Why This Pharmacy Entrepreneur is on a Mission to Make Pharmacy Profitable Again
Dr. Lisa Faast, Founder & CEO of DiversifyRx, discusses her mission to make pharmacy profitable again.
About Today’s Guest
Dr. Lisa Faast is an innovator, experienced business executive, and leader in the independent pharmacy industry. With over 20 years of experience as a pharmacy owner, consultant, compounder, and businesswoman, she is able to bring a unique perspective to the industry’s problems. Her passion is helping independent pharmacy owners thrive by focusing on diversifying and then growing revenue streams. She is currently CEO at DiversifyRx, a consulting and education company, in addition to being a wife and mom of 4.
Episode Summary
Every single independent pharmacy wants to thrive, but the leap from pharmacist to pharmacy owner is a big one for many reasons. Today, Your Financial Pharmacist Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, sits down with Dr. Lisa Faast, founder and CEO of DiversifyRx, to talk about what she learned from this journey and how it became her mission to help make pharmacy profitable again. Dr. Faast begins by talking through her career arc, from her first job out of pharmacy school to opening and ultimately selling her first pharmacy. She shares about launching DiversifyRx, a business that aims to educate and support pharmacy owners through resources, membership, and a ton of free content. Dr. Faast dives into how she’s developed a “figure it out” mentality as an entrepreneur and how failure, or perceived failure, set her up for later success. The conversation also touches on that balancing act most pharmacists know all too well, juggling the financial demands of owning a business and raising a family, something that Lisa jumped into when she opened her first pharmacy while pregnant with her first child. Even if owning your pharmacy is not in the cards right now, this episode holds some fascinating insights into the industry.
Key Points From This Episode
- Hear the story of Lisa’s grandmother and how she was drawn into this profession.
- The roundabout path from her first job out of pharmacy school to pharmacy ownership.
- What gave her the confidence to take a leap of faith and start Faast Pharmacy.
- The biggest lessons she learned as an entrepreneur and business owner!
- Juggling life as a first-time mom and first-time business owner.
- About selling the business and making marketing her best friend.
- How she started DiversifyRx and created a profitable buffet table for pharmacy owners.
- How pharmacists often have different priorities to business people.
- Scaling the business to reach more pharmacists at once.
- Hear about Pharmacy Badass University.
- About all the free content Lisa puts out and where you can find it.
- How characteristics that help you in pharmacy school can hinder you in business.
- Tackling ideas of what failure is and how perfectionism impacts business.
Highlights
“That was just one of our mantras: if we can do it, we do it. That’s just the way that we operate.” — Dr. Lisa Faast [0:11:59]
“When you own your pharmacy, marketing needs to be your best friend.” — Dr. Lisa Faast [0:14:23]
“These pharmacy owners can’t afford hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars a month. It’s just so hard these days. Providing a solution that is affordable and cost-effective is really at the core of my offering.” — Dr. Lisa Faast [0:31:32]
“I put so much stuff out there for free because if I can help a pharmacy owner for free, I am A-okay with that and if you get all you need from that, perfect.” — Dr. Lisa Faast [0:36:24]
“You really have to reassess what failure is and what it is not when you are looking and making decisions as the business owner, as the owner of the pharmacy, rather than looking at it as a pharmacist.” — Dr. Lisa Faast [0:41:02]
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode
- YFP Planning: Financial Planning for Pharmacists
- Schedule a free Discovery Call with YFP Planning
- The 4-hour Work Week By Timothy Ferriss
- DiversifyRx
- DiversifyRx YouTube Channel
- Connect with DiversifyRx on LinkedIn
- Follow DiversifyRx on Instagram: @diversify_rx
- Becoming a Pharmacy Badass Podcast
- Pharmacy Badass University
- Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin
- Pharmacy Profit Summit
- National Community Pharmacists Association
- Smart Passive Income
- Email Dr. Lisa Faast: [email protected]
- Connect with Dr. Lisa Faast on LinkedIn
- Your Financial Pharmacist Disclaimer and Disclosures
Episode Transcript
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:00.4] TU: Hey everybody, Tim Ulbrich here and thank you for listening to The YFP Podcast, where each week, we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom.
This week, I had a chance to sit down with Lisa Faast, founder and CEO of DiversifyRx. During the interview, Lisa and I talked through her career journey, up to launching DiversifyRx, the “Why” behind the business including her mission to make pharmacy profitable again. How she balances the financial demands of owning a business and raising a family, how she’s developed a “figure it out” mentality as an entrepreneur, and how failure or apparent failure set her up for later success.
Before we jump into the show, I recognize that many listeners may not be aware of what the team at YFP planning does in working one-on-one with more than 240 households in 40 plus states. YFP planning offers free only, high-touch financial planning that is customized for the pharmacy professional. If you’re interested in learning more about working one-on-one with a certified financial planner may help you achieve your financial goals, you can book a free discovery call at yfpplanning.com. Whether or not YFP Planning’s financial planning services are a good fit for you, know that we appreciate your support of this podcast and our mission to help pharmacists achieve financial freedom.
Okay, let’s jump into my interview with Lisa Faast, co-founder and CEO of DiversifyRx.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:01:24.8] TU: Lisa, welcome to the YFP Podcast.
[0:01:26.4] LF: Thank you so much for having me, this is an honor and I’m excited to chat with you.
[0:01:30.5] TU: So happy to connect with you here and to have you on the show. I’d like to start with before we get into your entrepreneurial journey, I’d like to start with some of your pharmacy background, where you went to school, when you graduated and what really drew you to the profession, to begin with?
[0:01:45.1] LF: Yeah, I graduated from UOP, the University of the Pacific over in Northern California, and what had kind of drew me, you’re in high school, you’re kind of trying to decide and I was looking at becoming a doctor. And I realized that 12 years of school didn’t sound really fun at all and I was hoping to take care of my grandma at the time, she was a diabetic and she had pretty much lost all her fine motor control skills and her eyesight was terrible. We were having to go over to her house twice a day to do her insulins and things like that.
That’s kind of what got me on the path to pharmacy and then what really solidified it is, one of those school projects that you’re – you know, handed out to go follow this profession, do a report kind of thing. Me and my best friend at the time, we were like, “I don’t know what we’re going to do.” He’s like “Hey, my mom is dating a pharmacist, let’s just go do that.” I was like, “Okay.” We went and followed his mom’s boyfriend at the time and did all that and I realized, “Hey, this pharmacy thing sounds really interesting.”
Looked into the school and looked into all the different things because chemical engineering was kind of like the other alternative as supposed to medical school and, bam, it just felt right. I applied to one pharmacy school at the very last minute right before the deadline and thank goodness that I got accepted. I guess you could say, the rest is history. I graduated from UOP back in 2001, so a little over 20 years ago now.
[0:03:07.2] TU: We’re going to talk, when I talk, when I think about chemical engineering and I think about pharmacy, it’s very linear, structured pathways typically, right? The degree as well as career. But you have taken, I think, a very unique and somewhat non-traditional pathway throughout your career. But also into the work that you’re doing now with DiversifyRx and leading that mission and company. And we’ll get to that here in a minute.
UOP 2001, you graduate, tell us about your first job out of pharmacy school and what that experience was like?
[0:03:35.8] LF: Yeah, all during pharmacy school, I wanted to be a nuclear pharmacist. I just thought that’s what I was going to go do and I even did one of my rotations in my third year, I did nuclear pharmacy at Syncore, which is kind of the gold standard. And so I graduated, they didn’t have any space in their class because you have to go and get certified and all those kinds of things, and I was kind of like, “Man, what am I going to do?”
I graduated at the time when there were still some pretty good signing bonuses and all of that kind of stuff going on. I had worked for Rite Aid at the time as an intern and I knew I didn’t like that. I didn’t want to go do that and so, I was lucky enough that actually, my mom had worked for Kmart for many years. That was her main job with us growing up and so, I looked into that. Kmart at the time was looking for a pharmacist and it ended up being the best job ever, not just because Kmart was a good corporation to work for.
Of course, now, I don’t even know if they’re still even in business anymore, but the way they treated pharmacy, because it wasn’t their main line of business, I pretty much got to run it like I wanted to. They were pretty hands-off, which actually was really great training for owning your own pharmacy and so, Rite Aid – interned as Rite Aid, went to Kmart, and then my friend, one of my friends came up and said, “Hey, I’m going to be selling my pharmacy, do you want to maybe buy it?” And I was like, “Okay.”
I did all this work and all these business plans, all the things that you can expect of going through the SPA process and it was taking forever. The SPA takes forever, FYI. Yeah, I finally got an approval and I called him and I was like, “I got the approval.” And he’s like, “I signed to sell to Rite Aid yesterday.” And so then, I was left with this big dream and nowhere to go. I just decided to go ahead and open my own and started that path. That’s what eventually became Faast Pharmacy, which was my first pharmacy and I started that from scratch.
Kind of a roundabout way of winding up into pharmacy ownership, never expected it when I was in pharmacy school, might have taken like their joint MBA course and things like that that they offer but that’s kind of how I ended up there.
[0:05:40.4] TU: 2001 you graduate, you take a position with Kmart, you mentioned the way Kmart had run their pharmacies, and I can remember that. Some of my classmates and colleagues worked for Kmart. Very different than a corporate pharmacy position today, probably an experience that you’re able to get that started to be the learning ground for you before ultimately moving to own your own pharmacy in 2006.
I don’t want to overlook that, that’s still a big decision and transition that a lot of folks might have an interest in but aren’t willing to really take that leap of faith and feel confident in themselves to move forward and that step of ownership. Just tell us about your mindset and that transition of what gave you the confidence, what gave you, ultimately, the path? Or that said, “I’m going to go from this stable position, this stable income to really taking that leap of faith and owning my own business.”
[0:06:32.2] LF: Yeah, it feels, looking back, because it’s my own life, it doesn’t feel like a huge leap of faith but even you describing it right now, it really was. It really was a leap of faith and I think there was a couple of things that gave me that confidence.
One, I knew I was a good pharmacist and I was also a nerd, I liked numbers. I understood financials, again, going back to Kmart, I got to see all their financials of the pharmacy. I knew what drugs cost, I know what they got reimbursed and I was able to kind of hone my skills that way. But the thing that I told myself is – and I was in my early 20s at this point, I think I was 25 or something like that. I said, “What’s the worst that can happen?”
I painted a worst-case scenario. Nobody comes to me, I make no money, I go out of business, I go bankrupt and I go back to my $150,000 a year because I was working tons of hours job from now. I guess that’s not such a bad case, worst-case scenario.
I kind of figured that I could live with the downside, and that’s something that I’ve learned, and just decision making as a mature – just kind of saying, “What’s the upside, what’s the downside, and can you live with the downside?” I didn’t really know I was kind of living by that mantra back then. Essentially, that’s what I told myself as like, what’s the worse that can happen, and can I live with that? Can we have a plan for that? We figured out that we did, that we could have a plan for that.
And I just – I really wanted to do pharmacy my way. Kmart gave me a lot of leeway but not total leeway, there was always more than I wanted to do for patients. And I was getting into functional medicine at the time and getting into all these other interests, and I just wanted to offer more. So really, that desire became an obsession to come up with bigger, better, and more awesome services to offer to the community. And it was really, probably that desire just outweighed the fear with owning your own business.
[0:08:18.3] TU: Yeah, that desire for autonomy, right? Being able to be kind of in control of that future, and even pursuit of some things that might not have been traditional or allowed or under your scope of responsibility in that role with Kmart. The ‘worst thing that can happen’ exercise, I hope folks will hear that and apply that. Tim Ferris talks about that in The Four-Hour Workweek, he gives several examples where when you’re facing a decision, you mention, Lisa, using that in the context of decision making. We often tend to over-emphasize in our minds what is truly the worst-case scenario, and I think many pharmacists, even with the challenges we’re seeing in the profession right now, being able to fall back on a six-figure position is a pretty worst-case scenario.
I think sometimes in your profession, perhaps because of the student loan debt which is near and dear to our heart and what we do here at YFP and helping pharmacists or perhaps pharmacists are graduating at a relatively young age and stepping into that great salary, there’s sometimes is that mentality of, the golden handcuffs and not willing to take those risk and sometimes perhaps allowing those fears to be greater than might even be the reality of that situation.
Owning your own pharmacy, tell us about that experience, so April 2006, your pharmacy is open. Tell us about the pharmacy, what your focus was, the skills that you learned throughout that 10 years as you owned that store, give us some more details there.
[0:09:37.7] LF: Yeah, I did just about everything right and everything wrong that I think you can do in a pharmacy and in a business. Because back then, in 2005 and 2006 when I was planning on opening this, Facebook groups weren’t a big thing and I didn’t know any pharmacy owners. I didn’t come from a long line of pharmacists or even pharmacy owners. I was really just figuring it out for myself and so certainly, a lot of things that I did wrong and a lot of things I did get right.
I think the biggest thing that really happened is I understood niching and I understood that I didn’t want to be competing for the same people that the other independents in my town were. The place that I picked was far away from lots of other independents but yet close to chains. I was actually sandwiched between CVS and Walgreens, which ended up being a perfect location.
I wasn’t near any other independent pharmacies, there was kind of a little independent pharmacy desert in my town. And so to me, that became really important, going above and beyond. I just served my patents as the best I could and if it was physically humanly possible, I did it.
I remember very early, I was probably opened a month or two, there was a dermatologist across the street, it was a Saturday, she had a prescription for biaffine, a patient forgot to get it before the appointment kind of thing. And biaffine is like a chemotherapy but it’s also used after laser treatment in dermatology. It was a popular drug back then and I didn’t have it in stock, she hadn’t sent me any of the prescriptions for it, I was only just open but I knew another pharmacy that had it, it was actually my old employer, Kmart.
I knew we had it on our shelf because I had dispensed it at that store and I was able to arrange for the biaffine to get filled, I went and actually picked it up, delivered it to the patient, and all for basically free of charge because I wasn’t the one filling it and – but I went above and beyond and when I started to do that, people started to realize that I was in it for the long haul.
Business is all about relationships and you know, I may not be very good at social relationships but when it comes to business relationships, I know how to go above and beyond and always be the one that provides the extra value. That’s how I started to gain such a loyal following of prescribers and patients because they saw that in me, and then eventually, my staff, as I started to get staffed and started to grow, that was just one of our mantras.
If we can do it, we do it. That’s just the way that we operate and you know, we eventually grew to seven million annual revenues, had 35 employees, I had a really awesome thriving pharmacy and – but still, that was at our core, was just, whatever we could do to serve the patient is what we’re going to do and that paid us back in dividends year after year.
[0:12:23.5] TU: Between opening your own pharmacy in 2006 and we’re going to get here in a few moments about talking about your current efforts and work with DiversifyRx, I know you had several other roles in between there as well. Talk to us more about those positions and ultimately, the additional skills, those help you hone as both the pharmacist and eventually as a business owner.
[0:12:41.6] LF: Yeah, so when I opened the pharmacy, we were – one of the first positions that I added was mom, becoming a mom. I was actually pregnant with my first child when we opened our pharmacy and I bring that up because I think that’s actually a very good skill set. I had my children at my pharmacy for the first year of their lives but I had to learn how to juggle. I’m one of those people that, I don’t believe in such a thing as work-life balance, especially when you’re an entrepreneur and you own your own business.
There is no separation. Calling work-life balance makes it seem like there’s a separation and they’re at different ends of the spectrum. And that’s not the way that I live my life now and I learned not to live my life. When I’m with my kids and I’m present with them, I’m 100% focused on them but when I’m at work, I’m 100% focused at work. It’s a mixture and I learned very quickly that the whole work-life balance really doesn’t exist, that it’s all a mish-mash. And the better that I accepted that and went forward, actually, the more effective I was and the better I was at being both, at being a pharmacy owner and being a mom.
When I sold my pharmacy in 2012, I went to work for Pharmacy Development Services, PDS, which is fairly well-known in the industry, and there, I did just about every job that you can do. I think the only position I never held was like CEO. And you talk about skillsets, you know, having to do all the various coaching and the project planning and project management and new program implementation, and then I went into marketing. And I’ve done all the business development, all the marketing, all the sales, that kind of stuff. It really did give me a well-rounded education if you will on kind of C-suite activities.
It was a lot of the stuff that I did in my own pharmacy because I do believe that when you own your pharmacy, marketing needs to be your best friend. You’ve got to develop certain skillsets because you can’t go around paying for all of it, you know? Just like some things you’re going to have to do for yourself, definitely doing that and also, other entrepreneurs.
I never stopped being an entrepreneur, even if it wasn’t a pharmacy, my husband and I have always owned some other types of businesses. Before we had the pharmacy, we had a used car lot with my brother and then we had the pharmacy and then we opened franchises and then we opened up just other startup businesses. We always had that entrepreneurial thing going, “on the side” type of thing.
I was always constantly going back and forth with my skills and I think that really honed me to that I can accomplish a whole lot in a small amount of time because my desire to spend time and be present with my kids was really strong, and to spend time and do things like be able to take a vacation or to go to a conference or something like that. I had to get the work done.
When you give yourself a finite amount of time, you realize how to get really efficient and really good at things and so really, the experience that all of that gave me was working with a ton of pharmacy owners, I mean, probably thousands of pharmacy owners and I’ve spoken at all the major events, anything that you can think of, I’ve probably spoken at.
Also, being in other institutions or systems or franchises got me a lot of exposure to other ways of doing business as well. I try to bring some of those lessons into the pharmacy world because there isn’t a whole lot of pharmacy business education and training and so, I try to bring a lot of the other industries, the best of the best of what they have to offer and really bring that in and apply it to pharmacies.
[0:16:05.4] TU: As we make the transition here to talk about the work that you’re doing with DiversifyRx, I want to pause for a moment and just reflect on the point you are at now, has been 20 years in the making, right? I think sometimes, especially in a day and age where entrepreneurship is glamorized, right? I think, where we can hear stories and examples and founders and IPOs that are happening and we don’t often see a lot of the skill development, the sweat and the tears and the hard work that go behind it as those stories continue to come forward.
When you shared, not only the experience you had at Kmart, the experience you had in running your own business for six years and even getting into that, having some obstacles to overcome a business that you thought was going to be available for purchase that was not. All that’s involved in skill development of growing your own business. Other franchises you’ve been involved with, used car lots, rolls that you have, chief revenue officer, marketing skills that you gained. All of that that over two decades has allowed you to obviously continue to grow as an individual but also, grow as a business owner. I think that leads to the efforts that you’re doing right now. Tell us about DiversifyRx, what is it, how did it start and what problem are you trying to solve?
[0:17:21.1] LF: Yeah, wow, that’s a fun thing to talk about. DiversifyRx was really just started almost as therapy for myself. When I was deciding to leave PDS in the summer of 2020, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was kind of at that conundrum where I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, you know?
I was looking at a ton of jobs, I had just moved to the Dallas metro area and the economy here is booming and there was all kinds of executive jobs and I was strongly considering leaving pharmacy and going and doing something else and so, the only anxiety that I had about that was I’m not going to be able to help pharmacy owners. I just kept filling this pool and that was the only thing that I was sad about.
I started DiversifyRx really as just a way to have a weekly email and a weekly blog and kind of stay connected to my brethren that I had been in the trenches with for the last 20 years and I was happy with that. That was great, that’s all it was and I took another job, chief revenue officer, within pharma industry and that was great, then I actually ended up getting fired from that job in February of 2021 and you might say, “Fired holy heck.” Yeah, it was the first time I ever got fired but it was a gentle loving firing, we just agreed that we just didn’t – we weren’t having the same vision for the company and so it was very amicable I guess as firings can go.
I was kind of left again with ‘what I want to be when I grow up.’ I was like, just had an “aha moment” with my husband where I turned to him and I said, “I know what I love doing. I am the happiest when I’m talking to pharmacy owners and I help them get “Aha, that’s my favorite”. It’s when I help them become aware of something or achieve a win, that’s when my face lights up and so I was like, “I think we just need to figure out how to do this full-time, I don’t know what it looks like.”
Again, kind of back to that leap of faith, I have no idea what it was going to look like, I had no idea what the plans were but I was like, this is where I’m happy and I need to be happy if I’m going to be a good wife, a good mom and a good person to everybody else in the planet.
Really, was in the beginning of 2021 where I said, all right, I’m going to do full-time diversify, let’s go figure that out and what that is. And really, the whole name comes from my fundamental belief that pharmacy owners need to diversify their revenue streams, you can no longer just be a passive pharmacy that just dispenses whatever prescriptions happen to walk in your door, you’re not going to make it that way. Being average and being normal is not going to keep you in business for long.
Profitable pharmacy strategies do not just fall from the sky. You have to go out there and look at them but gosh, there’s so many bad things out there, there’s so many great things out there. And pharmacy owners, when do you have time to vet, when do you have time to decide, when do you have time to go through all of that and so, essentially, I took all of my skills and all of my industry, contacts, and knowledge and things that I gathered that it’s like, I felt like it was kind of my job to create that pharmacy ownership profitable buffet table if you will.
Where it’s like, “Here is all the opportunities” because I firmly believe that there is more opportunity now to succeed as a pharmacy owner than there has ever been but it’s not in the typical way that it’s always been done in the past. I feel like my mission on earth here is to create that buffet, that smorgasbord of profitable opportunities because what fits for one pharmacy isn’t going to be a fit for another, it’s going to be the perfect fit for somebody else and so, if I can just come up with all of the opportunities and help pharmacy owners decide what’s going to work for them based on their demographics, their own passion, and their insight, then let’s go do that in your pharmacy so you can have a profitable thriving pharmacy.
Really, that’s what DiversifyRx is all about, is helping pharmacy owners diversify and optimize their revenue stream so that every single independent pharmacy that wants to stay open, that wants to thrive, that wants to be a generational business that they can hand down to their children and grandchildren, that they’re able to achieve that dream.
[0:21:20.5] TU: Lisa, I love the mission, I love the passion, love the why behind what you’re doing and I don’t want to lose as well that as folks go on your website, we’ll link it in the show notes and they see all that you’re doing now, it started with the idea and you mentioned a newsletter, right?
That important action step that I think, often folks will look at other pharmacy entrepreneurs, other businesses out there and get paralyzed by seeing the current state. It started in a very different state, right? It has grown over time and you know, I think taking that first step is such an important one and to some degree, put yourself out there in terms of, “Yeah, I have this vision, I have this belief, I see a need in the market and I’m going to be a voice in this space.” And allowing you to sit in that uncomfortable space of, “Is this going to resonate, is this not going to resonate, where is this going to go?” and I love that first step in action that you took.
I want to ask you that when you say there’s more opportunity than ever for independent pharmacies, from an outsider’s perspective, I can’t claim to live in the independent pharmacy space. I have been in the profession for 13 years, largely in the academic world prior to moving full-time with the work that we’re doing at YFP but when I look from the outside looking in and even as you say in your website, the onslaught of DIR fees, abusive PBM audits, low margins, poor cash flow, clawbacks have many owners on the verge of tapping out. I mean Lisa, from the outside looking in, why go into this business?
I mean, how can one even plan when you think about things like DIR fees, PBM audits, clawbacks like even trying to build out a proforma from that seems like a nightmare and it really feels like the deck is stacked not in the favor of the pharmacy or the pharmacist, so give us the compelling argument of, why is this a better opportunity than ever before?
[0:22:57.8] LF: I think the reason why it’s a better opportunity more because pharmacies and pharmacists are more than just dispensing destinations and that really comes from, we do so much more. Yes, our primary function is to dispense, we’re not getting rid of that but to me, where the opportunity comes from is consultation, functional medicine, cash-based services, supplements, compounding.
You know, all kinds of things that really are available and the broad – whether it’s under your “scope of practice” as a pharmacist or it’s completely outside of your scope in the sense that you don’t need to be a certain licensed person to recommend supplements or something, why would somebody go to a GNC and listen to a 19-year-old about supplements when they could come to your pharmacy and get somebody that is far more educated and probably get a higher quality product that’s very specific and tailored to their exact needs, you know?
These people out there are spending cash everywhere. You know, they are spending cash at GNC, they’re spending cash at the gym, they are spending cash at the spa, you know for all of these different kinds of services that really pharmacies should be in my opinion the place that the healthcare that healthcare destination, people kind of use that as kind of a catchy phrase nowadays but what does that really mean?
It’s really, pharmacists are positioned to really help patients to take care of their health in ways like never before. There is more testing available. You know, one of my favorite supplements has a neat little saliva test that you test the patient to even see if they need it, you know? It’s like then you can test them to see if it is working. There is just so many great things out there nowadays that pharmacies can be the conduit for if we’re willing to look up and outside of solely dispensing.
That’s really where that comes from because yes, if you’re just going to bank on patients coming to you and they’re just going to pay their copays and they are going to grab their bags and turn around and leave then yeah, it is going to be a very tough ride being a pharmacy owner.
[0:24:54.2] TU: Yeah and what I love about that vision Lisa and I think this is a healthy discussion for us as a profession, you know I have always felt that arguably, we’re just incredibly well-positioned across the country already having a physical footprint in many, many communities, right?
As we think about the dispensing of medications perhaps becoming a commodity to some degree and we look at the many threats that are there, if we can begin to diversify that and begin to really even look at, perhaps the dispensing of medications is kind of the entry point and at some level though lead generation to other opportunities where pharmacists is well-positioned, just a completely different way of thinking rather than that is the core business model, right?
[0:25:36.0] LF: Exactly, so pharmacy owners generally aren’t business people in the sense of what they’re really truly not thinking about their business from a marketing sales funnel conversion, all of those types of things that lots of other businesses do. I mean, there are so many businesses out there that would kill to have the traffic that independent pharmacy does.
They pay tens of thousands of dollars a month just to get people to come in and yet people are freely walking into pharmacies and it’s just pharmacy owners don’t have the skillset and the knowledge to know what to do with that traffic. And that’s where I feel like I come in like, “Man, that lowest hanging fruit is every single time you have a physical person walking into your pharmacy is an opportunity to sell them something else that they need.”
[0:26:19.5] TU: Talk about warm leads, my goodness.
[0:26:19.8] LF: They need something else, exactly. Yes, you have that traffic and that’s what most pharmacy owners, they don’t even understand the word traffic in the sense of how it applies to marketing. And so that’s where I really get my passion from is teaching them those fundamental business skills that are often taught for other solopreneurs and other types of verticals of businesses but really isn’t taught in pharmacy.
You know, really getting them to understand that that dispensing of a prescription is your front in offer. You know, that might be something that people know you for but where you make your money is on the back end offers and you know it started with drug-induced nutrient depletion. In my final year of pharmacy school when you have to do your big project, you know, I did mine on drug-induced nutrient depletion and that was back in 2001.
Nobody was talking about that then and so it’s like there’s always a way, I truly believe there is always a way for every pharmacy to thrive and survive, you know? We just have to figure out what that thing is and that’s to me the extremely fun part like I get just so much joy. It is like I am a little Sherlock Holmes and everybody’s little pharmacy figuring out what’s going to help work for them and because there is always something that’s going to work.
It doesn’t matter your demographics, it doesn’t matter the income level, there is always something that those patients are paying for, they are spending their hard earn money on and you just have to offer it to them.
[0:27:37.2] TU: Yeah and they are probably spending it elsewhere, right? To your comment about, yeah.
[0:27:40.4] LF: Absolutely, yep. They are spending it, they are spending it somewhere else and you just need to capture that.
[0:27:44.0] TU: Love it. So you are bringing this business mindset and perspective to independent pharmacy owners and you are trying to do it really on a level that I see as being scalable, so not necessary one-on-one. I am working with this pharmacy but really this membership type of model, which gets to the aspect of how you’re monetizing the business, so tell us more about the membership model and why you came up with that approach to be able to provide this solution to independent pharmacies.
[0:28:08.7] LF: Yes, so ultimately the mission that I am on is to save independent pharmacy and I am never going to accomplish that if I have to talk to every single pharmacy owner out there for an hour a month and help them that way and that one-on-one consulting. I have to figure out how do I scale it and to do many to one and frankly, I personally, my zone of genius kind of understanding when you’re a pharmacy owner, whether you’re a solopreneur or running your own PGX business or whatever, you need to understand what you excel in.
I learned early on that I do not actually excel in that one-to-one type of interaction. I excel in the many to one and frankly, it is the only way I am going to ever reach my mission, so I set out. I eventually figured it out, it took me a couple of months after going full-time into Diversify that I wanted to start a digital membership, which you see in lots of other verticals of companies out there but it just didn’t really exists in the way that I wanted to bring it to pharmacy and so, we named it Becoming a Pharmacy Badass, so Pharmacy Badass University.
My podcast and my YouTube channel is kind of like becoming a pharmacy badass and that’s a bold brand and you know there is some people that are like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe you said that” but to me, if you’re going to survive in this world because we do have so many things stacked against us, you can’t be average. You can’t even be good, you have to excel and you have to become something different.
Pharmacy Badass University is our digital membership and you get it all. It’s you log in, you get your membership and it’s like, “Well, what’s included?” it’s like you know, all of those online e-courses, we are constantly creating them. I am creating the initial ones because we’re just going to be launching but how do you manage your inventory, how do you do that? Well, I don’t know. Here, let’s go and let’s just watch this on-demand course that either you can give to your technician, you can give to your pharmacist or if you are a startup, you know maybe do it yourself.
How do you control your cost? Well here, here is how, the method I go through and how I can look at my PNL and how I control my cost and what those costs should be. And so it is going to be on-demand courses, a ton of done-for-you stuff because you know, as easy as Canva is or some other graphic designs, not many pharmacy owners are going to have the time to go do that, so it is like every month, we’re going to be creating those templates and those emails and those things for them.
We’re going to have those office hours because I get calls all the time from pharmacy owners and I’ll end up doing a podcast or something about it. I am sure you kind of get this too, it’s like, “Man, everybody could benefit from that question. That was such a great question and I had such a great discussion with you but I didn’t record it and I can’t share it” and so it’s like we’re going to have those open office hours where everybody gets in that kind of shared knowledge.
Those monthly mastermind calls where I bring in other experts, I bring in sometimes outside of the industry, sometimes within the industry and so it’s really going to be this super low-cost no complications at all, no contracts, no minimums. My golly, if you don’t want to be a member anymore, you know, cancel and we’ll make it happen because I only want to serve people that are truly getting value. I want to be the best value in pharmacy because I know, I am still a pharmacy owner myself now.
I sold my original pharmacy but I got back into pharmacy ownership. I actually have parts of three different pharmacies and I know how tight money and time is for pharmacies. Those are the two tightest things and so we want to help you save time and we want to help you use your money wisely. So we literally we’re trying to be stupid cheap as I say because it’s just you know, these pharmacy owners can’t afford hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars a month. It’s just so hard these days and that’s part of that is providing a solution that is affordable and cost effective is really at the core of my offering.
[0:31:46.1] TU: Well, I love what you’re building Lisa. It reminds me of, for folks who have not read Tribes by Seth Godin, you know what you’re building as, yes, Lisa is the founder of the company. Lisa, you have the idea, you’re obviously growing it from the ground up but you are developing a community of folks that are coming together that are passionate about this topic of making independent pharmacy profitable again, right?
Bringing a business mindset to independent pharmacy and obviously you are building it in a way that you can then scale that going forward. And it’s not about Lisa, it is about Lisa being a facilitator of this community that’s coming together towards this common mission and I think that speaks volumes. I love that business model when you look at memberships, especially when memberships have a community component, where you as the owner, you then move into yes, I am providing some service but I am really a facilitator among this community.
I think that people really resonate with and stick with those groups long-term because they really feel like there’s value in being part of that community.
[0:32:45.3] LF: I could not have said that any better myself. You are absolutely right and that is exactly what I’m going for because I might know a lot about a lot of things but I don’t ever claim to be an expert on everything. There is always going to be somebody else out there that can share some of their wisdom and if we’re all committed to helping independent pharmacy owners thrive, then everybody wins when you share what works and sometimes, what doesn’t work.
Sometimes you learn more from what doesn’t work and so no, you’re absolutely right and along with the membership aspect, we are doing our own live events that are very focused around pharmacy profit, like, I am unabashed and unashamed. We help pharmacies increase their profits and that’s not a bad game.
[0:33:27.8] TU: As you should, it’s a business.
[0:33:28.9] LF: Yeah, it is a business you know? Pharmacy owners are the worst people, you know, the saying that I founded [Long Deer 0:33:34.5] ago, is profit is not a four-letter word. Now granted, can you make profit bad ways? Absolutely, everything comes with the good and the bad side but making a good profit in your pharmacy is not something you should be ashamed of. There is right ways to do it and there are plenty of them out there and it is not a four-letter word and something that should be avoided.
I am unashamed in helping pharmacies improve their profitability. So we have the Pharmacy Profit Summit, which is a two-day event and then we have the Pharmacy Badass University, which is centered around the six pillars of pharmacy profit, so we are unashamed in helping pharmacies improve their profits because that is the only way that they are going to stick around and be able to help and continue to serve their communities.
[0:34:17.0] TU: That’s right and we are going to link to the website and you can get more information by checking that out in the show notes but just to bring that full circle, right? If we’re not profitable as a business, you can’t continue to offer the service, which is providing value to the community, which is why you started doing that in the first place. Amen to what you just said there Lisa.
Let me ask you as a follow up then, you know, I often think about differential advantages for businesses and so when I think about independent owners and other things that are already out there for them, right? I am thinking about organizations like NCPA, I am thinking about state organizations and interest groups within state organizations. I am thinking about buying groups and what they often will offer independent pharmacy.
What is different about what you’re doing and how are you differentiating that from other services that are already out there to serve independent owners?
[0:35:01.2] LF: Yeah, so I look at NCPA and a lot of the state organizations as legislative efforts. I mean, I think that’s all their ultimate goal is to affect things either on state and national levels from a legal standpoint, which I certainly support and I am not doing. Diversify does not do that, not to say that I won’t write my own letters to my congressman or something like that but I am certainly not starting a legislative moment on anything.
I think that is one important distinction there but sometimes when you get into buying groups and things like that, you kind of start to wonder who they’re actually fighting for, who is ultimately the best interest of what they’re recommending because sometimes what they recommend does not make sense when you are looking at it from that financial standpoint. It’s like, “Hmm yeah, buying my products from you is actually costing me money, so how is this better?”
You know, you kind of just maybe start to wonder where their ultimate loyalties lie and so really, what I am doing is I am bringing together that 20 years’ experience, I pretty much know just about everybody in this industry. I know what the companies are doing, a lot of people reach out to me, even startup companies, I often hear about companies that are just getting started a year before they launch for the public and those kinds of things.
I really try to keep my pulse on this industry and a lot of what I do is free. I try to put out a ton of free content, you know just follow my social media, follow the podcast, follow the YouTube, any of those kinds of things. I put so much stuff out there for free because if I can help a pharmacy owner for free, I am A-okay with that and if you get all you need from that, perfect.
If you want to go up to the next level where you kind of want some done for you, you want to be able to ask some questions, you need that little bit more of handholding, that’s where Pharmacy Badass University comes in and we’re less than $200 a month. I mean, we’re talking I am trying to keep it as low as possibly low as it can be and so really, I think that’s how it difference is, is that I am truly here for the success of other pharmacy owners not just to charge them by the hour or something like that in terms of helping them.
Where there’s lots of consultants, some good, some not so good, it’s just a different model because they are doing that one-on-one, well, you can only have 10, 15 maybe pharmacies when you do that one-on-one so you have to charge higher prices and you have to do things because you still got to put food on the table.
We’re a business as well and so my approach of the many-to-one I think not only benefits the industry because I am able to help more pharmacies, but it also benefits the individual owner because the cost for them interacting with me is next to nothing, $200 a month. It’s like, it doesn’t get any cheaper than that.
[0:37:36.1] TU: You know, just another different advantage of outside looking in is you are an owner. You’ve lived it, right? You are in it and I think you can resonate as both the leader of this community as well as somebody who is in the community looking to learn from others. I want to come back just for a second here talking about providing value. For folks that have not listened to Pat Flynn has a site podcast, a resource called Smart Passive Income, we’ll link it in the show notes but was very influential to me early on in my journey of starting YFP.
He often talks about, if you lead with providing value to address a problem that people care about and you have a solution, which is one that they eventually be willing to pay for, lead with value and the business will come. And I think you are demonstrating that very well. You mentioned leading with a lot of free resources and then you’ve got kind of next level opportunities for those that are willing to make that further investment of both time and money.
Lisa, I want to come back, final question for you is this aspect of figuring it out. If I reflect on your past 20 years, I would argue that less than 5% of the work that you are doing today and the success that you’ve had from your career is from what you learned in your training to become a pharmacist.
And you know, I think as I think about folks that are going down the path like you have gone down, there is this hunger to learn and there’s this mentality through all these different roles that you’ve had both as an employee, as an owner of just figuring it out, right? Being willing to learn and to grow and to get better and perhaps making some mistakes along the way. Tell me about that mentality for you and where has that come from? Am I right in reading that as a part of your success?
[0:39:13.7] LF: No, I think you’re spot on. I have a very – you know, I’ve taken probably every personality and skill test out there and I do have a very high figured it out factor partly because that’s the fun part to me. I like problem solving. I always like math in school, I like coming up with the right answer, it gives me my little dopamine hits and so I really do like the figuring it out part but I think what comes in as you mentioned a big thing about fear and we kind of started off with that is the fear of failure.
Even pharmacy owners, you know, I will sometimes get on the phone call with a pharmacy owner and give them 10 different options of what they might want to focus on for the next year or something like that. It is really the only ones, the ones that fail or the ones that don’t succeed or don’t implement are the ones, that – we’re afraid of doing it wrong. And as pharmacists, I think that particularly hinders us because in pharmacy school and in your primary pharmacists job, you want to be perfect.
You strive for perfection, you never ever want to make a mistake on a prescription, which is a perfect mindset for a pharmacist working the bench. However, when you take your bench hat off and you put your pharmacy ownership hat on, you cannot bring that thought process into your pharmacy ownership decision making. It is okay to make mistakes in business. In fact, I’m a big fan of fail fast. If I am going to fail, I want to figure out what’s not going to work as soon as I can so I can move on to what is going to work.
I am very much a subscriber to that belief of failing fast. And you have to understand that business mistakes are not the same as dispensing or pharmacist mistakes. If you try a type of advertising on the radio and you spend $1,500 and it was a raging success, great and if it was a raging failure, well, you lost $1,500 but nobody died, nobody was hurt. You probably did some good, you probably got something out of it even if it wasn’t what you thought.
So you really have to reassess what failure is and what it is not when you are looking and making decisions as the business owner, as the owner of the pharmacy, rather than looking at it as a pharmacist. And I think that is the hardest part for pharmacy owners who also happen to be pharmacists. It is really hard for them to separate themselves and I do a lot of what I’ll call therapy sessions on that in trying to help them figure that out because as you said in the beginning, the first step is just taking that first step, just putting out a newsletter.
I look at my very first newsletter that I sent out and I cringe. I’m like, “How did anybody read that and enjoy it?” but you know what? I got a ton of complements on it, you know? But looking back it’s like, “Oh just remember you’re always your worst critic but you can never succeed if you never try.” And you know, failure in business is to be expected. You know, perfection is not the gold standard and so we just have to understand that that’s different from when we’re working the bench as opposed to working on our business, and I think that’s the biggest lesson that pharmacy owners can learn.
[0:42:04.9] TU: That’s so good really differentiate what failure is and what is not and the difference between that mindset as a business owner versus as a practicing pharmacist and to be fair, you know, if I think back to my PharmD training, Lisa, we’re taught rightfully so, you know, when we are thinking about our roles as a pharmacist and mitigating and preventing medication errors.
That mindset is drilled into us of, failure cannot happen from that standpoint. And that makes sense from the pharmacist-patient perspective but to your point, which is spot on, very different when we think about that as a business owner and how we can learn and grow through that failure. This has been awesome. I am energized from this interview and I think that’s going to go to our community as well and those that are listening, so thank you so much for your time.
Finally, where can our listeners go to learn more about the work that you’re doing at DiversifyRx and to connect with you further?
[0:42:49.7] LF: Yeah, so our website is diversifyrx.com, that’s probably the easiest way. You can send me an email at [email protected]. Feel free to find me on all of the social channels either by the business name, DiversifyRx or my personal, Lisa Faast and then we have a podcast, we have YouTube and you can find all of those resources plus tons of free downloadables all on our website.
We try to make it super easy to help people for free as a primary method, so head over to that website and that is where a great place to get started.
[0:43:22.3] TU: Awesome, thank you so much Lisa. We’ll link to those in the shownotes and I really appreciate your time coming on the show today.
[0:43:26.9] LF: Thank you so much for having me. I greatly appreciate your shows.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:43:29.9] TU: As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and it is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information of the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment.
Furthermore, the information contained in our archived newsletters, blog post and podcast is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analysis expressed herein are solely those of your financial pharmacist unless otherwise noted and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward looking statements, which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward looking statements. For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/disclaimer.
Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast. Have a great rest of your week.
[END]
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