in, I’ll lay things down, I’ll unpack the packages, the bulk packages that have come in, I will open them to see what it was today. And that’ll be it. Sometimes — more times than not, and I’m very transparent about this — two hours later, I’m still in the thick of now I’m processing orders, you know?

Tim Ulbrich: Sure.

Allyson Brennan: And what that does is that does take away time from my family. And I have — again, transparently speaking — this year has been a completely rebalancing of what it looks like for our family. I’m not saying it’s been easy. And now, I do have a support system. You know, my husband has supported, now he’s the cook for dinner every night, not me. But ultimately, I don’t want to be at that frequency. I want to be able to manage that better. And that is the ultimate growth for me. I think — I mean, this is just true and this is my psychology background speaking — we are all works in progress our entire lives.

Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely.

Allyson Brennan: And the quicker that you learn as an entrepreneur or as a new person starting out, you give yourself some grace, you take a breath easier.

Tim Ulbrich: Amen.

Allyson Brennan: Instead of thinking that overnight, it’s got to be built. And that’s coming from someone who thought that overnight, it’s got to be built. I don’t — I don’t take the baby steps easily. But I know for my sanity and for the quality of life and for me ultimately to build a business, I have to learn that. That is a muscle I’m learning to flex and to build. So you have to start somewhere and you have to decide what it looks like and then block out all the other noise because the noise is what will get you off the path. The noise is what overwhelms you and makes you stop before you’ve started. And I’ve been there. So the balancing of the family life is something that is a daily struggle and on my mind. I’m getting better at it, and it’s because I know myself well enough now. I know myself well enough now that someone has to physically remove the phone from my hand. I know myself well enough now that someone has to physically take me away for me to vacate. I don’t do staycations. I don’t do weekend-long weekends. I don’t do any of that. That is not who I am, and I accept it.

Tim Ulbrich: The business is right there, yeah.

Allyson Brennan: The business is there. I accept it for me. My husband and I were huge travelers before we had our daughter. And now with COVID, it’s a little difficult. But for me to truly vacate, to let go of everything, to help reset your mind because we need that, I have to be gone. It’s got to be a certain type of trip that still speaks to me needing to be active, but I cannot tap into the things that drain you because you’re wanting to build them. So I think it’s — you’ve got to know how you’re programmed and how you’re built. And you have to just start somewhere and block out noise.

Tim Ulbrich: And that’s fantastic. And I love the self-reflection, the self-awareness. What you said really resonates with me and I think too just giving yourself permission, forgiveness, where you’re not going to get it right. It’s a life-long — I believe as well — it’s a life-long journey, and there’s going to be stumbles along the way. And I think that’s part of the process. And having those around you that can help keep you accountable and being willing to admit those areas where input and help would be valuable. So as we wrap up here, Allyson, where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the work that you’re doing?

Allyson Brennan: Sure. So for me, I have a website that’s available, it’s www.Emogene&Co.com — that’s all one word. And Emogene is interesting, it’s spelled Emogene. It’s an old-school spelling of the name a lot of people are not used to. Again, it pays homage to my grandmother, so Emogene&Co.com is the website. On Instagram, I am @__Emogene&Co__. And then on Facebook, I am Emogene & Co. So I am tapped into those resources all day, every day, if you can imagine from the podcast. And then email address, you can sign up for a subscriber, and you can contact me directly through the website.

Tim Ulbrich: Great stuff. And we will link to all of those in the show notes. And Allyson, this has been fantastic. You know, when I had first learned of the work that you’re doing, I got really excited of kind of the intersection of pharmacy administration, management, and entrepreneurship. And we both have some experiences in those areas. And I suspected this would be a fantastic story to share, and it certainly has. So thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. I wish you the best of luck and success with the work that you’re doing, and we’ll be touching base in the future to see how things are going.

Allyson Brennan: Oh, it’s an honor, Tim. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

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Celebrating 100 Episodes of the YFP Podcast!

Posted on May 16, 2019 by yfpadmin

Celebrating 100 Episodes of the YFP Podcast!

Tim, Tim and Tim celebrate 100 episodes of the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast by reminiscing about their favorites, talking about the future of the podcast, and hearing updates from several guests and pharmacy entrepreneurs that were previous guests on the podcast.

Summary

YFP celebrates 100 episodes! Tim, Tim and Tim talk about their podcast journey so far, what’s to come in the next 100 episodes, and hear updates from guests and other pharmacy entrepreneurs.

The Tims agree that it has been incredible to witness the growth of the YFP community and extend their gratitude to all of the listeners. They find it inspiring to see how people are impacted and empowered by the content on the YFP podcast.

After discussing their favorite episodes, several previous guests come back on the show to share updates on their financial journey and they way the YFP podcast has impacted their lives. We hear from Nick Ornella, Jill and Sylvain Paslier, Derek Schwartz, Blake Johnson, Alex Barker, Blair Thielemier, Adam Martin, Ashlee Klevens Hayes, and Nate Hedrick.

The conversation shifts to why the YFP team continues to publish podcast episodes and what the next 100 episodes will consist of. Tim Baker shares that they are just scratching the surface and have so much more content and stories to uncover. Tim Church says that what motivates him to continue is when he hears stories of the transformation of people from the YFP brand. Tim Ulbrich is excited to continue moving the issue of personal finance and how it affects so many aspects of one’s life. Although the team at YFP are working hard to share the impact of personal finance, the collective community of pharmacists that have formed are where the big changes and movement will be seen.

Mentioned on the Show

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich: Hey, what’s up, everybody? Welcome to this week’s episode, Episode 100 of the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast. Excited to be here in-person with Tim Church and Tim Baker. I don’t think there’s any other way we could have done this than being in person in Episode 100. We’re going to have fun with this episode. We’re going to reminisce a little bit on the journey, we’re going to talk a little bit about what the community means to us. We’re going to talk through some of our favorite episodes, and then we’ve got some special guests coming back on to the podcast, giving us an update and talk about what Your Financial Pharmacist has meant to them in their own journey as well. And then we’re going to finish off this episode talking about what do we see as the future of Your Financial Pharmacist? And what are the hopes and dreams that we have going forward? Now, before we get in and get a little bit sentimental on, you know, what this journey has meant for us, I want to first express I think as I was reflecting over the last few weeks, awaiting Episode 100, I was trying to think of what is one word or one feeling that comes to mind when I think about Episode 100. For me, it was a feeling of gratitude, of gratitude to the Your Financial Pharmacist community that really, without this community and without the support of empowering and helping one another and being so encouraging to one another, none of this is possible. And I think as we think back to starting this journey of the podcast back in summer 2017, it was all about creating a platform that inspired and empowered people to take on the steps that they needed to take towards their journey of financial freedom, whatever that might look like in their own financial plan. And to see some of that beginning to happen, to see the community empowered and helping one another is an incredibly powerful feeling and I think one that is more rewarding for us than certainly anything else. So Tim and Tim, as you kind of think on this journey, here we are at Episode 100, what are some of the feelings that come to mind, Tim Baker? It’s been a fun ride.

Tim Baker: Yeah, it’s really been unbelievable to me. And I think the podcast has really been a great conduit to really push forward I think our vision of what YFP, what we want YFP to be and I think what YFP is really doing for a community of like-minded pharmacists. And you know, I think when we met via Twitter and we were kind of looking at those messages back and forth — maybe we’ll post those on the show notes, you know just kind of the screenshots, which are fairly funny.

Tim Ulbrich: For someday when everybody’s like, what is Twitter?

Tim Baker: What is Twitter, yeah. You know, I guess I never would have thought that like this would have been a thing. So I think that I can’t really express the feeling that I get when we get feedback, either about the podcast or just us speaking, going around and speaking with different pharmacy schools and communities. And it’s just – I said it, it just jacks me up. It gets me fired up, you know, because other people are getting fired up about a topic that can be fairly dry and boring. But I think that that’s what this thing, YFP, is really – and it’s like when we started the podcast, it was me and you. And we’re like, what’s a podcast?

Tim Ulbrich: And will anybody listen?

Tim Baker: And will anybody listen? And I think the answer to that is yes. And you know, it’s kind of figuring that out and like now, it’s kind of taken on a thing of its own. And we’ve had so many great contributions and so many great stories and voices. Like, I’m a fan of the show. And lots of times these days, I’m not part of the show. But I listen and I get inspired by the community. And you know, that’s kind of been in the – it’s kind of poured over to this Facebook group and some of these other avenues that we see interaction and engagement. So if we would have – we’re at Episode 100, so we started the podcast two years ago, essentially, like I never would have thought it would have been this. I thought, you know, I thought we would have a few episodes. I think the average podcast is like eight episodes long or something like that.

Tim Ulbrich: Seven or eight is what I’ve heard.

Tim Baker: And we’re at 100. And I think it’s a credit to you, Tim Ulbrich and really Church, I think being all three of us kind of putting out great content, in my opinion, and seeing that engagement level rise and that needle move is what we talk about.

Tim Church: Yeah, first off, kudos to you guys because I had nothing to do with the podcast in the very beginning. And just taking it from idea and vision and actually making it happen, I mean, I think it’s unbelievable. I mean, when you look back, even the quality and the organization that you guys had to make this happen has been unbelievable. And to watch that grow over time has been really cool. And the opportunity to jump in on some episodes and then now kind of getting to interview some of the guests on the side hustle edition, it’s been really fun to be a part of that. But one of the things that really fires me up too is just seeing how this has been able to get the word out that this topic of personal finance is so important. But it’s not just about, you know, getting your finances in order and growing your net worth but just that feeling of relief, peace, the passion, and of being on that journey and feeling like you can do anything beyond just getting your finances in order. So I think it’s really cool to see that. And I think the pod has just been a great way to get the message out, to get people involved, and it’s resulted in a lot of great relationships over these two years, you know, with pharmacists in the community, with even non-pharmacists, with schools of pharmacies, organizations. So I think it’s just been a fun ride.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and I think that empowerment piece is so important. I mean, I’m thinking back to Tim Baker, when were at APhA in Seattle just a couple months ago, and people coming up to the booth and talking about the podcast. And you know, I think while it’s fun that people recognize the podcast, you know, that’s rewarding for a lot of the work. What gets me more excited is when somebody says with such enthusiasm, “Hey, I listened to this episode and now, my spouse and I or I did this or one step closer,” and they start to light up with energy that they feel like their finally in control of their financial plan. And it may be a baby step, it may be multiple steps, but that sense of empowerment as I think about the vision of where we were a few years ago, that’s what it’s all about. And it’s not about us, it’s about people feeling like that they are in a sense, in control of their finances and that peace of mind that comes with it. And I think that as I reflect, you know, Tim Church, when you talk about kind of not being involved as much in the podcast on the front end, like the work you’ve done with the side hustle series and as we really look back at the journey of 100 episodes, the front 50 really being focused on a lot more content and topics and we’ve shifted and done a little bit more on featuring more stories and side hustles and entrepreneurial types of journeys, we’re going to do a little bit of both going forward, but I think the evolution of the show over time has been a lot of fun. So let’s on that note, talk about favorite episodes because I think it’s fun to reflect back. And I think I have about 95 out of 100 of them memorized in terms of which episode. But I don’t think we could mapped out all the content that we’ve done. It’s been fun as we’ve had people reach out and say, “Hey, I’ve got a cool story.” And it kind of takes on a life of its own over time. So Tim Church, favorite episode? And maybe a runner-up.

Tim Church: So this is very tough. There’s a ton of them. And none of the ones that were my favorite are with me in them. So I’ll throw that out there. But Episode 057, the Power of Automating your Financial Plan, which is one that you did solo, Tim Ulbrich, which was awesome because I did one episode solo, and it’s really hard.

Tim Baker: It’s hard. It’s really hard.

Tim Church: It’s really hard to talk, but you did such a good job. And when I think about that topic, I think it’s so important to not only make it as a convenience factor, but really, that’s one of the most powerful ways to grow your net worth over time and getting that in play. And I think there’s a lot of cool technology out there that you can make it happen. But that, to me, was really powerful. And then my runner-up was Episode 073, How to Determine the Priority of Investing, which –

Tim Ulbrich: The buckets.

Tim Church: Yeah, which I nicknamed “Baker’s Buckets” because we talk about kind of the order in which you put in your tax-favored retirement plan. So that was a cool episode too.

Tim Ulbrich: Awesome. Tim Baker, what about you? Favorite and a runner-up.

Tim Baker: Yeah. I think my favorite, the one that sticks out to me, I really liked the episode with Adam and Brittany Patterson.

Tim Ulbrich: Oh, so good.

Tim Baker: Where, you know, I think Adam was the first episode in Episode 031 where he was just walking us through the journey of paying off $211,000 in 26 months. It’s unbelievable to me that to be able to achieve something like that in that short a time frame is just something that, you know, causes me to really pause and really think about that feat. And it’s impressive to me. And I think we had both of them back on Episode 059 to kind of talk through life after debt and really, the world’s their oyster. And obviously, I know Adam and Brittany. They’re actually clients of YFP Planning. And they’re just fantastic people and great to just learn more about what drives them and really help them to kind of take their journey to the next level. So I think those would be my 1A and 1B. I think my runner-up to that one, I really liked the episodes that Alex Barker, I think we had him on a couple times.

Tim Ulbrich: Three, right, now?

Tim Church: He holds the record.

Tim Ulbrich: Yes.

Tim Baker: He’s one of those individuals that, like I think when he talks, I listen. I think he has a very conversational way to kind of get his point across and his story, and to be honest — I think I’ve told him this in the past is that when I was, you know, thinking about launching Script Financial, now YFP Planning, I needed an education. I needed to really understand more about the clients for which I was to serve, and at the time, I didn’t have a lot of pharmacy clients. But I really wanted to plug into that world and see what makes pharmacists tick, what are they really looking for? And in Alex’s podcast was actually one of the ones that I reviewed and listened to. And I really like it. And the fact that we had him on our podcast so many times, and he’s a big supporter of our brand and we of his, you know, I think what he’s trying to do with Happy PharmD is just commendable. And I think I really enjoy having him on the podcast.

Tim Ulbrich: Great recommendation — sneaking in three, by the way, with the 1A, 1B. We’re going to let it slide.

Tim Baker: Yeah, you know, I’ve got to have some more.

Tim Ulbrich: You know, I would add — certainly I agree with everything you said about Alex. I think he’s a thought leader, I think he stimulates great conversation, great discussion, which we need in our profession. You know, the Pattersons, what’s so cool when I think about the journey that they’ve had, they are now out there doing education.

Tim Baker: Yeah.

Tim Ulbrich: You know, they were at their state association right now in Alabama. So I think back to the compounding empowerment, like they had such a transformation. Now they’re sharing that journey to help others along that way. And that is awesome. I mean, that fires me up.

Tim Baker: It’s inspiring, yeah.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s the exponential factor in terms of allowing the message to get out there and really having a true impact and change. You know, for me, I think that — this was really, really hard. I think about a lot of these episodes, and one of the things I’ve never talked about on the show before is I think selfishly, by doing so many of these interviews, being able to talk to these people is just an amazing benefit. It’s so inspiring and there’s stories that stay with me. They make me better as a person, as a father, as a business owner. And as I had to really think about which one of these, what rises to the top for me is Episode 060 with my colleague at the Ohio State University is Breanne Porter. And she talks so much about her lessons learned through accruing $224,000 of student loan debt. But I think why that episode stands out to me is her transparency and her honesty of what she didn’t know and what she now knows and how she feels throughout that journey. And I think that while we have featured so many debt-free stories along the way, what I really like about that is she’s not yet to the point of being debt-free. And she’s in the grind, she’s in the weeds, she’s working through it. And I think that’s going to resonate and will resonate with so many people as well. The other one that stands out to me, which I’m excited we’re going to have her back on the show in Episode 109 is we had Carrie Carlton on Episode 009. And she talked about her journey beginning to build a real estate empire. And spoiler alert: That empire has expanded. But real estate’s a passion of mine going forward and I think will be a great asset for many pharmacists to consider. And that opened up for me just a whole new area to think about of how she’s really leveraging her skill set in a very different way from pharmacy but is diversifying her income and building up assets in other ways. So those are our favorite episodes from the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast. We’d love to hear from you about what you thought your favorite episodes were and of course, content ideas you have for us going forward, always welcome it. [email protected]. At this point, we’re going to bring back some of the guests that we’ve had on the show before, some of our favorite episodes and stories. We’re going to ask them, we have asked them to give a quick update of their story, where they’re at. And so let’s hear from those guests right now.

Nick Ornella: Hello, this is Nick Ornella from Episode 079 of the YFP podcast. Since being on the show in December, my wife and I submitted the final payment on her student loans, so over $37,000 paid off in a little over 10 months. We took a two-week trip to Spain and Morocco to celebrate and also to celebrate our 1-year wedding anniversary. And after that little spending splurge, we started saving again, this time hopefully to start a family here in the near future. I’m still working full-time as a pharmacy manager at Walgreens, and I’ve been working hard on my blog, the Young Professional’s Guide to a year off. And as YFP celebrates its 100th episode, YFP had an impact on my own journey because Tim Ulbrich was there for me way back in 2016 when I decided to take a year-long sabbatical from my pharmacy career to travel. I found the YFP website and blog and reached out to Tim, and he was there to give me advice and encouragement. He was a big reason why I decided to hit pause on my career and to pursue my dream of traveling for a year. And that year ended up being just an incredible experience and one of the best years of my life. So I’m forever grateful for Tim and YFP for the help and inspiration that he gave me. And I think the work that YFP is doing is important because it helps young pharmacists get out of debt, become financially independent so they can live more intentional lives and not be controlled by debt obligations. You know, it allows people to take bigger risks like starting a new business or becoming an entrepreneur or doing something crazy like I did and quitting their job for a year to pursue a lifelong dream. So a big congrats to Tim and the YFP team on 100 episodes. Please keep up the good work!

Jill Paslier: Hey, it’s Jill and Sylvain Paslier from Episode 050. We wanted to give you a little update on what we are up to now. We’re still budgeting every month, and it feels really great to be saving money instead of sending so much back to the bank for loan payments. Our current spending plan has a little more room for fun stuff like traveling and enjoying our hobbies like playing music. I’m also trying to be a resource for the local college of pharmacy to help encourage financial literacy education for the students. I’m also facilitating Financial Peace University, which is a Dave Ramsey course, at our local church.

Sylvain Paslier: Being in control of our finances and becoming debt-free has given me peace of mind to actually leave my 9-5 job and launch my own business. And I think it’s working well because I could focus on the work instead of worry about the money. I even started my own podcast.

Jill Paslier: I think YFP is a great resource, especially for students and new pharmacists as we are learning how to manage our own personal finances. Many of us make the transition from making very little money to making significantly more, and I think it’s important to make this adjustment wisely so that we have a purpose and a plan for our money. I also really love the online YFP community, such as on Facebook. We can ask questions and have peer support as we continue to learn about managing our money together.

Sylvain Paslier: While there are plenty of resources out there on wealth management and personal finance, finding a specific community of people that you can relate to makes for meaningful connections and increased motivation and progress, which is great about the YFP community.

Jill Paslier: Thanks for listening. Bye!

Derek Schwartz: Hi, this is Derek Schwartz from Episode 014 of the YFP podcast. My podcast aired in September of 2017, when I was still on my journey to becoming debt-free. And my journey started in late 2014, when I made my first student loan payment, and I had over $180,000 in student loan debt to tackle. 40 months later, in early 2018, I made my last student loan payment ever. I paid off $180,000 in debt in 40 months, and looking back on it, it was such an incredible time to not do things with money because I sacrificed every dollar that I could to go into student loans. Every penny I could pinch would go back into it. And that’s the secret. That’s what you’ve got to do. I tell people, if you’re really serious about paying off your debt as soon as you can, you have to budget and squeeze out every dollar and cent you can to go back onto the student loans. Trust me, it’s worth it being on this side. Since I’ve been debt-free, I’ve been able to save money for an emergency fund, I’ve increased contributions to my retirement accounts, and this summer, I’m looking to purchase my first home. All of that couldn’t have been accomplished without paying off my student loans first. And one of the reasons I’m really excited about the YFP community is it’s a group of other pharmacists that are looking for the same goal. They’re looking for financial stability. They want to get their student loans paid off. They want to save money for retirement so they can have some. And it’s such a great community that brings in all the questions, you can get all the answers there, and it’s been amazing to have been a part of it since Episode 014 of my podcast. Happy 100 episodes of the YFP podcast! And I look forward to the next 100. Thanks, everyone.

Blake Johnson: Hey, guys, this is Blake Johnson from Episode 082 of the YFP podcast. Just a quick update on where me and my wife are. We just finished up rehabbing our eighth rental property with our business partners. And that was exciting for us because in April, that marked one year of being in business, and we were able to close, rehab and rent out our eighth property. So we’ve made good strides here in our first year, and we hope to continue to do that in the following years. However, at this time, our market is getting flooded with investors, so we’re planning on slowing down the purchasing a bit and make sure we invest wisely and purchase at the right price. Outside of that, we continue to invest in our Vanguard funds, specifically, our BTSAX mutual fund and also invest and max out my wife’s 401k. This summer, we’re going to enjoy a little trip, bigger than usual. We’re going to go over to Europe and spend a week in Paris and Prague. We both like looking at architecture and just kind of soaking in the environment and culture over there. So we’re going to enjoy that. That’s just a quick recap on where we’re at. But I just want to congratulate the guys over at YFP for celebrating its 100th episode coming in. These guys are making a huge difference, and the reason why is as pharmacists, we just don’t receive, in most schools, financial matters. We spend so much time learning about clinical decisions and learning about all of the different chemistry and pharmacology of drugs, but we never have any education on finances. And that’s a problem because we’re in a profession where it’s great, we come out making six figures, but we have no education on how to invest that wisely. And the guys at YFP are making sure that we know how to do that. When we graduate, we can take two roads. We can go on one road and just spend it all and never invest it and when we retire, have no money. Or we can take another road where we learn to live on less than we make and invest it wisely. And the guys at YFP are laying out a great road map on how to do that. They’re teaching people how to invest it wisely, how to protect ourself with insurances and make sure you know who to talk to if you don’t understand the stock market and how to invest your money. So guys, congratulations on your 100th episode, and I hope down the road as we look back 20 years from this that we see pharmacists that are retiring with lots of savings and lots of money saved up. That way, they can continue to give of their time and also of their money, just like we give in our profession now. Congratulations, guys, and I hope to see more good from you.

Tim Ulbrich: So thank you to those guests that came back on the show, took time to give us an update on your story. We appreciate your contribution, obviously, to the podcast and the community. And at this point, we’re going to hear from some of the pharmacy entrepreneurs out there that have been just incredible collaborators and partners for us over at Your Financial Pharmacist and in large part, have allowed us to be successful in the work that we’ve been doing.

Alex Barker: Hey, this is Alex Barker, the Happy PharmD founder, where we help pharmacists create fulfilling careers and lives. I had the privilege of being on Episode 007, 038 and 092. 100 episodes! Congratulations, YFP team, all of you Tims. Few podcasters reach this milestone, so this is great. But what should be celebrated more is their mission because the more pharmacists who pursue financial freedom, the more impact our profession can make. Because I believe what stops most from pursuing a dream, a goal, a great ambition, something risky, is the excuse of not having enough money. But financial freedom makes that excuse go away. And in turn, it frees up pharmacists to pursue greater and bigger things. Look, I was able to pay off $200,000 in debt. And that has financially freed my family to live our dream. And this summer, we’re actually celebrating by going around the country in a road trip. This is something that we would never be able to do if we were financially burdened. And it may seem like a long way for you to go. But trust me, we thought the same thing when we first started this journey. You can do it. Financial freedom is possible. Cheers to the YFP team and all you financial freedom-seekers.

Blair Thielemeier: Hi, this is Blair Thielemeier, founder of Pharmapreneur Academy and author of “How to Build a Pharmacy Consulting Business.” I was a guest on Episodes 039 and 089 of the YFP podcast. And as they’re celebrating their 100th episode, I was reflecting on the difference that YFP is making in pharmacists’ lives in helping them create a solid financial foundation on which they can build a business. So we all know that the job market is somewhat shaky these days. Being able to build a side hustle in pharmacy consulting is literally changing pharmacists’ lives. And having a solid financial foundation just gives you the ability to take more risks in your career and do something you truly love. So I just wanted to say thank you to all the Tims for creating this amazing podcast and doing this work in helping pharmacists change their financial lives.

Adam Martin: Hello, this is Adam Martin, founder of the Fit Pharmacist, speaker and author of both “Rx You: The Pharmacist’s Survival Guide to Managing Stress and Fitting in Fitness,” and “Scripting Your Success: How to Jumpstart Your Career,” as well as host of the Fit Pharmacist healthcare podcast. I was a guest on Episode 091 of the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast, and as Your Financial Pharmacist celebrates its 100th episode, I want to congratulate the Tim team on this monumental achievement. Seriously, job well done, guys. I believe that Your Financial Pharmacist is making a difference in our profession because as pharmacists, we are trained to perform root cause analysis to medication error review. This translates to finances perfectly, as stated in their book, “Seven Figure Pharmacist,” as root cause analysis unveils that financial problems, regardless of the specific situation, stem from the five behavioral biases that impact financial decisions: overconfidence, hyperbolic discounting, loss aversion, status quo and herd mentality. In the book, Tim and Tim share their experience with all of the pharmacists and students they have helped to overcome financial burdens through their work. Overall, they help us to overcome the most common financial pharmacy pitfalls, keeping us away from financial fitness through the work that they do. Congratulations, guys, on all you have given through investing in our profession. Wishing you great success on the interest you have compounded throughout the years. With gratitude, Adam.

Ashlee: What’s up, listeners? Ashlee here from RxAshlee. I was on Episode 095, just a couple weeks ago, with Tim Ulbrich. And I had so much fun. And when I found out that you guys are celebrating your 100th episode, I was like, oh my gosh, I have to congratulate you. I know what an accomplishment that feels like. I understand the hard work, the blood, sweat and tears that go into building a podcast, building a platform, creating such an awesome, valuable show for the pharmacy profession. I believe the work that YFP is doing is critical because of the need that we are going through in pharmacy. So many of us are graduating with student loans. So many of us are graduating with all of these questions of how do I invest in myself? How do I prepare for my future? And all three of the Tims are really meeting us there. They’re giving us what we need and that support, tips, advice on how to strategize and making sure that we can live our best lives inside the profession and, most importantly, outside. So thanks again to all the Tims, to all the YFP community, you guys are really the future of this profession. And I love, love, love supporting you. Thanks again, and congratulations! I am always going to be one of your No. 1 fans.

Nate Hedrick: Hi, this is Nate Hedrick, founder of the Real Estate RPH and frequent guest of the YFP podcast. Just wanted to take a second to congratulate Your Financial Pharmacist on their 100th episode. I really feel like YFP’s making a difference in the pharmacy world. They’re providing some much-needed financial education. Especially as someone who graduated pharmacy school with literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan, it’s been really nice having them as a resource as I work toward paying off that loan and ultimately, trying to achieve financial freedom. Looking forward to partnering with you guys even more in the future, and I’m excited to see what you have in store for the next 100 episodes. Congratulations, guys!

Tim Ulbrich: So to those pharmacy entrepreneurs, thank you so much for taking the time to provide your input and know that we, the collective Tims, have so much respect for the work that you’re doing. You’re an inspiration to us each and every day, each and every week, and it’s certainly fun to be a part of this community of pharmacy entrepreneurships that are, I think collectively helping one another and hopefully paving the ways for others that want to go into this area as well. So I want to end this episode in us having some conversation about why do we keep going? So as we think about episodes 101 through 200, you know, what’s the point? What’s the purpose? What’s the content? And why do we continue to go on this journey? And so Tim Baker, as we think about the future and where we’re heading and the mission of YFP and really, I think that we believe we’re just kind of getting started on this journey, what’s the future look like? Why do we keep going from here on?

Tim Baker: Yeah, so you know, I think sometimes it’s hard with the day-to-day, you get so busy with what you’re doing and obviously working with clients and things like that it’s sometimes hard to slow down and reflect, which is a little bit — I don’t want to say it’s hypocritical, but what I try to do is force clients to do that on their journey and with their financial plan and really take stock of where we’ve been and where we’re going. But you know, there’s a few times recently — obviously with this episode that you think about just where the heck we were a couple years ago and I think where we’re at. But I think more recently, you know, when we were at the APhA conference in Seattle, we had a booth there, and I wish Tim Church was there with us because he would have ran through a wall after that experience because he would have just been so fired up about I think the buzz that we saw there. And literally, I don’t even know how long we stood there just meeting different people that walked by our booth. But it could have been two or three, four hours, I have no idea. It felt like two minutes because you just talk to people — and I think one of the things that’s really crazy about the podcast is that you feel — people speak to you as if they know you. And maybe they do because they’ve heard us so much on the podcast. And you know, I don’t take that lightly. And I think for me, it’s just like you said, seeing people fired up about a topic that they maybe weren’t fired up about it two years ago. And I think about all of the content that we have out there with the podcast and the guides and the blog posts and things like that, but I really think that we’re only scratching the surface. I think that there’s so many things that we have yet to uncover, and I think the scope of what we’ve talked about it broad, but I think even doing a deeper dive or even expanding our scope and our discussion. And I think wanting to be thought leaders, you know, in and around the profession of pharmacy I think is important to us and really, ask those good questions. So I just get really, like I said, I get really fired up about thinking about where we still I think need to venture and go. And like I said, it’s been a great ride. Like I kind of reflect on my own personal journey, and I think about how grateful and how lucky, really, I am to have come across you guys, you know, Tim and Tim. And I think without you guys, like none of this is really possible. And I think like when we start to go down the path of saying, hey, we’re doing this podcast and we’re doing financial planning and the book and all this stuff, and I think the mindset from Day 1 is can we row this ship in the same direction, this boat in the same direction and one Tim looking out for the benefit and the interests of the other Tim has just been, it’s been an honor, really. Not to sound cheesy, but I know I’m exactly where I need to be because none of this feels like work to me. It feels like I am perfectly positioned to be doing what I’m doing because I enjoy working with pharmacists as a financial planner as much as I enjoy trying to figure out the business and where we’re going to go with YFP and, really, the direction that’s still ahead of us. So thank you guys. That’s my thought.

Tim Ulbrich: Tim Church, what gets you jacked up about the next 100 episodes?

Tim Church: Yeah, it’s been a really fun ride. And I think that the one thing that really gets me fired up — and you guys kind of mentioned that already — is just the transformation. There’s been a number of people that have said as a result of interacting with our brand, whether it’s the podcast or some other form, that a change has happened for the better and that they’re in a better position than they were before they heard of us, before they listened to some piece of content, before a story was told. And so I think there’s a lot more people out there that need to hear some of these stories to get inspired and motivated because I think it can have just an incredible amount of change and movement across everybody in the profession. I think one of the other things that really fires me up is when schools and organizations reach out to us to come in and really be able to cater to a larger group. And I think that’s really a cool thing when we’re able to make a bigger impact in that way. So I think those things are really interesting and motivating to me to kind of keep things going.

Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely. And I think one of the things we’ve talked a lot about this weekend together is while certainly we are running a business, I think what gets us more excited is actually moving the needle on this issue. So as we all know that personal finance is such a thread of every part of your life that if your financial house isn’t in order, it impact lots of things. It impacts marriages, it impacts relationships, it impacts your quality of life, your satisfaction at work. And I think really moving the needle with helping on these transformations and helping people put their financial house in order is really what we want to hopefully continue to do and look back and say, ‘That was a really fun journey in doing it.’ And one of the things I think we’re super passionate about is this education around personal finance and financial literacy needs to be in every college of pharmacy across the country. And we’ve begun to pave that road, but we have some exciting plans hopefully to continue that into the future, but making sure that every graduate is coming out with some basic skill level and understanding of what they need to do as it relates to their financial plan. And I should say that the only way we’re going to move the needle on this issue is not through the three of us running as fast as we can. The way we move the needle on this issue of personal finance and everything that comes with it is through the collective community of thousands and thousands of pharmacists saying, we care about this topic and we want to do this a different way than maybe it’s been done before. And that’s what it’s about. It’s about empowering the community to collectively move this issue forward. And we’re not going to do it as the three of us. It needs to be this group as a whole. And so I want to also thank — you know, I think just to echo Tim Baker’s comments — I mean, without the three of us, I think the collective power of what we each bring, you know, this wouldn’t be where we’re at. So I think us working together and running the same direction is where we need to go with the community alongside of us. I think we also would be remiss if we didn’t thank Shea, Andrea and Jess for — this takes a lot of time. I think we’ve been spending three or four hours this afternoon putting together a couple episodes, and that means sacrifice, it means time away from family. And that’s not easy. And I think for them, allowing us to pursue our dream and our passions, you know, I think it goes without saying that we love you guys and certainly appreciate what you do. And Caitlyn and the entire team at YFP, Caitlyn, Paul, Frankie, Tom…

Tim Baker: Christina.

Tim Ulbrich: Christina, I mean, as we think ahead to the future, hopefully more on the team as well. We’re so grateful for your buy-in to the vision, your commitment to what we’re trying to do. And again, it’s about the team, and the team is really I think moving everything in the same direction. So let me wrap up by saying to the YFP community, we thank you. We’re grateful for your continued support of the work that we’re doing. We’re excited to be here at Episode 100, but I think we’re more excited about what lies ahead for the next 100 and beyond.

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