From Unemployed to Successful Pharmacy Entrepreneur
On this episode of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast, Tim Ulbrich, co-founder of Your Financial Pharmacist, interviews Dr. Blair Thielemier, a successful pharmacy entrepreneur. She is the founder of BT Pharmacy Consulting, creator of the Pharmapreneur Academy and the Elevate Pharmacy Summit and author of the Amazon bestselling book How to Build a Pharmacy Consulting Business. Tim and Blair talk through pharmacy entrepreneur opportunities she has discovered through her journey from losing her job as a clinical hospital pharmacist to building a successful online business that provides pharmacists with efficient systems to managing a sustainable model for clinical services to improving patient outcomes and achieving the highest standards in the practice of pharmacy. They discuss what makes her tick as an entrepreneur, what changes she is seeing in the profession of pharmacy and how having your personal financial house in order is integral to having a successful business.
About Today’s Guest
After graduating with her Doctor of Pharmacy from the University of Arkansas for the Medical Sciences in 2011, Blair unexpectedly lost her full-time income as a clinical hospital pharmacist in 2014. She was asked to serve as an independent Medication Therapy Management Consultant Pharmacist, a niche position that was entirely new to her at the time but would be instrumental to her future success and entrepreneurial journey. For the past three years, Blair has been focusing on elevating the profession of pharmacy through advanced clinical services. In 2015, she founded a pharmacy consulting business BT Pharmacy Consulting, LLC and currently trains and coaches other pharmacists looking to start their own consulting businesses through an online e-course and membership site at the PharmapreneurAcademy.com . In April 2017, she launched the first online pharmacy conference in the industry. In 2018, based on the success of the first summit, she hosted a five day encore event in partnership with the National Community Pharmacists Association’s Innovation Center. The Elevate Pharmacy Virtual Summit featured pharmacists of various backgrounds practicing pharmacy at the peak of the profession. She is also the author of the Amazon bestselling book How to Build a Pharmacy Consulting Business.
Summary
Blair shares her story of losing her full-time clinical hospital pharmacist job to building successful online businesses. In 2014, while pregnant with her first child, Blair lost her job. Not knowing where to turn, she first took a hard look at her family’s finances to determine how much they truly needed to live and where they could cut their budget. From there, Blair contacted local independent pharmacies in her community to see if they needed her to fill in any shifts. She was given an opportunity to take over cases in a clinical program which she first declined. Blair felt like she wasn’t an expert enough in MTM to take on these cases. She thought she needed further board certifications or a master’s degree to be successful in this line of work. After accepting the position the second time, Blair discovered that MTM consulting was her passion and knew she needed to begin a business in northeast Arkansas and southeast Missouri.
Blair decided she would initially take on 3 or 4 coaching clients. She found challenges with each client as they were building their own businesses and was able to work through them. These experiences ultimately led her to develop her Pharmapreneur Academy course.
In working with clients to help them grow their businesses, Blair sees that pharmacists need to see their own value before they can pitch themselves confidently, that pricing your services appropriately is incredibly important so customers can see the value they are receiving, and that skills and trainings should be added as they are needed instead of adding them in case they are needed. Blair also shares about the need to bring more services elements versus products to clients.
Blair discusses other opportunities and platforms that are becoming available for pharmacists to work in, like genetic testing, the extremes of beginning the journey as an entrepreneur, the biggest mistakes she sees pharmapreneurs make, and much more.
Mentioned on the Show
- LendKey
- BT Pharmacy Consulting
- Pharmapreneur Academy
- How to Build a Pharmacy Consulting Business: Your Rx for Finding Freedom and Loving Your Career by Blair Thielemier, PharmD
- How I Built This Podcast with Guy Raz
- Small Passive Income with Pat Flynn
- Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck
- Elevate Pharmacy Summit
Episode Transcript
Tim Ulbrich: Hey, what’s up, everybody? Welcome to Episode 093 of the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast. This episode has been a long time in the works where I have an opportunity and privilege to interview Dr. Blair Thielemier. So quick bio on Blair: After graduating with a doctor of pharmacy from the University of Arkansas for the Medical Sciences in 2011, Blair unexpectedly lost her full-time income as a clinical hospital pharmacist in 2014. She was asked to serve as an independent medication therapy management consultant pharmacist, a niche position that was entirely new to her at the time but that would be instrumental to her future success and entrepreneurial journey. The past three years, Blair has been focusing on elevating the profession of pharmacy through advanced clinical services. In 2015, she founded a pharmacy consulting business, BT Pharmacy Consulting, and currently trains and coaches other pharmacists looking to start their own consulting businesses through an online e-course and membership site at pharmapreneuracademy.com. In April 2017, she launched the first online pharmacy conference in the industry. And in 2018, based on success of the first online summit, she hosted a follow-up event, a five-day encore event in partnership with the National Community Pharmacists Association Innovation Center. The Elevate Pharmacy virtual summit featured pharmacists of various backgrounds practicing pharmacy at the peak of the profession. And she’s also — in case that wasn’t enough — the author of the Amazon best-selling book, “How to Build a Pharmacy Consulting Business.” Blair, welcome to the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast.
Blair Thielemier: Thank you for having me. Excited to be here.
Tim Ulbrich: This has been a long time in the making, so I’m excited to get you on the show. And I was planning, I went way back to 2016, shortly after I started Your Financial Pharmacist. And you may remember, you wrote an article for us on the blog, “Four Ways for Pharmapreneurs to Improve Their Financial Equation.” And we’ll link on that, but our discussion is really going to build on that. And I’ve been following along your journey and genuinely have great respect for the work that you’re doing that’s having a positive impact on the profession and, I believe, allowing pharmacists to pursue the dreams that they have to be the best clinician and the best businessperson that they can be. So thank you for your contributions, and thank you for role modeling that, even for my own business. I appreciate it.
Blair Thielemier: Thank you. I think it’s important, that’s something we don’t get a lot of in school, right, is how to promote our businesses, how to promote ourselves and market our services in the right way. So I thought it was something very important to help other pharmacists with.
Tim Ulbrich: All the fun stuff, right, that we don’t get in school.
Blair Thielemier: Exactly. I love it.
Tim Ulbrich: So as I was preparing for this episode, I was going back through the website, I was recalling my own experiences just following you and your business growth, and I thought, what a journey that you have been on. And so I want to start by taking our listeners back to 2014, just a few years after you graduated from UAMS, you’ve got your PharmD, you’ve been out for a few years, you’re working as a clinical hospital pharmacist. And you lose your job. What are you thinking at that point in time? What are the thoughts that are going through your mind?
Blair Thielemier: One of the main ones is “I am 6 months pregnant, I have a baby on the way, how am I going to pay for this?” I was planning on an 8-12-week maternity leave. Now, is that going to be completely out the window? Pretty much, how am I going to replace this income? But you know, before I could even start looking at that, Tim, I had no idea how much income I needed to replace. And I think that is an important part to start with in my story is literally, the first thing that I did after I lost my job was I went and signed up for Mint.com and Personal Capital, all these different sites and started trying to figure out, OK, if I’m going to make the bare minimum to get by, what does that bare minimum look like for me? And really, drilling down on our expenses, exactly how much we needed to bring in each month to keep our lifestyle pretty much the same.
Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and we’re going to dive into that here in a little bit because I think as you and I have talked about before, getting your personal financial house in order is so critical to being able to approach business with confidence, to being able to take the risks that you need to take. And I think building a healthy business is a lot of that depends on your own personal finance. So here we are, you’re at 2014, you all of a sudden lose that full-time income. Do you think, as you reflect back on your journey today — and we’ll talk about the work that you’re doing here in a little bit — but do you think you ever get to the point of developing the businesses you started, taking the risks you started if that wouldn’t have happened back in 2014?
Blair Thielemier: Absolutely not. No. I think I was interested in entrepreneurship, but I really thought it was going to be something outside of pharmacy. I don’t think that I realized this opportunity existed until it happened. So when I lost my job as a clinical hospital pharmacist, I was pregnant, so I was just picking up shifts here and there at local independent pharmacies. So I was hustling on my student loans before we decided to have a baby, trying to get all those paid off. So people kind of knew me in the area as someone they could call with extra shifts. So I had gotten my name out there as a relief pharmacist for independent community pharmacies. And pretty much I just started calling them up and saying, “Hey, you know, I’ve got a lot of days open here if you need any vacation time.” And that’s how it grew. So I started doing that, picking up relief shifts, and to their credit, these pharmacy owners, they wanted to help me. I mean, they just welcomed me with open arms and really made up the difference in those shifts. So in working back in community pharmacy, they were like, “Hey, you’ve got this clinical background. We’ve got these clinical programs that we have to do now called CMRs, and we’d really like for you to start doing them for us, start taking over our MTM program and figuring out how to see these patients.” And I’d never done it before, so the first time they asked me, I said no because that’s scary, right?
Tim Ulbrich: Sure.
Blair Thielemier: You’re billing Medicare for a service that isn’t a product. And so luckily, I had kind of a mentor of mine, someone I had worked with in the past who she was doing some independent consulting doing MTM. And she helped walk me through my first few cases. So as I started doing more and more cases for these pharmacies, I fell in love with it. And I thought, this is what I need to do. I need to grow my MTM consulting business in northeast Arkansas and southeast Missouri because I’m licensed in Arkansas and Missouri. And so that was my focus. After the baby came and she was doing wonderful, so really in 2015, I’m thinking, OK, I’m growing this business. How am I going to do it? I know. I’m going to put up a website because if you put up a website, people are just instantly searching for you.
Tim Ulbrich: Or make a business card, right?
Blair Thielemier: Or make a business card and just hand that out to everyone you see, and then your business will be successful, right?
Tim Ulbrich: Right, right. Yeah.
Blair Thielemier: Well, the problem with having a website is if you don’t have a plan to attract traffic to your website, it’s pretty much like that business card that’s probably in your glove box in your car, and no one’s seen it. So what I did, I was sharing information about MTM on my website and on my blog, which was BT Pharmacy Consulting. And if you had seen it back then, it was really, it was focused on people hiring me. So I was sharing this —
Tim Ulbrich: I remember that. I remember that.
Blair Thielemier: Yeah. So I mean, it came about very organically because I was trying to build my business here locally, and as I was doing that, I was writing these blogs and sharing them on LinkedIn, and then other pharmacists started contacting me like “What are you doing? What is MTM consulting? How can I do this? I’d love to get out from behind the bench, even if it’s just a few days a week.” And so I decided at the end of 2015 I would take on three one-on-one coaching clients, other pharmacists, just to see if I could help them. And very quickly, we identified several challenges to building their businesses, and we were able to work through those. And that experience with those three one-on-one coaching clients is what I decided to turn into the e-course at the Pharmapreneur Academy.
Tim Ulbrich: So much to unpack there. And I appreciate you sharing that. And you know what jumps out to me as I think about a lot of pharmacists out there today that I’ve heard from that are frustrated with either, you know, hours getting cut or frustrated finding a position, and you know, thinking back to your journey in 2014, you find yourself in that position, and at that point in time, you have a mindset decision to make, right? Is this going to be a woe is me? Or is this going to be an opportunity to build relationships, leverage the relationships you had, take some initiative, which you did, see a problem that needed to be solved and work through that? And obviously, as you know in building a business, you take one step, that leads to another step, that leads to another step. But often, we get hung up in kind of the overall vision, which can be very overwhelming. One thing I want to ask you about, though, that stuck out to me there is that you said no at first. So when you talk about those other pharmacies that you were working with, you said no at first. And you alluded to the Medicare reimbursement and maybe not fully understanding or appreciating that at the time. But were there other reasons you said no at that point in time? I mean, were there things that you felt like confidence-wise or self-limiting beliefs or things that you didn’t feel like you had the tools to begin with the business? I mean, I know you worked through that, but what were the reasons that you said no to begin with?
Blair Thielemier: Oh, absolutely. And this is what I also found my first coaching clients struggling with too. So one of the big ones was not feeling like I was the best person to do this job. So I felt like I wasn’t expert enough in MTM. I felt like I needed a Master’s in MTM or a board certification in ambulatory care or just whatever I could think of, I’m thinking that’s my comfort zone. I mean, I know that I can get through school, I can pass these courses, and I can rack up this education. And I do, I’m big on personality tests and stuff. So I’m an INTJ, and the trap that I myself get stuck in a lot is the neverending pursuit of more knowledge. Like I need to know everything about a subject before I can move forward with it. And really, what the mentor, Ashley, was able to help me with in walking me through those first few cases is just seeing how I already had the tools and the skills that I needed. And you know, and then when I went and started looking at, OK, now I want to build this business, I think I need to go back to school and get an MBA because you can’t own a business if you’re not an MBA, right? And so it was just — it’s been a constant struggle for me to, you know, to view myself as expert enough to be able to offer these services. And so it’s something I see other pharmacists struggling with. You know, all the time, they ask me, “Should I go and take this course? Should I go and take this certification?” or whatever. And I’m like, “Well, what are you doing? What does your client say you need? What setting are you working in?” So really, now, I like to say, I add skills and trainings as I need them not in case I need them. And that’s been a huge learning curve for me.
Tim Ulbrich: I think you are so spot-on there. I think for many pharmacists, myself included, we tend to be learners by nature. Right? And that’s who we are, and I think there’s a tendency to feel like we need to acquire all this knowledge, and I think if we’re honest with ourselves, many times, that’s an avoidance of wanting to really step into something that we can think we could do, whether it’s business or take on some risk or whatever, and it’s an easy out to begin to continue to pursue. And I would point our listeners to — I’m sure you’ve listened to the “How I Built This” podcast on NPR. And many of those successful entrepreneurs and business stories, many of them don’t have formal education. I would say a vast majority of them do not. What they saw was a problem that needed a solution, and they took a risk to do that. They were confident in their ability, but they weren’t perfect in their ability. They made mistakes, they had self-limiting beliefs like we all do, but they took that step. And I think that’s an important piece for many of our listeners to think of as they’re considering their own journey. So one thing I want to ask you, Blair, is that I think there’s many I’m sure that are listening to this podcast that have some business aspirations to take a unique talent that they have to tap into some unsolved problem or maybe a process that could be done better or differently, or maybe there’s others listening that are feeling stuck in their job but don’t yet have an idea formulated for what their business may be, whether that’s a side hustle or a formal business. And I think when hearing and seeing your story in hindsight and as I introduce you and hearing about all the success you’ve had with the academy, your consulting work, the book, the summit, on and on, that can feel overwhelming to people that are just beginning. What advice would you have to somebody who’s just starting or beginning on that path to overcome that anxiety and overcome that comparison with others and to just take that first step in getting started.
Blair Thielemier: Well, first of all, I’m a huge proponent of a side hustle or building some kind of business as an additional income stream. I think we’re living in the gig economy, and I see pharmacy consulting as a way to leverage the skills and stuff you already have because a lot of people come to me and I get emails all the time. It’s like, “I was afraid I was going to have to leave pharmacy because it’s just not for me. But that was before I knew that consulting was an option.” So whether it’s consulting, whether it’s real estate, whether it’s creating your own podcast about personal finance, whatever it is, whatever your passion is, I think it’s about looking at the value that you can provide the person in front of you. So you know, one thing I like to say is you first have to be sold yourself on your value in order to pitch your services confidently.
Tim Ulbrich: Amen.
Blair Thielemier: So unless you’re running a charity, you do have to charge money for your services, and I think selling yourself is an art. So talking about, oh, I’ve got this, this, this and this, like certification or letters behind my name, well, nobody cares about that. But they care how you can help them achieve whatever goals or results they’re trying to get to. So when you’re talking about say you’re pitching a physician’s office, you’re going into a physician’s office saying, “I’d really like to come in and see some of your patients. There’s this thing called pharmacy consulting that they’re embedding clinical pharmacists into primary care settings all across the country. Doctors are loving it, it’s helping with burnout. The financial guys in the office are loving it because I’m going to be helping with quality metrics and meeting your MACRA and MIPS quality measures, helping you get better reimbursement, no late penalties and all this,” but you’re not saying, “I can do this, this, this and this. I learned how to do motivational intervene, I learned how to — I’m a certified diabetes educator, blah blah blah.” You’re not talking about what you can do. You’re talking about what they need.
Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely.
Blair Thielemier: So when you’re thinking about promoting your services, whatever it may be, think about what the result the other person wants to get. So I say if you’re going into that physician’s office, you don’t have a relationship with them, go in with a list of questions because you can’t offer them a solution until you know what their problem is. And I think that’s pretty similar to and can be applicable to most businesses is your marketing message needs to be tailored directly to the needs of the person that you’re hoping to serve.
Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely. And I think, you know, I’m thinking of as you were talking there, you know, Pat Flynn and his podcast, “Smart Passive Income,” and his focus is on providing value, right? You have to know what you’re bringing to the table. You have to know what the problems are before you start to present solutions. And just to build off of what you said, Blair, around pharmacists charging, I think one of the things that I often see is pharmacists tend to undercharge for their services because they don’t yet fully believe in the value of what they bring to the table. And second to that, they don’t fully account for all the expenses that are involved with providing something. They stop often at their salary and say, this is what I make per hour, and this is the value I bring. I think that gets to some of the business aspects of the plan. I’m sure you see that way more than I do with your clients.
Blair Thielemier: Yeah, absolutely, because you do need to take into account, well, I’m going to have to be paying for some other stuff that are benefits given in my job like liability insurance and maybe even health insurance if you’re looking at doing this full-time. So there is a difference in what you’re going to charge as a consultant just to cover those basic expenses. But I also believe in — especially for cash-based services — you’re also pricing yourself and your services based on the results that you’re getting for the person. So you know, for example, when I started looking at what do I charge pharmacists for the academy? It’s what could building a business do for your life in terms of financial freedom, in terms of financial flexibility? And then I want to price it appropriately so that the customer also sees the value because if I was giving this stuff away, then people would not be as invested in, OK, you know what, I’m going to do this. I’m going to take this advice and move it forward. And that’s the same for our patients. If I’m doing a genetic consult for somebody, you know, I charge my full rate because I want them to take it seriously, to be fully invest in the results and what I’m telling them, and then also to commit to making the changes that I suggest in my recommendations.
Tim Ulbrich: So Blair, shifting focus here a little bit, we have — as you very well know — a healthcare system that is moving towards value-based care and payment models. But largely, what I’m seeing outpatient pharmacy — not everywhere, but is really stuck still based on a payment-for-product model. We seem to be caught in this chicken and the egg situation where we want to evolve the role of the pharmacist and be doing non-dispensing care activities and leveraging their expertise, but we seem to be in this vacuum where the payment mechanism don’t support these efforts for a variety of reasons. Simultaneously, we’ve got a growing number of graduates, pharmacies that are cutting their hours, we’ve got automation and technology and Artificial Intelligence and states that are expanding the roles of technicians and other healthcare providers that, to be frank, have prescribing rights but are available at a cheaper cost than a pharmacist. What do you as a thought leader in this space, what do you make all of this? And where do you see you role in addressing some of these problems?
Blair Thielemier: So the new models of care, that’s exactly the reason why I created the Elevate Summit because I wanted to share stories and the experiences of pharmacists who were doing something differently and succeeding in adding a more service-based product into their toolkit, so to speak. So you know, traditionally, pharmacy has always been a product-based business. And I think as we’re seeing reimbursements decline, we need to bring in those service elements because they can be profitable, you can charge cash for a lot of these things, and there are people all across the country that are doing them very, very successfully. So what I wanted to do with the Elevate Summit was to highlight some of these models, you know, one this year I’m in the process of recording interviews for the 2019 summit. This year, I’m interviewing a pharmacist with an all-cash business model — a pharmacy owner with an all-cash business model. I’m interviewing one who brings in an embedded nurse practitioner to do MedSpa stuff. So they’re doing like chemical peels and Botox in the pharmacy. And others, they’re doing diabetes education, they’re doing travel vaccines, they’re doing consultations on health and wellness. There’s so many different things that we can provide. And then to answer your point about there are other people out there that can provide similar services that may be cheaper than a pharmacist. So I hear this all the time. Why would a physician hire a pharmacist when they can just hire another nurse practitioner or physician’s assistant and the billing is so much easier? I mean, that’s a fantastic point. So you know what? I asked one of our physicians that’s joining us on this year’s Elevate Summit that exact same question. And what he said was, “They’re trained in the same way that I’m trained. A pharmacist is trained in a completely different way than the way I was trained.” So what he saw the value of the pharmacist is as bringing in that different perspective in looking at it at a completely different angle whereas the nurse practitioner or the PA, who were trained in the same way, are looking at it kind of from the same lens as the physician. So I think we need to own our expertise in the area of medication management and optimizing therapy. And I also think there’s a lot of opportunities — you know, everybody’s into genetic testing now. It’s like for Christmas, everybody gets like one of the —
Tim Ulbrich: It’s the cool thing to do.
Blair Thielemier: It’s the cool thing to do. One of my friends told me that her aunt and uncle went to a party — they’re from New York — and they went to a party, and the party favor like an Ancestry DNA kit.
Tim Ulbrich: Oh my gosh.
Blair Thielemier: So they all did their DNA swabs and then they had another party later to come back and everybody looked at their results, and it was all fun and games. And I’m like, OK, but did you know that you can actually use that information to make medical decisions about your health? I mean, you can use that information more than just like, oh, that’s cool, I’m 20% Irish or whatever. You can really dig in a lot deeper, and so that’s one platform that I want to promote more this year personally is getting out there and talking about the value that pharmacists can add in helping decipher some of these genetic test results. So I started — after my son was born, I’ll share this quick story. So my son was born in December of 2017, and when he was born, the neonatologist had him under the light and they were looking at him and she was holding him on his belly and kind of looking at the base of his spine, and he has a very, very deep sacral dimple. And my daughter had one too but not near as deep as what his was. And the neonatologist said, if I can’t see the bottom of this, we’re going to need to do an ultrasound to make sure that it’s not open. And so you know, I told her, I said, “My daughter had the exact same thing. She’s fine. There was no neural tube defect or anything like that.” And his was closed too, thank goodness. It was just much, much deeper than hers. So then I’m thinking, I took folic acid my entire pregnancy. What’s the deal? I had actually taken it from the time Aven (?) was born until the time Hoyt (?) was born, so I knew that it wasn’t because I wasn’t taking folic acid. But when I went and did my — it was one of the direct-to-consumer DNA kits, it came back that I had a high risk of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, which actually exists on both sides of my family. My maternal grandmother has Parkinson’s, and my paternal grandmother died eventually of Alzheimer’s. And so in kind of digging a little bit deeper, I started looking at I’ve got this mutation in MTHFR that prevents me from being able to metabolize folic acid into the fat form, and so pretty much the folic acid I was taking wasn’t doing anything for me. But it was also, I went and got a blood test because I’m a guinea pig. And I like to — before I started taking methylated folic acid or anything like that, I wanted to know, what were my levels? What was my homocysteine level? And being able to start tracking that. So I went through with a fine-tooth comb, looked at all of my genetic markers, took them to my doctor. I was like, here’s the test I want. You can imagine. He was a very good sport about it, he was like, OK, I’ll try to figure out what these are and how we’re going to code these for your insurance. And so we did that, and you know, it came back that I’m a homozygous variant for the MTHFR mutation, and you know, I think now how close was my son or my daughter to having a neural tube defect because even as a pharmacist, I didn’t know that this existed.
Tim Ulbrich: And that’s why that party needed a pharmacist there to help them interpret their results. Right? And take some action.
Blair Thielemier: Exactly.
Tim Ulbrich: No, I think that’s a huge opportunity, and I’ve been following the work that you’ve been doing there, which is exciting. So for a minute, I want to talk about the value of having a sound personal financial situation to be in a position to start and grow a business. And I know this is a topic that you talk about with your community members and those in the academy and those that you’re coaching with the belief that really, a financially healthy business is built off the foundation of a financially healthy individual. So what does this mean for you and as you’re working with clients? You know, obviously, I’m sure for everybody, getting rid of all of their debt and everything is not necessarily realistic. What do you use in terms of the advice of getting yourself in a sound financial position that will allow you to take the risks and go confidently into the business aspirations that somebody has?
Blair Thielemier: Well, one question I get all the time is, how quickly will I be able to replace my salary? And so that question is a little bit difficult to answer because it’s kind of like, well, how much do you need? Not how much are you making right now.
Tim Ulbrich: Exactly.
Blair Thielemier: Not how much are spending that maybe isn’t on the necessities. But how much do you absolutely need? And that’s why I said when I lost my job, kind of the first thing that I went to was starting to track our budget because, Tim, this is embarrassing to admit. I didn’t know how much I made each month.
Tim Ulbrich: Yeah. Hey, I was there.
Blair Thielemier: I had no idea.
Tim Ulbrich: Yep.
Blair Thielemier: I knew what each paycheck said, but I had never really sat down and been like, OK, this is how much income I’m averaging each month. And I definitely didn’t know how much I was spending each month. If I didn’t even know how much — I knew a roundabout, but I didn’t know exactly how much I was bringing in each month. And I definitely didn’t know how much I was spending each month. So whenever I was able to take a hard look at those numbers and figure out, you know what, I don’t need to go shopping on Saturday afternoon because it’s raining and there’s nothing else to do and that kind of stuff that I was able that year that Aven was born, I lost my job, to take a $40,000 pay cut and be fine. We were able to now live well below what we were actually spending once we sat down and took a look at it.
Tim Ulbrich: And I think that is great advice. And we’ve talked so much on the podcast about budgeting to be able to determine what are those essential expenses, what to cut if you need to cut, and I think that’s huge for those thinking about some business ventures. They’ll say, OK, what do I actually need to live off of rather than what am I currently making or what am I currently spending each and every month. A couple things I would just add to that is that I think there’s two extremes on this that I’ve seen with the business, you know, some that say, I’m just ready to jump in, and I’m not worried about these aspects of my personal financial situation. And then the other end that says, I want to have everything lined up. I want to be completely debt-free, have a fully funded emergency fund, be on my path towards retirement, all these things taken care of before I jump into business. And you know, I believe that there’s probably somewhere in the middle that is reasonable for everyone. So maybe you look at, OK, I’ve got a plan for debt repayment, I’ve got a solid budgeting process in place. I’ve got an emergency fund. I’ve got the basics around insurance coverage while I’m working towards these other things, but I at least feel like I have a solid foundation so that I can jump into this business with confidence. And I think that allows people to approach their business in a more confident way and take the risks that they need to be taking. Blair, what are maybe the one or two biggest mistakes that you see new pharmacy entrepreneurs making? I mean, what are kind of the common traps that either fell into, probably I fall into, that you often see people that you coach going into? You maybe alluded to one with the idea of the website and feeling the need to start there. But what are some of the other common things that you see?
Blair Thielemier: So I think, you know, you mentioned not having — like some people have to have all of the information before they move forward. And definitely that was something that I probably should have been a little bit more diligent about when starting a business. I knew that I needed to register my business, I needed to have an LLC and all that. But I had no idea how to deal with taxes or any of that kind of financial stuff. So I am a big fan of investing in people that can coach you and help you through the processes like this.
Tim Ulbrich: Agreed.
Blair Thielemier: I ended up — so after my first year in business, I wasn’t doing quarterly estimated taxes or anything like that. I ended up owing about $17,000 in taxes. And it was something that I wasn’t prepared for because I really had no idea how to calculate that. So whenever I say I made just about every mistake in the book, I mean, it’s true. But we were able to come through that and, you know, now I know and hopefully I can help you guys avoid some of these pickles like that. But that would be definitely a big one, which is investing in hiring either a coach or some kind of professional to help you through that. I think once you have a business, you’re past the TurboTax, Do-It-Yourself thing, for me anyway because I will say whenever something is not my strength. And taxes and all of that is definitely not my strength. So I think it’s part of that is, you know, investing in your business. I think you can start a business relatively cheaply, but I don’t think your goal should be to spend nothing. So a lot of times, we’ll spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on our pharmacy degrees and then after that, it’s like I’m not going to pay $50 to do that CE. You know? And it’s like, I think professional development is a huge part of being successful, and this is also going to be a topic you’re going to hear me talk a lot more about this year is professional, personal, career development and what does that look like in order to do it in a way that, like I said, you’re not adding skills in case you need them, you’re adding them when you need them.
Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely.
Blair Thielemier: So as an entrepreneur, I value my time more than it costs to hire someone who is a professional in that space that can just come in and download into my brain, here’s everything you need to know. And if they can do it for me, even better.
Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely. And I think you’ve got to value your time and put a dollar amount to that. And that’s something that I am guessing like you and many other entrepreneurs struggled with at first, but I’m coming to appreciate more and more each and every year the value of depending on people that know exactly what they’re doing, they’re an expert in the space, and they can help accelerate business growth because it’s an ROI on your investment. So let’s talk about legacy for a minute. You know, I look at your vision statement, Blair, on your website, is powerful. It says, “In the next five years, helping hundreds of pharmacy businesses add millions of dollars in revenue and to serve them as an advocate for clinical pharmacy services.” And I think that it’s fair to say that the work that you’re doing today is going to be left behind for others to build upon and for your kids to admire and say, “Yes. That was my mom that did that.” So my question for you is, what do you want your legacy to be?
Blair Thielemier: Oh, I love that. Great question. So you know, it’s definitely — it is about my kids seeing me doing something that I’m passionate about, that I love, that I truly believe, this is my purpose is to bring together all this stuff that I’m interested in, present it to pharmacists as here is a viable financial model for really loving your career again. And you know, we’re being faced with a lot of challenges. You mentioned them earlier, just job market saturation and then AI coming in and maybe we won’t need to be doing the dispensing anymore. So then what are we going to do if not dispensing? We need to create these opportunities for ourselves, and a lot of people say, oh, we need provider status to do that. Well, you know, physicians have provider status, and they’re not getting reimbursed the way that they want to, so I’m pretty sure we’re not going to be reimbursed the way we want to, even if we did get provider status. So I think the opportunity there is to come up with unique things that maybe even exist in the market but that aren’t being done the way you would do them as a pharmacist like the genetic testing, like the health and wellness consulting where you’re counseling people on, oh, if they’re going to use CBD oil, make sure it’s not interacting with some of these other medicines or if they’re going to use this or that supplement or herbal medicine. And it’s a huge opportunity for pharmacists to get into the preventative medicine space, and so my legacy, I really, I want to bring about these ideas for new opportunities. But I think more importantly, I want to give you the skills that no matter what you’re doing, no matter what you’re selling, what business you’re in, you can feel confident in going out and marketing your services and selling them in a way that feels authentic. You know, that’s something I hear a lot of pharmacists say, “Well, I don’t want to feel like a salesperson. I don’t want to feel like sleazy, trying to push my product on people.” And that’s kind of why I said, well, first, before you sell your product to anybody else, you have to believe in it yourself.
Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely.
Blair Thielemier: You have to have bought into it 100%. And I think that this thing that I have can solve your problem and then you present it like that. You know, here’s your problem, here’s what you’ve told me you need, here’s the solution that I’ve come up with that I think will help you achieve what you just told me your issue was. And then when you introduce your price point, it’s kind of like, well, you know — it should be a stretch, your price point should be a stretch for whatever so that they can see the value in it, but it should also be something that they’re like, yes, absolutely. I get what you’re saying. That makes sense. So giving pharmacists that business acumen, I guess, is really my ultimate goal so that whatever it is they’re selling, they can do that confidently and then they can grow their business confidently.
Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and I think there’s that compound effect where as you’re training and teaching other pharmacists, they’re going out there and impacting patient care lives in a way, in a far greater number and a way than you could ever do yourself. And I love watching that and how you’re inspiring others. And I would also add, I think part of legacy for me — and I think you share this from what I’ve been observing your journey — is the legacy of our children. And I sense a passion for you in teaching your children about entrepreneurship and business and probably at a young age, just the role modeling, but I think that’s something that I’m passionate about, my wife and I share that. And I’m hopeful that that’s something that we can collectively do and thinking about how do we teach and train the next generation, you know, the skills that maybe we didn’t get ourselves or didn’t feel like we received through our formal education. So a couple last questions here that I want to make sure we give our audience insight into. Starting a business — and I alluded to this earlier that we often see the glamour, we see the glory — but you and I both know that it is absolutely exhilarating, but it’s also hard and it’s a grind at the same time. And there are moments that you can feel overwhelmed, there’s moments that you can feel unfocused, there’s moments that you feel like are stressful. And you go through those times of excitement and obviously, you remember exactly why you’re doing what you’re doing. What do you do — what is your process to kind of bring yourself back to that reason of why you’re doing what you’re doing when you’re feeling overwhelmed or unfocused or you’ve lost that focus temporarily. What do you do to re-engage? How do you keep yourself motivated along the way?
Blair Thielemier: So I was thinking about this the other night. So I try to do a meditation almost every night, just to kind of clear my head and think about exactly what you just said, why it is I’m doing what I’m doing. And I’m a very self-motivated person, but I think it’s because I have sat down and I have put together these goals. Like you mentioned, you know, the vision statement on the website. I put that on there to remind myself and to remind others what is my ultimate goal. So do you have your goals written down? Do you know what you’re working towards? A lot of times — so I work with a lot of independent community pharmacies as well as independent consultants who want to go in physicians’ offices. But they will not have kind of a guiding goal. So take health and wellness, for instance, if your big goal is to become a health and wellness destination, you know, maybe some of these other programs, it’s OK to say, “No, I don’t think that’s right for my audience at this time.” And that’s how I do a lot in the academy now is looking at so is this right for my audience? Is this program going to help them move forward with their goals? And then ultimately, advance the profession of pharmacy and help them add millions of dollars of revenue to their businesses? So I think it really is about going back to those goals and staying focused. So in the beginning, it was hard. I mean, but I loved it. I would get up early Sunday mornings and stay up late at night after my daughter went to bed. And I truly enjoyed what I was doing and working on my business. Whatever you choose, make sure whatever business you choose to go into that you’re cool with talking about it all the time because I really feel like I could talk about MTM and entrepreneurship all the time and never run out of words and run out stuff to talk about. And that’s the fire and the passion that you need to be able to bring to your business in order to have the endurance because I mean, it is a long game. That’s why I tell people, don’t build a website unless you have a long-term plan to bring traffic to it. Or don’t start a podcast unless you have a long-term plan to continuously upload episodes.
Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and that passion comes through in what you do. And I think it’s contagious and really allows the success that you’ve had and the academy members and drawing people to you. So before we talk about the academy and the virtual summit here to wrap up, how about a book and/or a podcast recommendation for our audience? Something that’s inspiring you, that you’re pulling from, that’s motivating you, that you think would be valuable to our community.
Blair Thielemier: Oh, so next up on my read list — I haven’t read it yet — is “Mindset” by Carol Dweck.
Tim Ulbrich: Heard of that.
Blair Thielemier: Yeah. So I’ve listened to her on a couple podcasts, and I really like what she’s doing. So mindset is a huge, huge issue for people. So one of the things that held me back in the beginning was I was afraid to one, to market myself as an expert, so to speak, in the field. And then two was I was worried what other people would think of me. I would put out a video, and instantly be like, should I take that down? You know? Because I was worried, what will my colleagues think? What will my husband’s friends think? What will all these people think? And you know, and occasionally, people would say to me, “Oh, I watched your video, but I didn’t understand what you were talking about.” And so, I would just kind of, “Oh yeah, you know, well it’s because it’s for pharmacists. You’re not my target audience,” obviously, but I think having the mindset of like I’m going to do this for me, whether or not anyone else is listening, that was really kind of the what I needed to hear in the very beginning, and I heard that from my business coaches and my mentors of saying, “You know what, just keep doing what you’re doing. You’re going in the right direction.” Even when other people were saying, “I don’t think pharmacists would pay for that. I don’t think they’re going to join your course. I don’t think they’re going to pay a monthly fee for business coaching from you.” And I still hear it. I still hear people say, “Oh, I think your course should be lower so students can join,” or “I think your course should be higher.”
Tim Ulbrich: They would be saying the same thing if it were a third of the price, right?
Blair Thielemier: Exactly. So it’s a lot of like just listening to yourself, and if you’re comfortable with it, I think just pick a direction, pick a number, and go with it. You can always change and reiterate later. But I think that was a big part. So the “Mindset” book by Carol Dweck I think if anyone wants to chat with me about it, I’m going to have lots of time for reading here coming up as we’re headed to South Africa, so it’s going to be a very long plane ride. So I’m getting my Audible and my podcasts cued up.
Tim Ulbrich: I look forward to reading it. Mindset is my personal mission for 2019 for all of the reasons that you mentioned. And I think similar to you, as I look back to my business journey and even just personal life, you know, whether it’s places stumbled, mistakes that I’ve made, if I wouldn’t have confidently taken the step to put myself out there, I would have never made those mistakes, which every one of those has been a learning opportunity, which has resulted in something else being better that I can bring better value to our community. So I think having the mindset around how you may go into certain situations, mistakes that you’ve made and looking at those as opportunities to continue to grow your business. So let’s finish up here, the Elevate Virtual Summit coming up May 8-12, 2019. Our listeners, I hope you’ll be there, great content planned, as Blair mentioned. You can get your free ticket by registering at ElevatePharmacySummit.com, and we’ll make sure to link to that in the show notes. And Blair, just for a minute, the Pharmapreneur Academy, I referenced that in our introduction, our listeners can go to YourFinancialPharmacist.com/academy, and they can use the coupon code YFP50 to get $50 off their first month. But tell us a little bit more about what our audience can expect if they were to engage a little bit more in that academy.
Blair Thielemier: So the academy, as I mentioned, is the e-course I built based on our one-on-one coaching program. So I created the MTM consulting program as the base of the academy. Since then, I have continued to build on new trainings and new modules. We go from very beginner stuff like should I get an LLC? Where do I find liability insurance? You know, how do I cold-call my potential clients? OK, they said yes. Now they want me to implement annual wellness visits in a primary care clinic. What do I do next? Or OK, now I want to do cash-based genomic consulting. What should I do with that? So the e-course, it builds on itself, and it goes from the beginner stages up through much more advanced content. So it’s a self-paced e-course. You can log in, get instant access. If you use the coupon code YFP50, you’re going to get $50 off the first month. And so you can cancel that anytime. It is a recurring membership, but we don’t hold anyone hostage. So you come in, go through the e-course, use the forums. The forums is where, you know, a lot of our members say is their favorite part of the academy because they ask questions, they get feedback not only from me but from the other pharmacists in there, so we’ve got about 150 pharmacists that are in the academy. You know, it’s not like a forum if you’re part of one of your national organization’s forums that you ask a question in the forums, it may or may not get answered. Or you may not get the answer you were actually looking for. These forums are monitored every single day by me and my team, and you are guaranteed to get an answer from one of us. So that’s where we kind of do our daily group business coaching. And then we also have a monthly member call the last Tuesday of every month, it’s a live Zoom call, like a video conference call that everyone who’s a current academy member can jump on, sometimes we bring guest experts like you, Tim, in to talk about –
Tim Ulbrich: Looking forward to it.
Blair Thielemier: Yeah, to talk about like financial, getting your financial foundation under you or in January, we brought in a sales coach, the sales maven Nikki Rausch, so whatever it may be, we kind of sometimes bring in guest experts, sometimes, we just do a Q&A, sometimes, I’ll do a special training. It really depends on feedback from the academy members. And that’s something that I’m big on. I probably ask for feedback maybe too much, but I really want to continue to build and grow the academy, and I do that by listening to what our members are telling me that they need.
Tim Ulbrich: Awesome. So again, that’s YourFinancialPharmacist.com/academy. YFP community members can get $50 off their first month by using the code YFP50. Blair, this has been fantastic. I’ve enjoyed this, looking forward to collaborating in the future. And thank you so much for your time and coming on the show.
Blair Thielemier: Thank you for having me.
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