side hustle

YFP 259: Building a Medical Writing Business with Megan Freeland

Posted on June 9, 2022November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

Building a Medical Writing Business with Megan Freeland

On this episode, sponsored by Insuring Income, Megan Freeland, PharmD, talks about talk about her career path in medical writing, the types of health content writing that might interest pharmacists, and how she created the Health Professionals to Health Writers program.

About Today’s Guest

For the longest, Megan’s ultimate career goal was to become a public health pharmacist working for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She accomplished that goal on multiple occasions — supporting divisions related to medication safety, health communications, and emergency preparedness and response — but realized she was missing the opportunity to apply a creative flair to her writing career.

Megan set out on her own to build a health content marketing company. Through StockRose Creative, LLC, Megan supports innovative health organizations, helping them use the power of words to reach their target customers and clients and turn them into raving fans. She uses a strategic approach to develop culturally-relevant content for digital health companies and health information websites. At the same time, Megan runs the Health Professionals to Health Writers program, which helps pharmacists and other health care providers learn how to replace a portion of their income through freelance health content writing.

Earlier this year, Megan also began lending her talents to an in-house communications team for the nation’s leading provider of sexual and reproductive health care and education.

When she’s not writing, reading about writing, or teaching others how to write, she’s binging podcasts and new music, scoping out the latest Peloton apparel drops, and laughing hysterically with — or at — her two young children and husband.

Episode Summary

In this episode, YFP Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, is joined by Megan Freeland, a pharmacist, entrepreneur, and health content writing expert. Megan is the creator of StockRose Creative LLC, where she supports health organizations, helping them use the power of words to reach their target customers and clients. In this discussion, Megan shares how she unexpectedly found herself with a career path in medical writing after accomplishing her ultimate career goal of becoming a public health pharmacist working for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Megan explains the types of health content writing pharmacists may be interested in pursuing and why many individuals get started in health content writing. She also shares how she saw the opportunity to create the Health Professionals to Health Writers program, helping pharmacists and other health care providers learn how to replace a portion of their income through freelance health content writing. Throughout the episode, listeners will discover how Megan’s passion for public health has been pivotal in the decisions that brought her to her current position. From volunteer work in healthcare centers, fellowships at the CDC, and sitting on the SNPhA board to an unexpected pregnancy, opportunities with the FDA, and more, Megan educates the listener on the art of life management while pursuing your dreams.

Key Points From This Episode

Understanding Megan Freeland’s career by looking at her interests and background in pharmacy.
How to apply knowledge and experience in pharmacy to the public health system.
What opportunities Megan took to further explore public health training and experience.
The hard journey she took to end up at her dream job in the CDC.
Her passion and motivation for the intersection of public health and writing.
The influence Megan’s family and community had on her passion for public health care.
Understanding the types of medical writing and how to pursue one.
A guide to beginning your career as a freelance health content writer.
Megan’s ideas, goals, and motivations behind StockRose Creative.
A look into how Megan has grown her career on LinkedIn.
Advice for those starting to pursue their content writing careers.

Highlights

“All of the opportunities that I was taking part in to try to enhance my candidacy for being in a public health space, all of those roles and opportunities involved writing in some way.” — Megan Freeland, PharmD [0:04:33]

“People are thinking about their own experiences and their own limitations when they are thinking about what you are or are not capable of doing. Even though they have the best intentions, those ideas and those preconceived notions get projected onto you.” — Megan Freeland, PharmD [0:15:53]

“It wasn’t just my individual, nuclear, or immediate family’s health conditions that I was aware of, but we were all aware of everybody’s business. I saw how important it was for people to have good healthcare and good health information.” — Megan Freeland, PharmD [0:19:03]

“I think about the environment, information, and access to healthcare and good health information, how critical that is to the health of communities — as a black woman in the world, that level of awareness that comes with that lived experience as well.” — Megan Freeland, PharmD [0:19:37]

“You are not necessarily a reflection of the people who are trying to learn from you.” — Megan Freeland, PharmD [0:39:36]

“Your life is your own, no one else is responsible for what you do. No one else has to live with your decisions or your choices — know that you are deserving of having the professional trajectory, having the life, having the career, having the whatever that you decide you want.” — Megan Freeland, PharmD [0:42:37]

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 Megan Freeland, pharmacist, entrepreneur, and health content writing expert. Megan is the Founder of StockRose Creative, where she supports healthcare organizations, helping them use the power of words to reach their target customers and clients and turn them into raving fans.

A few of my highlights from the show include Megan talk about how she unexpectedly found herself in a career path in medical writing after accomplishing her ultimate career goal to become a public health pharmacist working for the CDC, the types of health content writing that pharmacist may be interested in, pursuing and the main reason that individuals get started in this field and how she saw an opportunity to create the health professionals to health writers program where she helps pharmacists and other healthcare providers learn how to replace a portion of their income through freelance health content writing.

Before we jump into the show, I recognized 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 that 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 Megan Freeland, Creator of StockRose Creative.

[SPONSOR MESSAGE]

[0:01:42.8] TU: 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 contract from disability carriers or learn more about these topics, visit insuringincome.com/yourfinancialpharmacist. Again, that’s insuringincome.com/yourfinancialpharmacist.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:02:34.4] TU: Megan, welcome to the podcast.

[0:02:36.0] MF: Hello, Tim. I’m so excited to be here with you, thanks for having me.

[0:02:39.8] TU: I too am excited. We had a chance to connect several months ago and I’ve been excited to do this interview to share your story, your entrepreneurial journey with the YFP community. Let’s start off by hearing about your background, where did you go to pharmacy school, and what ultimately was some of your interest in going into pharmacy in the first place.

[0:02:57.6] MF: Great question and thank you for orienting me with this question, because whenever I get that background question, I’m like, “Where do we start?” I went to undergrad at Emory University and then I stayed in Atlanta for pharmacy school to attend Mercer University. When I went into pharmacy, I did not necessarily go into the field with the intention of practicing in the traditional sense.

When I was still in undergrad, I was trying to decide whether I wanted to pursue public health or whether I wanted to pursue pharmacy and I was encouraged by family members, my mom namely, to go into pharmacy because she was frankly disappointed that I decided that I did not want to go to medical school anymore and her thought was, “Well, at least, if you go to pharmacy school, you still come out with a doctorate degree.”

So I listened to mom and I chose to go to pharmacy school but I still had that public health bug in the back of my mind and so, my goal was to figure out, “Okay, how can I apply the experience, the knowledge that I gained through the pharmacy program to a public health setting?” How can I become essentially, a public health pharmacist when I leave?

Obviously, didn’t have a whole lot of guidance or examples to look to because at that time and even still now, there weren’t a whole lot of people who were kind of going down that public health path with the pharmacy background. So what was very much four year period of trial and error and kind of figuring out where I landed and how I could make that happen and what I noticed was that all of the opportunities that I was taking part in to try to enhance my candidacy for being in a public health space, all of those roles and opportunities involved writing in some way.

So, once I noticed that pattern, I decided, “Okay, well, this is kind of naturally the course that I’m going along, so I’ll just keep doing this and see where it takes me.”

[0:04:56.8] TU: It’s really interesting, Megan. I think it’s rare that someone goes into the pharmacy degree with a thought of a non-traditional career path these days. One example that I am passionate about is that my hope is that we can begin to see the PharmD education as being more of a gateway to many different opportunities and you know, not just one or two different pathways which folks may typically associate with.

So I think that’s really neat to hear that someone entered in with that non-traditional path and let me ask you a follow-up to that then, as you went into pharmacy school with a specific interest in public health, which isn’t a surprise, right? Emory University is known for their public health training, what specific opportunities did you look for in pharmacy school to further explore and build upon that interest?

Was there an organizations, was there specific internships, or rotations you’re able to get more experience, tell us more about how you’re able to foster that interest during pharmacy school?

[0:05:51.3] MF: Yeah, I love that question. And yes, that was not coincidental at all, actually, I’m originally from Columbia, South Carolina, and in the 9th grade, my magnet program, we took a field trip to Atlanta, and during that trip, we toured Emory and we also toured the CDC, which is right next door to Emory. So in the ninth grade, I decided, when I go to college, I’m going to Emory University and I’m going to work for the CDC.

So, it kind of was like a full circle situation but when I got to pharmacy school, I noticed that a lot of the extracurricular opportunities, the clubs, the programs, they were all pharmacy-related and so for me, I felt like, “Yes, I could do these things but will they really help me in the public health setting?” I’m going to have the degree, that takes care of my pharmacy qualifications.

I felt like anything that I was doing outside of going to class and taking tests needed to be more specific to public health in some way and so because of that, I was actually looking for opportunities outside of my school’s ecosystem because those were not what I felt like I needed to increase my candidacy for public health.

I looked at community organizations, I ended up volunteering at a center called, The Feminist Woman’s Health Center in Atlanta. They do a lot of education around sexual and reproductive health and I ended up volunteering on their health and education training committee for all four years of pharmacy school.

I looked into the CDC to see what types of internships or fellowships they offer that pharmacy students were eligible for. So, the summer after my second year of pharmacy school, I completed a CDC fellowship, it was called the Emerging Infectious Diseases Fellowship and it lasted for nine weeks, you were paired with a mentor, you actually worked on CDC teams, worked on a project, presented, everything.

I traveled to Panama for an epidemiology investigation in a Panamanian hospital. Those are like two of the core examples but any other time that I was engaging in extracurriculars, I made sure that they were related to public health in some way. One more that I just thought of, I was a part of SNPhA, the Student National Pharmacist Association and I participated in some of their community service projects because again, those are more public health facing educational opportunities.

I always had that lens and that perspective whenever I was doing anything outside of going to class, taking tests, and trying to get my degree.

[0:08:34.8] TU: I love the intentional and I hope if we have any students listening, they go back and rewind and listen to that because the message I hear there is that sometimes we got to get outside of the walls of the college or pharmacy to explore other opportunities and again, the PharmD can be used in so many different ways and I think your story here is a great example of that but sometimes it takes some creative thinking and it takes some initiative to see what those opportunities may be.

Tell us more one of the things you shared to me before is that you know, working for the CDC was a dream for you and you’re ultimately able to achieve that. Tell us more about what happened right after you graduated from pharmacy school. So it was during school, you identify this growing interest in public health, you see the connection to writing and then you have an opportunity to do an industry, fellowship as well as some work with the CDC thereafter, tell us more about those experiences.

[0:09:22.0] MF: Yeah, as I was going through pharmacy school and kind of collect these experiences that I hoped would be helpful for me in the future. I was also trying to think about what the immediate step post-graduation would be. My goal was to go straight back to the CDC after graduation. Those are the opportunities that I was most excited about and most intentional about but it wasn’t working out.

I wasn’t getting any opportunities that would be timely for me to start right after graduation and so I said, “Okay, if I can’t get to the CDC right now, what are other opportunities that I could take part in that were still public health-related that would still help me get back to CDC down the line?” So I looked into industry fellowships and I was specifically attracted to one program in particular because it had an FDA rotation as a component of the fellowship.

I graduated in 2015. So, at that time, it was one of the only industry fellowships that had any type of public health rotation as a part of it. It wasn’t like I had all of these choices. I did apply to many more programs because I would have made it work but this one, in particular, was of interest to me because of the FDA component and so that’s the fellowship program that I ended up getting accepted into.

Ironically, I got pregnant unexpectedly during the first year of my fellowship and so I never actually made it to the FDA rotation of the program. I was in the middle of my second rotation when I found out I was pregnant. What happened at that point was that I was located in New Jersey, the portion of my fellowship I was in at the time was the medical information rotation for Johnson Scientific Affairs, which is the pharmaceutical arm of Johnson & Johnson.

I was in New Jersey and I’m like, “Okay, well, I need to move back home” where my now husband but boyfriend at the time was and we have to get ready for it to be parents and so, I’m like, “Well, that also means I need a job because I can’t do my rotation from Atlanta” you know, maybe if it was 2020 or 2021, things are different now, maybe that would have worked out but at that time, basically, we just brought my rotation at one year instead of two.

I went back to the CDC drawing board, I was looking for fellowships, I was also applying to a whole bunch of other jobs mind you because like, this was survival at this point in time. It wasn’t about my preferences, I just needed a job in Atlanta but I was also looking for CDC opportunities and I saw this opportunity that was in the same department that I had completed my fellowship program in during pharmacy school.

I reached out to my mentor from that fellowship to ask her if she knew anything about the position, she wasn’t the hiring manager but she knew the person who was and so she connected me with that person, I went through the application, the interview process, everything and I got that position. I ended up back at the CDC, back at home in Atlanta, preparing for, to become a parent, and a lot of this story that I tell, it’s important for me to say that like, it sounds great now but that’s because I’m reflecting on past experiences, right?

Hindsight feels a lot better but all this journey was not easy. Even during pharmacy school, when I was engaging in all of these non-pharmacy specific projects, it was uncomfortable because I didn’t know if what I was trying to do was actually going to work and I had a lot of people who meant well, advisors, faculty members, in my ear, saying that I needed to go another route.

Similarly, with the fellowship experience, I was very disappointed in myself for not being able to complete my fellowship and I had three preceptors, which meant I had to tell three different people, “Hey, sorry, I’m pregnant and I can’t finish the fellowship” but they were all super supportive and when I got that role back at the CDC, one of my, I probably shouldn’t have favorites but one of my favorite preceptors said, “You should be proud of yourself because this two-year program was supposed to prepare you for a role like the one that you just got, not even nine months into your fellowship.”

“You should feel very proud of yourself.” I burst into tears because I was emotional and it was a lot going on, that really helped me put it into perspective. So that’s how I got back to the CDC. I should also add, the fellowship that I completed was in drug information and the CDC fellowship that I started after the one year of my fellowship was in health communications.

[0:14:10.0] TU: And we’re going to come back to more of the expansion on the interest and writing and where that has led to the work that you’re doing today. I want to come back real quick, Megan. You said something really important which I want – especially if we have any students listening. I want them to hear is that, you were given advice by several folks that I think, probably had good intent that maybe you should consider a different pathway and I can tell you from being in the academic environment for several years, we like very linear pathways, right?

We like very linear pathways where we know this opportunity’s going to lead to that opportunity and your pathway wasn’t necessarily linear in that you were coming in with somewhat of a nontraditional interest. You were getting different experiences but what you were doing is you were planting a lot of seeds and building a lot of relationships that sometimes it takes time for those to grow, right?

To flourish and I just love the passion and the interest that you had and continuing to pursue that, despite perhaps some outside noise of, “Maybe you might consider this and maybe you might consider that” and I think the lesson I hear there is, pursue the interest, plant the seeds, trust he process as you’re continuing to move forward and it might not always feel like one dot is going to connect to the next but I think as you shared in hindsight, you can start to appreciate how some of those things come together.

[0:15:24.3] MF: Absolutely. Trust the process and also trust yourself. One of the people who was encouraging me to do a residency which that’s what everybody was telling me to do, even my mentor at the CDC, understanding that I wanted to follow in her footsteps like once I found her, I was like, “You’re the person who I want to be like” and even knowing what my intention was, she was like, “You know, I really think you should do a residency first” and I’m like, “I hear you,” but what happens is sometimes, people are thinking about their own experiences and their own limitations when they are thinking about what you are or are not capable of doing and even though they have the best intentions, those ideas and those preconceived notions get projected onto you.

It’s really important to trust yourself enough to be able to examine what your thoughts, your preferences, your intentions are as well as the advice from trusted people but then to make your own decision based off of all of that information, including your own desires and intentions.

[0:16:26.9] TU: That’s one of the passion that I have and I’m not going to get on the financial soapbox because I do that in every other episode but that’s one of the challenges I have in our profession is that, they’re so often is the financial pressure of the student loans, the golden handcuffs of that six-figure income that folks that might be thinking about something more nontraditional or not as structured in terms of, “I’m going into residency, I’m going to go into fellowship, I’m going to go make this income” it can just be hard to have the space to explore that when you have those other pressures that are there.

I want to come back and ask you, you’ve really done a nice job I think of outlining this interest that you have in public health and an interest in writing, we’re going to come back and talk more about that but I didn’t ask you, what is the why behind that? Where did that passion come from in this intersection of public health and writing and what really motivates you and inspire you towards the work that you’re doing?

[0:17:14.1] MF: That’s a good question and one that I don’t think about as often. I can say that my interest in writing, I wouldn’t call it a passion at this present time or at the time that it started but my interest in writing actually came from a work study job that I had when I was at Emory. I was lucky enough not to be assigned to like putting books back on the shelves at the library the way a lot of our friends were for work study but I had a job with CancerQuest, which is a patient education website that was associated with Emory’s Winship Cancer Institute, and my role for CancerQuests was basically to update and write a lot of the patient education information that was on the website.

So that was like a huge directory of all these different types of treatments, preventative measures, therapies for different types of cancer and so I had to do a lot of research and write information that could be interpreted by the general public. It was kind of my first taste of health communications but I did not have the language to be able to say, “This is what this is.” I would say, from that point that kind of planted the seed for my interest in medical writing and health communications, although I didn’t realize it until probably a decade later.

Public health, I think that’s just something that has been a part of my experience as a person in the world. Like growing up in Columbia, South Carolina, amongst my family members who dealt with their own personal health issues, we were in a very communal environment. So in my neighborhood, like, my grandmother knew all the people on her street, all the people on her block, we were all kind of family.

Because of that, it wasn’t just my individual, like my nuclear or immediate family’s health conditions that I was aware of but we were kind of all aware of everybody’s business and so I really saw how important it was for people to have good healthcare, good health information and again, I wouldn’t have been able to verbalize this as a child but looking back, all of this information was kind of more abstractly in my brain at that time.

I think that just as I progressed throughout school, like K through 12, undergrad, I started to think more concretely about how environment and information and access to healthcare and good health information how critical that is to the health of communities and I think that also, just kind of as a black woman in the world, that level of awareness that comes with that lived experience as well, public health was just something that kind of called my name.

When I went to that field trip in the 9th grade, and toured the CDC, I think that was probably the first time that I was able to connect the actual field of public health with all of that previous life experience that I just named.

[0:20:13.5] TU: Admittedly Megan, my knowledge related to medical writing, health writing, health content writing, we’ve used our term health communications is pretty elementary and I’ve seen these terms used in different ways, and for folks that are listening, thinking about, “Hey, maybe I’m interested in entering this field” and whatever way that may be, break those terms down a little bit further for us.

What are the differences between those and the types of writing opportunities that folks maybe able to pursue?

[0:20:40.5] MF: So this is a juicy question because there are so many routes that a person could take, depending on what their interest are. So if we kind of backup and go to the most high-level area of this, when we talk about medical writing, like you, many people are using that term, interchangeably. Some people might describe what I do health content writing as medical writing.

It’s not that there is anything wrong in particular with using that language, but, I think what some people don’t realize is that medical wiring is more of an umbrella term that could actually describe a lot of different types of writing. Same thing with health writing. So when I talk about broadly and holistically, this space, you will sometimes hear me say medical and health writing, that’s because those are the broadest terms that describe all of the individual types that come down from that.

When we get to talking about like specific examples, you’ve heard me reference specific examples during this conversation, right? You heard me reference a drug information fellowship, a health communications fellowship, I’m a health content writer, it really depends on who is the audience and what style of writing is being done. Those are like, the two big buckets that can kind of help differentiate the different types of medical writing.

Medical writing, I typically think of those types as writing that’s geared towards a clinical audience, an audience of health professionals, an audience of scientist, it’s typically more formal in nature and the topics are often times more specific to medicine, like actual treatment, prevention, therapies and so some specific types of medical writing would be drug information that adhere to a clinical audience.

Another type would be scientific writing, another type would be regulatory writing. So you will see a lot of regulatory positions at pharmaceutical companies because there are people there who are writing INDs, they’re writing documents that need to go to the FDA or to different regulatory associations, so that’s definitely a type of medical writing. Scientific publications is a type of medical writing.

Medical communications, so these are companies who are sometimes contracted by pharmaceutical companies to create materials, to educate other health professionals, right? So if you want to put together a slide deck or a post of presentation to present at a conference, that’s often happening at medical communications companies. So, all of those are examples of medical writing, which is often times again, a more formal and geared to a clinical or health professions audience.

Then, on the other side of that, you have the other umbrella term of health writing. Health writing, I typically think of as geared to a more lay or general public audience and the topics are not always so scientific or medical. They could be more wellness oriented or more health oriented but health oriented from the standpoint of how does an individual person apply this information to their actual life, not health oriented as in like all of the science of like how this drug works or blah-blah-blah.

Specific examples of health writing are health communications, the fellowship that I mentioned at the CDC. In that position, I was basically like a liaison between our research team and the general public. So when they would come up with their research, I would create fact sheets, blog post, maybe sometimes op-eds, talking points that could go on the website that regular folks could understand.

There is also health journalism, which is when you go to the Washington Post or you go to health magazine, those articles that you see in there, those are forms of health journalism and then my personal favorite, health content writing. We’ll probably dive more into content writing but broadly content writing is information or education that’s presented online in most cases that help someone solve a health problem or answer a health question.

One of the most common ways that content writing becomes visible is when you go to Google, right? If you’re a mom, a new mom at 4:00 in the morning and you baby is not latching and they won’t go to sleep and you go to Google and you say, “Help, my four-month-old isn’t latching” the information that comes up, some of it might be like forums, parent forums but the articles that come up often times those are examples of health content writing because they’re helping you answer a question or solve a health problem that you have.

[0:25:23.7] TU: That was great. I mean, probably the best explanations I’ve heard and I know you have my mind spinning of, “Okay, if I am thinking about this as a potential side hustle or career opportunity, okay, what are the different ways? What might be my strengths or interest?” What would yours that I’d want to pursue? So the examples there were really helpful. I have heard you talk before about three main reasons that folks may get started in medical and health writing.

Those could be number one, they want to influence the public health on a larger scale, number two is to use their degree along with a healthy dose of creativity and number three is to create an additional stream of income outside of their clinical career. My question for you knowing that you coach many other pharmacists and other healthcare professionals that are exploring this area of writing, do you see one of those resonate more than the others or are folks often entering into this space because of all three of those or some combination of them?

[0:26:18.1] MF: That’s a really good question. I think most people have – I will answer this question in two ways, there are people who are interested and then there are people who take the steps to pursue. Those are often two different types of people, so people who are interested of course can have any of those three reasons. It could be relevant but I find that often times the biggest draw is the additional stream of income.

But what happens is once they realize how much work it actually involves to get to the point where they are qualified to be a health content writing, only having the interest of an additional stream of income is not enough. It’s not enough –

[0:26:59.0] TU: It’s not a strong enough why right?

[0:27:00.0] MF: No, it’s not at all because the return on investment yes, could be there because like you can make a whole living out of health content writing and plenty of people do but to get to that point where you can even do that, the time that it takes to learn the skills, to create the portfolio, to go out and find clients, only being motivated by the money is oftentimes not good enough.

The students that I work with and even students, that pharmacists that do decide to pursue health content writing but they choose another route or aren’t necessarily in my program, I find that there is more of that interest in really influencing public health and utilizing their degree in a way that brings them fulfillment and joy and opportunity to actually educate people, which is something that we are often sold on during pharmacy school.

But in reality, in real life once you get out into the workforce, sometimes it’s not really a major piece of what you are able to do in your workspace. So a lot of the students that I work with express to me that of course, they love to have some extra money because you said it earlier, loans and debt and family but what they’re really looking for is a way to find more fulfillment and joy within their profession.

There are lots of side hustles, other opportunities that people could engage in to make money but people don’t necessarily want to let their degree and their education and their experience go. It is not that they don’t love pharmacy or love healthcare, it’s that maybe they don’t love the way that they have to execute it in their full-time roles. So if there’s a way for them to still use the background that they have in a more fulfilling and impactful way, then they’re very into that.

[0:28:50.0] TU: So well said, you know, often I say and feel myself that forward progress and growth is such an important factor for us as individuals and human being, that we have a feeling of growth that we’re developing ourselves and I think for many pharmacists that may be are feeling stuck or they aren’t feeling that growth or they aren’t feeling like they’re using their degree to their full potential, that can be a suffocating feeling.

I often say that side hustle’s income that’s a nice symptom but really what we want to be focusing on I think in part and not overlook is, what’s the motivation, what’s the purpose, what creative outlet is this providing and that’s a hard benefit to measure but don’t underestimate it because it’s so powerful especially if you feel like you’re in a situation where you’re stuck. It’s so powerful to feel like you’re growing, you’re developing and you’re moving forward.

Let me ask you a question I’m sure you get all the time, which is: can I work full-time doing this? Is that a viable pathway to grow a medical writing business?

[0:29:49.3] MF: Yeah, so I’d say that the answer is emphatically yes. When I started out as a freelance health content writer, I had a full-time job. I will do a quick aside to address something that you just brought up in terms of having that source of fulfillment is I was in a job that I did not like. It was my third time at the CDC and it was a regulatory writing job and it was not my most exciting role and so I started blogging on the side just because I needed a creative outlet.

That really helped me when I was in that full-time role that I didn’t like because I had something that was going on that was interesting to me and so that was exactly how I got started as a health content writer. I had a full-time job at the time, it was accidental because I was not yet aware that health content writing was a field and so when I started my blog, it just so happened that a health company saw it and reached out to me and asked if I was right for them.

That was how I first freelance writing opportunity but it wasn’t until a year and nine months later that I actually left my full-time job for that entire year and nine months, I was freelancing on the side. So it’s definitely possible, I would say it is definitely one of the most common approaches. If you are in a position where you are just learning the skill of freelance health content writing, I don’t know what your financials are like.

If you have a couple of tens of thousands in the bank and you can afford to just shut your full-time work down so that you can focus on freelance health content writing, that’s definitely open to you but for most people, it’s going to take time to even get the foundations that you need to be able to get started and then once you start, it’s going to take you some time to get your feet under you and get to the point where you can bring on more and more clients.

So, in most cases, it actually makes sense to start with a full-time job so that you are not reliant upon this income source that you haven’t yet created. So definitely possible, it just takes time management and availability of time as well.

[0:32:02.2] TU: Yeah and I am a firm believer as you kind of were eluding to there that building a business upon the back of a strong personal financial foundation is so important, right? Because you can approach that opportunity with less stress, you can approach that opportunity with confidence and perhaps some folks can manage to make that jump and not to have that stress still if they have additional savings.

But I think for many, having that full-time job will allow them to pursue that opportunity with confidence and to minimize that stress. Talk to us about StockRose Creative, the company that you’ve started and have been growing, talk to us about what it is, how it came to be and what are the services that you offer?

[0:32:38.4] MF: Yeah, so StockRose is the business entity that I created when I decided to go full-time in my health content writing work. Unlike the students that I work with, I did not have real guidance when I got into the health content writing space. I was just out here figuring it out on my own and so because of that, I dabbled in a lot of different types of writing through StockRose before I landed on health content writing solely and before I got even narrower in the specific types of writing services that I was offering through health content writing.

Today, what that looks like is I offer blog writing and video scripting services particularly for digital health companies and especially if those digital health companies have audiences that are primarily black or they have portions of their audiences that are primarily black and the reason for that is because content writing is a very small piece of content marketing. It’s a much broader process and so a part of what you had to do if you’re interested in being a freelance health content writer is you have to understand how that fits into the broader process.

With that, strategy is a part of the process that has to come before writing and sometimes companies, they do not have that strategic part in-house and so I consult with them to say, “Hey, if you have audiences that are black or primarily black, you’re going to have to develop a different content strategy in order to actually have content writers that are writing effectively for those audiences.”

That’s the core service that I provide but it did not start out that way, it was much more lose and difficult to define because I was figuring it out as I went along. So that’s kind of the service part of my company and then the coaching part of my company, I’ll kind of give some context to how that came about. I really sat down one day and thought, “What is the theme of my professional career?”

I’ve had a lot of different roles and they’ve all had writing in common but beyond that, what kind of links everything together? I realized that in all of my past, fighting health misinformation and putting out good health information has been the theme that connects everything together and is what I’m passionate about and what I want to continue doing into the future and so if I want to fight health misinformation, which is getting more rampant by the minute it seems, I am not the only person who can or should be doing that.

There are more people and specifically, healthcare providers who should be doing that. The problem is that most healthcare providers don’t have experience in health content writing or creating online content. It is not because they can’t do it, it’s just because they don’t have the exposure or the experience in order to be able to do it. So the question is, well, how do they get that? Technically, I could hire them.

However, I am not particularly interested in running an agency or managing other writers like that’s just when you get to the point where you’re running an agency, it often takes you out of the actual execution of whatever the service that you’re providing and you become a manager and my passion is about the creation of the health information. So my question was, “Well, how do I help other healthcare professionals become health writers so that they too can be able to counter the misinformation that’s out there?”

I decided that creating this accelerator program called Health Professionals to Health Writers, where there is didactic teaching to make sure people have the foundational knowledge of content marketing that they need, where they are able to create the portfolio of samples that they need to actually get freelance gigs and where they actually build out the business processes they need to know how to go out and secure clients.

That would be the way to help more professionals have the skills and the experience that they need to be freelance health content writers as well. So that’s what my coaching side of StockRose does under the Health Professionals to Health Writers accelerator program.

[0:36:58.0] TU: I love that and I think that aligns so well with your why, right? Of how you got into this in the first place. You talk about fighting misinformation and looking at doing that on a broader scale, the impact of that is you coach up and train up other pharmacists, other healthcare professionals, the impact of that is going to be much greater than your writing alone or even a team or writing if you did go with that approach.

We’ll link in the show notes, that’s stockrosecreative.com, folks can go there. We’re also going to link in the show notes, you have a Health Writing for Health Professionals 101 series on YouTube, and then folks can also learn more about the accelerator program that you mentioned as well, some of the work that you’re doing. I do want to ask you, this is somewhat of an aside, but I think a really cool accomplishment, I’ve been following your work on LinkedIn, and I saw you recently went through the LinkedIn Creator Accelerator Program as a part of the first class of a 100.

First of all, congratulations on that accomplishment, that was fantastic. What did you take away from that program about yourself and about leveraging LinkedIn as a platform to help grow your business?

[0:37:57.2] MF: Thank you, Tim, for the congratulations. That was probably one of my most exciting accomplishments of last year. I was literally in tears when I got the email that I got into the program and I do also have to shoutout Brian Fung, who was the one and only other pharmacist in the first 100 with me, so we had a great time. I think the most important thing that we took away from that experience was how important it is to really be intentional about the content and the information that you’re creating not just on LinkedIn but online in general.

That might sound odd because as a health content writer, that’s exactly what I do but I think the most important part here is thinking about there’s always an audience that you are sharing information to. If you are ever creating any content whether it’s health content or social content or anything, if you are creating that just for you, then you are really missing an opportunity to connect with the people who are following you and watching you and listening to you.

Because they often times have different perceptions, leads, preconceived notions than you do and so, whenever you’re creating content, this applies to health content writing as well, you really have to be less focused on what you think and what you already know and really dive into what your audience thinks, what they do and don’t know so that you can create that content in a way that helps address their questions and helps solve their problems as accurately as possible.

You are not necessarily a reflection of the people who are trying to learn from you. If I were creating content on LinkedIn just for me, I would be going over the heads of so many people because I’ve been a content writer for five years. There are people, pharmacists who are coming across my account who have literally never heard of health content writing before. Students that I’ve worked with are like, “I did not know what this was until I saw your post.”

If I am not keeping that in mind and really trying to get a sense of where people are, then I am missing the point and the same holds true for any type of content that you are creating for any reason, paying attention to what your audience thinks and what they need.

[0:40:17.9] TU: I hope, folks, if they are not already following you on LinkedIn, they’ll be able to see that in action, so I hope they will. We’ll link to that in the show notes, Megan N. Freeland on LinkedIn. All right, my last question here for you, Megan, you had a post on LinkedIn recently that caught my attention and I didn’t prep you for this question, so this is going to be a discussion but you said:

“When you’ve worked so hard to get to a certain point, people may tell you to just be grateful that you’ve made it there. The sentiment implies that asking for anything more is mere greed. To that I say, don’t you dare dim your light for anyone else’s comfort. You can be grateful for your journey without having to stay there. We are all allowed to grow, mature, and evolve. Going after the career you want and the life you desire is not selfish, it’s your right and most importantly, it is within your power to do.” Tell us more.

[0:41:10.0] MF: Okay, hearing that read back to me that kind of got me in the heart a little bit. This kind of goes back to what I alluded to before about trusting yourself and recognizing that people might have your best interest at heart, or they might think that they do but they will also set limitations on you based on what they think is possible and what they think is fair and what they think is possible for them to do.

Sometimes, when you’ve worked really hard to achieve this goal, let’s say the goal is just graduating from pharmacy school, that might have been an expectation that either people didn’t have for you or people don’t have for themselves and so when you get to that point and if you turn around and realize, “I am proud of myself and I am glad that I accomplished this goal but I don’t feel completely settled” right?

I still feel like there’s something out there more for me, I still feel like maybe I am not in the exact place that I should be, maybe I’m close but maybe I’m not quite there, if you express that feeling to people, there are people who might say, “What are you talking about? You’re a pharmacist, you graduated, you should be grateful. I am over here doing XYZ, that’s not as cool as being a pharmacist, you have nothing to complain about” and that’s not about you.

That type of response is not about you, that’s about them and so my advice to anyone in this situation is your life is not anyone else’s. Your life is your own, no one else is responsible for what you do. No one else has to live with your decisions or your choices and so, regardless of how people respond to your discomfort or your feelings of unfulfillment or whatever it is, know that you are deserving of having the professional trajectory, having the life, having the career, having the whatever that you decide you want.

That’s within your control, that’s within your power and frankly, it is not for anyone else to comment on at all but if you say it to people, they will comment but just keep in mind that you determine all of that stuff. You determine the trajectory and you don’t have to feel guilty about that because it’s your life and you’re the only person who’s responsible for it.

[0:43:27.2] TU: So powerful, Megan, great said. It reminds me of a couple books I read and reread recently that I’d highly recommend, The Four Agreements, is one and the second one is, The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. We’ll link to those in the show notes but those, both of those books get exactly to what you just shared there and that is so important for other people to hear especially for folks that are out there creating, putting content, stepping out in non-traditional ways like if you don’t work through that individual, everything you just shared there, it can be a very painful journey.

I think for folks to really realize what is their full opportunity but are their goals not what is the outside noise but what is their full opportunity, what are their goals and can they really lean into that is such encouraging words. Well, this has been a lot of fun and I am so grateful that you have taken time to come on the show. Where is the best place that folks can go to follow your work and learn more about what you’re doing?

[0:44:17.6] MF: Thank you for having me, Tim. This was a wonderful conversation. It’s been a while since I did a podcast, so I thought I was going to be a little rusty, but you made it really smooth, so I appreciate you. The best way to reach out to me is really via LinkedIn, we’ve talked about LinkedIn a lot, I am on there every day. So if you listen to this episode and you want to learn more about health content writing or you just want to say hey or you want to ask follow-up questions about anything Tim and I talked here, just find me on LinkedIn and shoot me a message. I love having conversations with folks there, so that is how you can reach me best and I look forward to chatting with you.

[0:44:51.7] TU: Great stuff, thank you so much, Megan, for taking the time to come on the show. We really appreciate it.

[0:44:55.1] MF: Thank you, Tim.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:44:56.7] 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 your 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.

[DISCLAIMER]

[0:45:32.9] 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.

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

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

How Mindfulness and Money Intersect with Cynthia Knapp Dlugosz

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

About Today’s Guest

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

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

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

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

Episode Summary

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

Key Points From This Episode

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

Highlights

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Cynthia’s Recommended Books

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

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

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

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

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

This week’s episode of your financial pharmacist podcast is sponsored by Thoughtful Wills. Let’s take a minute to hear from co-founder, Notesong.

[00:01:40] NT: Hi, there. I’m Notesong, one of the founders of Thoughtful Wills. Our law firm specializes in creating custom estate planning documents that are understandable. We’ve leveraged technology to offer a lower price point than most law firms. Honestly, it’s refreshingly affordable. As our client, you’re in the driver’s seat. We’re here if and when you have any questions or just want our input. Our explanatory worksheet and online interview gathers your answers whenever and wherever is most convenient for you.

As a busy mom of three sweet kids and two fluffy sheepdogs, I totally get it. Life is crazy busy. Who has the time? We designed our firm around that too and we poured our hearts into making our estate-planning process less of a hustle. I invite you to visit thoughtfullwills.com/yfp to learn more. Give us a jingle or drop us a note. We’d love to chat with you.

[INTERVIEW]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:47:23] CKD: Fantastic.

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

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

[OUTRO]

[00:47:32] TU: Today’s episode of Your Financial Pharmacist podcast was sponsored by our friends at Thoughtful Wills. If you haven’t created your estate plan yet, we urge you to reach out to Notesong and Nathan. They draft custom estate planning documents like wills, trust, healthcare directives, and durable powers of attorney that fit your situation and reflect your wishes. This is key. These are custom legal documents created and reviewed by actual attorneys.

Thoughtful Wills created two cut-to-the-chase packages designed for pharmacists who are ready to get their estate planning in order. You’ll really appreciate their dedication to approachable lawyering and they charge about half of what most law firms charge for the same documents. These documents are such a gift to your loved ones. If you haven’t created them yet, please just get it done. Reach out to Notesong and Nathan by going to thoughtfulwills.com/yfp. Go ahead and book a meeting with them. They’ll take such good care of you.

As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and it’s not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding material should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. Furthermore, the information contained in our archive, newsletters, blog post, and podcast is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analyses expressed herein are solely those of Your Financial Pharmacist, unless otherwise noted, and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward-looking statements, which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements.

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

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YFP 231: From Pharmacist to Calligraphy Artist Working with A-List Celebrities

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

From Pharmacist to Calligraphy Artist Working with A-List Celebrities

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

About Today’s Guest

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

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

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

Episode Summary

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

Key Points From This Episode

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

Highlights

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

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

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

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

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

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

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

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

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

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

[INTERVIEW]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:07:49] RC: That’s incredible.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:18:41] TU: Figure it out. Right. Exactly. Tell us more about the products specifically or a couple of your main products that you offer at Wander Crafter, and who are the customers. You mentioned some local things and so forth. As you think about your business, the products that you have to offer, the folks that you’re focused on marketing those products towards. Tell us a little bit more about those two things in the business.

[00:19:04] RC: Sure. I have two different pillars that make up my business these days. The first one is live events and that includes luxury brands like Neiman Marcus or Netflix. I’ve also worked for HBO Max a couple of weeks ago for their succession launch. Those luxury companies end up bringing me into the store. Going on-site, and I bring my kit and get dressed up and I create a luxury service for these brands to create a better client experience, and that helps them to sell their products a little bit better, because everyone wants something personalized. There’s nothing more special than seeing your name on a perfume bottle.

Most of the things that I do these days are personalization on mostly perfumes. I’ve done it on like whiskey bottles, water bottles and a couple other stones and things like that. But it is mostly perfumes, just because I think that’s where they have the most profitability.

The other pillar of my business is coaching. After figuring it out for a couple of years on my own, I decided to create a coaching program for calligraphers who want to break into the luxury brand industry. I help them start a business, get over the money mindset. How do you charge for something like this, working on a website, or SEO, photography, videography, and leveraging your social media to create a business model that works for you and helps to bring in multiple clients. Not just luxury brands, but also your local clients as well.

Nowadays, I don’t really do the local clients as much. I tried to focus more my attention on the luxury brands just because that has a bigger return for the time that I put into it.

[00:20:58] TU: Very cool. I hope folks will check it out, wandercrafter.com. We’ll link to that in the show notes. You can see more of the work that Rosie’s done, the engraving, the calligraphy as well as the training program. She’s mentioned the Craft Academy and some items to shop there as well. It is really, really beautiful stuff.

One of the things, Rosie, I like to prod a little bit is, you mentioned before we had hit record that, your pharmacy job was funding a very expensive hobby or business. I think for many folks that are getting started with something, especially something they’re very passionate about, which I think links well to the work that you’re doing here, is that, there’s a mindset shift that happens from, “Okay. I’m going to do this thing that is interesting, it’s a hobby to actually running this like a business.”

What was the transition or the pivot point? Was it the specific markets when you mentioned kind of working with some of the higher end items or the training course? Was it figuring out the messaging or the SEO? What was it that really allowed you to make that transition from a hobby to actually running this as a business?

[00:21:59] RC: Oh my gosh! That’s a really good question. I think the transition, business-wise, I don’t know if there was like an actual, pivotal moment. It was more of a gradual, uphill climb. Until, I mean, to be honest, I think it was just a burnout. I don’t know if I ever mentioned this in any of the emails and stuff that we’ve had back and forth. But during the pandemic, I’m sure you’ve heard a jillion times, it was really hard. The initial panic was really difficult. Because we had to tell doctors like, “No, we can’t give you this Z pack” or tell this family, “I can’t give you 20 Z packs. One, I don’t have any, and two, that’s illegal.” It was a lot of moral decisions that I didn’t have to make before. And then, we kind of got used to that with the mail orders and things like that.

Then the vaccines launched to the public in March of 2021. Honestly, that to me, that was the turning point where pharmacy went from a passion to just painful really. At that point in the business, I was already making probably the same amount as my pharmacist salary. For whatever reason, whether it was feeling guilty for giving up on pharmacy or a duty to help the public or family expectations, I just didn’t have the bravery to really just trust myself with the calligraphy business.

It got to a point where we were doing 30 to 60 vaccines per day, and most of the time, we were by ourselves. It was just one pharmacist for the whole day. It just got to a point where I was completely burnt out. I hated my life. I hated work. The only thing that provided a little bit of light was my business. I just remember like one Friday, I was short on technician and we did 30 vaccines that day. Then Saturday, we did the same thing. At the end of Saturday night, I told my tech, “I can’t do this anymore. I don’t think you’re going to see me Monday.”

Monday came around, I woke up and there’s just this existential dread in my day and I just could not physically get out of bed or go to work. So I ended up calling my scheduler and was like, “Hey! I just don’t feel good today.” I called my doctor and I was like, “I think I need therapy.” Like I’m at a point where I could hurt myself. I could hurt my patients because of not being in it. I wasn’t passionate about it anymore. I went to therapy for a couple of weeks and ended up just double downing on my business, my coaching program, my calligraphy business. From there, it blossomed, it grew beyond what I could even imagine. I mean, if there’s anyone listening out there, I would say, don’t wait until you’re at an existential crisis to turn your hobby into a business.

[00:25:15] TU: Yeah. I hear a big mindset shift that happened. I certainly don’t want to say that there have been positive things related to the pandemic. It’s been a very difficult time for obvious reasons. But here, as you share that story again, for you in that journey and some of that pain that you experienced, personally led to further pursuit of the passion that you’ve had around this work. I hope folks would even go back and listen the last three minutes because, Rosie, like your tone in your voice and your enthusiasm around talking about the business relative to sharing, and I could tell, even self-reflecting on some of my own journey for you. Just a very different vibe, and your voice and your tone.

I think, for folks that are listening that have an idea, whether it’s within pharmacy or something else, whether it’s within the job they’re in or pursuing something as a side hustle, or another opportunity, taking some type of a risk or opportunity that they can pursue. Like having folks around you, whether that’s family, friends, accountability partners, you mentioned providers that were involved that hopefully can pick up on some of those passions, and some of the enthusiasm, some of the things that they’re observing and keep you accountable in that journey as well. Resilience, Rosie is something that really stands out to me as I think back to your sharing of some of the difficulties after graduating from pharmacy school and not passing the licensure exam right away, delay, unable to do that residency. How did that journey and developing resilience through that experience in pharmacy, how has that helped you in the business?

[00:26:44] RC: I think it’s just not being afraid to take risks, calculated risks. Being a pharmacist, I think you do have a little bit of type A, doesn’t matter what kind of personality, but there’s a little bit of OCD in there, and just doing whatever it takes to survive and succeed. I think just being able to – even in pharmacy school, I feel like I learned a lot of skills, whether it was learning how to study, and multitask and manage your time. I think there’s a lot of things that I learned in pharmacy school that I would not have learned out in the real world, if I had just entrepreneurship from the very beginning.

Then even working at a retail pharmacy, I think part of that even comes – that taught me a lot too. Working in retail is really hard. You have to be able to multitask, and manage people and teach people in a way that they will understand, whether it’s different teaching, or learning skills and stuff like that. There’s a lot of things that I still learned working out in the real world and going to pharmacy school that I do apply to the business itself as well.

[00:28:01] TU: One of the things you mentioned, Rosie, before we hit record. We’re recording on the first of a month, and you mentioned you had a really big order come in over the weekend, which is leading to a busy Monday and start to the week for you, which is good problems. But problems nonetheless, when you’re growing, and running a business and you have growing demand and more people want your service. We’ve all heard many stories where sometimes businesses may not keep up with some of that growing demand. Talk to us about, as we look ahead at Wander Crafter, as your products, your services, your time is becoming of greater demand. How are you growing the business intentionally? What steps are you taking knowing that there’s going to be demand that continues to increase? At the end of the day, there’s only one Rosie.

[00:28:49] RC: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I was really literally just thinking about that this morning. How am I going to continue scaling this if I’m the only person who can do the engraving, and the writing, and all that good stuff. Right now, I’m just a one-woman business. I did have an assistant who ended up getting her dream job a couple of weeks ago, so I lost her and I’m really sad about it. I haven’t quite recovered from her leaving me just yet, so I am very hesitant to bring on anyone into the business, whether it’s for social media management or even just assistants, or photography, or anything like that. I am very scared to bring someone on in case someone leaves me again. Maybe you can give me some advice on how to grow your team.

[00:29:39] TU: It’s a work in progress. I feel like it’s one of those things that as you are so passionate about the vision, that you obviously are, and as people really treasure the products that you’re putting out, sometimes you as the business owner, me as the business owner can become the bottleneck of the growth. It’s a hard thing. It’s a hard thing to figure out of making sure that you’re comfortable in that next step, making sure that the quality of the product is to the standard that you want it to be.

But also recognizing that the addition of a team and folks that you trust can ultimately mean a bigger reach and the impact that your work can have. I look forward to watching some of the growth and what happens over the next year or two as you continue to grow in that area.

[00:30:23] RC: Yeah, I’m really excited for where Wander Crafter is going too, the coaching program is taking off, the calligraphy portion of it is taking off too. There’s definitely a high need to hire somebody to take some of that load off so that I can have some kind of a balance in life. But right now, I feel like it’s okay. I’m only working like maybe 20 up to 30 hours a week, which is still less than what I was doing with the pharmacy job, so it’s not too bad.

[00:30:54] TU: And pursuing something that you’re really passionate about, which is awesome. Where can folks go, Rosie to follow your work to learn more about what you’re working on?

[00:31:04] RC: Yeah. I am always on Instagram, so head on over to instagram.com/wandercrafter. I’m also getting really big on TikTok these days, so find me there as well. Also just go to my website, wandercrafter.com. You can find out about the Craft Academy, which is the calligraphy coaching business or program rather. And yeah, just hit me up on Instagram. I’d love to chat with you and maybe give you some inspiration for your own business as well.

[00:31:31] TU: Great stuff. We will link to those in the show notes, the Instagram, the TikTok, the website, the YouTube channel. Really appreciate, Rosie taking time to come on the show to share your journey, and hopefully it’s going to inspire many other pharmacists on their own journey. Thank you so much.

[00:31:43] RC: Of course, Tim. This is a dream. I’ve been listening to you for so long. This is really an honor to be on here.

[00:31:49] TU: So fun. Thank you so much.

[OUTRO]

[00:31:51] TU: Today’s episode of Your Financial Pharmacist podcast was sponsored by our friends at Thoughtful Wills. If you haven’t created your estate plan yet, we urge you to reach out to Notesong and Nathan. They draft custom estate-planning documents like wills, trust, healthcare directives, and durable powers of attorney that fit your situation and reflect your wishes. This is key. These are custom legal documents created and reviewed by actual attorneys.

Thoughtful Wills created two cut-to-the-case packages designed for pharmacists who are ready to get their estate planning in order. You’ll really appreciate their dedication to approachable lawyering and they charge about half of what most law firms charge for the same documents. These documents are such a gift to your loved ones. If you haven’t created them yet, please just get it done. Reach out to Notesong and Nathan by going to thoughtfulwills.com/yfp. Go ahead and book a meeting with them. They’ll take such good care of you.

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

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

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

[END]

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YFP 230: 5 Steps to Get Ready for a Home Purchase

Posted on November 18, 2021November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

5 Steps to Get Ready for a Home Purchase

On this episode, sponsored by IBERIABANK/First Horizon, Tony Umholtz talks through five steps for getting ready for a home purchase.

About Today’s Guest

Tony graduated Cum Laude from the University of South Florida with a B.S. in Finance from the Muma College of Business. He then went on to complete his MBA. While at USF, Tony was part of the inaugural football team in 1997. He earned both Academic and AP All-American Honors during his collegiate career. After college, Tony had the opportunity to sign contracts with several NFL teams including the Tennessee Titans, New York Giants, and the New England Patriots. Being active in the community is also important to Tony. He has served or serves as a board member for several charitable and non-profit organizations including board member for the Salvation Army, FCA Tampa Bay, and the USF National Alumni Association. Having orchestrated over $1.1 billion in lending volume during his career, Tony has consistently been ranked as one of the top mortgage loan officers in the industry by the Scotsman’s Guide, Mortgage Executive magazine, and Mortgage Originator magazine.

Episode Summary

If you are considering purchasing a home in the next six to twelve months, today’s episode with mortgage manager Tony Umholtz will equip you with the information you need to prepare for this exciting journey. Tony shares his knowledge about the importance of understanding interest rates, where to find the most up-to-date information on those rates, how to determine your home-buying budget without the lender setting it for you, and criteria used by the lender to calculate your maximum loan amount. Tony also shares the best time to get pre-approved and things to look for in a lender when going through the home-buying process. The discussion covers the five key steps to follow to ensure that you are ready to purchase a home including, understanding the landscape, knowing your budget, getting pre-approval, choosing a lender, and knowing which documents you need to provide once the property is under contract. If you have questions about interest rates, the difference between pre-approval and pre-qualification, the various types of lenders that you can work with, the pros and cons of putting a 20% down payment on a home, the 28/36 rule, or anything to do with credit scores, you’ve come to the right place!

Key Points From This Episode

Why now is a good time to buy a home.
Where you can find out the average interest rates in the home loan industry.
Tony explains what discount points are and why you need to understand them.
The importance of reading the fine print.
Know your budget!
How lenders determine how much they are going to lend.
What the 28/36 rule is.
Tony runs through the pros and cons of a 20% down payment.
How savvy investors look at returns.
Comparing pre-approval and pre-qualification.
The value of a credit report.
How lenders work out your credit score, and why this differs from what you will see if you use a monitoring service.
Examples of the different types of lenders that exist.
Information that you will need to provide to the lender you choose once you have a property under contract.

Highlights

“Lenders look at your gross income. We don’t factor in your after-tax income.” — Tony Umholtz [0:09:23]

“I’m a big believer in being diversified.” — Tony Umholtz [0:10:51]

“The higher your credit score, the better your rates tend to be.” — Tony Umholtz [0:23:12]

“There are advantages and disadvantages for every type of lender that’s out there. So, it’s good to know, get some recommendations, and also to compare the products and make sure it’s a fit for you and that you feel comfortable with the group that you’re working with.” — Tony Umholtz [0:27:20]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] 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 welcome back onto the show Tony Umholtz, a mortgage manager for IBERIABANK/First Horizon. During the interview, Tony and I talked through five steps to getting ready for a home purchase. So, for those that are listening and thinking about a home purchase in the next 6 to 12 months, this episode is certainly for you.

On the show, we discuss the importance of understanding interest rates and how you can find the most up-to-date rate information. We also discuss how to determine your home-buying budget and the criteria used by the lender to determine your maximum loan amount. When is the best time to get pre-approved and what is the difference between pre-approval and pre-qualification? And finally, what to look for when shopping around lenders and going through the application process.

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

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

Okay, let’s hear from today’s sponsor, IBERIABANK/First Horizon and then we’ll jump into my interview with Tony.

[SPONSOR MESSAGE]

[00:01:42] SPEAKER: Does saving 20 percent for a down payment on a home feels like an uphill battle? It’s no secret that pharmacists have a lot of competing financial priorities including high student loan debt, meaning that saving 20 percent for a down payment may take years. We’ve been on the hunt for a solution for pharmacists that are ready to purchase a home with a lower down payment and are happy to have found that option with IBERIABANK/First Horizon. IBERIABANK/First Horizon offers a professional home loan option AKA a doctor or pharmacist home loan that requires a 3 percent down payment for a single family or townhome has no PMI and offers a 30-year fixed rate mortgage on home loans up to $540,250. The pharmacist home loan is available in all states except Alaska and Hawaii. To check out the requirements for IBERIABANK/First Horizon’s pharmacist home loan, and to start the preapproval process, visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/homeloan. Again, that’s yourfinancialpharmacist.com/homeloan.

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:02:46] TU: Tony, welcome back to the show.

[00:02:48] TU: Tim, thanks for having me. Always good to be here.

[00:02:51] TU: Excited to jump into this episode, you’ve been a frequent guest on the show. Last episode we had you on was episode 216, where we talked about common credit blunders to avoid when buying a home. We’re going to link to that in the show notes and dig in some more detail on that topic as well during this episode. So Tony, give us the update. What are you seeing out there in the housing market? It’s been a wild year, right?

[00:03:14] TU: It has been a crazy year. It really has been. A lot of the same things we’ve seen before in the past, the inventory levels are still fairly tight and rates are still low. The one thing I will mention is you know is more of a timing thing for the time of year in the season we’re in, is the autumn in the fall is typically – there’s a little bit less buyers out there. We have Thanksgiving and the holidays around Christmas. Typically, there are less buyers, a little bit less competition. So, it’s often a better time to buy because there are less buyers you’re competing with.

[00:03:51] TU: I think that may be true for many folks in our community that perhaps we’re shooting for a spring or summer home purchase. Maybe they got delayed because of the inventory issue that is well known that’s out there. So today, we’re going to be digging into five steps that folks can take to get ready for a home purchase. We’re going to be talking through evaluating loan options, finding a lender, saving for a down payment, and running the numbers for your budget. So, if you’re thinking about buying a home in the next 6 to 12 months, this episode is really designed for you. If you think combined is in your future, whether that’s now or down the road, my hope is you’ll be able to pull some tips and lessons away from this episode to help you prepare for that journey.

No need to take notes. You can head on over to yourfinancialpharmacist.com/home-loan. We’ve got an extensive resource at that site. You’ll be able to check out a lot of what we’ve referenced today. So Tony, five steps to get ready for home purchase. Number one, know the landscape. So, before you’ve been shopping around for lenders, it’s helpful to have a general idea of what’s going on in terms of mortgage, interest rates, what the market is. So, what do we generally seeing right now Tony, and knowing these, of course are subject to change, and where can someone go to research those rates?

[00:05:05] TU: Well, it’s a good question here, Tim. The first step, just to kind of get a very broad view of the landscape would be, you can actually go to Freddie Mac, freddiemac.com, and Fannie Mae, they actually post rates, but it’s an average rate. So, it’s an average industry rate. You can also find it like in The Wall Street Journal. Clearly online, you can find it but you would look for the weekly average rate, and by Fannie or Freddie Mac. Freddie Mac quotes typically have points in them. So, you do have to look at the fine print with that, that it’s an average rate, kind of a consensus of the industry to tell you where rates are, like a rough idea of where they are, but they’re often quoted with points. So, keep that in mind, because your lender may quote you something the same or a little higher, but it does not have points. That’s just kind of a good place to start, Tim.

[00:05:58] TU: Tony, I’m looking at those rates right now. So, at the freddiemac.com/pmms, we’ll link that in the show notes. So, showing 30-year 3.14 percent, 15-year 2.37 percent, a five-one-year arm, 2.56. And then what’s neat about this is you can look at the trends over the year, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years. And then also let you know what has changed within the last week or the last year. I didn’t know that about points in terms of how these are reported. Some folks may be looking at these and not thinking about the points or what that means in terms of expenses for them. So, just give us a quick definition of points and why it’s important that folks understand that as they’re trying to compare rates, and perhaps get to that apples to apples comparison.

[00:06:41] TU: Sure. Points are actually called discount points. They’re an upfront fee that the lender will charge and it is often a charge in the form of prepaid interest. And that helps you get a little bit better interest rate. But that is a percentage of the loan amount. So, it can be costly. Let’s say, it’s 0.3 percent of a loan amount, if you’re borrowing $400,000, well, that’s $1,200 in additional fees, you’re going to pay if you were to obtain that loan. So, you do have to be aware of points in fees as that is a big component. And then lenders all have different origination fees. That’s another segment of the costs and those are things that you want to look at too, because not all rates are equal, right? There are a lot of pieces of mail people will get. I’ll just leave it at that. There’s a lot of mailers you get with that will quote these really low rates, but then if you read in the fine print, you’ll see how much fees are charged. So, you really want to be aware of that because your payback period could be so long, and it makes no sense to pay points, and often it doesn’t.

[00:07:49] TU: So that’s number one, know the landscape. Number two, a topic we’ve talked about before when we’ve had you on the show, know your budget, and before thinking about pre-approval, it’s important to know your budget, as well as knowing how a lender is going to determine what they’re going to borrow to you in terms of that home-buying purchase. And those things can be an often perhaps should be different as you evaluate what fits in your budget and the lenders looking at what they’re comfortable in terms of you borrowing. So, down payment isn’t certainly is not the only cost. But Tony, talk to us about lenders, in terms of how they determine how much they can lend to individuals or to couples. And I think here, it’s worth talking about the 28:36 rule.

[00:08:37] TU: Sure. I mean, this step is is critical, right? You clearly want to review your own budget and know what you can and can’t afford, because even if a lender can qualify you for a certain payment, that may not be something you’re comfortable with, so it’s very important to evaluate your own budget. Lenders do look. There is, obviously, the 28:36 rule, and this ties back to what lenders can qualify you for, but often we can qualify people up to a back-end ratio, which is a total debt ratio of 45 percent, sometimes even 50 percent with enough down payment. So clearly, we can often maybe qualify you for more than you want to borrow.

The other component to this too, that’s very important to know is that lenders look at your gross income. We don’t factor in your after-tax income. So, that’s another method that we all look at in our industry. We use your your gross income that you report on your W-2, or the gross income before taxation. Same thing if you’re self-employed, we look at your gross income prior to to income tax. So, that helps people buy homes and afford homes, but it is a factor to consider when you’re running your budget. But historically, those numbers, we do go a little higher. Nowadays, instead of 36 which is – I think, let me just dive into what that means.

So, the 28 percent is called the housing ratio. That’s the total amount of your monthly income that is allocated to a home payment, like a mortgage payment on a home. And that mortgage payment includes your principal and interest, and your taxes and insurance, and any other HOA expenses you might have. So, when you buy a home, you had your principal and interest payment on the mortgage, you have property taxes, that you typically pay 1/12, so a monthly amount of the total amount of property taxes on a monthly basis, and then your insurance. So your homeowners insurance.

And then some communities have what are called homeowner’s association fees, that might be $100 a month or $100 a quarter, just depends on where you live. And those are all part of the housing expense. So, when Tim referenced the 28 percent, what that means is your total income, so let’s say you made it just for round numbers, let’s say you made 10,000 gross income as a household per month, we would use 2,800 as your housing expense. I’m not saying that that’s what you need to do. You can actually go a little higher, and of course, you can go lower. But that’s kind of the metric that historically lenders have looked at.

And then the back-end ratio means your total debt. So, that’s going to be the aggregate of all your other debts. So, your car payments, if you have auto payments, on auto loans, student loan payments, we take your student loan payment, any credit card payments you might have, and any other installment loans you may have. It does not include car insurance. Auto insurance, or cell phone bills, things like that, utilities, it does not include those at this juncture. So, we don’t look at those expenses. But that is going to be the aggregate of all of your debts and you cannot exceed that. We call it the debt to income ratio. So, that’s a very critical metric that lenders look at when they’re evaluating you for your pre-approval. That’s kind of a high level of what we would look at.

[00:12:10] TU: Tony relevant to our audience, if I zoom out for a moment, we’ve seen somewhat of a stagnation of pharmacist’s salaries, obviously, that’s very dependent upon the field and someone’s career trajectory. While we’ve seen a significant bump up in home prices, as well, as you know, I just read an article the other day in the journal about home insurance, homeowners insurance costs going up. So, if we think about what’s involved in that 28 to 36, rule 28 percent, again, being maximum monthly housing expenses, 36 percent would be maximum monthly gross income going to all debts, as you alluded to, and of course, student loan debt, has been going up, as our listeners know, too well.

So, these do have implications for our audience, in terms of understanding these rules, what’s involved and to your comment, just to reinforce it, the number that gets spit out by the lender, may or may not be in line with the budget and the rest of the goals. So, we’ve got to take a step back and determine what makes sense in the bigger picture.

Tony, one of the most common questions we get is 20 percent down, yay or nay? What are the pros and cons of putting 20 percent down? I think the reason it’s top of mind for many is just the amount of time and savings it can take to put 20 percent down. So, if I’m buying a $400,000 home, I stay true to that rule of thumb of 20 percent, looking at $80,000, I’ve got $200,000 of student loan debt, I’ve got other competing priorities. That takes time, to be able to do that. From your perspective, what are some of the things that you think about in terms of the pros and cons of that 20 percent down payment?

[00:13:46] TU: Well, you’re exactly right. It can take a long time to save 20 percent. This is a question that comes up a lot. Let’s start with the pro. Let’s look at the pros first. I mean, clearly, you’re going to owe less on your mortgage if you put 20 percent down. So, your payment would be slightly lower. But it’s not that much lower because interest rates are so low. So, that additional 20 percent is really not buying you much of a lower payment. It might be, maybe $100 a month, or something to that effect, maybe $200 depending on the price of the home, but it’s not going to be a substantial amount for the amount you’re putting down. So, that’s one pro clear, I’m going back to the pros, is you owe less.

The other thing is if you’re not a, for example, pharmacists, we have some programs that you can avoid PMI, which we can address later. But if you’re not, let’s say you’re in my role, you I don’t have a PMI option for my career path. So, 20 percent down would help a lot of people avoid PMI. So, clearly that’s a pro. And then, the other thing you owe less on your mortgage so you have a little bit more margin there. Those would be some of the pros. You can also maybe afford more home, because your payments lower, or you’re allowed a higher debt to income ratio, because I did reference earlier, we can often even get approvals up to 50 percent. Well, if you put 20 percent down, there’s going to be no constraints from the MI company or the lender’s underwriting, for example, they may allow you to go to a higher level, because 20 percent down frees you up. If you have great credit, and you’re putting a nice down payment, you can actually get a higher debt to income ratio, often, approved.

So, those would be some of the pros, Tim, of putting 20 percent down. Some of the cons, clearly, one is just how long it takes to save the funds, and that plays into a whole bunch of other things, too, that I see quite often. Number one, you could use that, those proceeds to pay off higher interest rate debt, because mortgage rates are low plus, the mortgage interest is often tax deductible as well. So, you’re really not even paying the actual note rate you’re paying in many cases, so you could use that extra money to pay off other higher interest rate debt, whether it’s auto loans, student loans or credit cards.

The other thing is home repairs, upgrades, if you’re looking to remodel, it’s very common right now. People will say, “Hey, I want to redo the flooring in the kitchen.” And that gives them greater margin to do that. They’ll have their own money, they can actually get into the home, acquire it with less money down. And then of course, they can do all those things they want to do the house which creates value. One thing just to address with like investment, a home is more of a lifestyle to place to live. It’s an alternative to renting, but if we do work with some savvy investors, too. I have referenced before on this climb. I’m doing this for 20 years. I’m getting kind of old. I have quite a few investor clients. And I’ve noticed over the years that some of the savvier investors look at their returns differently than a lot of us would, right?

For example, just think about this. I mean, the average appreciation, let’s take out the last few years it’s been way above this. But normally it’s like 3.5 percent to 5 percent a year, is kind of historical, average appreciation for homes over time. If you were to find a home, let’s say you bought a 400,000 home, and you put 5 percent down such that’s going to be a $20,000 down payment. Okay. Well, let’s say that house, the following year is worth 420. Well, you just made 100 percent return on your investment. You only put 20,000 down to secure the home. And now your home’s worth 420, you just made 100 percent return in one year. I mean, it’s an incredible return, right?

Where if you put 20 percent down, you would have made roughly a 25 percent return, right? So, it’s still a good return, but not the same return. That’s how a lot of the investors that are out there, look at their returns on real estate. So, institutional investors look at it that way. But even us we can look at that way, you know, because that’s what we invested truly, and we put down $20,000 to buy that 400,000 home. And now we’ve made 20,000 in equity. So, we’ve doubled our investment in that case. Versus if we put 80,000 down, which would be 20 percent down, and we made 20,000 and we got a 25 percent return.

So clearly, the con is you don’t get the same returns, right? Your return is not as high. I think I’ll add one more thing to that with returns is, you could also use it for other investments. For example, the team at YFP, IRAs, Roth IRAs, there’s a lot of other alternatives out there to diversify, instead of putting all your money into real estate. I’m a big believer in being diversified. So, I think, clearly a con, if that’s a lot of your net worth that 20 percent, you’re putting it all into one asset may not be the wisest thing. So, those are just some cons there, Tim, to consider. And I guess, as we compare those options.

[00:19:09] TU: Tony, you’re alluding to two really important concepts that tie into the financial plan, which is leverage and opportunity costs, right? Any purchase and financial decision we make, there’s an opportunity costs or an evaluation of an opportunity cost. Here we’re talking about putting more money into a home that might be used elsewhere. I think that for many of our folks, this is a time to do some self-reflection evaluation as you look at risk tolerance, as you look at other goals that you have, looking at student loan debt, looking at your long-term investment retirement picture. That’s one of the things I think the team at YFP Planning does so well with the financial planning clients is help them look at a decision like a home purchase decision, have these conversations about appropriate amounts of leverage and the other goals that they’re trying to achieve, and then help coach through that decision making while looking at home buying in the context of the rest of the financial plan.

I think this is a good place, Tony, that we just remind folks, that down payment, of course, is not the only expense we need to be thinking about, right? We’ve talked about this on the show before, you know, earnest money, closing costs. So, what you’re going to need in some to come at the table to close, but then also, beyond just the ongoing monthly payment, which you mentioned, the PITI concept. So, principal, interest, taxes and insurance, what about everything else associated with that home purchase? So, whether that’s maintenance, and upkeep, and things that you expect, remodeling, finishes, landscaping, equipment that you need for the home, now that you have that home purchase. Really taking a step back, especially for those that might be currently in a renting situation to say, “What’s the total cost? And are we ready financially to make this decision?”

So, that’s number two, is knowing the budget. Number three is getting prepared -approved. So, once you’ve done some research to understand rates, created a budget, safer down payment and some of the other costs I just mentioned, next up is getting pre-approved. Tony, why is the pre-approval process so important? What is it? And how is that different from pre-qualification?

[00:21:09] TU: Well, the pre-qualification is typically a very easy thing that can be done. But unfortunately, this doesn’t carry a lot of weight. So, the key differences are, an actual pre-approval is going to be when a lender looks at your credit report, and then also looks at your income. So, it’s not just looking at credit, it’s actually asking for a pay stub, for example, and we verified your pay stub. Where pre-qualification, you don’t even run credit, you just put in what your expenses are, and tell the lender what your income is, and say, “Okay, great, you’re pre-qualified”, that doesn’t carry a lot of weight in the real estate community.

We talked to a lot of realtors, they call us a lot of times on offers, the listing agents do when they receive an offer and the buyer will include our letter, our pre-approval letter and ask some – they want to know that the client is qualified because it’s a competitive marketplace, and they don’t want their properties being tied up. So, the key difference is the lender has run credit, has reviewed your income. Those are the key differences there between the two.

The other thing that the pre-approval, I mean, that really brings value that I’ve seen over the years is the credit report. I want to bring this up, because a lot of us follow our credit scores, whether it’s Credit Karma, or a lot of these other monitoring services that are out there. But they don’t truly give an accurate reading of what a creditor sees. They’ll give you a kind of a good idea of what your scores are doing, and like if they’re moving higher, then the trend is probably good for you. But they can often be 20 to 30 points, 40 points even lower than what a lender sees. Because we run all three bureaus, we don’t follow one.

So, the mortgage community runs a report that has all three bureaus, TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian and we use the median score. So, we use the median score of the three to determine your credit score. And the value that I think can come here is, clearly, you know your score, which can determine if you qualify, but also your interest rate, right? So, the higher your credit score, the better your rates tend to be. And some lenders, and not all lenders can do this, but some lenders have the ability to help you with rescoring.

Basically, they have a program where they can tell you what you can do to improve your score. And that’s been invaluable for many people that are home shopping right now that we’ve been able to get them either qualified or into a better program by telling them, “Hey, by the way, if you pay down this credit card, for example, your score will go up 20 points.” Or “If you consolidate this loan or whatever it might be, you can improve your credit by this much.” So, that’s been something that’s been helpful during the pre-approval process, Tim, that I’ve seen lately.

[00:23:56] TU: And that’s a good connection back to Episode 216, Tony, when you and I talked about common credit blunders to avoid when buying a home. Again, we’ll link to that in the show notes, but credit is such an important part of the home buying process for the reasons that you mentioned. So, really looking at any due to shore up credit and making sure that you’re understanding your credit scores and using the right tools, so that you’re not surprised when you get into that pre-approval process.

So, that’s number three, get pre-approved. Number four is comparing lenders. Tony, we know that not all lenders are created equal. Ultimately, we’ve got to make this decision of what lender am I going to work with? What type of loan am I going to pursue? I think sometimes these are recommendations that might come from an agent, might be recommendations that come from a family or a friend or coworker, might be a random internet search. So, I think it’s worth talking about what are some of the things that folks should look for in a lender?

Now, of course here, Tony, you’re representing IBERIABANK/First Horizon, and we’re talking about the pharmacist home loan products. So of course, there’s a vested interest in folks evaluating that option. But from your viewpoint, what are some of the things that folks should be looking for when choosing that lender?

[00:25:06] TU: Well, there’s quite a few different types of lenders out there, and all of them have varying pros and cons to working with. So, I could kind give you guys an idea of some of the lenders that are out there, you have what are called mortgage brokers who are true, almost like a middleman between lenders, and there’s pros and cons with working with those types of lenders, because they do have a lot of options where like a larger bank may not have as many options as a mortgage broker. But mortgage brokers tend to be more expensive. I find that they’re typically better when you have a really more tough case, whether it’s a credit score issue or some other issue, they can be more valuable than a bank in a lot of ways. Because they have some more greater flexibility.

Then you have the correspondent lenders, which are mortgage lenders that may have small branches in a city or a town. They’re not a bank, but they are able to lend directly to Fannie and Freddie. They use, not to get too complicated here, but they actually use bank warehouse lines to fund the loans, and then they’ll sell the loans, but they are true correspondent lender. And then of course, there’s banks. But there’s different types of banks, there’s large banks like the Citi groups and the Bank of America’s and Wells Fargo. And then there’s more of a medium sized bank, like the bank that I work for, and then there’s small community banks, too.

So, there’s lots of different sizes, and all have pros and cons. When you’re looking at mortgage lenders, programs are very important. The program that you can get is important. Rates are important as well. The other thing that’s very critical, is being able to fulfill the timelines, because there’s some challenges out there with certain types of lenders where they can’t meet the commitment letter deadline in the purchase contract, or they have a struggle with their appraisal process, or they have a struggle closing a loan in 30 days. Those are questions you need to ask the lender upfront, because different lenders had different operations. Some will actually use outsourced processing, which might be in another state, whether it’s not all under one roof, or the loan originator that you talk to may not have control over that process.

So, those are just some things to think through. But clearly, there are advantages and disadvantages for every type of lender that’s out there. So, it’s good to know, get some recommendations, and also to kind of compare the products and make sure it’s a fit for you and that you feel comfortable with the group that you’re working with. I think ultimately, that’s the most important thing, that you feel confident that they can help you and fulfill the closing date for you. That’s a key element.

[00:27:52] TU: Yeah, that’s a good reminder, Tony. Interest rates, of course, are very important for the reason we mentioned in terms of the length of the loan, and what that’s going to mean in terms of dollars out of pocket. But don’t overlook some of those things about abilities around appraisal and underwriting and closing on time and communication, and making sure that you feel comfortable. There’s, of course, going to be some open communication. There’s a lot of things that need to get done in a short amount of time.

So, I think it’s a good place to highlight the pharmacist home loan product that is offered, Tony, through your organization at IBERIABANK/First Horizon. We’re seeing a lot of interest in the pharmacist community about this product, which many listening might have heard of doctor type of loans and think, “Hey, I’m a pharmacist. I’m not eligible for that.” And here with IBERIABANK/First Horizon, we have an opportunity that is available to pharmacists. So, talk to us more about that program in terms of down payment, what’s involved or not with PMI, maximum loan amounts and where this option is available in terms of where folks may live?

[00:28:58] TU: Sure, sure. Well, this product is often a great solution, and it’s been really fun to be able to help so many people with this program. It is somewhat unique in that you can put very little down payment and not have PMI and still have very aggressive interest rates too. So, to kind of just highlight the program overall is, if you’re a first-time homebuyer, first time buying, you can put as little as 3 percent down. And of course, there’s no PMI. If you’ve owned a home before, it’s 5 percent down. You’d have to put a 5 percent down payment and the no mortgage insurance clearly is an advantage. But the other thing too is oftentimes the rates on this program, the 30-year rate that we offer on it is often better than my 20 percent down rate. So, you’re still getting a really competitive rate and priced very, very well. As far as the minimum credit score is 700. So, there is a minimum credit score you have to be above 700. There’s no like clear reserve requirement. What that means is having extra money reserves of payments in your bank account or investments, which is nice too, for a lot of first-time homebuyers and those that are buying their first home.

But the other piece about the loan limits that Tim referenced, currently, our loan limit on this product is 548,250. But that’s about to change. I think we’re probably looking at at least 625,000 starting January 1, 2022. So, we’re going to see a nice bump up. It may even be higher than that, and that’ll be across the country. So, this program is available in basically the 48 lower states. Alaska and Hawaii are the only two states that we’re not licensed in, but we can offer it in 48 states. So, it’s a nice footprint that we can help and we’ve helped individuals in pretty much every state, I think, that I referenced.

But the loan limit thing is exciting, because I think that’s going to enable a lot more people to buy in higher priced areas. And we may even see that go higher than that in certain areas that are even higher priced. And there are certain parts of the country that priced markets, housing prices are much higher, clearly in California, in and around DC, Northern Virginia. So, those are some places where this could be even higher than 625. So yeah, it’s exciting to see a little bit of a move higher there.

[00:31:19] TU: So sorry to our friends of YFP in Alaska or Hawaii, as Tony mentioned, this is available in the lower 48. We’ve got more information that goes into more detail on what Tony just shared there. You can find that at yourfinancialpharmacist.com/home-loan. And again, that’s a summary of much of what we’re talking about here on this episode as well.

So Tony, we’ve talked so far about knowing the landscape of interest rates. We referenced the Freddie Mac resource, folks can go to find that information, making sure that they’re considering that points may be including those rates, as they’re looking at various options. So that was, number one, know the landscape. Number two, we talked about knowing your budget, the importance of not only the down payment, but also other costs that are involved in the transaction, as well as ongoing costs with the home purchase. Number three, we talked about pre-approval, why that’s so important, how it’s different than pre-qualification, and how the credit score has implications there. Number four, we just talked about comparing some of the lenders and the options that are out there and we talked about the pharmacist home loan product.

So here we are, finally, we put in an offer on that home, we’ve got our lender obviously lined up, we’re working with that agent, hopefully that offer is accepted. And now we’ve got this process that happens from offer accepted to ultimately closing on the home where those keys are handed over. So, what should folks expect in this application underwriting process in terms of forms that they’re going to need to prepare, documents that they’re going to have to show, and any work that they might be able to do in advance to get some of that ready?

[00:32:55] TU: Yeah, so the exciting part happens, right? We’ve got the property under contract, but there is quite a bit of of items that lenders will need. Once you feel comfortable and you found the lender, that’s a good fit for you, lenders, we’re all really going to need the same things, and it’s going to be income information. So, if you’re self-employed, we’ll need typically two years of your tax returns, both your corporate returns and your personal returns. And then for income for those that are employed, it’s a little easier, just need two years of your W-2s, and your most recent pay stubs for the past 30 days. Those are what lenders will need to verify income.

Then we’re going to have to verify your down payment. And typically, that’s going to be bank statements and lenders have different types of ways to do this. We actually have a technology that we’ve – no, it’s not our proprietary technology, we have a FinTech company out of California, that has been doing very well in the mortgage space. They built a platform where when clients enter their information, we can actually do a read only format for your bank statements. So, you don’t even have to supply them. It’ll tell us what’s in the account, and the average two months and we verified it that way. So that’s been really helpful and a lot of clients have liked that.

But outside of that alternative, traditionally, it’s two months of statements. So, two months of your most recent bank account statements to verify the down payment. If they need additional reserves, if the lender needs additional reserves in, if you have an IRA or 401(k), or any investment account, brokerage account, those assets would be verified with a two months of statements or a quarterly statement as well. And then of course, we’ll need a copy of the purchase contract. So typically, once you have a purchase contract available, you’re able to lock a rate in and that’s important because rates can be volatile. They can move in, especially with economic reports, that can cause rates to move up and down and lenders typically cannot lock rates until they have a purchase contract so they know how long to lock it and they have an actual property address for the bond that they’re locking, basically. So, that’s another step that we’ll need.

The other items that you need to work on too, is homeowner’s insurance. I always encourage people that to get started with that as soon as possible, especially if you’re in the southern states, southeastern states during early July, through the end of October. We have some tropical storms down in this area and hurricanes, even if they’re not any threat to you, if they are in, what’s called the box, insurance companies have limits on when they can write insurance. So, we’re always very encouraging to get that process started soon. So, homeowners’ insurance is an important component. And typically, driver’s license, things like that.

The application will go through all the questions about your employment, where you’ve worked the last couple of years, a lot of your vitals, date of birth, social security number, those types of things, and you’re on your way. So, it’s an exciting – that’s when the process officially begins. Typically, the appraisals ordered shortly after that mortgage application is put in. So, we also need to know who your realtors are, if there are realtors involved, so they can open the home – they can be the point of contact for the appraiser. That’s another item that we need to know. We need to know the parties who are involved. And often we do, but I just included that because that’s something else the lender will need to know. You may need to supply that to your lender, make sure that you do. That information, the key contacts in the transaction. But from that point on, that the journey is on, and you’re moving through the loan process after you make that formal loan application.

[00:36:33] TU: Yeah, and I mentioned a few moments ago, Tony, the importance of open communication. This is an exciting time, this can feel overwhelming, there’s a lot of moving pieces and parts. I think much of what you just shared to me is a good reminder of folks of like this is the time to over communicate on both sides, for both the lender, as well as the home buyer, and making sure that you’re being responsive, things need to move quick, there’s a lot of ducks that need to get in a row. The other reason, I think, this section here on our final one on completing the application and bringing this whole process to ultimately a close is folks should be thinking about some of the information that’s been requested and what implications things like job transitions may have, big financial purchases people are making, right?

Ideally, we’re trying to have as little disruption as possible in this time period, because of the information that the bank is requesting from you and wanting to have the stability of both that funds to close as well as looking at your income. So, for folks that are in transition, for folks that have pending large purchases, I’m thinking of the residents or the fellows and those that are moving from a first to a second job. Just be thinking about some of the timeline and the implications that has on finishing up this process and ultimately the overall home buying process.

Tony, great stuff as always. It’s been a great year of having you on the show, and always appreciate your input and your expertise. And folks, again, more information, yourfinancialpharmacist.com/home-loan. You can learn more about all of what we talked about here on this episode, as well as the pharmacist home loan product and get in touch with Tony and the team at IBERIABANK/First Horizon from there. Tony, thanks so much.

[00:38:10] TU: Thanks for having me, Tim. Always good to be here. Thank you again.

[SPONSOR MESSAGE]

[00:38:13] TU: Before we wrap up the show, I want to again, thank this week’s sponsor of Your Financial Pharmacist podcast, IBERIABANK/First Horizon.

We’re glad to have found a solution for pharmacists that are unable to save 20 percent for a down payment on a home. A lot of pharmacists in the YFP community have taken advantage of IBERIABANK/First Horizon’s pharmacist home loan, which requires a 3 percent down payment for a single-family home or townhome, and has no PMI on a 30-year fixed rate mortgage. To learn more about the requirements for IBERIABANK/First Horizon’s pharmacist home loan and to get started with the preapproval process, visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/home-loan.

[OUTRO]

[00:38:55] 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 229: How This Pharmacy Professor’s Debt Free Journey Ignited His Passion to Teach Others

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

How This Pharmacy Professor’s Debt Free Journey Ignited His Passion to Teach Others

On this episode, sponsored by GoodRx, Bhavik Shah talks about his debt-free journey, his early missteps, and how he used his experience to further the financial literacy education of other pharmacists.

About Today’s Guest

Bhavik Shah earned his doctorate of pharmacy from Rutgers University and completed post-graduate training in pharmacy practice and infectious diseases at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, PA. He is an associate professor at the Jefferson College of Pharmacy and co-director of the Pharmacology thread in the JeffMD curriculum at Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University. He is an active member of ASHP and ACCP. Within ASHP, he has served as vice-chair and chair of the Year-Round Educational Steering Committee for 2019-2021, where he was able to promote including personal finance education through podcasts with the New Practitioners Forum and Clinical Leadership section advisory groups.

Bhavik is passionate about teaching personal finance to students and colleagues. He has created a personal finance elective at JCP.

Episode Summary

Today, we host pharmacist and educator Bhavik Shah for a candid conversation about his journey of becoming debt-free and the financial missteps he took early in his journey that you can avoid. Fresh out of pharmacy school, Bhavik knew he wanted to pay off his student debt, but he did not have a plan. Bhavik shares the story of how he paid off a hefty student loan of over $80,000 in just six years and shares his advice to develop a plan for student loan debt payment along with a plan for making the most of your income. Bhavik also shares why he believes it is critical to take advantage of Roth payments and how he was motivated by the idea of being his own financial steward. Listeners will learn why Bhavik believes it is essential to get a grasp on the basics of financial literacy before hiring a professional (tax, insurance, or otherwise), and what drove him to create his course on financial literacy, including the reality that student debt creates a barrier to entry for many pharmacists to pursue post-graduate education. He believes that this problem could be solved by including a financial literacy piece in the PharmD program. Listeners will be introduced to several great resources that have enriched Bhavik’s financial understanding and more!

Key Points From This Episode

An introduction to today’s guest, Bhavik Shah.
Bhavik’s academic background and why he chose a career in pharmacy and teaching.
The money scripts Bhavik was raised with and how they impacted his mindset.
How he graduated with $80,000 of student debt and paid it off in just six years.
Why he considers it a mistake not to have taken advantage of Roth contributions to get tax-free growth.
What Bhavik means by emphasizing being your own steward, and what motivated this.
How he learned the importance of understanding the basics before hiring a professional.
Financial education and literacy and why it is important.
What motivated Bhavik to create his course on financial literacy.
Bhavik’s thoughts on whether a personal finance piece should be included in the PharmD program.
Resources he has found helpful, including the White Coat Investor and the Money Guy.
How student debt deters people from pursuing postgraduate education.
The role of financial education in preventing this barrier.

Highlights

“The core, the concepts of living below your means, saving, understanding the value of money, those experiences stuck with me. It made it a lot easier as an adult to approach my own finances with that mindset.” — Bhavik Shah [0:05:02]

“Another mistake I made was not taking advantage of Roth contributions, especially as a student or as a resident, being in that lower-income bracket and having not much time on your side to get that tax-free growth. That is something I wish I had done more of or at all.” — Bhavik Shah [0:14:02]

“There is a taboo centered around talking about money and so I realized people are making the same mistakes and so we need to learn from one another so that is really what drove me to create this course.” — Bhavik Shah [0:23:24]

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 Bhavik Shah, an associate professor of pharmacy practice at Jefferson College of Pharmacy. I had an opportunity to meet Bhavik a few weeks prior to recording and really appreciated his passion and his enthusiasm for personal finance. On this week’s show, we talk about Bhavik’s journey to becoming debt-free from student loans and why he felt like that was just the beginning of his overall financial journey. We also talk about some of his early missteps and how that helped shape his current mindset and approach.

We talk about why and how he has taken the experience from his own journey to further the education of other pharmacists through podcasts that he’s done with ASHP new practitioner’s forum, as well as by creating and offering a personal finance elective at Jefferson College of Pharmacy.

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

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

[SPONSOR MESSAGE]

[0:01:44.7] TU: It’s American pharmacist month and to honor the occasion, GoodRx has created the Above and Beyond Pharmacy Awards. These awards recognize pharmacy professionals that go the extra mile, every single day to improve the health of their patients and communities and we need you, the pharmacy community, to nominate your incredible colleagues.

Pharmacists, technicians, residents, and interns that show true leadership, compassion, pride and dedication. Pharmacy professionals are on the frontlines, working every day to transform their communities. The time has come to show them some appreciation. Nominations are open now through November 19, 2021, and recipients will receive education credits and more.

Go to GoodRx.com/pharmacy-awards to nominate someone today. Now, again, that’s GoodRx.com/pharmacy-awards.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:02:36.5] TU: Bhavik, welcome to the show.

[0:02:37.5] BS: Thanks for having me, Tim.

[0:02:39.8] TU: Looking forward to this interview. You and I had a chance to connect a few weeks ago, and we’re going to get to where that connection came from and some of the work that you’re doing in personal finance education and your passion for this topic. I really left that conversation feeling inspired and empowered in my own journey, based on the intentionality, I really heard of how you have approached your financial position and I think that information is going to be really helpful for our community.

Let’s start with your background and work in pharmacy, what drew you to the profession, where did you go to school and then what type of work are you doing now?

[0:03:14.0] BS: Absolutely. I went to pharmacy school at Rutgers University, I did the zero to six program and what drew me to pharmacy is because I knew I wanted to do something in healthcare. And I was sort of deciding between medicine and pharmacy, and I had family pursuit pharmacy and you know, the more I learned about it, it seemed it fit my strengths and my personality. So that’s what drew me to Rutgers and I did my residency training at Thomas Jefferson University and pharmacy practice as well as in infectious disease and I’ve been a faculty member here since 2010.

I have a student of four, hospital medicine rotation, and teach in a number of courses as well as in the medical school too.

[0:04:02.7] TU: Very good, we’re going to come back later about some of the work that you’re doing at Jefferson around personal finance education but I first want to talk about your own journey and your own story. And Bhavik, one theme I’ve noticed on this show, through interviewing other pharmacists, that I have also seen in my own journey, is their relevance of the money scripts that we carry with us.

What I mean by that is the said and unsaid things from our upbringing that impact the way we view money today. Tell us about your money scripts and how they impacted your own journey when it comes to your financial plan?

[0:04:40.4] BS: That’s a great question. My relationship with money started with my parents. They immigrated from India with nothing and they sort of built a life here. They had the means to provide for my brother and I, but it was never to the point where it was abundant, where we could talk about investing or anything but the basics, the core, the concepts of living below your means, saving, understanding the value of money, those experiences stuck with me. It made it a lot easier as an adult to approach my own finances with that mindset.

I really am appreciative of that upbringing, even though I didn’t necessarily have the rarer thoughts and know all the finer things about investing or anything like that. I think that came later but that relationship with money, I think was really key in understanding what it brings and what it doesn’t bring.

[0:05:36.7] TU: I like Bhavik that you used the word relationship with money because I think that is something that is healthy for us to think about is, what is the relationship we have with money? Whether that’s a healthy or an unhealthy relationship, where might that come from? Where do the perceptions and values and beliefs that we have come from in money, and obviously knowing that that very well and likely, is connected to the behavior and how we’re approaching our financial plan today.

Bhavik, as you know today’s graduate is facing on average, about $170,000 in student loan debt. Now, that is much different than what our peers were facing back in 2008 when both you and I completed our PharmD training. Tell us about your debt position after graduating and through residency and not only the position that you’re in debt-wise but also tell me about your mindset at the time around paying off that debt.

[0:06:29.4] BS: When I graduated, my expenses for college were all financed by student loans. My parents, coming from a working-class background, they didn’t have the means to provide for us and that was fine so I knew that sort of going in.

I graduated with about $80,000 of debt back in 2008. I was fortunate enough to go to a state school, I was fortunate enough to be in a zero to six program so that definitely helped mitigate some of the amount of debt that I graduated with.

When I graduated, I didn’t know, you and I know repaying debt, especially student loans, there’s so many different options and terms and it’s very dizzying and I made mistakes along the way. And when I went to residency, I put my loans into forbearance, which looking back that was not the right thing because I was confusing the terms forbearance and deferment.

As I sort of started learning more about things, my relationship with my loans was I wanted to pay them off as quickly as possible so I was – I was a resident for two years, I was moonlighting, picking up extra shifts. And once I became a faculty member, I was working, you know, having them sort of being accustomed to working every other weekend as a resident, I carried that forward so I was picking up shifts at the hospital.

I was able to pay off my student loans in six years instead of a standard 10-year plan. A part of that way that we were able to do that, it was dad’s idea actually. He suggested that we payoff, at the time interest rates on student loans was more high, they’re still high. At the time, he had access to a home equity line of credit. That was very low, that was right after the economy crashed in ‘08.

He had access to cheaper money and so he said, “How about we take a home equity line of credit” we pay off the loans and then I paid my parents back. I looked into that and I didn’t know what a home equity line of credit was back then, I didn’t understand these things but my dad was looking out for me and I really appreciated that because he was able to get a 2% home equity line of credit at the time or two out of 3%.

I was sitting at six and a half percent so I was saving money, he said, “You know, why pay the interest to the government when you could just pay it, keep it within the house?” I was just paying him interest to – he didn’t make any money off of me but he did get a tax deduction out of it so I guess he came out ahead a little bit but it really set me up for success and so I really appreciated that offer. Obviously, they trusted me to pay them back.

[0:09:19.9] TU: Yeah, there’s got to be obviously, trust in that relationship. That strategy, if I heard you correctly was, you’ve got federal loans and I remember, Bhavik, I had fixed interest rate loans 6.8% is the number I remember in my mind in 2008. Some are a little bit lower but many of them were at about that rate and so obviously, home equity line of credit that your father is able to help with lower. You mentioned two to 3% so obviously that difference between six, six and a half two and three percent is significant intra savings, even when you’re talking about a relatively short period of time, which that being six years.

Did you, Bhavik – when I graduated in ‘08 and I think there’s a lot more information that’s out there today. I’m finding that I’m having conversations with graduates today that already have an understanding of unsubsidized versus subsidized and public service loan forgiveness, and refinancing and income-driven repayment. I didn’t know what any of that was.

Did you feel like, at the time, you had an understanding of the nuances and options, and would you agree that it seems like a lot of that information has come a long way here in the last decade since we graduated or I guess, a little more than a decade.

[0:10:28.3] BS: Yeah, absolutely. I think back at the time, I didn’t know anything. I just knew I had to pay it back, I know that the standard 10 year plan was a default and that was, it’s sort of the mindset that I went in. I didn’t know there were other options at the time. I think student public service loan forgiveness was new and so in looking back, I certainly didn’t qualify for it because I was a previous borrower predating 2007.

I won’t have qualified but I didn’t know that at the time. I just knew I had to pay this off and so that’s why I was just motivated to pay it off as quickly as possible. So I was paying extra principle payments to my dad, turns out but I was able to pay everything off in six years. That was like a huge sense of relief.

[0:11:18.2] TU: Yeah, that’s great. One of the things you shared with me when we talked a couple of weeks back is, this resonates with me as I think back to our own journey. Once the loans are paid off, you kind of wondered, “Well, now what?” right? Had you thought much about that post debt payment journey and tell us a little hit about that transition from making big, aggressive, large on monthly payments to no longer, they’re gone, right?

[0:11:43.8] BS: Yeah, actually and that’s where my sort of personal finance journey started was after paying off my student loans, I was like, “Now, what?” and so at the time, I was dating my now wife, girlfriend at the time, I just transitioned my monthly student loan payment and I was just saving cash because I knew, engagement ring, and I’m Indian and when we do weddings, it’s sort of a big affair.

I knew that I want to pay for that and I didn’t want my parents to go into any debt for that. I transitioned towards those expenses, saving for those expenses and so that sort of – once those were done, then it was like, “Okay, now what? Where do I go?” I started learning more about where else to save and invest our funds.

[0:12:34.6] TU: We graduated in 2008, I guess we could call ourselves kind of that maybe second part of the career, right? That mid-career, we’re no longer new practitioners, we’re beyond that or there’s perhaps some evolution of the financial plan, the debt’s paid off, other goals that you’re working on and towards.

And so my question here is, Bhavik, you now sit in this vantage point of, “Okay, I’ve been through this journey, I paid off the debt, I’m now in more of that wealth building, next phase of the financial plan.” What advice would you give to the students that are listening to the new practitioners who are listening or even think about your former self as they are on the front end of this journey, and perhaps feeling overwhelmed by the magnitude of not only the debt but also other priorities of which you’re trying to work on?

[0:13:19.8] BS: Absolutely. I think for me, the challenge that I had was I didn’t have a plan. I had a general sort of vague approach to things but it wasn’t necessary purposeful. And so having a dedicated plan for your student loans is something that I would tell myself. I, looking back, I did what I wanted to do but then, was I optimizing every single dollar. I left money on the table because I wasn’t taking advantage of 403(b) matching at my employer.

I mean, I wasn’t spending the money, which is I guess good, I was still building net worth by putting it towards student loans, but finding ways to get the most utility out of your money was a real mistake I made. Another mistake I made was you know, not taking advantage of Roth contributions especially as a student or as a resident, being in that lower-income bracket, and having not much time on your side to get that tax-free growth. That is something I wish I had done more of or at all.

That’s what I tell students is just there’s a lot of information out there and so going back to your question earlier, which I realized I didn’t answer, because back then, there was not enough information out there, the new programs are really new. Now, there’s a lot of resources out there, just a matter of finding it. You have that, other websites have it blogged. Knowing that and I encourage my students, third year, fourth year, to start thinking about this and that way, in my elective, that when you graduate, you know what you’re going to do. Whether you’re going to pursue this line, what IDR is best for you or not, or if you’re going to refinance, which lenders you’re going to look into, that sort of thing so having a plan.

[0:15:02.7] TU: Absolutely, we talk about it all the time, right? The intentionality of the plan and even if that debt number doesn’t change tomorrow or next month or next year in a very significant way, the power of knowing you’ve evaluated your options and you have a plan, going forward that considers, not only student loans but also other parts of the financial plan, knowing that student loan debt is certainly going to be a big part of the puzzle for many folks that are out there.

When you and I talked several weeks ago, one thing that you said that really stood out to me was your desire to be your own steward, and how much of a motivation that was for you on your quest towards learning more about personal finance, and then applying the things that you’re learning in your own plan and on your journey. What did you mean by that in terms of the importance of being your own steward and what led to that motivation?

[0:15:52.9] BS: I think the biggest experience that I had was, after I had paid off my student loans, you know, we paid for the engagement ring and wedding, I mean those life events that are happening in your 20s and 30s you know, it was sort of like, “Now, what?” My wife and I, when we got married, we had an accountant.

I asked for advice and how to minimize taxes and what more we could do. They offered it and so that sort of got me into thinking, “Okay, they encouraged, a backdoor Roth.” That’s not what they called it at the time but it’s called a none – it was more confusing. I wish they called it backdoor Roth because I Googled it that way. Then, that got me sort of thinking. At the same time, when I graduated as a resident, I was approached by what I thought was a financial advisor but it was really an insurance agent.

He was recommending term insurance, term life insurance and disability insurance which I know I wanted to get, but they were pushing whole life insurance, which at the time for me didn’t make sense. And I pushed back but they have a really good sales pitch and it’s very tempting, but I did not go down that road. But he did end up selling me a term life insurance, which was not what I wanted, but I didn’t know how to communicate that because I didn’t know what specific terms to look for or ask for.

What I was sold was a term 80 policy by one of the big companies in the business. The premium increases as you get older, what I really wanted was a level premium where it’s just a fixed amount per month, doesn’t increase with the face value for a certain period of time. That’s what I wanted but I didn’t use that jargon.

Similarly, he also sold me a disability insurance and he was saying it was like an own-occupation et cetera. Similarly, it didn’t have – it was not a level premium so the premium was escalating and in your 20s and 30s, it looked pretty cheap and I didn’t really look at it how much of a cost in my 40s, 50s, 60s. The own-occupation ended up not being really own-occupation.

[0:18:08.2] TU: Yeah, it’s confusing, yup.

[0:18:09.9] BS: It was only for the first year or two of a claim and then it goes back to any occupation. Again, at the time, I didn’t know what to ask for or what to watch out for. Between that experience and going back to the accountant, I started looking more into the backdoor Roth, and doing it in one of the resources that I stumbled across was White Coat Investor. I learned about what that was and how doing it – and once I executed it and I – the next tax year, I went to my accountant. I said, “This is what I did, my wife and I. Can you help us file 8606?”

He did it correctly for me but he did it incorrectly for my wife. Now had I not known what to look for I wouldn’t have credit and so the basis would have been off of my wife. So that’s why I was saying, you know, I was trusting a professional and the accountant and this insurance agent, with a lot letters behind his name that seemed like he knew what he was talking about, but it was still not what I wanted or wasn’t in my best interest. So that really solidified for me and my wife that we have to sort of take the time to at least understand the basics.

That way if we engage with professionals then we know we are getting what we want to get and if it is appropriate for us.

[0:19:35.5] TU: I think what you just shared there, Bhavik, is a lot of things that are so valuable. Because I would advocate, as you just mentioned whether folks engage with professionals, you talk about accountants, you talk about insurance sales, you talk about financial planners and certainly as you’ve highlighted, not all professionals are created equal. There is some homework that folks have to do to understand the different professionals or credentials, how folks are getting paid, what standards are held under.

Does it makes sense or they act in their best interest or not, and we’ve talked about several of those things on the show but regardless if you are working with a professional or not, I think this concept of being your own steward is so important. One of the philosophies that we have at YFP planning is very much that folks feel that they have the education of the information whether that’s debt repayment, whether that’s investing, whether that’s insurance, whether that is tax as well as they feel empowered in that be in a shared decision that is being made between them and the professional in this case, who would be a financial planner.

Again, even if you are entrusting a professional, to your comment that you just made, really having that understanding, that baseline knowledge to make sure that you feel comfortable and confident in the advice that is given and that also you feel good that it affirms what you’ve been learning on your own. Or that you are able to then engage in that conversation, hopefully have some good and at times perhaps some hard questions and we’ve got more information.

There is a couple of things that you mentioned there, Bhavik, that I sense folks probably might want to dig into a little bit deeper. You mentioned both life, term life and long-term disability insurance. We talked about those on episode 44 and 45 of the show respectively, we’ll link that at the show notes and then back to our Roth IRA, probably one of the most common questions we get, I’ve got a blog post, why most pharmacists should consider it.

Episode 96 on the podcast talks a little bit about what is it, what’s the process, executing back to Roth, some of that, we’ll link to both of those in the show notes. A great example that I think you gave in terms of the importance of being your own steward. I want to shift gears and talk for a bit about financial education, financial literacy is I know that this was in part how we crossed paths and something that we both very much show and have a passion for.

This is evident, Bhavik, in the work that you’re doing and teaching personal finance elective at Jefferson, also within ASHP, you’ve been able to promote personal finance education through podcast with a new practitioner’s form and the clinical leadership section advisory groups. And so one of the questions I want to start with here is, as it relates to the course that you are teaching at Jefferson, tell us more about that course.

How did it get started? What type of support have you had? Some of the general concepts and information that you are trying to teach within that course, is that something that we certainly don’t see at all colleges but I suspect many listening whether it’s a student or alumni, perhaps a faculty member might have an interest in seeing this being offered or something similar through own institution?

[0:22:33.0] BS: The course was a – it sort of was a multi-year process of how I sort of got there. As I spent a couple of years teaching myself about personal finance and then becoming comfortable educating others or pointing to others the right resources, so I first started off with doing a faculty development program or a session on it, and then I start incorporating it with my API students.

I would do topical, topic clinical topic discussions but I would devote Mondays for personal finance topics and I made it optional because I didn’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable. But you know, I was saving on this is Money Monday, we’re going to talk about anything that you want to talk about and so students took me up on that. That sort of showed me that there was a need for it, especially since we don’t really get taught in any and I didn’t have any sort of formal education on it.

There is a taboo centered around talking about money and so I realized people are making the same mistakes. And so we need to learn from one another, so that is really drove me to create this course. I looked at the literature to see what was done at pharmacy schools and there wasn’t a lot published. There were a few papers published, there is really one paper that’s published by Michelle Qui out of the University of Wisconsin.

[0:23:52.7] TU: Yeah, I think that was back in ‘13 or ‘14. It’s been a while too, right?

[0:23:57.0] BS: It’s been a while, yeah and so there wasn’t out there, and I looked at different colleges to see what they had on their websites, how many schools had it and so this was like an untapped – this was a need but it had an untapped potential. In creating this course, I really didn’t have too much direction of what was done. I just sort of created something about starting from the basics like banking, credit scores, debt, what does the interest mean and what does inflation mean.

Then we talked about like module on tax rates, and then we get into the weeds of the different retirement vehicles, student loans. And so you know, it is pretty comprehensive, estate planning and so it’s a one-credit course over 14 hours. Now, it is going to be a two-credit course because there was just so much volume there that the students wanted, and so I expanded it to two-credit hours and so the type of assignments that I give are, I hope, that was sort of practical.

There is a long internal assignment in the course where I want them to finish the course with their own financial plan and so we build that out throughout the course. Existing debt, so what is your repayment plan, what’s your plan for getting life insurance, disability insurance? What’s your plan for your student loans, saving for retirement? Every week we go through that, each of those topics.

For life insurance and disability insurance, I go through policy genius or whatever resource just getting an idea of this is a resource you could use to look at when you graduate and how much it might cost. We go through student loans and we go through the different tech leaders online, and the studenta.gov and we go through PSLF. And so then that way they can put it to paper of what they are thinking about now. And obviously they could change their plan when they graduate, but having that something to refer to it will I think hopefully give them a starting point.

Something that I know I certainly don’t have but having that sort of framework hopefully sets them up for success.

[0:26:08.8] TU: I love you started one credit, you’ve gotten to two credits. I suspect there is a lot of interest from the students as well and I felt that similar but we started with one-credit hour personal finance like in the northeast to have Murdoch University about six or seven years ago, one to two-credit hours and then at Ohio State, we built the three-credit hour online asynchronous course and you know there is a lot to cover.

I think that the students, certainly there is a desire for that information and just some really cool things that you can do obviously in early management systems and other things to customize that learning experience for the students. I love the work that you are doing at Jefferson at that, and I hope for other colleges that we’ll see more of that. Bhavik, I’m going to put you on the spot and I didn’t tell you I was going to ask you this question in advance.

I am honestly curious to hear your input on this and of course, noting that you might have a bias, you probably do have a bias because you are teaching a personal finance elective. I think we have an interesting opportunity in front of us with the ACPE accreditation standards that are set to come out the next version in 2025 I believe and there is currently a comment period through the end of 2021 for folks to give feedback on those standards.

I have often thought and again, biased of course that you know, personal finance education should be considered as a part of the PharmD required curriculum and I think for good reasons, there is perhaps some split opinion on this ranging from is something like personal finance really part of a PharmD large at a clinical pharmacy training program. And I think there is other professions we could point to, whether it’s veterinary medicine and their associations or even medicine in AAMC who have done some more work in this topic than perhaps we have done in pharmacy.

I sense there’s two camps or two thoughts out there of, like absolutely consider what’s going on with the debt loads and the trends like it is a part, or our obligation to make sure students have a baseline understanding of personal finance education. Then others that are perhaps of the mindset of like, great philosophically, great in theory, great idea. I buy into the importance of the topic but is this something that really should be a part of the required PharmD program. What are your thoughts on that?

[0:28:27.8] BS: I think that is a fascinating question and honest, you know, you mentioned the comment period. I already added my comment to that asking that this be considered being incorporated in the document. I didn’t direct them to make it required or elective but I think it should be considered and I think there is an opportunity for it now especially I think there is a well for it and I think it relates to the current standard for where they talk about personal and professional development.

I think there is definitely a fit into that, because a part of personal finance is you need to have that self-awareness that what your own goals are and what you want out of your own career and your own personal life. And money is a tool that helps you achieve that or not, depending on how you use money. And so that’s one of the things I have in my elective is a reflection paper and for students to sort of put down why are they doing what they’re doing with their financial plan.

They just start thinking about it. I think there is a goal for it and I think there is certainly a need for it, and I saw that in the APHA House of Delegates. There was a motion too for every school of pharmacy or college of pharmacy to have such a course either be offered, whether it be required or elective, but at least be offered and so I think the momentum is there. I can comment out on the medical students because I also have a role at the medical college at Jefferson.

[0:29:50.0] TU: Yeah.

[0:29:50.5] BS: Currently, there isn’t a course. There is some content that they are exposed to but it is not as structured or in a course format, so they, the students themselves, they did a curricular gap analysis last year and there’s a strong desire from the medical students to have this kind of content. And so I am hoping that with my hand in two pots, you know, I can sort of bridge that in and open it up the elective to both students. I think that would be great in professional opportunities.

[0:30:23.6] TU: Yeah and I think we have some examples, you know the course you are doing at Jefferson others that are teaching courses, I probably know of 10 or 12 colleges that have some really good momentum in this and similar to other areas. I think in professional education being one, where really pharmacy took a jump out of the gates even ahead of other professions, and you get started, and then it continues to evolve, right?

It continues to evolve over time and so I agree, I think there is momentum. I think the house of delegates you mentioned at APHA SP, the students really being behind this, and credit to what I’ve seen AVMA and AAMC do for their members in both veterinary medicine and medicine respectively in terms of resources they provide with their membership. I think we’ve got a real opportunity in pharmacy especially considering what we have seen in the trends in debt load as well as some of the other pressures that we have on our profession.

That I think the timing is right to be able to see some of these forward. Bhavik, in your journey, again as you are in kind of this next phase in your career, what resources have you found to be really helpful as you’ve navigated this topic of personal finance in the first 13 or 14 years of your career?

[0:31:35.0] BS: Yes, so there is a number of resources that I’ve sort of used and they all have a different role and what is good. But the ones that I sort of go through, and sort of subscribed to on a, I guess daily basis, so The White Coat Investor, I mentioned. He has a blog, a couple of really good books. His bootcamp, financial bootcamp book was really helpful because it sort of laid it out in a very algorithmic manner of like what you ought to do.

That helped me sort of make sure my disability insurance, life insurance was up to date and of adequate coverage. I like White Coat, after White Coat, I was looking at other resources that’s when I stumbled upon YFP and so that was really good. It was good to see there is something in the pharmacy space as well, and it was very helpful to see that it was the same message and so that sort of solidified what I was doing. I also like, I don’t know if you have ever heard of The Money Guy, it’s a YouTube channel.

[0:32:35.5] TU: No, I have not.

[0:32:36.5] BS: No? I really like them. It’s a podcast that’s done by, and they have a YouTube channel of two CPAs/CFPs. And the way they present content is very approachable, very digestible. It’s very beginner-friendly. The one thing that I like most that they have that’s for free is what they call the financial order of operations, and for me, that was something I wish I had ten years ago because I was just trying to think about paying off debt but I didn’t know what to do next with my next dollar.

The way they laid it out it optimizes every single dollar to meet your goals. And so from the tax standpoint, from a matching standpoint, paying off debt, all of those considerations. And so it’s very easy and approachable to do an action plan, so I found that to be helpful.

Another thing to consider about the need for personal finance education in pharmacy curriculum is that there is data out there that shows that students, their career choices after graduation are impacted by their perception and stress related to their student debt and not knowing how to handle it. There is data that shows that folks are less likely to pursue post-graduate training and enter the workforce directly because they want to pay off their loans.

I think the profession will be served best by having this so that students when they graduate, they know what to do and have a plan and that way, they’re making their career choices because that is what they want to do not because they feel like they have to and so I think that will probably help our graduates the most in our profession by incorporating it.

[0:35:05.5] TU: Bhavik, I appreciate the resources and the recommendations. We’re going to link to those in the show notes, you mentioned The White Coat Investor, The Money Guy, YFP, I appreciate the shout out and I suspect our community will find those resources helpful. Bhavik, thank you so much for taking time to come on the show, for reaching out and I really appreciate your willingness to share your story with the YFP community and also very much appreciate your passion for teaching personal finance to others, so thank you again.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:35:33.6] TU: It’s American Pharmacist Month and to honor the occasion, GoodRx created the Above and Beyond Pharmacy Awards. These awards recognize pharmacy professionals that go the extra mile every single day to improve the health of their patients and communities and we need you, the pharmacy community to nominate your incredible colleagues, pharmacists, technicians, residents and interns that show true leadership, compassion, pride and dedication.

Pharmacy professionals are on the frontlines working every day to transform their communities. The time has come to show them some appreciation. Nominations are open now through November 19th, 2021 and recipients will receive education credits and more. Go to goodrx.com/pharmacy-awards to nominate someone today. Again, that is goodrx.com/pharmacy-awards.

[DISCLAIMER]

[0:36:24.2] TU: As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and it is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information of the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment.

Furthermore, the information contained in our archived newsletters, blogpost 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 228: Why This New Practitioner Decided to Start His Own Business

Posted on November 4, 2021November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

Why This New Practitioner Decided to Start His Own Business

On this episode, sponsored by Thoughtful Wills, entrepreneur and pharmacist, Chris Cozzolino, talks about his journey building several businesses as a recent graduate.

About Today’s Guest

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

Content creation for social media and personal branding has grown exponentially over the last couple of years but is still fairly new to the healthcare sector. Today on the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast, host Tim Ulbrich speaks to pharmacist and co-founder of Uptown Creation, Chris Cozzolino, about his journey into the social selling space and how it aligns with his pharmacy education. Chris shares his non-traditional career arc, from making money using video games as a teenager to starting his own dropshipping business in college and now to running a hugely successful business development company focused on direct outreach campaigns. In this episode, Chris shares his passionate mindset about impactful contributions and innovatively using all the resources available to create something bigger than himself. Chris touches on strategies in the growth hacking space to build authentic relationships and a trustworthy reputation, as well as always keeping your endpoint in mind. Listeners will learn about the importance of knowing when to pivot your business, focusing on the end goal rather than attaching to a product or idea, plus you’ll hear some insightful perspectives about the benefits and challenges of diversifying across available platforms. Tune in today to hear all this and more!

Key Points From This Episode

Chris shares what drew him into the profession, and the freedom of remote working.
Reflecting on Chris’s non-traditional career path, and building something impactful.
How social media is a fascinating concept of reaching so many people at once.
How making money in a video game as a teenager galvanized his entrepreneurial spirit.
Discussing the big barriers to starting a business, like upfront capital and inventory holding times.
Optimization through combining drop shipping and retail arbitrage.
Chris outlines the challenges and opportunities of not working on your platform.
Having the best of both worlds by making the brand bigger than the platform.
Diversifying across platforms to build community and then converting that traffic.
How Uptown Creation was founded, and key pivots in their journey.
Learning the Instagram algorithm and their specific social media marketing tactics.
Chris shares about his pivot to LinkedIn and what the clients and services entail.
Building authentic relationships and a trustworthy reputation.
Why creating content is still really new for the healthcare sector.
Where Chris sees Uptown Creation heading in the next few years.
The concept of developing your craft, and always being able to be close to the ground.
Always keeping your endpoint in mind.

Highlights

“What I’m trying to create is being able to build something that’s bigger than myself.” — Chris Cozzolino [0:05:53]

“I don’t want to sell anything in a salesy way. I just want to make something that’s really good and then people can decide if they want it or don’t want it.” — Chris Cozzolino [0:22:57]

“That became the ethos of what we are today, is getting rid of bots and automation, putting a human in all the seats that a bot would be taking, and being able to have genuine interactions with people using the internet as a means to contact the right audience.” — Chris Cozzolino [0:25:11]

“I think a big thing that people do wrong in entrepreneurship is they fall too in love with the product or the service or that identity of what they’re doing, rather than the end impact that they’re trying to have.” — Chris Cozzolino [0:33:47]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

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

This week, I had a chance to sit down with entrepreneur and pharmacist, Chris Cozzolino to talk about his journey with several businesses that he’s been involved with as a recent 2020 graduate of the University of Iowa. Some of my favorite moments and takeaways from this interview include, hearing from Chris about his decision as a new practitioner to not pursue a traditional career path, but rather start his own business. Also talking about why he is prioritizing LinkedIn as the platform to generate authentic conversations that promote personal and professional success. We dig into the work that he is doing as the co-founder of Uptown Creation, a B2B business development and consulting firm. Really cool story, one of my favorite episodes of this year of a pharmacy entrepreneur who is using his PharmD in a non-traditional way.

Before we jump into the episode, I want to invite you to a free webinar that’s happening on November 10th at 8:30 PM Eastern. Dr. Jeff Keimer, our good friend and author of Fire RX: The Pharmacist’s Guide to Financial Independence will be joining me to talk about the FIRE movement aka Financial Independence, Retire Early. How pharmacists can overcome common barriers to achieving financial independence, how to calculate your retire and need and some investment considerations for those that are on the FIRE path. Plus, if you attend the webinar live, you will be entered for a chance to win a copy of Jeff Keimer’s book, Fire RX.

You can register by going to yourfinancialpharmacist.com/webinar. Again, that’s yourfinancialpharmacist.com/webinar.

All right. Let’s hear from today’s sponsor, Thoughtful Wills and I will jump into my interview with Chris. This week’s episode of Your Financial Pharmacist podcast is sponsored by Thoughtful Wills. Let’s take a minute to hear from co-founder, Notesong.

[00:01:57] N: Hi, there. I’m Notesong, one of the founders of Thoughtful Wills. Our law firm specializes in creating custom estate-planning documents that are understandable. We’ve leveraged technology to offer a lower price point than most law firms. Honestly, it’s refreshingly affordable. As our client, you’re in the driver seat. We’re here if and when you have any questions or just want our input. Our explanatory worksheet and online interview gathers your answers whenever and wherever is most convenient for you.

As a busy mom of three sweet kids and two fluffy sheepdogs, I totally get it. Life is crazy busy. Who has the time? We designed our firm around that too and we poured our hearts into making our estate-planning process less of a hustle. I invite you to visit thoughtfullwills.com/fyp to learn more. Give us a jingle or drop us a note. We’d love to chat with you.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:02:51] TU: Chris, welcome to the show.

[00:02:53] CC: Yeah, thanks for having me, Tim.

[00:02:54] TU: Really excited to have you on and feature your entrepreneurial story and how that’s connected in with your pharmacy journey. One thing I’ve mentioned on the show over the last several months is a goal, I have to feature more pharmacy entrepreneurial stories with the hopes that more folks will see the PharmD as a potential pathway, they can go many different directions. My thought is not that, folks hear Chris’s story and say, “I’m going to go do exactly that.” But rather it inspires and motivates folks to think differently about how they might leverage and utilize PharmD. Chris and I actually share a mutual friend, Ashley Klevens Hayes that connected the two of us. We had Ashley on this show, Episode 95 when we talked about how to level up your career.

Just a couple weeks ago, Chris and I did a LinkedIn live and I left that conversation, really feeling energized and motivated to take some of the expertise and information I learned from Chris to accelerate our own business at YFP, and to be able to serve and fulfill the mission that we have to help pharmacists achieve financial freedom. So excited to introduce Chris to the YFP community if you don’t already know him.

Chris, before we get into your entrepreneurial journey, share a bit about your background, where you went to pharmacy school. when you graduated, and what drew you into the profession.

[00:04:12] CC: Originally, I am from the southwest suburbs of Chicago. When I was looking at universities and everything, University of Iowa was close enough to be close to family, but far enough away to still get away, like you’re trying to do early in college. I was lucky that they have a great health care program going into it, I knew that I wanted to do something in healthcare. I grew up in a family, my dad was in the state police, my mom was a dietician, and my brother has cystic fibrosis and is doing really well with it. But I kind of saw medications my whole life. That was a big part of being interested in medicine.

Then going in early to college, really fallen in love with chemistry. I just really enjoyed those classes and also the – just the philosophical concept of being able to take a substance in medication that can then solve a problem, and providing control to otherwise uncontrollable situations. That’s kind of how I’ve always thought about medicine as it puts control back into people’s hands, which was a nice thought and I liked that component of everything.

Then the other big aspect of going to – I went to pharmacy school at University of Iowa. The big thing that drew me to pharmacy, outside of all those other things, was the ability to work remotely, and to be able to work in different places. A lot of times if you’re a physician or a dentist even, you kind of set up practice, and there’s a lot of opportunity to be entrepreneurial. But once you set up that practice, you’re building your book of business, and you’re kind of set there. Obviously, you can build it bigger, you can move yourself out of the role. But I liked the idea of being a pharmacist, there’s CVS, Walgreens pharmacies all across the country. So if I wanted to travel or live in different locales, it was very doable.

Then also, after that realization that I wanted the freedom to be able to move around, I also realized that there was a remote component with medication therapy management and those roles that were popping up. The concept of working remotely, before it was so common practice, was another thing that kind of drew me into the space.

[00:06:28] TU: Chris, you mentioned some things that I would think of as more traditional that drew you into the profession, in terms of some of the science chemistry, obviously the ability, the impact on patient care. But you’re taking a very non-traditional career path. I don’t know if I love that term, because I’m hoping we’ll get to a point where, you know, we recognize to my comment earlier that the PharmD is really just the beginning of one’s career path and their opportunities.

But when folks hear me say non-traditional, they know what I mean. So you’re relatively young in your career, you haven’t taken that traditional clinical pharmacy job where you’re utilizing your PharmD as much on a direct patient care. We’re going to talk about the work that you’ve done in various entrepreneurial efforts, whether it be the dropshipping business, other summer accelerator programs, the work that you’re doing uptown creation. But nonetheless, it’s been in a different direction.

My question here for you is, like what’s the why behind that as you reflect back on this first part of your career, like, why not a traditional career path? Why do you think you’ve gone in this other direction?

[00:07:30] CC: Yeah, that’s a good question. I think the biggest thing for me is, I’ve always enjoyed creating things and being able to play around. There’s a lot of opportunity to do that within healthcare and within pharmacy. Even though the projects that I’m working on right now, I have an inkling that it will come back to healthcare and come back to pharmacy in one way or another, where I’m able to tie entrepreneurship, growing companies, and doing that within a healthcare model. But the other thing that has always been kind of an ethos of what I’m trying to create is being able to build something that’s bigger than myself. If I’m trying to have as large of an impact on the world, as I want to have, knowing that, I’m going to have to take a lot of things out of my hands, and be able to build a machine or a processor system that is able to put other people into seats that can extend that reach.

That’s kind of one of the concepts of why social media, the internet, and being able to reach a lot of people at once has always been a fascinating concept to me. Because the impact that you’re able to have, as an everyday human is pretty robust with everything that we kind of have at our fingertips.

[00:08:50] TU: A really unique opportunity, right, in the time that we live in. Your desire for contribution, Chris really stands out to me. I just finished reading The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, which is just an awesome, awesome book. He’s got a follow-up called Turning Pro. One of my favorite passages from that book, as he says, “Creative work is not a selfish act, or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being. Don’t cheat us of your contribution, give us what you’ve got.”

I sense that desire in the conversations you and I have had, and we’re going to talk about how that’s threaded throughout your journey. But I often wonder, and obviously, I’m looking at it through the lens of the financial plan, sometimes being a barrier to folks being able to achieve some of the potential that they have, and the ideas that they want to contribute. We’re passionate about that part of it.

But I often wonder as a profession, what could we fully contribute, if everyone’s giving everything they’ve got, and they have that mindset and we remove some of the barriers. I think sharing your story and others is hopefully a source of motivation and inspiration for folks that consider that question.

Chris, your entrepreneurial journey, we’re going to talk in a little bit about the business that is today, in terms of what you’re doing with Uptown Creation. But you know, I think with most entrepreneurs, they can point back to a younger version of themselves, where maybe it wasn’t a formalized LLC or business structure, and you didn’t have a team and employees, but you’re hustling in some entrepreneurial way. Take us back to when you can remember that entrepreneurial journey beginning for you.

[00:10:24] CC: Yeah. I think the start was really, when I was like 12 or 13 and playing World of Warcraft, a video game, and seeing digital currencies that people wanted, and digital assets that people wanted, which is a whole another conversation that has started up again with NFTs and everything. But being able to sell like gold in World of Warcraft was the first way that I made money before even having a job. And then I started to referee as a soccer referee and then had a variety of jobs from there.

But really, that first playground that I had was being in a video game and kind of trying to learn supply and demand, but actually make money as a 13-year-old by selling a thousand gold coins through PayPal to random people on the internet was that original bug, I guess, where I was able to scratch that itch of fulfilling something.

Then, outside of that, I didn’t really do a whole lot other than having minimum wage jobs throughout my high school career and then early college. Then I always thought there was something that I was missing with, seeing stores buy something cheaper, and then sell it for more expensive and make money on that. It just seemed like such a simple concept that there had to be something that I was missing to – otherwise, everybody would be doing that.

It kind of coincided with Amazon Seller marketplace rising a lot and eCommerce rising a lot more. This was back when I was a junior in college. Probably 2015 was – yeah, a junior at Iowa. Yeah. I did my undergrad in biochemistry at Iowa.

When I was a junior, I was working as a pharmacy technician, I was working in a cystic fibrosis research lab. I was just looking for other ways to supplement income and the term dropshipping came up. And that’s something that I just became fascinated with because it was a way that you could sell physical products and not hold an inventory. That’s usually the biggest barrier I found with buying something cheaper, selling it for higher, is you have to put that upfront cost and to get that thing for cheaper, and then sit on that inventory to then be able to sell it. But drop shipping took away like that variability.

So the initial business that really got me involved in the entrepreneurship community at University of Iowa, which I’m lucky that they have such a good program and had so many connections, and ways to foster an environment. I know not every school has that. But that was the original business model.

To break it down even more simplistically, I was following somebody on Instagram, who was talking about finding products on eBay, and then selling those products on amazon.com and never having to purchase the product until it was already sold. Somebody would buy it from you on Amazon, you would get their shipping information, their name, and then you could take that information and go back to eBay, and put that into the shipment address, and then put your credit card information in and it would just ship the product directly to that Amazon customer and you collect the profit in between.

That was the first low barrier to entry that I had to be able to experiment again, and the risk was pretty low. I was able to do it with a credit line of like $1,000, because I was a college student with nothing but debt, and nobody wants to give you money or credit card, so I was able to do that with limited startup costs. That was a big factor of that being kind of the first step into, but I learned a lot about customer service, about human nature, and about expectations that people have when they’re purchasing something.

[00:14:10] TU: Yeah, and I love that as an example. As you mentioned, you know, some of the big barriers to starting a business can be upfront capital, can be inventory holding times, right? Especially when talking about product-oriented businesses. Being able to learn some of those lessons, which I would argue you probably already see a direct connection to the benefit that’s been and furthermore will into the future. But to be able to learn those lessons without having to go through that pain of going further into debt and so forth, extremely important to you. Did you continue that through pharmacy school then?

[00:14:42] CC: Yes, I continued that through pharmacy school and I continue that to this day, and it’s evolved a little bit more from an Amazon to eBay dropshipping model, so we have other suppliers. But the big versions of selling are selling products on Amazon and sourcing those from walmart.com and then vice versa. Selling things on walmart.com as a Walmart seller and sourcing those from amazon.com.

So really, the terminology for it, if people want to look it up, is a combination between dropshipping and retail arbitrage is really what it is. Retail arbitrage usually is done by people going into Walmart, finding a sale, checking it on other websites online. If they’re able to make money, then they’ll go check out at Walmart and then ship that product out. This is kind of the way to do it at scale without having to physically go into a store but just doing it online.

[00:15:34] TU: Chris, my naive – and I’m following the methodology, and I suspect we have many that are listening, maybe interested in a side hustle that are going to go down this rabbit hole, which is cool. My naive understanding of this type of opportunity brings up a question. I often think of businesses that might be built on the back of something else versus businesses that you have full control over.

We’re going to talk in a moment about what you do at Uptown Creation and in that environment. Chris and co-founder and partners can make decisions tomorrow, today and do what you want in terms of the business in the direction. When I think about a business model or a side hustle, whatever you want to call it, with something that we’ve been discussing that might be built on the back of like an eBay, or a Walmart, or an Amazon. What challenges does that present, as well as perhaps opportunities, how do you as an individual that is trying to grow something strategically, whether you look at that as a business or not? How do you plan for some of those unknowns that are out of your control when it’s not on your own platform?

[00:16:36] CC: Yeah. I think that is a great thing to bring up, and that that is one of the – I wouldn’t say risks, but one of the pitfalls is that, Amazon can stop people from selling at any point on their platform, and then you’re reliant on that as your sole business. You’re kind of at the mercy of whatever platform you’re using. By the benefit that you get is, you get all the attention that Amazon has and all the web traffic that Amazon has. That’s the benefit of using another platform that isn’t your own, but then you’re at the mercy of that platform at the end of the day.

That kind of goes into the whole social media part of things. Anybody who has tried to build a brand or build something on social media, probably understands that they’re at the mercy of that platform, whether it’s Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn.

To be able to mitigate your risk, I think first, being able to identify like that is a risk that needs to be overcome. I know with, let’s say, Instagram influencers, for example. If Instagram was to go away, so many of those influencers would be wiped off the face of the planet and nobody would know who they were. So being able to make the brand bigger than the platform is kind of the best of both worlds, in my opinion, whether it’s selling physical products, building your personal brand, or anything else where you’re leveraging something on the internet.

It’s a matter of being able to use that platform, that traffic, because it’s convenient and it drives a lot of traffic and attention. But then being able to do something with that, that you’re able to take people someplace else.

For example, if I wanted to make my Amazon business bigger than just my place on Amazon, I would include packing slips, for example, that would direct people to my personal website where they could check out the other products. Maybe there’s a little bit of a discount if they go there. But then now I’m taking the traffic from Amazon and directing it someplace that I have a little bit more control over.

[00:18:38] TU: And you see so many companies doing this, right, that are trying to get to that direct-to-consumer relationship and I think for the reasons that you’ve mentioned. That was a lesson, Chris, I learned early on in YFP. I think I might have picked up on that from some of Pat Flynn’s work with Smart Passive Income. The concept of being at the mercy of an algorithm, and that could change and has changed in different platforms. How do you diversify across platforms and then how do you utilize them not as the end game, but as a source to further promote, and build that relationship with the community, the audience that you have, and then convert that traffic?

Like for us, a big part of that is getting folks over to our platform, and thinking about a way we can then engage with them via email or other types of educational offerings that we want to do. But you know, if I’ve fully built the YFP community on the back of Facebook, or Instagram, or whatever, and something changed drastically tomorrow and I wanted to promote a webinar. All of a sudden, I don’t have an audience to promote to, right? I think there’s a lot of wisdom in what you said.

You started the dropshipping business while you’re in college, found some success in it. I’ve continued to grow it, but that didn’t stop you from starting another business. Talk to us about Uptown Creation, what it is, and what’s the story behind why you launched the business, and ultimately the problem that you’re trying to solve?

[00:20:01] CC: Yeah, that’s a great question. Uptown Creation was founded in early 2016, and with my current business partner, who also went to the University of Iowa, his name is Conor Paulsen, and we both had companies beforehand. He made a men’s leather good company, where it was very personalized leather good products that he was creating; bags, duffel bags, everything like that, belts. But you were able to have – his customer was able to have a part in the creation of it from meeting the leatherworker that’s going to be creating stuff, having things very, very customized. He was in a business where the customer relationship and their customer experience was really at the center of it, and that’s why they were able to do what they did because they provided a great customer experience.

Where what my business was, was more trying to scale things and do things at as large of a level as possible. Then kind of use the attention that was from another platform and drive it to myself. We became friends through the entrepreneurship communities at the University of Iowa, so the Founders Club was a club where you can kind of had to have a business, and then there were different tiers of it based on the income you were generating from your business. That allowed you to do pitch competitions, startup accelerators and everything.

Uptown Creation started in a startup accelerator at the University of Iowa. Conor, my business partner came to me and asked if I wanted to do this thing for the summer. We had some other people that were in it just for the summer. It started off as a YouTube company, essentially, which is nothing what it is today, but the goal of it originally was to be an educational company, and create YouTube videos to kind of teach people the things that college didn’t teach you. They went through that startup accelerator over the summer. I had already done one in the past, so I can be directly involved and compensated that way. But I kind of had a backburner role in it, and that was as I was entering pharmacy school in 2016.

At the end of that summer, Conor and I looked at each other and the other people that were involved, it turned out that we were the only ones that wanted to continue doing anything with the business. Now, it was Conor and myself, and we had to figure out kind of what to do.

That was the first big pivot is, we knew that we wanted to create some sort of education that we were able to provide other people, the format we weren’t married to. But we knew that YouTube was a way to make money from ads. But we knew that we also both had a background in selling physical products. This was at the same time that Instagram was initially talking about something called shopping on Instagram. This was back in 2016, they started to talk about it. It didn’t get launched until earlier this year, which is funny, but that drove us to learn Instagram.

One of the problems going back to Amazon, that Amazon selling brings up is that Amazon takes a 15% cut of everything that you’re selling. We were naturally looking for other ways to sell physical goods then and have a little bit less of a cut be taken. We saw Instagram as the potential for that if we were early on enough. We spent the next couple of months growing some Instagram accounts.

And long story short, we realized that we were really good at growing communities on Instagram and growing Instagram accounts that people started to come to us and want to pay us for that. When you are making no money as a business, and you have people that want to pay you for something that you’re doing, you usually take that opportunity, so you can keep the business going.

So that was kind of the next big pivot. Maybe we’re not going to sell our own educational resources or our own physical products on Instagram. Maybe we’re just going to help people do Instagram better than what they’re doing currently and then let them get more attention for whatever they’re working on whatever products they’re working on.

That kind of put me down the rabbit hole of learning the Instagram algorithm really, really well. Learning social media marketing tactics specific to Instagram, better than most people I can think of, and doing that through online forums, and the underground communities that exist in the growth hacking space. I was in pharmacy school, and also simultaneously doing that. I like to learn things, so that was a good hobby to have outside. But then we started bringing clients and people started to want to pay us for these Instagram services. Unfortunate that – so this is I guess a good touchpoint to have.

Another reason why my business partner and I decided to go into business together was, we complemented each other very well. He is very front-end sales, talking to people, networking, probably the best networker I’ve ever met in my life. And I was very – I don’t want to sell anything in a salesy way. I just want to make something that’s really, really good and then people can decide if they want it or don’t want it. I’ve always been more of the service fulfillment and service creation component of the business. Whereas, I had a partner early on that did the things that I didn’t want to do. I think that’s imperative because that set us up for success.

[00:25:28] TU: I think you’ve done that really well, Chris. Like when I look at – if folks haven’t looked – we’ll link in the show notes to some of the educational content that you’ve done on LinkedIn, which we’ll talk about here in a moment on YouTube. I think you have very much that persona of a desire to provide good value and good education. From there, I suspect the business development opportunities come to be so that complementary approach between you and your partner, I can see why that was so important and the value that you bring to the team.

Pivot is a word you mentioned a couple of times. You mentioned the beginnings with YouTube, the pivot to Instagram. And now I understand much of the work that you’re doing focuses on LinkedIn. Talk to us about that pivot to LinkedIn, and some of the services that you offer now and the types of clients that you serve.

[00:26:16] CC: Definitely. As a commonality that – about all the businesses that I’ve started have been kind of built on the backbone of something that already has a lot of attention, whether it’s Amazon selling, whether it’s Instagram, whether it’s LinkedIn, business development. It’s always been being able to drive attention from something else. As I mentioned, you’re also at the mercy of that platform. We were using a lot of bots and automation on Instagram, found out Instagram doesn’t really like that too much. They do their best to keep that stuff off of the platform.

We realized that if we wanted to scale the business, we needed to not have those variables, because it was easy to have 50 clients, 100 clients. But if we wanted to ever grow bigger than that, we wouldn’t be able to wake up one day and Instagram changes their algorithm and now we have to rethink our whole process and deal with customer service of 100 people.

That led us down, “Okay. What if we just played within what the social media platforms want us to do anyways? That’s creating real conversations, having a very human component to things.” That became the ethos of what we are today, is getting rid of bots and automation, putting a human in all the seats that a bot would be taking, and being able to have genuine interactions with people using the internet as a means to contact the right audience. As Uptown Creation sits today, it’s a business development company really focused on direct outreach campaigns.

What that looks like in practice is, targeting people on LinkedIn, and then starting conversations in their inbox, but not the spammy messages that everybody receives. More of a message, you know, I think given that example. If I was going to reach out to you, Tim, I would go to the YFP website, I would look at a podcast, I would try to find an episode where I’m able to bring up a guest name, listen to the first 10 minutes. And now, when I message you, I’m going to bring those things up. That’s how I’m going to inevitably start that conversation and hopefully get you to respond. Because while you have 20 other messages that are clearly spammed out to everybody, this is the message that you know is sent to you directly.

[00:28:26] TU: That’s how genuine conversations, and rich relationships, and meaningful long-term relationships start, right? Is having a true vested interest in someone else and identifying where that collaboration can happen. I love that approach and as I mentioned, we’ll link in the show notes. You did a great series on YouTube going step by step through the LinkedIn process, and what you guys have done with clients in terms of looking at that as a business development opportunity.

When I look at Chris, your LinkedIn presence, and again, we’re talking here from the mindset of, it’s not just about the number of followers and how many people do message, but authentic relationships. And the fact that you’ve been able to build those authentic relationships also build a large profile, a large following of what you do, I think over 20,000 something, folks that are following the work that you’ve done. Talk to us about the positive impact that has had on you professionally, personally, as well as for the business and what you’re doing at Uptown Creation?

[00:29:24] CC: Yeah. So personal branding has been kind of a buzzword that I’m sure everybody’s heard. That was a big component of the work I was doing on Instagram, a big component of what people talk to you about as you’re going through pharmacy school. The way that I like to talk about personal branding is really, it being your reputation, and nothing more, nothing less than that. But personal branding, kind of being the online word for it.

But in the real world, you have a reputation, people think of you or hear your name, and they think certain thoughts or remember certain things that they’ve seen. Really, since I’ve done so much consulting work with clients of trying to get them to create content, trying to get them to spread their message, use the free traffic that the internet provides. I realized I needed to also do that myself and be a practitioner of that, which was uncomfortable for me at first, because that’s not my natural way of being.

I think a lot of people think that, “Oh! If somebody is creating content or creating videos, like they’re seeking attention, they’re more outgoing than I am. They’re –”, all these other preconceived notions that people may have. When in reality, it’s really just being an effective communicator, and also building your reputation online.

With the community that builds up through my own LinkedIn outreach and content creation, there’s been a lot of great relationships that I’ve made. I mean, this is one of them, because I don’t think I would have ever met you, Tim, if I didn’t have those other interactions with other pharmacists that say, “You really need to talk to this guy.”

Just from a sheer meeting people in the industry component, I don’t think that that can be understated, how much that has helped. I mean, even with jobs that I’ve been offered in pharmacy, specifically, and just the conversations I’ve been able to have with people greatly exceeded my expectations. The cool thing about it, especially in health care, and pharmacy is that, in the entrepreneurship communities and business, this is nothing new. Everybody’s been creating content for a decade or more since YouTube came out as a platform. It’s still really new for healthcare. There’s not a lot of people that are known for things online, or have a brand. I think, ZDoggMD is probably one of the biggest brands that exists that a lot of healthcare people know. It can set you up for speaking engagements, for having those side hustles, those side gigs, but also creating something that you’re known for that then you can progress your career with.

[00:32:01] TU: I would add too, Chris. I think the benefits professionally to many folks, I think may seem fairly obvious in terms of opportunities, and the network, and the relationships that come from that or in your case, what that means for the business. I also just get a ton of fulfillment, and joy in really connecting with other pharmacists, learning about what people are working on, what problems they’re trying to solve, opportunities that have frustration challenges.

That’s one of the things I love most about the work I do at YFP, is I get to have conversations like this, or talk with prospective clients and pharmacists all across the country in all different phases of their career. The point I’m making is, don’t underestimate folks listening of, yeah, I mean, it’s going to have professional benefits for sure. But also, just some of that personal satisfaction and joy that can have from developing those meaningful relationships.

Chris, I know at the time of recording, you’re doing some strategic planning for the business right now. I’m curious, as you think about the evolution of the business thus far, you’ve talked about a couple of pivots that you’ve made, you put your hand on the crystal ball, like what does Uptown Creation look like in three or five years? Where do you guys see yourself going?

[00:33:09] CC: Yeah, that’s a great question. I want to make it like explicitly clear that Uptown Creation started as making YouTube videos on the Internet, went to Instagram, and is now at a completely different spot with direct outreach marketing. I think that’s a good learning lesson for a lot of people in that, especially pharmacists that are looking to do anything outside of pharmacy, or even just start a side hustle. It’s good to get out of your own way sometimes, and just start and know that it’s going to evolve into something else and that’s okay, as long as whatever that end mission or that end goal is being accomplished.

I think a big thing that people do wrong in entrepreneurship is they fall too in love with the product or the service or that identity of what they’re doing, rather than the end impact that they’re trying to have. If you know that the journey to getting to that end can change and it’s okay. I think that makes it a lot more freeing, that it doesn’t have to be what you’re doing right now, but you have to start to be able to get to that endpoint.

Going back to your question of kind of what the outlook for Uptown Creation is. We are very clear now kind of what we’re good at what we do, and that is direct outreach marketing. Meaning, you can use paid ads, Facebook ads, and other paid forms of traffic online to bring people in and that’s what’s called a one-to-many approach. You’re showing an ad to thousands of people. Well, we are the experts at, and growing our services in, is the one-to-one approach, and being able to have very specific targeted conversations.

So as the mediums change that are effective right now, LinkedIn, email marketing, even cold calling, and cold texting are still really effective ways if your targeting is right, but that’s going to change over the next five to 10 years, which is okay. LinkedIn might not be the best platform to do outreach on and that’s not where people are hanging out online. That’s when we’ll make more pivots, but really being on the bleeding edge of direct outreach, marketing, conversational marketing. Social selling is the term, that’s another buzzword, is where we’re headed over the next five years.

[00:35:24] TU: I love that. It’s so in line with what you just shared, which is great advice for folks that are growing something or thinking about something is, keeping that goal and vision you have in mind, understanding the methodology of getting there might change, likely will change, just given how quick things are evolving today.

[00:35:42] CC: The one thing that I want to plug as well, because I think that this is like interesting insight for people. The reason why marketing and direct outreach is interesting to me as – I’m 27 right now. I plan to have other businesses. I want to do things in healthcare. But if I’m able to build this engine of direct outreach, bringing in traffic, starting conversations, this is something that I can apply to future businesses that I create regardless of the industry. Building this engine early on in my career, that can then be applied to other companies in the future.

[00:36:17] TU: Great stuff. Chris, I want to talk about the concept of developing your craft. I’m a follower of the Uptown newsletter. This morning came out and you said the following, “What I love most about Uptown Creation is that what we do just makes sense. It makes sense that reaching out to someone on the Internet is an extremely personalized way, it would elicit a response. This is what sets the framework for us as an organization. As the marketplace continues to evolve, we will evolve faster because we are practitioners of our craft, and practitioners always win.” What does it look like to be a practitioner of your craft? What do you mean by that?

[00:36:55] CC: Yeah, and that’s a little Gary Vaynerchuk insight there. It was somebody that I follow and admire. But really, being the person that’s doing the thing that you’re selling, or the thing that you want to be known for can’t be overstated. That’s why there’s so many pharmacists out there that are experts in oncology, experts in nutrition, experts in all these different fields that are practitioners every single day, and have things that are worth sharing to people that aren’t doing that every single day, even if you don’t really see that yourself.

If you’re doing something every single day, you are an expert, whether you like it or not in that thing, and you know, more than 99.9% of the population that’s not in that thing. Really making sure that you always have your finger on the pulse so to speak, and by doing whatever you’re known for, or whatever you’re in business for, you can never be blindsided.

I think a lot of business owners start to grow as a company, and you have to put other people into a lot of the seats that you were doing before. But always being able to be close to the ground and be doing things yourself that are directly related can’t be overstated, because that’s the way that you stay up to date.

[00:38:17] TU: Great stuff, Chris. Really enjoyed the conversation. Appreciate you taking time to come on and share your story. Look forward to having you back on the show in the future as you further develop some other projects that are coming. What’s the best way that folks can connect with you and reach out to you if they have a question or want to learn more about the work that you’re doing?

[00:38:35] CC: Yeah, connecting with me on LinkedIn is probably the best. So Chris Cozzolino. Then my email address if anybody wants to email me is [email protected] and checking out uptowncreation.com is probably the next best way to learn more about what we’re doing.

[00:38:52] TU: Awesome. We will link those in the show notes so folks can reach out to Chris. Chris, thanks again for your time.

[00:38:58] CC: Yeah, I’m excited for future conversations.

[OUTRO]

[00:38:59] TU: Today’s episode of Your Financial Pharmacist podcast was sponsored by our friends at Thoughtful Wills. If you haven’t created your estate plan yet, we urge you to reach out to Notesong and Nathan. They draft custom estate-planning documents like wills, trust, healthcare directives and durable powers of attorney that fit your situation and reflect your wishes. This is key. These are custom legal documents created and reviewed by actual attorneys.

As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and it’s not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding material should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. Furthermore, the information contained in our archive, newsletters, blog post and podcast is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analyses expressed herein are solely those of your financial pharmacist, unless otherwise noted and constitute judgments as of the dates publish. Such information may contain forward-looking statements which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements.

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

[END]

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YFP 186: The Picture Perfect Side Hustle

Posted on January 14, 2021November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

The Picture Perfect Side Hustle

On this episode sponsored by Live Oak Bank, pharmacist and photographer Landen Conner shares how he turned his side hustle into his main gig, why and how he started his photography business, how he found his niche, and the mechanics of his business.

About Today’s Guest

The career of pharmacy accelerated Landen’s path to becoming a photographer, but where he met his passion was at the intersection of pharmacy and photography, which was “people.” Seeing people heal in an instant on camera was magical. Then hearing the unexpected wins after, such as landing a job, gaining more clients, even dates was the icing on the cake for him!

Summary

Landen Conner became interested in photography after one of his friends shared with him that he was able to create a successful business as a wedding photographer. Although Landen was a full-time pharmacist at the time, he was experiencing major burnout from his job and needed to step away from pharmacy. Landen soon realized that being a photographer was more than just picking up a camera and taking pictures. He found his niche in headshot photography and helps clients heal by taking their picture and sharing the stories of his clients.

Landen was debt free aside from his mortgage loan and knew he didn’t want to start his business without taking on any debt. He used cash to fund his start up and leaned on his pharmacy day job as a way to invest in his business. Knowing that he was paying cash for the majority of his equipment allowed him to be more present with potential clients. He estimates that he spent around $10,000 to $15,000 starting his photography business.

Landen now focuses on headshots, family shoots, commercial photography, and marketing and branding. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Landen started working a couple times a week as a per diem pharmacist to help bring in a steady stream of income. Landen also discusses how he automates functions of his business, his advice to other pharmacists looking to start a side hustle, and how he’s taking his business to the next level.

Mentioned on the Show

Episode Transcript

Tim Church: Landen, thanks for stopping by and for being part of this side hustle edition.

Landen Conner: Thanks a lot, Tim. I appreciate you for having me.

Tim Church: I recently learned about your story as I was perusing Google News alerts and an interesting article came up from the Orlando Business Journal titled, “Side Hustle to Main Gig,” and one of the biggest reasons I was excited to have you share your story on the podcast is basically, you have the reverse side hustle where pharmacy is not your main gig. But before we dive in, I do have an icebreaker for you.

Landen Conner: Yes.

Tim Church: Alright, you ready for this?

Landen Conner: I hope so. Let’s roll with it.

Tim Church: Alright, the pandemic is over and you’re out at a bar or restaurant and your name comes up to sing karaoke. What song are you singing?

Landen Conner: Oh, wow. Talk about a curveball. This may be funny. How about the Lion King Can’t Wait to be King?

Tim Church: Oh my gosh. I love that Disney movie.

Landen Conner: It’s like 1A in my book.

Tim Church: That’s awesome. I was not — let me just say, I was not expecting that. That’s a good jam. Do you like blast that in the car?

Landen Conner: The only reason why I’m hooked on it as like my second favorite Disney movie of all time, probably right there with Aladdin. But my wife just designed this whole room for a newborn with Lion King. And I’m hooked back onto Lion King now.

Tim Church: OK, that’s awesome, man. I love it. Well, Landen, before we kind of jump into your main gig now, really, talk a little bit about your career path as a pharmacist.

Landen Conner: Started out at 18 with a tech — as a tech/student. And wanted to see if I wanted to be a pharmacist. I got a job at Walgreens pharmacy, loved it, started school at Xavier University. The first day, I got scared and flipped my major from computer engineering to pharmacy because I got scared — I heard about 50,000 people were going to be laid off. So I was like, I’m just going to go to my second strongest thing, which was science. And that’s where my career began as a pharmacist.

Tim Church: OK. And talk a little bit about what are some of the positions that you’ve had when you were working full-time.

Landen Conner: I’ve been pretty much the full gamut. Went from retail pharmacy as everyone does pretty much to long-term care — loved that one — specialty pharmacy — loved that one as well — to MTM pharmacist and now to basically a per diem pharmacist filling in on call positions.

Tim Church: Now, obviously to where you got to that point, going from full-time to per diem, you talked a little bit about something in the article because at some point in your pharmacist career, that initial vision you had when you were training, you were starting out as a pharmacist, that changed. And in the article, you mention that you had been diagnosed with extreme stress related to your job and were quoted as saying, “As a result of this, my vision became blurred, memory loss occurred, as well as pains all over the body. The diagnosis made me sit back and think seriously, was it or anything worth the cost of my health? The simple answer was no.”

Landen Conner: Yeah.

Tim Church: Now, when I read that, I was really taken back because we’re not just talking about oh, I’m stressed at my job. We’re talking that it got to the point where it was physically affecting you. So obviously, that had to be pretty severe in the position that you had at that time to get to that point. So talk about those feelings that you expressed and how did it get to that point?

Landen Conner: The feeling that I expressed, I was actually helped along. I won’t mention her name because of the company she works with, but I was sitting next to this lady, we were really good coworkers and friends. She had mentioned her story to me years earlier when she was progressing in this company, going up the management chain. It got to a point she was taking on so much, she got sick. And she had to make a choice whether to keep working or keep progressing. And I asked her about that story and what would she recommend? And she said, “Landen, if I could do it again, I would choose to take a break and stay away for my health purposes.” So hearing that, I took that as a sign from God to say, you know what, choose your life. Because you can always find a way to make money with an entrepreneurial mindset versus how we’re taught in pretty much — you’re a pharmacist too, Tim — we go to school, we’re in school all day. And when you come out, you still practice those similar principles, but after awhile, you experience burnout. And that’s where it was with me. It was just burnout.

Tim Church: And can you elaborate a little bit more? Like what specifically were some of the things that were contributing to that? And how long did that take to develop?

Landen Conner: I think it developed slowly, honestly, going through recently a new marriage, working all the varying types of shifts, 5 a.m. shift, 10 p.m. shifts, then going from working early in the morning maybe to a photo shoot that evening and then just constantly repeating those cycles, finally caught up to me. Not being able to take vacations when you wanted or when you needed, rather, not just wanted per se, when you needed it. And just going through that, it was accumulation. Then you just start feeling the headaches, you start seeing the double vision, sometimes memory loss where you don’t really remember verifying certain things because you’re under that amount of stress, you think you’re keyed in, but you’re not.

Tim Church: How did you get to the point where you said, you know what, I’ve got to transition. I have to do something to get out of this situation?

Landen Conner: Sitting back, taking a look and starting to organize your life. I’d be lying to you if I said being debt-free except for the house didn’t matter because then I could start to organize, hey, it takes this amount per year to live. And then you break it down into monthly cycles, you know living in Florida, your bills may be a little bit higher due to the summer weather, then in the winter, you can dial it back. So you kind of average, put everything in perspective. And you don’t have your credit cards that you have to pay, the bills you have to pay. And that helped.

Tim Church: So obviously, that setting yourself up in a good financial position allowed you to make that transition, it sounds like. But one of the things that I wanted to ask you is while you were working full-time as a pharmacist, your side gig at that time was photography. And so before that became your main gig, how did you become interested in photography? I think that’s interesting because the last time I checked, you know, that was not an elective in my PharmD. I don’t know if it was — what was it, Xavier that you went?

Landen Conner: Yes, that was definitely not an elective. I tell you, I was sitting in a desk working specialty pharmacy, and I was — I kept saying the same thing over and over again. I was like, man, I’m basically saying, “You want fries with that?” And I’m like, God, you’ve got to have better for me than this. And then one of my best friends back home in New Orleans, Calvin Gaveon, called me. He told me how much he was making doing wedding photography. And I said, “No way, dude.” He’s like, “I promise you, man.” And I’m like, “Cool, I’ll pick a camera and do the same thing.” But it was so much more than just picking up a camera and shooting a wedding. I found my personal niche in headshot photography. And that grew into branding and marketing a person because the joy that I experience meeting that person one-on-one and attacking those internal securities — insecurities — watching them heal in front of the camera was just golden, knowing that you could do that in the power of a millisecond with a click, this person’s whole life can change.

Tim Church: So Landen, your friend Calvin reaches out and says, “Hey, you should try this out because I’m making great money, and it’s an opportunity for you to do something on the side,” not knowing it would eventually become your main gig. But you talked about something there that I think is really important and really stuck with me is that you said you had the opportunity to learn other people’s stories and to help them get to a point where they weren’t so insecure about getting even just a simple headshot. Talk about that.

Landen Conner: I’ll take you — I’ll make it relational. Like whoever may be listening to this, you go back to the age, I mean, to your kindergarten age. And you get your mom and your dad, and you think they’re doing the greatest thing in the world by having to take kindergarten photos. Most kids don’t want to take them. Or you’re being bullied in school or someone, that one person in life tells you you’re not beautiful and you’re not worth it. You carry those insecurities with you throughout the rest of your teen years, your adult childhood years. So once someone’s steps in front of a camera, they’re carrying it, like I’m not photogenic. I’m uncomfortable in front of cameras. I’d say that’s 99% of people I shoot, they tell me that they don’t think they take great photos. And they don’t value themselves. And once I meet them at the corner of that insecurity and just give them small coaching tips and walk with them through, it’s like, “Hey, you’re beautiful,” or, “You’re debonair.” Who told you that lie? And they pour out their heart to me. I can give you a story, a couple stories if you want.

Tim Church: Yeah, let’s hear it.

Landen Conner: The first time where photography became so much more than just a photo, I walked in shooting this behind-the-scenes interview that a guy from my church asked me to do. And I said, “Sure, I’ll do it. I just need to get some headshots to build my portfolio.” And the main interviewee said, “I hate my photo being taken. I really don’t want to do this.” So I asked her, I said, “Can you give me five minutes? If you don’t like it, delete it. It’ll never see the light of day.” And she allowed me to do the photo. I edited it, sent it to her probably within 48 hours. Then she called me back about a week later, kept me on the phone for maybe an hour, and said, “Landen, I put this on Facebook, and I got over — at that time, I think 75-100 likes.” And she was almost in tears because she said, “I am beat up verbally so bad in a marriage, abused in a marriage, abused in her childhood, I thought I was the ugly duckling in the family.” And from that moment on, it completely changed every time I stepped behind camera and had someone in front of my camera. The second one that made a massive difference was probably about a month or two ago, I photographed this young lady that was a resume writer. She came in, she got her head — she was ready to do her headshot. First five minutes, we shot, made sure my lighting was good and everything. And then I was just talking to her, getting to know her, and then in five minutes, we got a photo that she loved. And walking back to the bathroom to change, she stopped midstream and said, “I can’t believe you made me look this beautiful.” And I said, “Why? You’re beautiful.” She’s like, “I just had a kid two weeks ago, my body is out of shape from the weight gain from the pregnancy, and I didn’t feel like I was myself.” And I was like, “Hold on, you’ve got to stop because you’re about to make me cry.” And she just kept going on, and the session was just magical.

Tim Church: So did you ever think that when you were getting into the photography business that you were going to hear these stories from people or that you were going to have the opportunity to walk with them in what was a very difficult thing to do, which may not be for other people, but for a lot of people, it is?

Landen Conner: Absolutely, 1,000% no. I had no clue this would happen. I had no idea. I’d be lying to you if I said I did.

Tim Church: And so how has that really changed your perspective? And was that part of how you flipped that switch to basically say, I’m going all in?

Landen Conner: Yes, absolutely. Recently I joined a Christian Chamber about three months ago, and the leader of the Christian Chamber was Crystal Pocker. And she helped me to marry the two fields because I thought pharmacy had nothing to do with photography. And she said, “Landen, the common thing you have, you did one P with Pharmacy and now you’re doing another P with Photography, but in the middle, that P was People, that you care for people and want to see them win in life and not just meet the status quo because everybody is unique.” I’m different from you, Tim, you’re different from me. We may have some commonalities, but you have your own personal traits.

Tim Church: I think it’s just amazing, the work that you’re doing because it goes beyond just putting images on a website, on social media account. It’s driving a lot of impact and helping people get to a place where they’re comfortable with themselves. And I mean, I think that’s huge. It has to really give you that warm and fuzzy feeling inside.

Landen Conner: It does, but you want to know something, Tim? I was scared as I don’t know what to share people’s stories initially. I really battled with that because let’s just say if I took a — because if I took a photo of you and you shared something personally with me, I would — I would say about a year and a half ago, I would just put, “Had a great time working with Tim. And he was excellent to photograph.” That tells the viewers nothing. But sharing those stories, it makes it so relational, just like I shared with the lady that was mentally, physically abused in her previous relationship or with the guy who was molested at a young age, those type of things. I don’t have to put the molestation, but it’s a sense of rejection from another person’s perspective. You need to make it totally relational. I just posted something a couple of days ago. I said, the title of it was, “Don’t be Stiff.” As soon as I put that up, I said, man, this is so relational. Because I get in front of a camera and freeze up every time.

Tim Church: How have these stories that you’ve collected from the clients during the photo shoots, how has that helped with the marketing of your business?
Landen Conner: It’s humanized it because when you see those headshots, you see a healed person. You don’t see the person that looks like everybody else. You see that actual person. If I photograph Tim, I’m not shooting just with Tim. I’m shooting for Tim’s audience. I’m shooting so they can meet who Tim is, not just the, “Smile, Tim!” That’s not it.

Tim Church: Well, Landen, I want to switch a little bit and kind of dive into the mechanics of the business. The article mentioned that you used cash to fund the initial startups and you said this was something really important to you. So talk a little bit about that.

Landen Conner: I was at a photography conference, and this one photographer told me, he said, “Don’t look at your business” — I mean, “Don’t look at your day job as just a day job. Look at it as an investment into your business.” And since I already had a limited school loans, I didn’t believe in debt for the business because it did one big thing. I bought one lens on credit, and it would make me talk to people — I would allow myself to talk to people differently, thinking I had to book this client to justify putting this lens on debt. But when I paid cash for everything, I didn’t have that type of burden in my life. So it allowed me to actually sit and talk with clients freely and to serve their best needs.

Tim Church: And what were some of the other startup costs that you had besides the lens and some of the basic equipment? Anything else you needed to kind of get up and running?

Landen Conner: I would say the biggest thing — of course, cameras, different cameras, more up-to-date cameras, lenses. But getting to be able to afford automation because I photograph different people on different days, and that’s a lot of storage to kind of keep inside. So I don’t want to just share everything all at once because you get tired of seeing it after awhile if I overload you with too many stories. So I just needed to hit with that one person that one day or two people so they can know that they’re not alone. So the automation was the biggest thing.

Tim Church: Do you mind sharing approximately, what was the cost that you needed to kind of at least get started? What are we talking?

Landen Conner: I would say anywhere from $10,000-15,000 maybe. If it was now, I think you could do it — actually, I know you can — as much as half that amount.

Tim Church: That’s not a little amount to kind of get started. I mean, was that sort of intimidating looking at those costs? Or was it much more palatable considering you started it while you were still working full-time as a pharmacist?

Landen Conner: It was easier because at a pharmacist’s salary, did I know it at the time? No, not until I did my taxes at the end of the year, and I’m like, “I spent what on what?” But I’ll tell you this, for any aspiring people, do your research first. Even though I didn’t research, there were some of the marketing tricks that I fell for, which I allowed myself to waste money in certain areas. And that would have cut my costs in half, by at least 25%.

Tim Church: So do your homework. Know what the bare minimum you need to get started. But it may not be as expensive as you think is what it sounds like.

Landen Conner: No, it’s definitely not as expensive as what you would think. Right now, they’ve came out with better products at a much more affordable cost. So that’s going to knock your costs from where I started for probably down by more than half.

Tim Church: Wow. That’s a big deal. So you said a little bit earlier that headshots are basically your jam, that’s the space that you excel at and how you’re helping people. Are there any other services that you provide or that you do?

Landen Conner: I still do family shoots when my clients ask for them. Weddings, I’ve kind of stepped away from. I’m doing my last wedding this Sunday. My bread and butter now is marketing and branding, commercial photography. And we just start with the headshot and build all the way down. Why? Because everything starts with you. As a small business owner, I want to know who you are. We don’t have the luxury to hide behind a brand name such as a Nike or Apple.

Tim Church: So talk a little bit more about that, that beyond just individuals marketing themselves, you’re talking about other businesses and helping them with their marketing materials, specifically with photos but even other things as well. Talk a little bit more about that.

Landen Conner: Sure. With the marketing and branding is — you know how we, like when we start a business, we always go to those free stock image websites?

Tim Church: Yeah, of course. I’ve used those multiple times.

Landen Conner: Oh boy. Should we change the question? So as a photographer, there’s nothing wrong with those starting out. But you should try to get away from those type of websites within your first 6-12 months, especially if you’re getting big. Because if you look at it, those are models and those are ideal situations. I’ve seen a lot of times where people use those stock imagery images, and I can go to another website and see the same stock images. So it causes a disconnect in the viewer’s mind. Or let’s just say that small business owner to mid-size business owner invites me to their office, I go to their website, it doesn’t look anything like this. So now I have my defenses up because I think you’re lying to me. They’re never going to tell you this, but it’s the same scenario. When you’re doing your marketing and branding, you can’t market and brand on things such as Facebook, Instagram, using non-organic photography.

Tim Church: And so what it sounds like is you’re basically helping to foster that image of that company, of maybe that individual as well, and making that more of an authentic feel versus something that is not actually representing who you are and what you’re doing.

Landen Conner: Correct. Absolutely, 100% correct.

Tim Church: So one of the other things I wanted to ask you — what about matching pajama holiday photo shoots? Do you do those too?

Landen Conner: Yes. I’ve done that, two years ago, actually. Two years ago.

Tim Church: I mean, I could see there could be a lot of high demand for that one.

Landen Conner: It’s funny you should mentioned that because you just brought to mind this family that I photographed like two years ago. And the story behind that one was they wanted holiday photos within their home. It meant something to me when they called me because a kid was born so prematurely and was fighting for his life. And now, I believe he’s running, walking and just going all over the place being a kid. But knowing the story, the backstory behind how this kid fought for his life to live and then was able to do the whole photo session and now he’s — you wouldn’t even know he was a preemie.

Tim Church: Wow.

Landen Conner: Those types of sessions are magical.

Tim Church: That’s cool. How specifically are you marketing your business?

Landen Conner: Definitely LinkedIn. Trying to get better at Facebook. Christian Chamber has definitely been a blessing in my life.

Tim Church: Hopefully the YFP podcast as well.

Landen Conner: There’s a new one, another blessing, the YFP podcast. And just word of mouth has been my mainstays right now.

Tim Church: Does anyone help you with the business? Anyone with assistants or doing some of the behind-the-scenes things to get you up and running to kind of do the sales or is this all Landen?

Landen Conner: This has been all Landen — and I use the word ‘has’ because until recently, I realized that with people in my life, I can start to delegate and hire out to do different things. So now we’re moving into video and we’re able to move into doing a full scale brand and market build. So if you need copywriters, if you need graphic design artists, then we’re working purely organic — with organic material for the particular individual or business.

Tim Church: So sounds like things are happening and you’re growing, which is awesome because it means that a lot of people are valuing the services that you’re providing, which I think are huge. Landen, talk about how did you get back into pharmacy? You said you were doing that full-time, you switched to photography, and now it’s kind of coming back to some extent. Talk about that.

Landen Conner: I got back into it because COVID did put a kind of damper on the business for awhile. That and the house note was the only debt that I had that was left to pay off. And then with my wife’s health, with her being diagnosed with MS, I had to provide even when you don’t have a constant income coming in as a entrepreneur. So doing those on-call maybe 1-2 times a week, it does keep a constant flow when I don’t have clients that are coming through.

Tim Church: One of the things that often comes up is how do you even consider a side hustle with a full-time job? People talk about in the YFP Facebook group, they’ll message me on LinkedIn, they’ll say, “How do you do it? How do you work full-time, have a side job, and also maintain your family, your relationships, and do it all?” So how do you do it?

Landen Conner: I would say automation really helps. The other thing is I started to sit back and remember why did I get into this in the first place? Meaning pharmacy. And then the second thing — I mean third thing was do you want to make a difference in just your life and build something only for you? Or do you want to make an impact in others’ lives and change one life at a time and challenge yourself a day at a time? Can you make someone else’s life better? You make time for what you desire to have fulfilled in your life.

Tim Church: I love that. That really pumps me up. But I totally agree with you that if you’re buying into that mission and the results of what that work is going to accomplish, that that can be a huge driving factor for being able to make it work. Totally agree with you on that one. You mentioned automation, so talk about that a little bit. I think that’s an interesting way that you’re making it happen. So talk about that.

Landen Conner: You mentioned that a lot of people ask how do you do it? Let’s just say if you want to do email blasts, ConvertKit is an excellent source. If you want to do Facebook posts, you can schedule out your Facebook posts, your Instagram posts, your LinkedIn, all of those things have built-in automation. And the other thing I would explain to people who are interested in a side hustle and they’re doing those email campaigns, they’re doing those social media campaigns, there’s seven days in a week. One day, you’re going to have a groove. And let’s just say that groove is an hour to two hours. You get in that one or two hours, and you just write or bang out a bunch of posts of things that you want to go on, schedule them out. They don’t have to be every day. They could be weekly. And then as you gain more experience, as you gain more clients, then you add to it. So you’re building slowly. And it adds up over time.

Tim Church: I think that’s big. I think you’re right. You have to harness technology. We all have the same amount of time. We have 168 hours every week. And after sleeping and working your full-time job, I mean, you’re limited. That gets substantially cut. So I think that really is a huge one because you have to think about OK, realistically, how are you going to make it work? And how are you going to do the things that you want? I think that’s big. I mean, I think that’s great advice. So speaking of advice and recommendations, what advice would you give to other pharmacists out there who they have other interests, passions beyond pharmacy that have the potential to be turned into a business or they have an entrepreneurial mindset?

Landen Conner: Go slow. That was one of the biggest things that I say now I understand because if you think of the story of the tortoise and the hare, the tortoise always wins. Get out of debt. Organize it from biggest to smallest. If you watch Dave Ramsey, you understand that. And give yourself small wins. Look at the pharmacist’s salary allocated in percentages. If you want to take 10% out of your salary and invest into your business to get those automation programs, they’re going to pay off huge in the end.

Tim Church: That’s so good. I want to bring another one up that you mentioned in the article, which was find the right group of like-minded people who won’t just tell you what you want to hear but what you need to hear. How has that helped you?

Landen Conner: Immensely. A lot of times, it’s hard to hear what you need to hear from people. I haven’t had that issue because I have friends that they’re going to tell me whatever it is that they feel like they have to tell me. I know it’s out of love. So it’s getting to a place that I know that they love me and tell me up front versus hiding the truth and hurting me or damaging me long-term. My grandfather, before he passed when I think I was like 8 or 10 told me something I never forgot. He said that there are only going to be three people that make it off your block. And lo and behold, there was only three people that made it off my block that was successful. And he said, “Watch the company you keep because whatever company you hang around is what you will become.” Is that always the truth? No, but a good majority of the time, I’ve seen it come to fruition.

Tim Church: I definitely agree. And sometimes, we need that criticism, that feedback, if we want to make it to the next level.

Landen Conner: True.

Tim Church: I totally agree with you on that. Well Landen, thank you for coming on the show, for sharing your story. Thanks for being open about the burnout that you experienced as a pharmacist. I know you’re not the only one out there who has gone through that or is going through that. A lot of pharmacists are dealing with that, so thank you for being open about that. And you know, I really look forward to hearing about your progress as your business continues to grow and you continue to create memories but also share people’s stories with the work that you’re doing. And I think it’s just amazing, that work that you’re doing right now. So if somebody wants to reach out to you for a holiday photo shoot, wants their headshot for LinkedIn or they just want to learn more about who you are and what you do, what would you recommend?

Landen Conner: Of course reach out to me on LinkedIn at Landen Conner or my website, www.landenconnerphoto.com, and it’s with e’s. And of course the last one, which hardly anybody takes advantage of — give me a call. (514) 905-2249.

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YFP 158: How Building a Platform Can Unlock Opportunities

Posted on June 25, 2020November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

How Building a Platform Can Unlock Opportunities

Mike Corvino, clinical pharmacist and creator of CorConsult Rx, joins Tim Church on this week’s podcast episode to share his unique journey in pharmacy, how he built his side hustle, and how he’s persevered through challenges along the way.

About Today’s Guest

Mike Corvino received a BS degree in biochemistry from Charleston Southern University and his PharmD from the Medical University of South Carolina. He is board certified as a pharmacotherapy specialist and ambulatory care pharmacist. He is also a certified diabetes care and education specialist. Currently, he works as an ambulatory care pharmacist at Fetter Health Care Network. In addition, he holds the position of adjunct assistant professor of pharmacology for the physician assistant program at Charleston Southern University. Outside of work, he is the host of the evidence-based medicine podcast called CorConsult Rx as well as the CorConsult Rx social media pages and CorConsult Rx Flash Briefing on Amazon’s Alexa device.

Summary

Mike Corvino, currently a clinical pharmacist at Fetter Healthcare, graduated pharmacy school in 2015 and became a Walgreens pharmacy manager right after. He chose not to do a residency but stayed incredibly dedicated and committed to continual learning after graduation. Mike shares that he spent all of his free time furthering his clinical knowledge including on his days off from Walgreens, free time in the day, PTO days, etc. This “self-taught” residency built him a reputation of having clinical insight and helped him get a clinical pharmacist position without formal residency training.

Mike realized in 2017 that he could take the content he was learning and teaching to another level by starting a podcast and Instagram page. Mike began the CorConsult Rx podcast which now boasts 350,000 unique downloads and has a following on Instagram of 21,000 people.

Mike shares that he doesn’t monetize his platforms specifically, but has had several professional opportunities that are paid come from them. His podcast has led to opportunities like getting a teaching position at a new PA school where he built the program from scratch as well as various speaking engagements. Mike is hopeful that opportunities that bring in additional income will continue to arise. Because of his side hustle, Mike brings in an extra $1,500 a month.

Mike also shares his tips for starting a side hustle and his advice for those that are interested in entrepreneurship.

Mentioned on the Show

PolicyGenius – Shop for Life and Disability Insurance
CorConsult Rx on Instagram
CorConsult Rx Podcast
RxRadio
The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller
Email Mike Corvino: [email protected]
CorConsult Rx
CorConsult Rx on Facebook
CorConsult Rx on LinkedIn
CorConsult Rx on YouTube
CorConsult Rx on Twitter
Text CorConsult Rx at (415)-943-6116

Episode Transcript

Tim Church: Mike, thanks for stopping by and being part of this side hustle edition.

Mike Corvino: No problem, man. Thanks for having me.

Tim Church: If you’ve listened to any of the other side hustle interviews I’ve done, I like to start out with an icebreaker. And because you’re somebody who does a lot of clinical work, I wanted to ask you this: So the zombie apocalypse is coming, and you can only bring three medications with you. What are you bringing with you?

Mike Corvino: Oooh. Good question. Let’s grab some I guess naproxen because I’m most likely going to trip and fall in the woods while running from the zombies. Let’s see, what else? We’ll grab — we’ll throw on like maybe a Z-pack or two just to make sure, in case I get some upper respiratory infection or something like that while I’m running. Got to keep the lungs clear. And then probably some allergy medicine so I can keep my sinuses and stuff open too because I’ll be doing a lot of running I imagine during the apocalypse.

Tim Church: OK. I like that. You’ve got to be able to maneuver and be in good shape to be able to do that. That’s interesting. I thought you might go with like pain med — another pain medication or maybe a benzo. But I guess that’s not always going to be in the best situation, depending on what you’re doing.

Mike Corvino: You’ve got to stay sharp when the zombies are coming after you, you know? It’s key.

Tim Church: Well Mike, talk a little bit about your career path as a pharmacist.

Mike Corvino: OK. So I graduated pharmacy school in 2015. I did not do the residency track, which in hindsight, I guess kind of worked out but probably would have been easier I think if I had gone and done residency and gotten it out of the way and done all that training ahead of time. But went straight into working for Walgreens. Got a pharmacy manager job probably 3-4 months after graduation. And then during that time, I had spent pretty much all of my free time going back to the Medical University of South Carolina, which is where I graduated, and volunteering to help teach and help them with osties and working with students, going to topic discussions that the real residents were having, things like that, just to kind of continue my education. And then from there, managed a Walgreens for about three years and then got an opportunity to be a clinical pharmacist for a place called Fetter Healthcare Network and worked in their diabetes program. It was kind of in the early stages at that point. And so took that opportunity, switched roles and transitioned over into more of a clinical role at that point. And been doing that as my main job since — for the last going on two years now.

Tim Church: And was that position difficult to obtain without a residency?

Mike Corvino: So I would say normally, I think yes. And even in my case, you know, it was difficult in the sense that I had spent so much time kind of furthering my own clinical knowledge. You know, I basically had zero time off from 2015-2018. Like I used all of PTO from work to basically go and spend time at MUSC. We went on our first — my wife and I went on our first actual, real vacation three years after I graduated. I spent literally every second of free time, every day off that I had doing something to kind of further my own clinical knowledge. And I kind of built this sort of reputation around myself as being more on that clinical side of things and being somebody that you could go to for some more clinical insight in the retail world. And that kind of trickled over into some of the clinical world. And so I was able to kind of make that transition easy at the time that it was actually presenting itself. But it was a long kind of road to get there. But yeah, once it was actually time, the actual transition was pretty effortless because I’d been prepping myself that whole time to make that jump.

Tim Church: So what it sounds like is you did your own version of a residency, just not in the traditional sense.

Mike Corvino: Yeah, so that was kind of like our joke, me going to my old professors and we would kind of say I was doing a self-taught residency. And that was kind of the way I looked at it. I just basically said, I’m going to put in as many hours as I can progressing as a pharmacist, I’m learning everything I can possibly get my hands on. And I actually saw it as that even though it was kind of silly to say out loud. But I looked at it as almost like this is my residency. I’m going to do it this way. And so I just got laser-focused for a few years. And it all kind of came together.

Tim Church: Wow, that’s really cool. And I don’t know if I know anyone who has done that. So essentially, you’re working at MUSC for free just to get that additional training and experience.

Mike Corvino: I was like the weirdo sitting in the topic discussions and people were like — all the other residents were like, who is this guy? I was kind of like sitting in the back answering some questions and then fade into the background. But no, it was good times. It was hard, it was a long road. But it was fun.

Tim Church: So you said that diabetes management was one of the things that you’re doing at Fetter Health. Walk us through a typical day. What would that be like?

Mike Corvino: So on a day where I’m just seeing patients, basically — like I’ll take yesterday for instance. I came in around 8 or so in the morning, and I basically had patients that had been referred to me. Most of them have uncontrolled diabetes. Some of them have some other things going on as well where they’re just on a whole bunch of meds, and their primary care doc would just say, “Fix this.” And they’d get referred to me. So their appointment that day is just with me. The nurse takes them back, does their vitals and all that. If we need to run an A1C or something, we can do that ahead of time. And then I start my appointment with them, go through the medications, figure out if there’s something that needs to be changed, what can be optimized. We’ll go through like lifestyle management, go through some diet, some exercise type stuff, whatever that patient needs specifically. And then if I need to order labs or change medications, then I kind of have the autonomy to do that, which is great. And then if I need to have the patient come back and see me, which a lot of my patients it’s the first time I’m seeing them, they’re pretty poorly controlled and things like that. So a lot of times, I’ll have them come back and follow up with me two or three times. And then once they’re A1C is good, their blood pressure’s good, whatever I’m dealing with with that particular patient, then I’ll turn them back over to primary care and let them take it from there.

Tim Church: That’s really cool. And it’s interesting because the position that I have through the VA is very similar, almost verbatim exactly kind of how you’re describing it. So one of the things that always comes up when I talk to other pharmacists who are in a similar type of position is what’s the culture like at the facility with the physicians and the other clinicians that are there?

Mike Corvino: So when I first got there, I was — there was only one other clinical pharmacist that had ever been through there. And he was kind of like a contract pharmacist from MUSC. So he was on the payroll of the actual college. He was going there as part of a grant that was doing some professional collaboration type of thing. Plus, he’s actually one of my old professors, kind of one of my mentors. So he was a lot older than me, and so they kind of looked at him as a little differently. Other than that, the only pharmacist they ever interacted with were dispensing pharmacists, which we have some great dispensing pharmacists there. But they just weren’t used to pharmacists being in the clinic. So when I first got there, it was kind of like, what are you doing here? You know, why are you back here with us instead of being in the pharmacy? But I kind of took the approach of I’m here just to learn, I’m here to do anything I can to help you guys. If you need me to get your coffee for you, I’m cool with that too. You know, whatever it was. And I tried to be as humble as I possibly could. A lot of the clinicians that work there are much older than me, had been doing this for years and years. And so I was as humble as I possibly could going in even though I’m very confident in my ability. But took a very humble approach and then kind of just let my work kind of speak for itself. And then over the months, it’s gotten to the point now where I basically, anything I make as a recommendation, they’ll jump on it. Like I mean, a lot of times I help with the psych department as well. And they could bring me a patient case with them and if I say, “Hey, let’s try this, this and this,” they’ll say, “OK, let’s do it. We’ll go that route.” So I’ve built up really good rapport with the providers there now. And it’s just kind of taken a little bit for them to kind of get used to. And basically I had to kind of prove myself a little bit, which is good. And yeah, but now, it’s great. I absolutely love the providers I work with, it’s fantastic. They make my life super easy. I have so much time, more than I could ever ask for. And yeah, it’s great.

Tim Church: So prior to getting that position, you did your own version, you did the Mike Corvino residency track. But did you have any board certifications or any other credentials prior to getting that position?

Mike Corvino: So when I was at Walgreens, I started doing some MTM. And Walgreens was on board — they’ve gotten a lot more on board with MTM since I left, which is great. But when I was there, at least in our state in South Carolina, we weren’t doing a ton of it. And so I started kind of picking up some MTM on my own. And I was the pharmacy manager, so I had to run the actual pharmacy. But I wanted to kind of proof of concept the idea, and so I was doing MTM claims on my own. I’d go in on my days off sometimes and work on and basically showed how it could be lucrative. And my district manager finally approached me and said, “Hey, if we give you a day a week or two days a week where you can just work on this and we bring somebody else in to actually run the pharmacy, would you be interested?” And so I jumped on that and was able to end up — finally ended up overseeing the MTM for like 80 different Walgreens after like a year’s time. And basically got enough direct patient contact hours to where I was able to sit for the — it was called the CDE exam, Certified Diabetes Educator exam, back then. Now it’s — what? CDCS. They had to change it and add more letters. It’s hard. It’s rough.

Tim Church: It looks better. It looks better now, Mike.

Mike Corvino: If you say so. I had to memorize a whole new set of letters. It was rough. But and then after that, I took the BCPS, I didn’t find out that I passed the BCPS until I actually got to my new job at Fetter. I think I was there for like a month or two, and I found out that I had passed from when I took it. I was at Walgreens when I took it and that was right during that transition. And then I got the AmCare board certification a year later. But I think going into Fetter, the only one I knew for sure that I had was the CDE.

Tim Church: So let’s talk about board certifications for a minute. And this is a little bit off-topic, but I think it’s an interesting discussion. So you know, I have the same diabetes credential that you do and also the ambulatory care. And a lot of people will argue, especially in the pharmacy realm, that having those credentials makes you much more marketable when you’re looking for positions. And arguably, there’s some positions that they’re required that you have some sort of credentials like that in order to be even considered. What do you think now in terms of when you think about the time it takes to prepare for the exams, the cost to take them, the ongoing costs, what is your thoughts in terms of the return on the investment to even get to that point?

Mike Corvino: I really think it just depends on what you want to do. You know, I don’t think that I needed — other than the diabetes certification, which looked really good for this new job because they were wanting to do a diabetes program — I don’t think it would have made a difference either way. I don’t think any of them even knew what a BCPS or ACP or anything like that was. But I think it just depends on the job. As far as if it truly makes a difference as far as the person, I mean, me personally, if I was hiring somebody, I don’t know that I would care all that much. I mean, because when I passed like my board certifications, it wasn’t like all of a sudden I was this miraculous pharmacist comparatively to before. I mean, my knowledge was just basically proving that I knew what I knew. I think, you know, a test is a test, and you can only judge so much just because someone’s a good test taker doesn’t mean that they’re going to be fantastic with patients. So for me, I did it just because it was one of those things — one, I was told that I would never become a clinical pharmacist unless I had a residency. And then I was told that I would never be able to get board certified unless I’d done a residency and all of this kind of stuff. So honestly for me, it was more of like just a personal thing just to prove a point and prove that I could pass it. And it was more on that realm more so than it was I thought that it would make a huge difference in my actual career. But I definitely think like you said, some places like look at that and think that’s the end-all, be-all and if you don’t have that, they don’t even want to look at you. So I really just think it depends. It’s hard to judge whether it’s a good return on investment. I think it just ultimately ends up which employer you go with and how that person particularly sees it.

Tim Church: So does it get you a pay bump if you add more credentials, if you get another board certification?

Mike Corvino: No, not at my current job.

Tim Church: So I mean, I think that’s interesting too because obviously that’s not the incentive for most people why they’re doing it. But it could be one of the benefits, depending on where you are. There’s a lot of government organizations that that’s one of the ways that you can get extra steps or increase your pay. But I think it’s interesting. And I like that you said that that you would proving yourself in one respect because honestly, when I looked at kind of your resume before we jumped on here, I think most people would assume they’re like, OK, where’d you go to residency? Where’d you do your residency? Did you do a PGY2 or did you just do a PGY1?

Mike Corvino: Yeah. And that’s — usually when I tell people I didn’t do one, it’s like, well, what do you mean you didn’t do one? How did you get board-certified? There’s more than one path to do it, I promise.

Tim Church: Sure. So Mike, you’re doing well at Fetter Health Care Network working as AmCare pharmacist, working with patients, helping manage their chronic diseases. At what point do you say, I want to do something more, I want to do something beyond just my full-time position?

Mike Corvino: So realistically, I kind of started that part of it probably before — I guess it was probably 2017 when I first started thinking about ways that I could do more. And initially, it kind of just started off as a way of keeping myself accountable as far as continuing to learn. You know, it’s very easy when you get a job as a pharmacist, you can make great money in retail and it’s very easy to get a cushy paycheck and start watching Netflix instead of reading Medscape. And so I kind of just used that as a tool of I was trying — I like to teach even though I wasn’t in a position to teach at the time. And I like to teach, so I was like, well, how can I maybe use like social media or something like that as a way of helping up-and-coming students as well as kind of it would force me to keep accountable and keep learning and keep staying current with the newest evidence-based medicine trends and things like that. And so that’s kind of where all my side stuff started was that mentality. I had no intentions of it — I never even thought like six people would actually follow my stuff on social media or anything like that. It started off really as a personal thing just to kind of — I knew that if I started it, then I would keep going because I would refuse to stop at that point because I didn’t want to be like one of those people that start something for a month and then quit. And so it was more just that. It was more just an accountability thing. And then it just turned into a lot more as it went on. But initially, it was more so yeah, just something that was supposed to be very simple and just kind of almost for me. It was interesting how it kind of transformed from there.

Tim Church: And so what you’re talking, the things that you’ve done on social media, keeping yourself accountable for the clinical information, that eventually developed into you creating a podcast called CorConsultRx.

Mike Corvino: Yes.

Tim Church: So talk a little bit about that and how that got started.

Mike Corvino: So initially, it was just — CorConsultRx was just going to be like on social media for like posts and things like that. So you know, Instagram is the one that I use mainly. Facebook some, Twitter some as well. But Instagram is kind of like my main focus. And initially it was just that it was going to be just posts with like little clinical pearls or updates and things like that. I was also doing a little bit of like landmark clinical trial video reviews and things like that that I would put on YouTube. But my main focus was just posts on Instagram. And then the more I kind of got established with that, I wanted to try other avenues. And audio is kind of the other piece of the puzzle. Visual aids with social media, video from YouTube and then I wanted the audio piece. And so I kind of started — initially I was doing just like what they call flash briefings on Amazon’s Alexa. And so I learned how to like get a flash briefing going. Back then, like basically Amazon was like, if you don’t know how to code then forget you. Now it’s become like super easy. You just drag and click and you’re done. But back then, literally it was like me and my brother a glimpse in time looking through books on how to write an RSS code that would be able to be uploaded to Amazon. And then from there I got into the audio stuff and then I wanted to go full-scale podcast. And kind of worked my way through that. And that just kind of kept going and snowballed. And now it’s to the point where we just hit — so we’ve had the podcast now for two years. I think we’ve hit a little over 350,000 unique downloads and we’re on all major platforms and yeah. It’s pretty awesome now and something I absolutely love doing. But it started off as kind of just a let’s see if this can be something that could accent what we were doing on Instagram. And the podcast is now probably the main — the Instagram is still a big portal that we have a lot of followers and things on. But the podcast is kind of really where a lot of our listeners are and stuff. I brought in one of my old students, his name is Cole Swanson, he’s the co-host on the podcast. He had finished — he was on rotation with me initially and helped me with some of this stuff when it was early on. He was one of the hardest workers I had ever had on rotation. And so I asked him when he was getting closer to graduation if he’d be interested. And he jumped on board, and we’ve been going after it ever since.

Tim Church: Well, I think it’s awesome. And clearly people are really into what you’re doing and the podcast otherwise you wouldn’t have over 21,000 followers on Instagram and the number of downloads that you’ve had. But when somebody thinks about getting to that point or even just maintaining and keeping episodes going, I mean, was that difficult to do to keep it going, keeping things fresh, always coming up with new content?

Mike Corvino: So I think as far as keeping it going, the good thing about medicine is you can never get to the bottom of it. I mean, that’s one of the things we’ve actually joked about on the podcast is well, I mean, heck, we can just start back over at Episode 1 and go through the topics again if we want to. And it’ll basically be fresh because all the stuff, the guidelines will change and new meds will come out. You never really run out of topics. Ours is very broad. I mean, ours is pharmacotherapy like as a whole, evidence-based medicine. We didn’t want to like get only on one topic or one set specific area. So it was super broad range of topics that we’d go over, so that makes it easy. And as far as like kind of staying with it, when we were first starting, I just always kept everything in perspective as far as followers. Like I never really cared much about how many people were following. Now that I look at the number of followers and things on Instagram, it blows my mind that six people listen to what I have to say. And so I literally just kept that in perspective. I remember being like so crazy excited when we had hit like 100 downloads on one episode. I’d be like, “Cole, check this out! 100 people downloaded our podcast! That is ridiculous. Who are these crazy people? Why would they want to listen to us talk about anything?” I mean, it blew my mind. And so I always had that. I was always so appreciative of anybody that would take 5 seconds to glance at our stuff that I never even really thought about the fact that when we had 500 followers on Instagram, I was like, “Yo, this is great! 500 people.” And then it would just build and build and build. And so it never really got to the point where I felt like oh, come on, when is this going to happen? When are we going to finally get to the 10,000 or whatever? Just because I was just enjoying the fact that these people were — I mean, you think about 100 people, what that would actually look like if you put them in a room. And people complain that they don’t have enough followers. I’m like, 100 people have to care what you have to say. Like that’s huge. And so 21,000 is like unfathomable if I were to actually like line those people up. And so you know, I just always try to keep it in perspective. And I’m super thankful that anybody listens to my podcast. And so that’s always been a driving factor as far as I don’t want to let them down either and make sure the information’s good and something that’s entertaining and what they want to listen to and helpful and all that. So it’s actually been fairly easy to kind of keep the momentum going just because it’s grown and yeah, just looking back, it’s been like, I mean, the absolute best ride ever.

Tim Church: Is there anything you guys do to make it more entertaining? Because obviously, you know, not everyone enjoys diving into randomized clinical trials for hours upon hours. Is there a — how do you guys keep it so obviously you’re delivering the content but you always keep it entertaining and keep people engaged?

Mike Corvino: So like when I first was thinking about doing the podcast, my idea for it was I want high level nerd stuff, but then I also want it to be super laid back coffee shop type tone. And so we literally just talk as if we were going to sit down at Starbucks and then go over some stuff. Like you know, just hey, did you hear about this trial, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, we joke. I don’t act any differently on my podcast than I do in real life, which I joke around a lot. I’m always cutting up and stuff at work. I mean, I grew up surfing and things like that. I mean, before I was a pharmacist, I was a professional MMA fighter. I mean, I’ve had a very different non-medical background in my past. So now, it’s like, I say dude and I use a lot of slang. And so I just didn’t change any of that. I literally just brought that into my podcast. And I was like, yeah, this is how I talk. I’m not going to try to change it or try to make it sound like I’m something I’m not. What you hear is what you get. But we just try to make sure that the content was there but that it was just not in the typical dry format that usually that kind of stuff is presented in. There’s always like this you have to like have a certain tone when you talk about clinical medicine. It’s like, why though? Who made that stupid rule? And so we just kind of did our own thing. And it’s apparently — I mean, there’s definitely people who say that — I’ve gotten emails that say, “Hey, your stuff’s great, but it’s a little distracting when you guys go off on tangents.” I’m like, I’m sorry, but that’s how my brain works. I don’t know how to fix that. If I could, I’d probably be a lot more successful. But you know, we just keep it as honest as we can and you know, if — basically if you don’t like it, there’s so many other good podcasts that are more like lecture-style that they can definitely check those out too. So we just kind of — we’re trying to be authentic with it and let it go from there.

Tim Church: So obviously, having a platform like yours where you have a lot of followers, a lot of people download the podcast, that opens up opportunities to start monetizing that platform, not that that was the intention or is the intention. But obviously those opportunities come about. So how has the podcast and the followership allowed you to monetize that platform? Or if not, has it led to opportunities to be monetized?

Mike Corvino: So initially, my main focus for the podcast was to open up more professional doors for Cole and I. And so it wasn’t so much that I was ever trying to like monetize the podcast itself, not that I was opposed to that. But I just kind of wanted that to be the attention-grabber, if you will, and get people to kind of know who I was because of that kind of stuff and the free content that I was putting out. And then hopefully that would lead to more opportunities. And because of the podcast and because of my certain things that I’ve done clinically and whatnot, I basically was offered a chance to interview for a position of a new PA school that was being started in Charleston and was going to basically be the first one besides MUSC that had been done ever in this area. And they were a new program, and they said, “Hey, we want to bring a PharmD in to teach pharmacology.” And they wanted somebody that was looking to really like kind of build the program from scratch because they didn’t have a curriculum or anything. They had like a skeleton of what they needed to cover topic-wise. But they had not even a single PowerPoint slide made. And so they wanted someone that wanted to build the curriculum as well as, as they put it, somebody who was looking at more innovative ways of teaching. And so I really kind of went to the interview as just sort of like an experience thing. I didn’t think there was any chance that I was ever going to actually get to teach. And on paper at the time, I had no business teaching, to be totally honest. I mean, I was 28 years old. I didn’t need to be teaching grad school. And during the interview, I just kind of told them what I had been working on, the stuff I had done with like Amazon and the Amazon Alexa and different podcasts and the stuff on social media. And they said they liked it and they wanted to give me a chance and brought me onto the program. And so that was the first time where I really had like a big jump in my pay, if you will, just from something that had been kind of directly from the stuff I’d been doing with CorConsult. And since then, I’ve had speaking opportunities that have paid well and I’ve gotten other different thing and I’ve gotten opportunities to help teach things here and there, other schools and whatnot. And it’s given me a lot of other opportunities that I know will in the next probably 6 months to a year will lead to even more opportunities and things like that. Not to get too ahead of myself, but I see the path now that it’s opening up and all these different doors that it’s opening up. And so that’s really what I’ve been focused on now is kind of using it as that funnel, if you will, to open up doors that I can then jump through and keep it interesting for me from a career standpoint as well as find ways to supplement income and things like that.

Tim Church: And so how often are you teaching at the Physician Assistant program?

Mike Corvino: So I teach an hour and a half lecture twice a week, and I do that almost year-round. I have like December and January pretty much off. I do like a couple like review classes for the students that are going onto clinicals. But I don’t have like regular, set lecture times during those two months. But other than that, I just teach year-round.

Tim Church: And what kind of income does that bring in that’s extra beyond what you’re making in your full-time position?

Mike Corvino: It ends up being — with other speaking things kind of thrown in there and other opportunities, like all in all, it probably ends up being around $1,500 or so a month extra.

Tim Church: That’s a nice boost in pay, right?

Mike Corvino: Yeah, it’s a nice little thing of change.

Tim Church: And so when you look at that additional income beyond what you’re making in your full-time position, how do you funnel that extra income? How do you figure out what you’re going to do with that every month?

Mike Corvino: I don’t have like a set — I mean, some of it I reinvest make into CorConsult. And I mean, realistically, I feel very, very comfortable where I am now. My wife is a pharmacist too. She also works — she’s a pharmacy manager for Walgreens. And she works part-time with her cousin’s opioid treatment center and does clinical work for them. So we feel very comfortable financially. And so anything that we make at this point is something I try to reinvest back into the other future things, whether that’s savings or reinvesting back into CorConsult. It gives me a little bit more justification when I tell her I’m going to buy something for the studio for the house. In our house, she let me build a studio. So she deserves like an award for that because it’s pretty awesome.

Tim Church: We’ll have to add some photos of that in the show notes.

Mike Corvino: There you go. But yeah, it’s one of those things that I just kind of try to — I don’t have anything set each month that I do with it or anything. But we just kind of use it to, you know, further things along, if you will.

Tim Church: So you mentioned that besides the teaching position, that through your platform, through CorConsult, you’ve been able to get other speaking gigs kind of even in addition to that. So what do those look like? And what would those typically bring in?

Mike Corvino: It depends. So some of them will be — usually if I’m speaking at an event, it’s usually on a certain topic like I’m speaking in August on dislipidemia, doing like an hour talk on that. I did one in Hilton Head, South Carolina not too long ago that was on — I think it was diabetes I did there. I did one on just like how different ways of like staying current with inflammation, different techniques to kind of keep up-to-date with everything. I spoke at the Kennedy Center on innovation in your field and things like that. So just different topics. But it can range from anywhere from a couple hundred bucks to almost $1,000 to speak at something, it just kind of depends on the event. I mean, there’s some events that like I’ll still absolutely do for free. I mean, I’m not opposed to that at all. I don’t think I’m a fancy speaker or anything like that by any stretch of the imagination. So the fact that people want to hear me speak, I’m like, sweet. I’ll be there. You know, it just depends on the event. It can be a range of that.

Tim Church: So obviously we keep talking about CorConsult, your platform, the thousands and thousands of followers you have on Instagram. It’s not something that just happens overnight. So one of my burning questions I have is how much time are you spending on all these activities beyond your full-time position? I mean, what does that look like?

Mike Corvino: So when I first started, literally 2017 was kind of when I decided to do this, I had a talk with my wife and was like, if I’m going to do this — because she’s always been super supportive of me. And she knows I get a little crazy with my projects that I want to go on. And so she was like telling me to go for it and things like that, and I said, “Look, if I’m going to do this, I need” — because I wanted to be able to do posts on Instagram and different graphic type stuff, so I didn’t know how to use any of the software that I would need to, let alone do video editing and audio. But as far as graphic design, I didn’t know how to do that either. So I had to like go through — I went to the University of YouTube for hours on end and learned how to do all these different tutorials and things like that with Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro and all that stuff. And so at the time, I mean, I was basically working like every second I was awake. I mean, if I was off, when I was at Walgreens, I had more days off during the week because I was working like 14-hour shifts at Walgreens. And so I would just treat the next day — if I was off, I would just treat that as a shift at Walgreens and I would work 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. on my stuff. And I would eat some lunch and just keep going back at it. And I would just treat it like that. And it took a lot of my time. I mean, I spent a long, long time kind of learning and building and trying new things and seeing what worked and what wouldn’t work. Richard Waithe from RxRadio, him and I used to talk about our after-hours was 10 p.m. to 2 p.m. And he would text me and I would text him at like 1 a.m. to see if we were still working. That was kind of like the ongoing joke for a couple years. And it’s one of those things, it’s probably not the healthiest lifestyle, but it was something that I knew I wanted to do and kind of build this platform. So it was just something I kind of made peace with in my mind as well as getting my wife’s blessing on it. And we just went for it.

Tim Church: So has that scaled back after you’ve kind of gotten a lot of the pieces under your belt and got acclimated with all the tech involved with kind of running the operations?

Mike Corvino: It definitely has to a degree. Now, it depends, though. Like last week, not at all. Last week was a bad example because even my wife was like, I don’t think I saw you take a break the entire week. And I was like, I don’t even remember last week at all. It was just all a blur. And so I mean, because I was trying to get these different things done, I was trying to help a couple of my buddies start their podcast. And you know, I had to get stuff going for my class. And so it was just a ton of stuff. So it depends on the week, but a lot of times, I do take — if you’re looking at the week as a whole, I take a lot more time off trying to do more fun stuff. We’re going on vacation in July and then again in November, which was like unheard of for us before. So I’m trying to take more time to kind of have somewhat of a more normal life. It’s still not normal by anybody’s normal standards. But it feels like I’m working way less from my point of view. And so I feel like I’m trying at least to move in that direction. But I’m also having a great time with it, so it’s hard for me to like fully get into cruising mode, if you will.

Tim Church: Yeah, and I think one of the things that always comes up is people ask the question, well how do you balance these things? And you know, there was a book that I read one time by Gary Keller called “The One Thing.” And basically he kind of refutes that idea being balanced in all parts of your life because it can shift. And if you want to be mediocre in everything, then you can balance everything. But sometimes some weeks or some seasons, you’ve really got to get the grind on if you want to be successful with whatever you’re doing. And sometimes it can take time to get back. So it sounds like I’m kind of hearing a little bit of that from you because obviously you have to hustle in order to get the kind of response to get the followers, to get the downloads that you’re getting because it’s not something that’s going to happen with little work.

Mike Corvino: Yeah. And usually when people ask me that about my work-life balance, I’m like, it’s horrible. Like I know it’s horrible. I’m not going to sit here and try to give the cliche answer of like, oh I’m very balanced. I’m not at all whatsoever balanced. But that’s what works for me personally. That’s what I need to do to reach my goals. I also have no interest in pushing that life on anybody else. I always tell a story about I had a student of mine that I was — because I always talk to my students at the beginning of the rotation, I’m like, “Hey” — because a lot of them will say, “I just want to follow your exact schedule.” I’m like, “Cool. Do you want to do my clinical schedule? Or do you want to do my real schedule?” If you want to do my real schedule, you’re in for a horrible month. And you know, I always give them that choice because I don’t ever push my work — my poor work-life balance on anybody. And I always tell the story of a student that I had where I was talking to them about different things and he said, “Honestly,” he goes, “I don’t mean to sound like a slacker or anything,” he goes, “But I want to get my PharmD, I want to do well at my job, but I really just want to make enough to where I can surf whenever I want.” Like I loved him for that. Like that’s so authentic to him. And that’s awesome. Like he’s going to do a good job, he was going to make a good income, and he’s going to enjoy what he loves doing. So I have no interest in like ever pushing my personal thought process or my goals on anybody. But when I do have — when I hear somebody that’s like, “I want to be this. I want to take over the world. Blah blah blah blah blah.” I’m like, OK. Well, if that’s the case, then I better not see you at the beach this Saturday on Instagram. You better be working because that’s not how you get there. So it just depends. Like I just basically, you know, give my two cents on that person’s specific goals. And I think that’s kind of the way I look at it. So there is no right balance for anyone. I mean, there’s no blanket statement I can say, OK, now you’re balanced. It just depends on the person, what you want to do, and are you happy? And that’s all that matters to me. It’s like, is that person happy with where they’re at in life? And if they are not, then OK, let’s work and let’s buckle down and figure out what we need to do to get to the next stage. If you are happy, that’s awesome. Good for you. That’s great. I have a buddy of mine who makes a fraction of what I make, but he’s on multiple intramural leagues and he does whatever the heck he wants, living his best life. He loves it. I’m like, that’s great. I love that for him. So it just, it really just depends on the person.

Tim Church: Well, I think it’s cool — and you mentioned this a couple times — that your wife is really supportive of the work that you’re doing. And although it may seem a little bit hectic to somebody else and depending on the life that they want to live, but it seems to work for you guys and your wife is on board with helping you reach those goals and get to the next level.

Mike Corvino: Yeah, absolutely. And if she wasn’t, then we’d have to obviously have a different conversation. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to do what I do. So it all just depends. This is working for us at this point. You know, once other things, life changes happen, I’m sure we’ll adjust and change or maybe slow down or who knows? It just depends. But yeah, it’s so far everything’s smooth sailing.

Tim Church: So Mike, obviously you’re doing a lot of great things. But one of the topics that comes up with entrepreneurship is failing or failures. Would you say that you’ve had any failures along your journey or things that really didn’t work out the way that you thought they were?

Mike Corvino: Yeah, for sure. I mean, like I said earlier just kind of briefly, basically when I got into pharmacy school, so I had been doing like some form of martial arts my entire life, like since I was a little kid. And when mixed martial arts became a thing like MMA — UFC is the big one that everybody knows about — but MMA became like a thing where there was a professional league and you could make money at it, that was like, oh my gosh, I want to do that so bad. I had been working towards that from my early — I guess late teens or early 20s. And then when I was 22-23, however old I was when I got accepted to pharmacy school, literally the same week I got a contract to fight professional MMA. And I was like, oh crap. So I like had a real dilemma there, which path I wanted to go. And I ended up doing both for a little while. I fought professionally for like two years of pharmacy school. And my first year of pharmacy school went terribly. Like I mean I was completely 100% focused on MMA. I barely went to class, barely studied, and I ended up actually getting — I don’t tell this story very much — but I actually ended up getting held back my first year. So my first year was so much fun I got to do it a second time. And like the school was literally like, why did we let this kid in here? They were like totally not wanting me to be a student there anymore. And I mean, you know, at the time, people looked at me like I was going to be a terrible — I was told by some people that I would never become a pharmacist, I didn’t belong there, blah, blah, blah. And you know, when I finally got to the crossroads of like OK, I need to pick a path that’s got the longer life expectancy as far as a career goes. I’m 32 right now, that’s like 108 in MMA years. And so you know, I was like, OK, pharmacy is kind of where it’s at. And then I got focused and I kind of just put all of my focus into pharmacy and my competitiveness into pharmacy instead of MMA. And that’s when things really turned for me. But my whole first two years of — almost my first three years of pharmacy school were like all failure to the point where literally nobody was expecting anything out of me. The fact that I have multiple board certifications and things like that, a lot of that stems from stuff that people had told me I would never be able to do back then, kind of got a little chip on my shoulder I guess from it. And a lot of that came from all the times I had done so poorly in school. If you saw my GPA from pharmacy school, you’d be like, oh gees, they let you teach people? That’s atrocious. But I mean, it’s just — I’ve redeemed myself since then and obviously I have learned good material since then. But I had a very rough start or rough half, if you will, to pharmacy school. I think I got used to being — disappointing my professors and things like that. And so it was a long turnaround period that I had to go through to kind of get the respect again and things like that. So that’s one example. There’s plenty of things I could go into, but I think — personally I think failing is super important. I think it teaches you something. I think as long as you look at it the right way, I think it’s motivating for a lot of people. I know for me, one of the best things that ever happened to me was someone telling me that I would never become a pharmacist while I was in pharmacy school. I still think about it. I’ll go on a run nowadays where it has nothing to do with pharmacy. I’ll be on a run and like, I’m so tired, I think I’m going to stop. And then I’ll think about that person telling me that and I’ll start running faster. It still motivates me to this day. And since that, I have a great relationship with that person, so it’s not like I have any ill will toward them or anything. But it’s just something that really, really motivated me and gave me a little bit of that competitiveness that I needed I guess. So I think failure is super important. There’s people that would disagree with me on that and don’t think adversity leads to success. But I definitely do. I think it’s all just the way you look at things and process what’s put in front of you.

Tim Church: Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, I think for me, I look at my own career and my path with pharmacy, with entrepreneurship, and failing has really been key. I look at people that are role models or that I look up to that are more successful in things than I am, and I look at they — typically the response what I’ve come up with is they either have better habits than I do or they failed more than I have to get to the point of where they are. So I think it’s something that’s really critical. What would you say to people who — let’s talk about pharmacists or pharmacy students specifically that are interested in pursuing a business, a side hustle, something like that but that fear of failure is just paralyzing them. What advice would you give them?

Mike Corvino: Probably just one, figuring out what your side hustle actually needs to be. There’s some people that want to build a side hustle that has to do with pharmacy because they happen to be a pharmacist, but they don’t like love it. And that I feel like is a very hard thing to do. I mean, I got very fortunate to where my career happens to be the thing that I love and am super interested in. But there’s a lot of people that’s not the case. So I think that that fear of failure comes into the fact that they don’t want to have to put in all those extra hours to begin with. And so that fear of failure is kind of amplified because if they do fail, they wasted all that time versus if you’re doing something that you love anyway, like for example, the student that I said that wanted to surf, if his business is around surf lessons or something like that, that fear of failure kind of goes down because he’s doing what he loves anyway. So if the business side of things doesn’t work out, then that’s not great. But at the same time, if that whole time he was just doing that was something he’d be doing anyway, that kind of de-escalates the fear a little bit. And then ultimately, I think that you need to really kind of figure out whose opinion I guess you’re worried about if you do fail. You know, are you worried about somebody thinking you’re a failure? Like who cares what that person thinks? I mean, even if it’s somebody close to you. I mean, ultimately, who really cares? And why do you care so much what they think? I think that’s something that a lot of people have to kind of battle with is they don’t want to put something on Instagram or social media or a podcast because they’re afraid that someone’s going to think that they’re not qualified and they’re not whatever. And I just, I don’t know, I just think you just need to really kind of figure out what’s going on internally in your own head to where that bothers you, that that person’s opinion would keep you from doing what you want to do. I think it’s something that a lot of people struggle with. And the sooner you can kind of get past that and where that is a badge of honor kind of thing and be like, look, just — I have people that I looked up to that told me that CorConsult wasn’t a good idea. And that literally like made me happy because I was like, oh man, I cannot wait to prove you wrong. This is going to be amazing. And so that’s kind of my personality from the get go. But if it’s not your personality, I think it’s important to kind of look at it in that sense of like, OK, they don’t think this is a good idea, they’re going to laugh at me if I fail. OK, this is an opportunity to prove them wrong. And if they’re right and you do fail, OK. Then you’ve got something funny to talk about later and you guys can just kind of poke fun at yourself. There’s plenty of things that I’ve done with CorConsult that haven’t worked out. So you know, I think everyone takes themselves so seriously, and they’re worried about wasting time and things like that. I mean, on paper watching Netflix is a waste of time too. And yet a majority of people do that. So it just depends on the person. But I think coming down to what you really want to do, is that really what’s going to make you happy? Or are you just doing the side hustle because you think you’re supposed to? And then ultimately caring about other people’s opinions on what you’re doing. I mean, are any of them doing side hustles or working extra or putting in extra work? Or are they all doing nonsense stuff too? It just, other people’s opinions I think is something that so many struggle with and I wish that they could kind of be eliminated from the equation. But it takes practice.

Tim Church: Definitely. You reminded me of a quote, one of the great motivational speakers Les Brown. I don’t know if it was from him or somebody that he was mentored by, but he would say that somebody else’s opinion of you does not have to become your reality. And I think you demonstrated that on multiple accounts based on your story and the things that you’ve gone through, which I think is just amazing when you look at that and you look at how people, what their perception was and what they thought of you but where you are now. It’s just amazing. So any other books or resources for pharmacists, pharmacy students, who want to get into entrepreneurship, pursuing a side hustle?

Mike Corvino: I’ve got to be careful with how I word this because I don’t want to — I’m always careful with how I say this because again, this kind of stems from my personality. I’m like very anti-books about entrepreneurship. I think if you have an idea, you need to just try and figure out how you can make that work. And I am a much more of a kinetic learner. Like it would do me no good to read through a book on how to be an entrepreneur. One, I don’t think you can truly teach entrepreneurship. I think you teach like entrepreneurial tendencies, if you will, but not true entrepreneurship. And I think that’s something that some people just have and some people just have no desire to go that route. And I think that if you have an idea or you want to try something, like try it. Because the other thing is well, what if somebody’s never written a book about the thing you want to do or the idea that you had or no one’s ever — like that doesn’t mean that it’s not a good idea or it’s not innovative or not going to work or anything like that. And I think that so many people get caught up on trying to prep for their big starting moment that they sometimes get caught up in that. I — and this is just, again, this is 100% me personally and there’s plenty of people who are way more successful than me that would disagree with this, so take it as it is. I’ve personally read like zero books on entrepreneurship. I couldn’t tell you, like when you said Les Brown, like I have no idea who that is, to be honest with you. Like I read zero stuff about that. I just, I try things that I think feel right to me. And I see what happens. I roll with it. I’m like alright, let’s roll these dice and see if this works out. If it doesn’t work out, cool. If it does, then great. I’ll take that data and apply it to this next thing I’m going to try. And I just kind of go that way. And I know that doesn’t work for everybody. And you know, if books and things like that is how you learn, that’s great. I just, me personally, it’s hard for me to kind of give advice on that because I don’t really use that tactic. I just, it doesn’t come naturally to me to do that. In fact, usually when I’m reading a book about somebody who’s telling me I’ve got to do it this way and this way, my brain defaults into, I’m going to try it the opposite just to see what happens. It’s probably a flaw. I mean, it probably would be way easier if I would just go with the grain on that one, but I just, I can’t help it. That’s just the way my brain works. And it’s just very hard for me to see someone who — like I see the life coaches and things like that. I’m like eh, I mean, cool, I wish you all the best. But I just, I have a hard time getting behind a lot of that stuff.

Tim Church: Yeah, and I mean, I think you said it. I mean, you may operate in a much different wavelength than somebody else and be willing to take more failures and hits versus trying to prep for everything that you’re going to do versus just putting it out there and start. But I think a lot of people that they’re so afraid of getting started or so afraid of putting themselves out there that they never get their idea, they never get their business off the ground just because of that. So I think you shared some really key points there. Well Mike, really appreciate you coming on the podcast, sharing your story, sharing your tips for pharmacists, for pharmacy students, who have an interest in starting a side hustle, becoming an entrepreneur. What is the best way for someone to reach out to learn more about you and what you’re doing with CorConsult?

Mike Corvino: So you can email me directly if you want. It’s just [email protected]. And CorConsult, all one word. It’s like the worst branding of all time. So CorConsultRx.com is my email. You can go to the website. You can follow me on any social media platforms, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, any of those things, even LinkedIn, Twitter, all that good stuff. All the same handle, CorConsultRx. You can reach out to me via text if you want. I have a texting platform that you can contact me directly. It’s (415) 943-6116. I do like answer pharmacotherapy questions and stuff over text in real time. So that’s been kind of fun. But yeah, any of those things you can get in touch with me. I’m fairly easy to contact, depending on which medium you want to use.

Tim Church: Wow. Are you as fired up as I am? As Mike was telling his story, I honestly felt like I was watching the movie “Rocky” and “Going to fly now” kept coming on. Has anyone ever told you that you weren’t good enough for something? You didn’t have the training or credentials to get a particular job? Or your business idea or plan wasn’t going to work? I’ve certainly heard things like that before. Sometimes, that can be the ultimate motivation to do or stick with something. But beyond that, I think Mike illustrated that building a brand or platform can take a ton of time and effort, not just hours but even years to gain a huge following and begin to start monetizing and unlocking these opportunities. While that may seem overwhelming and intimidating, just remember as Zig Zigler said, “You don’t have to be great to start. But you have to start to be great.”

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YFP 137: How to Monetize Your Clinical Expertise

Posted on January 30, 2020November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

How to Monetize Your Clinical Expertise

Diana Isaacs joins Tim Church on this side hustle edition to talk about her journey in becoming an expert in diabetes and how she has been able to monetize her clinical expertise through speaking engagements, advisory boards, consulting projects and CE articles.

About Today’s Guest

Diana Isaacs, PharmD, BCPS, BC-ADM, BCACP, CDE is the Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) Program Coordinator and Endocrinology Clinical Pharmacy Specialist at the Cleveland Clinic Diabetes Center. Her role includes clinical practice, teaching, and research. She provides medication management and runs a robust CGM shared medical appointment program.

Summary

Diana Isaacs shares how she monetizes her clinical expertise in diabetes on this side hustle edition.

Diana’s training after graduating college was in pharmacy practice and ambulatory care. She gained clinical expertise and took additional training to receive certifications and specializations. She fell in love with diabetes and started working more and more in the field. She now works as a Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) Program Coordinator and Endocrinology Clinical Pharmacy Specialist at the Cleveland Clinic Diabetes Center. Diana was recently awarded the 2020 AADE Diabetes Educator of the Year.

Her passion for diabetes is palpable and has allowed her to become an expert in the field. When she’s working at night on her side hustle as a clinical diabetes expert, she doesn’t feel as though she’s working but more that she’s doing a hobby she loves. She’s monetized her passion and expertise in several ways, including speaking engagements and presentations, advisory boards, consulting projects and CE articles and courses. She earns the most from honorariums which varies between $500 to $3,000/event. Advisory boards come in occasionally and bring in between $1,000 to $2,5000/board. Diana receives $500 to $4,000/CE article and if she works on a consulting project she usually earns $1,000 to $2,500.

The biggest reason for her success has been her willingness to say yes to opportunities and to reach out to organizations or conferences in which she’s interested in speaking.

Diana says it’s hard to quantify how many hours she works, however she makes it happen! Her side hustle has increased over time so she didn’t feel the brunt of working several additional hours on top of her day job at once. She has a very supportive husband that works part-time and is able to take on more with the children and household tasks. She works at night after her children go to bed but takes off Saturdays and Sundays when she can to make sure she’s present for her children and husband.

Mentioned on the Show

Refinance Your Student Loans
AADE (American Association of Diabetes Educators)
American Diabetes Association
Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
Pharmacy Times
Power-Pak CE
Email Diana Isaacs: [email protected]
Follow Diana on Twitter

Episode Transcript

Tim Church: Diana, thanks for stopping for and for being part of this side hustle edition.

Diana Isaacs: Oh, you’re welcome. Thanks so much for having me.

Tim Church: I first want to congratulate you on your recent award. And that is the 2020 AADE Diabetes Educator of the Year. And this is an award that honors a diabetes educator who has made a special contribution to the field through dedication, innovation, and sensitivity in patient care. Now Diana, this is a really big deal, and I wanted to ask you, what does winning this award mean to you?

Diana Isaacs: Oh, well thanks. Yeah, it’s been a really exciting year. Winning this award has been tremendous. I mean, I’m so grateful to be recognized for it. And it’s definitely opened up a lot of opportunities for me in terms of it almost seemed like overnight, people were like, oh, she’s an expert in diabetes. And it’s given me a lot of new opportunities to pursue.

Tim Church: That’s great. And when was the last time a pharmacist won this award? Because this isn’t something specific to pharmacists. This is really anybody in the diabetes space.

Diana Isaacs: Yeah, that’s one of the things I really love about the organization AADE, the American Association of Diabetes Educators, is that it is, it’s a multidisciplinary. You’ve got nurses, nurse practitioners, DAs, exercise physiologists, you’ve got dieticians, you’ve really got everybody. And so it’s just — it’s really special I think to be recognized by all the different disciplines. And in terms of the last time a pharmacist, I think when I looked it was like 12 years. So it definitely had been a long time.

Tim Church: That is so cool. And it’s really awesome to see you being recognized because as we’re going to jump into, you really have done a lot for diabetes in terms of your scholarship activities and a lot of the committees and things that you’ve been on. So I’m excited to jump into that. But obviously getting this award is not something that happened by accident. So I want you to talk a little bit about your career path.
Diana Isaacs: Yeah, sure. So let’s see. Going all the way back, I graduated from SIUE, it’s about 10 — actually exactly 10 years ago now. I did a pharmacy practice residency with an emphasis in ambulatory care at the Philadelphia VA. And then I was really fortunate to get my first position as a clinical assistant professor with a practice site at the VA, getting to manage diabetes. And I think through that, I really was able to gain clinical expertise in managing different types of patients and seeing different types of things. And I pursued my certifications, like my CDE and the BCEDMs, I’m board-certified in advanced diabetes management. And really, I think one of the things that really stands out is I say yes. I definitely say yes to different opportunities and also seeking out whenever there was an opportunity to be able to speak at a meeting, whether a local program or anything, really trying to grow myself professionally.

Tim Church: So a lot of those opportunities, did you have to be very intentional about getting? Were some of those given to you?

Diana Isaacs: So that is a great question. So yeah, the golden ticket, right, is when you get one of those emails that says, “Hey, will you do this? And we’ll pay you all this money, and we’d like you to present here and write this.” Those emails come sometimes, and they have fortunately come more often since getting this award, but no. For the most part, I sought things out. When I saw that a meeting was accepting abstracts to be able to speak, I drew up an abstract and I submitted it. I, you know, submitted lots of proposals for lots of different things. I worked really, really hard. And some of the things stuck, and many times, they didn’t get accepted. But I kind of just kept trying.

Tim Church: And did you have any failures along the way when you submitted those proposals?

Diana Isaacs: Well, I don’t like to think of it as failure, right? Because you’re trying to think of it as you’re growing. But yeah, I like to think of it as like I throw 100 darts at a board, and two of them stick. And that’s great. I’ll pursue those two things. So yeah, I feel like I apply for lots of things. I’ve tried to really do a lot of different things and yeah, sometimes I don’t make it, they choose someone else, I don’t get it this time, but I just kind of keep trying. And I really try to keep my ears open for opportunities. That’s something I’ve been pretty good about paying attention, you know, sometimes you get those emails where it’s like, you can apply for this. Like for example, with the American Diabetes Association, they have these special interest groups. And I’ve been wanting to get involved with ADA, and so I applied for that. And I ended up being appointed as communication director for the pregnancy and reproductive health group. And that was just an opportunity that hey, I paid attention to my email, I filled out the application, I submitted it. And it worked out. So I think, you know, a lot of it is reading your emails and seeing what opportunities are out there.

Tim Church: At what point in your career did you realize that you had become an expert and really had authority in this space?

Diana Isaacs: So I don’t — I guess I’m still growing, and I like to think I’m still definitely growing and evolving and there’s so much to learn with diabetes that I don’t know if anyone is a full expert. But I think, you know, definitely earning this award this year has solidified some of my confidence. And I think over — especially in my current position, so right now, I’m at the Cleveland Clinic Diabetes Center. And I think in this space, I see such complex cases. I get to do so many cool things here that I think I just realized, you know, when I interact with other people that I am seeing a lot more, a lot more diverse things that I’m becoming an expert, I guess you could say.

Tim Church: So what would be some of the examples of complex cases or things that maybe most pharmacists kind of in an amb-care setting may not see every day?

Diana Isaacs: Yeah, so I get to do a lot of work with the post-kidney transplant population. And that’s a lot of fun. So there, we do a bunch of kidney transplants there. And unfortunately, our patients were kind of falling through the cracks. That was a need when I came here, that they weren’t getting good glycemic management right after that transplant. It was hard to get into endocrinology. So that’s a service that I took on. And now I see a lot of those patients. And so it’s just, it’s very interesting because they’re on high dose steroids, they’re tapering over a month’s time, they just had a transplant so they’re acutely sick. Many of them, even if they didn’t have diabetes before, now they have steroid-induced hyperglycemia, and it’s really an art to it because there’s no specific protocols. It’s really every person’s different, and you have to very closely manage it. And then in addition to that, sometimes you see the pancreas-kidney transplant. Like I have a patient this week, she had it, and you know, you would hope, right, the dream is that if you get a pancreas transplanted, you don’t need insulin anymore. But it doesn’t always work like that. They call it like angry pancreas. Like it takes some time for that new pancreas to adjust. So then we have her on Metformin and like we’re trying to see, are we doing a DPP4 inhibitor and what else are we going to do? And so it’s just — man, it’s a lot of cool stuff, a lot of cancer patients, a lot of just everything, like post-bariatric surgery, hypoglycemia, people doing keto and de-escalating therapy, lots of CGM, diabetes technology, insulin pumps, just lots of cool stuff here.

Tim Church: So it sounds like that the providers are how they come in through the clinic, they’re like if they’re complex or it’s going to be difficult, we just send them to Diana. Is that pretty close to how it works?

Diana Isaacs: So I am so fortunate. I work with like the most amazing doctors, and I have an amazing, amazing team. So what I try to do when coming here — because I was the first full-time pharmacist put into the diabetes center — was I tried to find where would I be most useful? And some of the areas I recognized that were one, we were underutilizing diabetes technology, so like insulin pump adjustments and getting more patients on CGM. And then the kidney transplant need was really two areas where I decided that I would really be best utilized, and so those are kind of niches that I’ve I guess developed. But yeah, I try to be helpful wherever I can for the team.

Tim Church: That’s really cool, and I think those are obviously niche areas within diabetes itself, but through the organization that you work for, obviously if those are very frequent types of patients that are coming in, there’s certainly going to be a need. And I think that’s really cool how you positioned yourself to basically say, what are the needs out there and how can I best be a part of this service and impact patient care in that way? So I think that’s really cool the approach that you took.

Diana Isaacs: Thanks. Yeah, and I try — you know, a lot of times, pharmacists will come and ask me what they can do and how they can get involved, and I think it’s really every place is unique and it’s about assessing the needs and making sure you’re not stepping on other people’s toes but you’re adding value to the team.

Tim Church: So besides kind of positioning yourself as an expert by taking on very difficult cases, very unique cases that many people may not see all the time, you know, one of the things I thought about prior to our interview was the book “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell. And essentially, one of the conclusions of that book is that in order to become an expert, you need 10,000 hours. So a lot of people out there — obviously you don’t become an expert, you don’t become a member of the Beatles like overnight. The Beatles don’t become The Beatles overnight. It takes a lot of time and practice in order to get to that point. So what do you think about that in the context of your personal journey?

Diana Isaacs: Yeah, that’s a great point. And yeah, hard work is required. I mean, I work hard. But the thing is, it’s not boring or tedious. I just, like I really love diabetes. And I love that I can use my skills in diabetes to be able to help people. Almost 10% of people now have diabetes. So wherever I am, I’m able to make an impact and to directly help people. And so like for me, I love doing it so much that I don’t think of it as work. Like if I am working on a project or I’ll do this stuff in the evenings, and I don’t really think about it because I’m enjoying doing it. But absolutely, like the hard work is necessary. And I think on one hand, that should be inspiring because it’s not that you have to have like some special secret skill or talent. Like every person or every pharmacist should know, like if they work hard enough in a certain area, they can become a clinical expert.

Tim Church: And I think too — and I think obviously, you’ve already kind of talked about this, but just that repetition of seeing the number of patients over and over and over, and you start to develop certain patterns. You know, obviously you’re going to have some complex cases that you’ve never seen before, but it’s almost kind of like it adds to the — your own repertoire of knowing OK, I’ve seen a patient like this in the past and this is how he or she has responded. And I’ve kind of instilled that in the training programs is when we take residents — because for those that don’t know, I also do primarily diabetes management, but I’m always pushing the residents and students to really see as many different types of patients as possible because that repetition is so key, even if it seems monotonous and tedious at the time.
Diana Isaacs: Yeah, and I think the great thing about kind of the ambulatory care environment too is you’re interacting, you’re communicating with different types of people. So you can always learn from every person. And so that’s really the art of it that makes it really unique and something — I have a lot of trainees, a lot of residents and students that I work with. And that’s something, you know, you can have two exact same clinical situations but what you do may be different depending on like the patient’s attitudes and other factors. So yeah, that communication and, like you said, repetition, is very helpful for navigating different situations.

Tim Church: So who or what really inspired you to become an expert? I can tell like just from your voice, obviously this is where you’re already passionate about. But is there anyone who inspired you to basically continue to achieve, continue to get to the next level?

Diana Isaacs: Yeah. So I want to highlight, so Jess Kerr, who is faculty at SIUE where I went to pharmacy school, was very inspiring. She was faculty and had a practice site — or still has a practice site at the VA. And I wanted to do what she did. I guess that passion I saw, she had that passion for helping people and I really wanted — she seemed so happy — and I really wanted to be that. I was very fortunate to get a position like that. I think something else that actually stands out is my math teacher, actually in high school. I had a really bad attitude about math. And I was like, fine, like this is too hard. Like I’m just getting C’s, like I don’t care. This is just way too hard, I don’t feel like doing it. But she invested all this time in me. And she encouraged me to have a positive mental attitude, PMA, and she said things like, “Dream it. Believe it. Achieve it.” And that really shifted things. Like I learned that my attitude really dictates how situations will turn out. And just through changing my mindset, having a positive attitude, things can go really well. So I turned myself around, I went from C’s to A’s. And I think that that message really stuck with me in a lot of different areas, not just pharmacy and diabetes but in other areas of my life too.

Tim Church: That’s really cool. And I think that a lot of people, they would not be where they are unless they heard some message, received some encouragement from somebody. So that’s cool. And I think it’s great that you highlighted those individuals. So obviously you’ve reached this expert status in managing diabetes and along with that comes some engagements and proposals and things where you can really show off those skills but also help other clinicians help patients. So talk about some of the ways that you were able to start monetizing your clinical expertise.

Diana Isaacs: Yeah. So it’s been exciting because I’ve done a lot of things over my career for free, put a lot of sweat and tears — not usually tears. But yeah, now I’m getting paid to actually speak and things like that. And I love — it happens to be that I love giving presentations. And so that now, you know, I get paid to give presentations. And part of actually what I’m doing with this Educator of the Year is I get to give presentations and then beyond the five that I will give and that I kind of already received an award for, I can do additional ones where they pay me and I’ve been able to set my price. And so that’s been exciting. And then another side benefit has been that industry has been interested in me too. So now I’m speaking for DexCom as well as I’m on the speakers bureau for Novo and for Zerus, and so that is very exciting.

Tim Church: So take a step back for the award, the Diabetes Educator of the Year, they’re already guaranteeing you five speaking spots? And are those individual speaking gigs, those are paid for? Is it one lump sum that they’re giving you?

Diana Isaacs: Yeah, so what happened is I got $5,000 up front for that. And in that, I agreed to speak at five places, which I got to choose — or places could request me, and then I got to choose from the list of people that requested me. And then beyond that five, then additional places can request me. But they won’t get the financial assistance. So they would have to pay for my travel and then pay for my honorarium on their own.

Tim Church: So besides speaking, what are some of the other ways you’ve been able to monetize?

Diana Isaacs: Yeah, so things like CE articles, so places like Pharmacy Times, Power Pack, they will basically — they will pay you to write CE articles or like give webinars. So that’s one thing I’ve been able to do. Also, like in the webinar and course development — so I actually do a lot of stuff with AADE. There’s a whole CGM course. And it’s going to be turning into a certificate. But I was involved in that. And so that’s led to a lot of honorariums along the way. We even most recently created videos for it on how to counsel on CGM. And so there’s been a good number of honorariums for that as well.

Tim Church: That’s great. So can you break down kind of the different ways you’re earning and what they would typically provide in terms of an honorarium? And that could be like a range.

Diana Isaacs: Yeah, so it really varies a lot from place to place. Like some places, you do a local program, and you speak, and you get $1,500. And that’s to cover — it usually would be like a one-hour program. Depending on the company, sometimes they’ll give you the slides. And sometimes, they’ll have you pick from slides or they’ll let you put together slides, depending on how much freedom you have. Usually, many places will pay — if it’s not done that way, they’ll pay you an hourly rate and then they will pay for presentation development. So like usually, that honorarium ranges from I would say from $200-300 an hour. And so that would, you know, if it takes 10 hours to prepare, say that would be $2,500. And then the presentation itself usually will be like a $2,000 honorarium as well. So I would say like usually, when I speak, I’ll get anywhere form like $1,000 to $5,000. $5,000 being the best and not usually so normal. But that’s kind of a range. And then they pay for travel and hotel and all that, flight and all that good stuff. Recently, I was asked to speak as part of this diabetes program, which is training people for CDE. And that, I think we agreed on like $600 per hour of speaking. But that wouldn’t be prep time, that would probably just be like the time. So if I speak for five hours, then it’s $3,000. So that’s kind of for the speaking stuff, that’s usually how it works out.

Tim Church: And then have you been able to cross — I mean, obviously with AADE, ADA, those are multidisciplinary organizations — but have you gone and done presentations specifically for physicians, for nurse practitioners, physician assistants?

Diana Isaacs: Yes, so I was just recently asked to speak for like the dietician organization. So I think that’s beginning to happen. I was asked to speak also for ADA post-grad sessions, which is in early February. So that’s exciting because that’s an organization, there’s a lot more physicians in that organization. And of course, I do a lot of speaking AADE. So I think I’m starting to tap into these other organizations as well.

Tim Church: You mentioned to me before we jumped on the call that besides speaking, besides CE articles, some of the other ways you’ve been able to monetize have been being a part of advisory boards and then also consulting. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Diana Isaacs: Oh yeah. Advisory boards are like the greatest thing in the world. They’re usually like these — it’ll be like four hours and you’ll get paid like $250 an hour, plus if there was any travel. But the best is when they’re local, and you just like go for four hours and you get $1,000. Those are wonderful. I love when those happen. Other things, like for consulting, just different types of like writing or I get asked a lot of stuff about CGM type of stuff. Like now, I’ll be working on a supplement for the Diabetes Educator for InPen by Companion Medical, so stuff like that pays. Oh, recently I got asked to do this Medscape thing, which that sounds actually really cool. It’s like about time and range. And they’re — I guess it’s more kind of like an interview. They asked me to pick a nurse that I like working with, so I picked my favorite nurse. And we’re going to go I guess to like New York to film this brief thing. But that was like another kind of cool thing that I was like, oh, wow. That’s interesting. So all that stuff’s been cool. And I guess one of the things I’ve learned is, you know, I’ve done lots of things for free in my life. And I love doing it. So sometimes, it’s like easy to get to be like, oh yeah, I’ll just do this. But recently, I’ve tried to set my boundaries that hey, if someone’s asking for a good amount of my time, to make sure that I am getting paid fairly for my amount of time.

Tim Church: Sure, I mean, I think that’s absolutely reasonable. And you’ve done a lot of the things in the past to get to the point where you are where you weren’t necessarily compensated. But I think it’s incredible all the different ways you’ve been able to monetize. And obviously, along the way, you’re providing a lot of value, whether that be organizations or education that ultimately gets in the hands of patients itself, which is really cool. Can you break down in terms of percentages — so all of these different things that you’re doing to monetize — can you break down kind of what is the highest in terms of bringing in the revenue? Without specific amounts, just kind of what percentages does speaking bring in versus advisory boards, consulting, CE, etc.?

Diana Isaacs: So I think speaking definitely brings in — if it’s like a big program where — like I’ll give you another example. Like at AADE, I had a bunch of presentations, but then I had this one presentation, it was sponsored by Abbott. And so the honorarium was like $2,000. So that’s something that just brings in money, I feel like quickly, especially if it’s a topic that I’m pretty comfortable with. Like another example was a CE article that I did, it was also on CGM, and that paid $4,000. And so those are topics I’m very comfortable with. So those are easy and much faster, I guess, to earn the money. Other things, like writing sometimes. You know, writing can take awhile, so especially if it’s a topic you’re less familiar with. So now I try to stay in the diabetes realm. But I actually, like last year, I wrote an article about hyperhidrosis, which was not as familiar to me as other disease states. So that one took a little bit more time. So I guess what I’m saying is it’s hard to completely break it down. But I think for sure speaking, advisory boards pay a lot, but those are really unpredictable. So you know, I could have two advisory boards in one month or I can go almost a year without an advisory board. It’s just, it really depends on the needs of the company and what area they’re targeting and everything. So I think it just really varies. Another thing that brings in revenue, though, which is kind of cool, is speaker training. So whenever you speak for one of these companies, they want you to get trained. And so like that, that’s amazing because you get your hourly rate for a bunch of hours and you’re not presenting or anything, you’re just learning. And so that’s pretty cool.

Tim Church: How does that work?

Diana Isaacs: Yeah, so like with Dexcom, I was really fortunate because I missed the original training, and two people came out to me and like just trained me for four hours. And like I earned $1,000 and it was amazing. Other ones, like I’ve been invited now for this year to go to a Dexcom and to a Novo training. And so those, I’ll be flying out to like to Florida in the winter, so it’s not like it’s so bad. I think the other one’s California. But it’s just basically like a day, and they’ll be paid an hourly rate. And the good thing about those is it will be with other people on their speakers bureau. So the opportunity to interact — but those are really interesting because you learn more about their product. And so I mean, I just find it’s incredibly helpful and interesting, and I get to earn money. So it’s really awe — I mean, it’s really cool to get to do that kind of stuff.

Tim Church: Yeah, it sounds like you’re getting just a tremendous amount of opportunities, which is really cool. Would you say that now at the point of where you are that most of these opportunities are already being asked of you where you’re not having to reach out as much anymore to get them in motion?

Diana Isaacs: So yes and no. So yeah, like fortunately with the pharma stuff, that’s been really exciting. But I think it goes both ways because I was pretty interested in Zerus and definitely let them know that I was interested in being a consultant for them. I’m definitely getting asked more, but I’ll tell you, there’s still things I apply for. So I think it depends the caliber of what it is. I am, fortunately, getting asked a lot more. But there’s certain things that I — I’ll give you an example, OK? So this isn’t so like — this makes sense. So like ADA Standards of Care, I would like love more than anything to be on the committee that develops the standards of care, OK? So that’s something you have to apply for. So that is something that I hope to apply for and if I were to get selected for something like that, that would be like a career dream. So I think it goes both ways, maybe my dreams are even higher now than they were before. But yeah, I still, I’m open to new opportunities and still — will still apply for things.

Tim Church: So looking back, now that you’ve obviously been able to monetize, you’ve been able to bring in extra income, what are you doing with the additional income that you’re bringing in with your side hustle?

Diana Isaacs: That is also a great question. So honestly, I just live my — I don’t want to stress about money, and I think bringing in the extra money allows me to live a very comfortable life without stressing. I work very, very full-time between my regular job and all these extra consulting opportunities. My husband, fortunately, is able to work part-time, which is good because then someone is home more for the kids and I feel like we have more balance, and he’s able to take care of some more of the stuff at home. So I think for us, it’s just really about not having this stress, being able to buy what we want, and then whatever extra, college funds, all that good stuff.

Tim Church: Cool. So how much time do you think in most weeks you’re spending kind of on consulting and all these other activities that are outside of your scope of your full-time positon?

Diana Isaacs: Yeah, that’s hard to quantify. I will say every Saturday, I completely disconnect and I am not using the phone, I’m not working, I’m like really just with the family. So I always have that day. And even Sundays, I try to really make family day. And I’m fortunate that I have a position that’s Monday through Friday so that I have my weekends off. I try really hard to do my extra work in the evenings when my kids go to sleep and like evening-weekend — or weekend-evenings. I try not to take too much time away when my kids are awake. It’s definitely a balancing act. I feel like I make it work. I don’t know. Maybe it seems like I work a lot, but I try — somehow, it all works.

Tim Church: I was going to ask you, what other tips do you have? Because I mean, you’re doing so much, you have a family, I mean, I think a lot of people when they think about the thought of taking on something in addition to their full-time job, it almost seems like it’s impossible.

Diana Isaacs: So I guess it’s built up like over time, so it hasn’t felt like oh, it’s this massive thing all at once except when I have an article that’s due and I waited until the last second to do it, which isn’t great. But I don’t know, I just, I don’t do — like I don’t watch TV really. I don’t go to movies, I try to minimize distractions. I’d like to say I’m perfect about social media, but I definitely like to post things on Twitter and stuff. But I try to really minimize the outside distractions. And when I am home with my family to really focus on my kids and not be distracted. And that way, when they go to bed, like I can really devote my time, you know, like whatever, from 8:30-10 on whatever I want to work on. So I just — and I think I just love what I do. I just love it so much that for me, it’s like my hobby, right? Like if someone else likes to paint or likes to do whatever, they would make time for that. So for me, this is kind of like my hobby. I just really enjoy it. And so I just — like I make time for it.

Tim Church: And it sounds like too that it sounds like your husband is very supportive in you doing these extra activities and things like that. And obviously, you said it makes it a little bit easier that he’s part-time. But would you say that he’s played a big role for you to be successful with all these other ventures?

Diana Isaacs: Oh my gosh, yes. Yeah. I mean, he’s the only reason that I can do what I do. He’s like really good at managing the kids, going grocery shopping, like he’s really on top of it, but also I have cleaning help. Like that’s a must. I definitely, I have cleaning help, a lot of cleaning help. So that’s another thing I use my money for lots of cleaning help. But yeah, I mean, you have to have that support. And he knows that I love doing this stuff, so he is supportive as long as I’m not out of town too much. And that’s the part I have to balance because all these speaking gigs, trying to just make sure — I like to be home on the weekends when I can and stuff. But yeah, it’s a balancing act, but it’s fun.

Tim Church: Well, Diana, this has been a great time. And obviously, it’s just cool to hear your passion in your voice. I mean, obviously, this is an area where you’ve become an expert and be able to impact not only clinicians but patients just in your full-time job but with all the work that you do. So what tips or suggestions would you have for others who want to become an expert in a particular clinical area?

Diana Isaacs: So this is going to go against all that burnout, resiliency talk that you hear. But just say yes. Like this whole thing about saying no to avoid burnout, I just, I disagree with it. And I think in order to be an expert, to have new opportunities, you’ve got to say yes. You’ve got to open yourself up to that because you never know, like when you say no because you’re worried, oh, it might overwhelm you, what you’re going to miss out on. And the thing is when you say no a lot, that really closes doors and people don’t want to ask you again. So I just, I like really encourage people to say yes or at least really, really think about it before being so quick to say no. And then the other thing is just look for those opportunities. Don’t expect that people are going to hand you things. You do have to work hard. It doesn’t happen overnight, but that’s OK. And just look for new opportunities.

Tim Church: Diana, if somebody wants to learn more about you and what you’re doing, what’s the best way to reach out?

Diana Isaacs: Yeah, so you can email me, you can find me on Twitter, @DianaMIsaacs. Yeah, I’d be happy to chat with anyone who’s interested in talking. So yeah, feel free to shoot me an email. If we’re going to one of the same meetings, we can meet up there. So yeah, happy to connect with anyone who’s interested.

Tim Church: Diana, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, sharing your story and your tips and suggestions. It’s been a lot of fun.

Diana Isaacs: Oh, you’re very welcome. Thank you so much for having me.

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YFP 126: Going Beyond Six Figures Through Medical Writing

Posted on November 14, 2019November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

Going Beyond Six Figures Through Medical Writing

Brittany Hoffmann-Eubanks, Founder and CEO of Banner Medical, joins Tim Church to share her side hustle journey in creating a company that’s on track to hit over $100,000 in revenue and what she did to get to this point.

About Today’s Guest

Brittany is the Founder and CEO of Banner Medical and a native of the Chicago-land-area in Illinois. Banner Medical combines her passion for writing with her medical background as a pharmacist; with the goal of improving patient outcomes through educating healthcare providers. Brittany is an expert in the development of needs assessments, continuing education, and scientific writing. With over a decade of experience in community pharmacy, Brittany tailors and delivers medical communication projects in any topic area in a balanced, accurate, and timely manner.

Brittany earned her Doctor of Pharmacy and Masters of Business Administration degrees from Drake University College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences in 2012. After graduate school, she completed a Post-Graduate-Year-1 Community Pharmacy Residency where she earned her teaching-and-learning certificate, dedicated herself to patient-centered pharmacy care, and learned the business of pharmacy. It was during her residency year that Brittany discovered her passion for education and desire to be an entrepreneur.

After residency training, Brittany accepted the role of pharmacist in charge and clinical pharmacist within the community pharmacy setting. Brittany also precepts student pharmacists helping to prepare them for their future careers as pharmacists. In her free time, Brittany loves to travel to new and exciting places with her husband and family, playing with her dogs, and singing. She is also very involved in her State Pharmacy Association where she serves as a Board Member, Journal Editor, and Co-chair of the Public Relations Committee. In 2018, Brittany was awarded the Edmond P. Barcus Distinguished Young Pharmacist Award for her service to the Illinois Pharmacists Association.

Mentioned on the Show

Policygenius
YFP 116: Transforming Your Life and Career Through Networking w/ David Burkus
Friend of a Friend: Understanding the Hidden Networks that can Transform Your Life and Your Career by David Burkus
Alex Barker, The Happy PharmD
Banner Medical Writing
LinkedIn
Brittany Hoffmann-Eubanks on LinkedIn
Email Brittany Hoffmann-Eubanks: [email protected]

Episode Transcript

Tim Church: Brittany, thanks for stopping by and for being part of this side hustle edition.

Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks: Thanks so much for having me. I’m really excited:

Tim Church: Well back in Episode 116, Tim Ulbrich talked with David Burkus, author of “Friend of a Friend.” He discussed how one and can and should grow their network and how to build key connections. And this really reminded me of how we met and ended up doing this podcast today. So do you mind talking about that story?

Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks: Sure. I was just looking to put my business into place with a website and kind of make everything official after unofficially starting my side hustle about four years ago. And so one of my connections that we met through a mutual friend, someone that I had been working with on my business. And I was like, “Man, I really want to get my website together, have a place where I can put my portfolio for prospective clients. Do you have any ideas?” And they’re like, “I have a person, and they’re a pharmacist.” And I was like, “Oh, that’s fantastic. Who knew that pharmacists do websites on the side?” So we were connected and got to talk to you, and I was really excited because you understood my vision of what I was looking for for the website and just turned out to be an awesome partnership. And I’m super excited with how things turned out. And we started talking about my business, and here we are in the podcast.

Tim Church: Yeah. It’s really fun. Is it OK if I mention who our mutual connection is?

Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks: Oh, for sure. I don’t think he’d mind.

Tim Church: Yeah, shoutout to Alex Barker. I think he knows everyone in the pharmacy profession, by the way. But a great guy and really cool opportunity that we got to meet through him. So Brittany, talk about your full-time pharmacist position and also your career path.

Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks: So as a full-time pharmacist during my day job, as I like to call it, I’m a community pharmacist, and so I work as a pharmacy manager and clinical pharmacist with a large community pharmacy chain in the Chicagoland area. And as part of that role, I kind of wear a couple different hats of making sure that my pharmacy is running, we’re able to take care of our patients as well as managing my team and one of my passion of working with patients. So I do a lot of MTM with patients, Medication Therapy Management, hyperlipidemia management, diabetes, especially, and then also probably my favorite part of my job as a community pharmacist is the immunizations. So I’m travel health certified, I get to see people going all over the world. Traveling is a passion of mine, so that’s kind of the day-to-day job that I have in pharmacy. And then in terms of career path, I think I took probably a pretty traditional route. I went to Drake University College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, got my Doctor of Pharmacy degree. Also did their dual program where I obtained my Master’s in Business Administration. And then after I graduated from college, went on to do a postgraduate Year 1 residency, community pharmacy residency, with the company that I now work for as well as Midwestern University in Chicago. And I loved my residency year. It was an opportunity just to immerse myself in direct patient care, learn about the business of pharmacy, do some ambulatory care projects on the side as well as obtain a teaching and learning certificate. And that’s kind of where my nontraditional pharmacy career that I have now happened by accident during that timeframe, my residency year. I didn’t jump into it right away. I just decided to work for a little bit and really just get my feet wet in being a pharmacy manager, helping take care of patients, really just immerse myself in community pharmacy before moving onto what I’m doing now, which is medical writing.

Tim Church: Yeah, so talk about how did that happen? Where did that vision come from during your residency and as you transitioned into your community pharmacy role?

Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks: Yeah, when people ask me about this story, I always share with them that my becoming an entrepreneur happened by accident. It was in my residency year that we were asked to write a continuing medical education written piece for a pharmacist to help educate them on a topic. And as part of that process, I received some really good feedback and just kind of got the wheel moving, so to speak, of is this something that I’m interested in? Could this be something I could do in the future? How can I earn some additional money on the side in addition to what I’m doing in my day job? I love to travel, as I said, and all of those student loans, trying to get rid of them as quickly as possible. Through that process of just trying to figure that out, what I was doing, what I wanted to do, I had a friend that I had worked with — I guess I should colleague that I worked with during my residency year who moved onto a different position with a large national publication, so I just reached out to them and said, “Hey, how do you get your content? I’m really interested in potentially doing more of this type of work. Do you take writers? Or how do you obtain new writers?” And that really kind of started it. And from there, I did my first project and just kind of morphed into what I am doing today with my full-fledged business.

Tim Church: So was that your first paid gig where you just reached out and you were looking for opportunities?

Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks: It was. And actually, it’s kind of a funny story because they didn’t give me just one project. They actually gave me two to work on simultaneously. So it was a fun challenge, and actually the first project they’d given me to write about was a topic that I wasn’t an expert in. It was actually on pet medications, so it required me to just take a step back, think about what angle I wanted to attack it from, and go from there. It was such a great experience. It was an opportunity to get my feet wet and just really figure out how I wanted to move forward with this type of writing that I was interested in.

Tim Church: So how did that feel getting that first gig and actually getting paid to do it?

Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks: It was exciting. I think oftentimes, we think about how can I make money on the side? And is it going to be worthwhile, so going to be that return on investment? Or what’s the opportunity cost? You know, what else could I be doing if I wasn’t doing this right now? And I think for me, the biggest piece of it was is that all it required was my computer and my time at that time. So it was easy for me and kind of exciting to be like, OK, I can go to my day job, come home, fit this into when I have time to do this and make some extra money on the side that I can either use to put towards traveling or I can add some extra funds to paying off my loans quicker.

Tim Church: And so those were the two biggest motivators, at least initially, for kind of pursuing this side hustle?

Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks: It was for me. I knew — just to back up for a second, I came out of school with probably close to $250,000 in student loans, which is a ginormous amount of student loans. I’d done an undergrad degree first, so four years before I went on to Drake. Drake actually has a six-year program, and I didn’t go that route. I did the four years and then the additional four years. And in addition to that, added on a second degree where I obtained the MBA program and stayed during the summers to achieve that dual degree by the time I finished pharmacy school. So I knew going into that that it was going to be a lot more burdensome in terms of the cost factor. And so you know, having had that background with the MBA degree, looking at those amortization tables and the compounded interest, I was like, I’ve got to do something to get rid of this student debt as soon as possible. So I think paying that off as quickly as possible and having some extra funds was a big motivator in the beginning.
Tim Church: So your medical writing business is called Banner Medical. Talk a little bit about what your business specifically is all about, other than obviously we know it’s medical writing, but what is your mission of the business? And who are you specifically serving?

Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks: Yeah, that’s a great question. I appreciate you asking that. It’s probably the first question that everybody asks me of what is that? Or what is medical writing? So by now, I’ve gotten very good at explaining to people what it is that my company does. But essentially, if you were talking to a lot of the pharmacists out there and maybe other healthcare providers who are listening in your audience, it’s pretty simple. We write about medicine. And there’s a lot of different areas that encompass medical writing. It could be continuing medical education, it could be education grant writing, which is something that we now are experts and something that we’re typically sought out for with our writing for a needs assessment. It could be on the editorial side where we’re writing about maybe a new drug that came out or something that’s going on in the healthcare field. Or maybe even the academic scientific writing where we’re helping a company put together their manuscript for a journal submission or working with a pharmacy organization to spread some of their grant work that they’re doing. So it’s a wide, encompassing field. There’s a lot of different types of medical writing. And every business is going to excel in certain areas and have a focal point. So for me, the mission of my company, it really is a business-to-business company I would say. We serve many other businesses, helping them, whether it be through educational grant writing with the needs assessments that we do, but ultimately, it serves the patient and the healthcare provider in the end. And so for me, our mission at Banner Medical is really just to optimize that knowledge to improve clinical care or clinical outcomes for the patient. So if you think about it, when we’re writing these types of medical writing pieces, our goal is to help healthcare practitioners and clinicians, especially, make better clinical decision-making or improve their clinical decision-making so that they can ultimately take better care of their patients and improve the outcomes for them in the long run.

Tim Church: I love that, Brittany. And I think that’s so cool the way that you articulated that because it’s not just about the education piece of the healthcare provider but ultimately, what is going to happen as the end result of that education? I think that’s so great the way that you put that. So the businesses that you’re working with, is this primarily have pharmacists as the audience in terms of who’s reading this content and taking charge? Is it other healthcare providers? Is it a mix?

Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks: So when I first started my business back in 2014, it was exclusively for pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. And now, since we have been moving forward with expanding the business, we’ve moved into other clinicians as well. So for example, we now service regular physicians, we do non-physician clinicians like Physician Assistants, Nurse Practitioners, really have gone beyond exclusively writing for pharmacists, which is really exciting for Banner Med because it opens up our opportunities, additional revenue streams and additional access to helping improve outcomes for patients.

Tim Church: Now you talked about initially reaching out and getting that gig or actually two gigs in the beginning. But how difficult has it been to acquire new clients and getting them on board? I mean, was it easy after you did the first couple and then you didn’t have to market as much? Or is that a constant thing that you’re doing in terms of getting new business?

Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks: I think maybe the answer to your question is two-pronged. So when you have your own business, you spend a good amount of time working in your business as well as working on your business. And I think finding the right balance of that is really important, especially as you’re trying to grow and obtain new clients, especially. I think the biggest thing for Banner Med and me specifically is that it really comes down to the relationships that you build. So you always have to be making sure that you’re reaching out to new people, be it somebody you know through your network, just always be ready to have that elevator pitch, so to speak, when you meet someone knew and they may be interested or how you can help them or provide value to them for what they’re looking for. So to answer your question, I think for me, I spend a good amount of time each week looking for new prospective clients, now gotten to the point where a lot of times, people are reaching out to us now, seeking out our help, which is great. It’s taken a bit of time to get to that point, but I’m excited to be moving into that arena rather than having to constantly hustle to find new clients. And we have a group now of great core clients that are repeat business, which is fantastic because it makes it a little bit easier to not have to always constantly be looking for new work all the time to build those revenues. So to have repeat customers is really helpful too.

Tim Church: What percentage of the business right now is repeat customers?

Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks: I’d say about 80% at this point in time is repeat customers. And then the other 20% is new clients that we’re working with that have either been referred to us or that we’re actively seeking out.

Tim Church: Great. So talk a little bit about what is the earning capacity for doing medical writing? Because one of the things that you mentioned was basically what you needed was a computer and you needed some time. And obviously, it takes time to do what you’re doing. But talk a little bit about how much you’re charging for the different pieces of medical writing and the different focus points that you have.

Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks: So the revenue piece of it, of what you’re able to earn is to a degree, kind of limitless. It really just depends on the clients that you’re working with, what types of projects they’re asking you for as well as experience. And all of that kind of goes into the whole thing together. So there isn’t really like a strict fee that we charge for every single project. It’s always going to be individualized. But to give you an example, for this year alone, we’re on pace to be six figures this year, which is amazing compared to where I started when I had my first gig that I told you about where I was doing two projects and made about $700 for those two projects, which at the time was fantastic because it took me about two weeks to write the two different projects that I was asked for, and I made $700, which was really exciting at the time. Now, fast forward, it’s been a growth process over the last few years where I think year 2, we did a little bit over $10,000, and then it’s just gotten — the revenue stream has gotten bigger and better. So really, it just depends on how much you want to put into it and what types of projects you’re willing to take. And the other piece too that I think is really important, especially for new, aspiring writers is not to undervalue your work. You know, oftentimes, we’re afraid to charge a certain price or tell a client or a vendor that oh, I think this project’s probably going to be about $1,000 based upon the amount of work that you’re asking for and what you need whereas someone who is maybe less experienced and maybe has that fear of oh, $1,000, like can you afford that type of thing, they may undervalue themselves and say, oh, I’ll do that really big project for you for like $450. But at the end of the day, you’re putting so much time and effort into it that it doesn’t make financial sense. So it’s important to consider the type of work you’re doing, what’s being asked of you, and one of the biggest places I always start is I ask the client, do they have a budget? And what have they budgeted for this particular project to kind of help me determine if I’m going to be able to work with them within their budget or if we need to negotiate and talk about what the project fee should be.
Tim Church: Now Brittany, I’ve got to step back for a minute because you just nonchalantly said that your side business is earning about six figures on pace to do this year, which is really exciting and just pumps me up. And I think a lot of people who are listening are probably thinking, that’s incredible, No. 1. But No. 2, how have you been able to do that?

Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks: Well thank you. It’s been pretty exciting to see the business grow. And I’ve spent the last year working really hard to scale it. And frankly, I think a lot of the credit I would have to give to just working with Alex Barker through the coaching process for my business. And I’ve talked about this previously, but I think for me, it was initially when I thought about the idea of hiring a business coach, it seemed a little silly to me at first. But then I sat back and thought about it and I was like, well, we have coaches for a lot of other things that we do in our lives, sports, especially. So you know, why not for a business? This kind of makes sense. And initially, probably like a lot of other people who’ve maybe considered doing coaching wonder about the costs of it and is it going to be worth it and what’s the return on investment going to be? But I have to say, working with the Happy PharmD and Alex specifically just really helped push me to think outside of the box and how I wanted to expand this business and I was really worried about hiring someone because I was becoming that rate-limiting step, right? There was only so much I could do in the time that I wasn’t at work in order to build this business. I mentioned earlier about working in the business and on the business. And I was really tapped out for working in and on it. So in order for me to move forward and expand to where I wanted this business to grow, I had to get over that roadblock, so to speak. And Alex was instrumental in helping me do that and just kind of work through the process and figure out, OK, this is the fundamentals, this is where I started, this is where I want to be. How do I get to that next level? And I’m super grateful just for the time that I’ve spent and wish I probably would have done it sooner because it’s been amazing from last year to this year where I’m on pace now. And I think about oh man, what if I had done this in like year 2 or year 3 instead of waiting? But it’s been really exciting. And I think it’s a testament to how working with someone else to think about different factors in your business can really help you grow and move forward.

Tim Church: I think that’s such a key. I mean, we don’t know what we don’t know. And sometimes, it takes really that outside perspective to help get to that next level. What were the initial hesitations with working with a coach or just paying money out of pocket to do that?

Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks: Yeah, I think for me, it was just being comfortable with the amount that it was going to cost on a monthly basis and just thinking long-term of OK, well, I understand having a business background that you have to spend money in order to make money. But as I mentioned, paying off those student loans were really important to me, and my business at that point was — I was at kind of a fork in the road. Either I was going to go to the left or I was going to go to the right. And I just decided to just go full boar to the right and do something different and hope that the return on investment was there and that it paid off, and it has. Within the first six months of working with a business coach, I tripled my revenue, which was amazing to see that happen and just be a part of that and just have those small wins, and it really just helped invigorate me. And I never looked back, so to speak. And as a result of working with a coach for the business, it just helped me think about things from a different perspective, bringing on a new employee to the company. I now actually have three employees, which is really exciting compared to where I was just a year and a half ago where I was terrified of hiring one and how was that going to affect my business and the quality, which was really important to me to teach someone else how to do what I do and just working through all of those pieces to be where I am now. So it’s been a long journey, but it’s been exciting. Each new thing, just thinking about something differently, not letting analysis paralysis take over and just stopping me from moving forward with the things that I wanted to do.

Tim Church: That’s really exciting, Brittany. And you mentioned that you were the rate-limiting step in the business, and I think that’s really interesting to kind of realize and recognize that. And talk about how you brought on employees and what that process was like and kind of what are they doing day-to-day in the business right now?

Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks: Yeah, so for me, I really needed someone who could help me with some of the pieces that didn’t really require me in the writing process. So I decided that hiring a medical writing assistant made sense, someone that could help me with the research, going through all the different articles that we need for the evidence-based writing that we do. Can they help me basically go through the research and highlight the pieces that are important for the particular types of work that we’re doing? Can they help me with bibliography writing and going through all the different sources that we have and that we’re using? Just some of those basic tasks that didn’t necessarily require me or my writing as well as someone who maybe was interested in becoming a medical writer with my business. And so it’s kind of funny how it happened because I have a group of pharmacists now who are working for me. And I love working with them, anyone with an advanced degree is perfect typically for medical writing, although there are a lot of great non-advanced degree writers out there. So I don’t want to generalize. But for what we’re doing at Banner Med, it’s been awesome to be able to hire other pharmacists and bring them on. But now, it’s turned into kind of a whole new thing where we’re working one-on-one with them, teaching them how to write the different types of medical writing projects or pieces that we’re doing and really helping them go from medical writer — medical writing assistant to medical writer and just being able to see that process and where they start and how they’re growing and their individual goals that they have as it relates to their own professional growth as well as Banner Med has been really exciting. So I started in one place and ended up being in a totally new place as well as far as the business is concerned, so that piece has been exciting too just not only educating healthcare providers but also helping to mentor and educate new aspiring writers as well.

Tim Church: And how did you primarily find these additional writers? What were the channels that you used?

Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks: So initially, this was one of the things that I think was kind of a hurdle for me to get over. In the beginning, I wasn’t quite sure how I wanted to go about that: Did I want to use a traditional place like Indeed or Monster or some of those places, the job boards that you think of when you’re going and looking? Or did I want to utilize a network and try to find people through that way? And I ended up actually utilizing a network, kind of a LinkedIn process of OK, I’m going to create an application, this is the qualities that I’m looking for, these are the things that are absolutely essential, these are the things that are ideal, and these are things that would be nice to have but aren’t necessarily required. I kind of went through that process, did a phone interview with them, made sure that they’re going to be a good fit for me, anyone that I work with, they ended up becoming like family to me. And my business is my baby, so to speak, so it’s really important to me that they’re just as passionate about writing. I can teach them a lot of the things that they need to know, but do they have good fundamentals? And so for us, we kind of went the more personal network route of utilizing LinkedIn and some other networking opportunities that made that process a lot easier. And now, believe it or not, just from some of the opportunities that I’ve had to spread the word about Banner Med, I actually have a lot of new aspiring writers that reach out to me now on a regular basis. And I’m always impressed by that. I think if you take the time to reach out to someone and tell them what value you can bring and how you’re interested in what they’re doing, then I can talk to that person a little bit more, find out what it is that they’re interested in, how they might be able to help us out or if it’s possible to work together. So there’s a couple — it’s changed from how we went about it in the beginning to how we do it now.

Tim Church: So are you still having a hand on each individual project? Or is your team taking certain project completely from start to finish?

Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks: Yes, there are — it depends on where they are in terms of the training process, how long they’ve been working with us. Quality control for me and making sure that every project is still meeting Banner Med’s expectations is very important to me, so the writers that I’ve been working with are absolutely fantastic. I do have one full medical writer right now who takes a project from start to finish. And then I come in kind of in editor role as opposed to writer role and just go through everything, make sure it checks every box that the client was looking for, just kind of as that last piece before we send the project off. And then with my new writers, I do take on a more hands-on approach where I work with them directly, offer feedback, and probably have more of a writing role with those projects. So like I said, it kind of depends on the individual. But yes, I do typically still look at every single project that comes through for Banner Med, just making sure that it’s going to meet the client’s needs and that we’ve successfully put together the deliverable that they’re looking for.

Tim Church: And then depending on kind of what stage they are as a medical writer, does that also impact kind of their compensation for each project?

Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks: It does. And unfortunately, in the medical writing world, there isn’t really a great compensation table, so to speak, where you can go and say, ‘OK, for this project, you’re going to make x amount of dollars,’ or, ‘This project, you’re going to make x amount of dollars.’ It’s really, for me, it’s a combination of their experience, their efficiency, their ability to write, along with what the total project cost is that we’re going to be receiving, the revenue that we’ve worked out with the client as well as my own just personal experience in terms of working with that individual of what the compensation’s going to be. But the one thing that’s really important to me is that the wage is always fair. And I strongly believe in that. I’ve gone back and advocated if a writer’s came back to me and said, “Hey, Brittany, you know what? This project took 10 extra hours more than we thought it was going to. And because of that, I had to spend all this extra time, x, y, z.” So in that case, you know, I have no problem going back to the client and saying, “Hey, you know what? We need to circle back on this project cost. These are some of the things that came up. Let’s talk about the compensation for this particular project and potentially renegotiate that.” Or I may even do that just on a personal level with that individual writer depending on how much extra time or effort that they had to put into it. So it’s a long answer to answer your question. But it’s so individualized that it’s impossible to say, OK, you’re going to do x and we’re going to pay you z every single time. It just really depends on the individual project.

Tim Church: So other than the payment to your employees for their assistance with the different projects that you receive, what are the other major costs of running your business?

Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks: I think the other major costs really come down to some of the software programs that we use. There’s a particular reference product that we use that has saved just so much time and energy when it comes to doing the bibliographies for a lot of the different products that we use. So I would say primarily software would be the biggest expense that the business has on a day-to-day basis in terms of operating costs. Aside from that, there really isn’t a whole lot of extra overhead types of things. I mean, we have some of those fixed costs like internet and if we want to have meetings with all of us together, there may be particular software that we use to facilitate that process. So it just — I guess it really just kind of falls into that software, the things that make our job a little bit easier. All of my writers live in different parts of the country, so they’re all remote-based. And so it’s not like we’re just meeting up in an office, working together. We have to facilitate those online meetings in some way or fashion.

Tim Church: And do you guys meet together as a team to kind of help foster some of that mentorship that you’re providing?

Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks: Yeah, so we’re going to actually start doing that. Recently, we acquired two new employees that now make us a team of four. So I’m really excited about that. Prior to that, when I was working just with my medical writer that I’ve now had for almost a year, actually, you know, her and I would meet quarterly. Sometimes it would be on the phone, other times it would be through a video chat. But it’s really important for me to make sure that we’re not only discussing the projects that we’re working on but that I’m also helping them with their individual goals that they have, what things do they need help with, what is their biggest difficulty when it comes to the projects that we’re working on, and really just having that open communication, that feedback, so that we can keep improving and keep growing the business and help them move forward into new roles that they’re excited about or interested in or their particular topic. So yeah, I would say that group discussion, the mentorship, is really important for the business.

Tim Church: I think that is so cool how you continue to grow and bring other team members on. And it’s just really exciting to see that growth. I think one of the other burning questions that a lot of people probably listening right now, and including me, is how much time are you personally spending in the business? Because even though you have writers and you have some help, I mean, clearly you said that you’re still having a hands-on, even if it’s from an editorial perspective, but just on the business itself. So talk a little bit about that.

Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks: Yeah, it’s a significant amount of time. I’m definitely not going to sugarcoat that. Probably I’d say between my full-time job and this side hustle, which is probably can’t even categorize it as a side hustle anymore. Now it’s like a full hustle.

Tim Church: That’s right.

Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks: I would probably say it’s easily like 80 hours per week. I’m definitely probably doing full-time on both right now. But you know, some of you guys may hear that and be like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t do that. There’s no way.’ You don’t have to do that to be in medical writing, right? You can pick the projects that you want to work on, you could do some extra money on the side if that’s what your goal is, or you can go full in like I’m doing. I think for me, I absolutely love this. And it doesn’t feel like work to me. So when I come home and I’m working on a project, it’s exciting to create this, to have my clients excited at the end of the day that they don’t have to spend hours upon hours redoing work and really come to us when they have those difficult projects or difficult topics that they know they need a good writer on. And I think that’s really important, and the biggest thing no matter what you choose is that at the end of the day, it’s awesome to make extra money on the side. But do you love the work that you’re doing? And if you don’t, then obviously you need to make a change or think about things differently. My grandfather always told me when I was a little girl, if you don’t like something, change it. And if you can’t change it, then change the way you think about it. And I’ve really just tried to use that as a guiding light for me in everything that I do. And this business is something that I absolutely love, so at the end of the day, even though I’m putting tons and tons of time into it right now, I know later on, it won’t be like that where I will have to spend as much time. But right now, we’re in that growing phase where it’s necessary. But I look forward to the days where I can step back a little bit and work on maybe some pet projects. But right now, it’s just fun and exciting to see things moving forward.

Tim Church: That’s so good, Brittany, and I think you just dropped a bunch of wisdom bombs in there, which was great. And what I want to know is because you’re doing so well and this is scaling, is this something that is going to take over your community pharmacist position? Is that going to cut back? What does that look like going forward?

Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks: Well, it’s hard to say right now. I absolutely love being a community pharmacist. I enjoy the patient interaction. I feel like to a degree, it helps me be a better writer, so to speak, in just being able to help patients navigate different difficult topics. In the community, I see people that are dealing with cancer, dealing with all kinds of just difficult types of long-term conditions or maybe it’s a short-term issue. So you know, I don’t know that I know the answer to that question right now, but I definitely know that I’m excited to see where things go in the future and depending on where the business takes me, you never know. This could be the final thing for me, or I may choose to scale back a little bit and do both. It’s hard to say right now, but I’m definitely excited for the future of what Banner Med can do.

Tim Church: You talked about you’re spending 80 hours many weeks out of the year trying to do both of your jobs, basically two full-time jobs.

Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks: Yeah.

Tim Church: So one of the things that often comes up that people feel that time is that limiting factor to work on a passion project, a side hustle, or another job. What seems to work for you in terms of managing both of those but then also your personal life?

Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks: Yeah. I get asked this question a lot, like how do you do it? And I think the biggest thing is that you have to be intentional about your time, right? So you know, if I’m working on a project, then I have to get rid of the distractors. I’m working specifically on that so that I can be focused and be efficient. But one of the things that I found during my residency year that was really helpful is just to schedule out my time. So my calendar — I’m that person that’s got thing color-coded and have a specific time I guess for everything. But that works for me. So I think the biggest thing — and everybody always says, oh, time management. But what does that actually mean, right? How do you put that into action? Are you the type of person that you need to work on something for 30 minutes and then take a five-minute break and then come back at it for another 30 minutes? You just really have to figure out what works for you. For me, scheduling my time, be it the time I’m going to work on projects or am I going to work out at 5 a.m. tomorrow? What time am I doing dinner with my husband, date night, etc.? It’s just really helpful for me to make sure. And then when that time comes up and I’m supposed to be working on that particular project during that time or whatever it is, make sure that you actually do it. I think that’s the biggest thing is just that follow through of whatever way that you find to manage your time, that you’re being consistent and that you follow through. Don’t say on Tuesday at 6 o’clock, I’m going to set time aside for my family and then be like, oh, sorry guys, this came up. I can’t do that. Like you need to honor those commitments and just stick with it.

Tim Church: I think that’s so true. There’s such power in that intentionality but then figuring out that system on how you’re going to actually execute. One of the things that you wrote to me before we jumped on the interview is that your husband has been one of your largest supporters. So I wanted to give him a shoutout because clearly, you seem to have written that with a lot of enthusiasm. And it seems like that’s probably necessary for the undertaking that you have.

Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks: Oh, 100%. I honestly couldn’t do what I’m doing right now without his support. I mean, just think about that for a second. You’re married to someone, you have committed to spending your life together with one another, and here I am going to work 40 hours during day, either work typically 8-4 or 2-10 at my job, and then when I come home, it’s like, “Hey, honey. Let’s have dinner. OK, I’m going to work again.” So I could totally understand him being frustrated or like what the heck, she has no time for me. But I think you know, we try to always schedule time with each other, which sounds very unromantic, I get that, but I’m in that phase right now with the business where these things have to happen, and I think he definitely understands that it’s a dream of mine, something that I’m pushing really hard for. And he’s just awesome. I can’t thank him enough for being super understanding about it, never gives me a hard time when I say, “Oh, I have this project I have to work on,” or, “Oh, I have this deadline.” He’s my biggest supporter, and I love him for that.

Tim Church: That is awesome. What’s his name?

Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks: His name’s Matthew.

Tim Church: Matthew, you’re doing an awesome job. Keep supporting Brittany. So Brittany, one of the questions I think that often comes up — and I feel like especially with medical writing — but just in general with trying to start a business or a side hustle, one of the things that comes up is just how do I get started? How do I break in and get going? Because I think it’s easy to kind of sit back, hear your story, and obviously it’s taken a lot of hard work to get to the point where you are now, but what advice, what guidance would you give to somebody who’s just trying to start to break in?

Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks: Yeah, I get asked this question all the time, actually. And so much so that I am actually working on a new project that’s hopefully going to help new, aspiring medical writers solve that problem. So stay tuned. There’ll be more to come. But just in general, to answer your question, I think the biggest thing that people who are aspiring to be a medical writer have to think about is one, what type of writing do they want to do? Do you want to have a staff position? Do you want to be a freelancer? Although that isn’t my favorite way to characterize what it is that we’re doing, but it’s in the vernacular to describe this medical writing role when you’re not working full-time for a particular company. And then ask yourself what types of things do you like? What are you interested in? And then seek out those types of opportunities. This is a gig economy where you can seek out different projects, let people know what you’re interested in, and just make sure that you come in prepared too. We want to make sure that you’re not only just asking people but that you’re letting them know what it is that you can provide to them that’s of value because that’s the biggest thing when it comes to different companies is how can you provide that value to them?

Tim Church: Well said, Brittany. So if somebody wants to reach out to you to learn more about your business, what you’re doing, or maybe just needs a couple key pieces of encouragement about getting started, how can they do that?

Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks: Yeah, so they can reach out to me on LinkedIn, Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks, can also find my email address on my website at www.BannerMedicalWriting.com. Either one of those is a great way to reach out to me. I love hearing from new people and talking about your story. So don’t hesitate to reach out. And if I can help you, I’m happy to do so.

Tim Church: Well, thank you again for coming on the show, sharing your story, and just really looking forward to hear about the progress as you continue to grow your business.

Brittany Hoffman-Eubanks: Thank you. I’m super excited. Thank you so much for having me. I hope that anyone who’s out there listening that if you’re really interested in being an entrepreneur, starting your own side hustle, start small with the things you can control. And you never know where things will take you.

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