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

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

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

About Today’s Guest

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

Summary

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

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

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

Mentioned on the Show

• Insuring Income: Get Quotes and Apply for Term Life and Disability Insurance
• My Guiltless Treats
• Call Me Doctor by K. Wong
• Don’t Sit on Her! by Karine Wong
• Pharmacy Pearls Quiz App by Karine Wong
• Connect with Karine Wong on LinkedIn
• Connect with Karine Wong on Facebook
• Follow Karine Wong on Instagram @KarineWongPharmD
• Send Karine a Message

Episode Transcript

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

Karine Wong: Hi, Tim. How are you?

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

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

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

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

Tim Ulbrich: Right? Yeah.

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

Tim Ulbrich: Oh gees.

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

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

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

Tim Ulbrich: Amen.

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

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

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

Tim Ulbrich: Yes.

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

Tim Ulbrich: Yes.

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

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

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

Tim Ulbrich: Hey, congratulations.

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

Tim Ulbrich: That is awesome.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Karine Wong: Thanks.

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