YFP 292: How & Why One Pharmacist Started a Functional Medicine Organization for Pharmacists

This week, Dr. Lauren Castle, founder of Functional Medicine Pharmacists Alliance, discusses how her experiences working with Walmart in influencer marketing and personal branding helped prepare her for growing her business,  why she started FMPhA to integrate pharmacists into functional medicine, and her transition from employee to entrepreneur.

About Today’s Guest

Dr. Lauren Castle is the founder and CEO of the Functional Medicine Pharmacists Alliance (FMPhA.org), the first association representing pharmacists in functional medicine. FMPhA supports members practicing functional medicine across all pharmacy settings by uniting leaders in the field to provide continuing education, training, networking, and advocacy.

Lauren also serves as a functional medicine consultant pharmacist with the PharmToTable Team and maintains a part time practice as a retail pharmacist. She received her Doctor of Pharmacy from Ohio Northern University in 2013 and her Master of Science in human nutrition and functional medicine from the University of Western States in 2018. Lauren has also studied with the Institute for Functional Medicine and Functional Medicine University and became an Applied Functional Medicine Certified (AFMC) practitioner through the School of Applied Functional Medicine in 2022.

To download a free Functional Medicine Pharmacist Checklist, visit FMPhA.org/newsletter.

Episode Summary

This week on the YFP Podcast, YFP Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, welcomes Dr. Lauren Castle, founder of the Functional Medicine Pharmacists Alliance, to the show. Tim and Lauren discuss how her experiences working with Walmart helped to prepare her to create her business, why she started the Functional Medicine Pharmacists Alliance (FMPhA), and her transition from employee to entrepreneur. Lauren shares what led her to pharmacy and how an internship with Walmart unexpectedly changed her life plans in the best way. After graduating from pharmacy school, Lauren had always planned to become a pharmacy owner. She planned to use her internship with Walmart to see something the opposite of her chosen path. While working with Walmart, Lauren quickly learned that even in a huge company, she could stand out and make a difference. After working on special projects for the home office, Lauren realized she didn’t want to put her dream in the hands of something else. Recognizing the value of her ideas, she started the Functional Medicine Pharmacists Alliance. 

She explains how social media and networking benefitted her career and how consistently sharing her story and message of food as medicine helped to catapult her to a market director position. Listeners will hear about Lauren’s personal experience and how it led her to pursue her passion for functional medicine, ultimately forming FMPhA. She shares what FMPhA looks like today, the importance of advocacy for the profession of pharmacy in the space, and how pharmacists can differentiate themselves in functional medicine. 

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

• YFP Planning: Financial Planning for Pharmacists
• Schedule a free Discovery Call with YFP Planning
• Functional Medicine Pharmacists Alliance
• Ohio Pharmacists Association
• YFP 123: Leveraging Your Expertise to Start a Side Hustle
• Functional Medicine Pharmacists Alliance Facebook Group
• Smart Passive Income Podcast with Pat Flynn
• Functional Medicine Continuing Education
• The Tim Ferriss Show
• Purpose is More than a Side Hustle: It’s Our Built in GPS by Joe Colavito
• DrLaurenCastle.com
• Connect with Dr. Lauren Castle on Facebook
• Follow Dr. Lauren Castle on Instagram: @drlaurencastle
• Follow Dr. Lauren Castle on Twitter: @drlaurencastle
• Follow Dr. Lauren Castle on TikTok: @drlaurencastle
• Your Financial Pharmacist Disclaimer and Disclosures

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

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

This week, I welcome the Founder of the Functional Medicine Pharmacists Alliance, Dr. Lauren Castle. During the show, we discuss how her experiences working with Walmart in influencer marketing personal branding helped prepare her for growing her business, why she started the FMPhA to integrate pharmacists into functional medicine and functional medicine in the pharmacy, and how she planned for the transition over five years from employee to entrepreneur. 

Now, before we jump into the show, I recognize that many listeners may not be aware of what the team at YFP Planning does in working one-on-one with more than 280 households in 40-plus states. YFP Planning offers fee-only high-touch financial planning that is customized for the pharmacy professional. If you’re interested in learning more about how working one-on-one with a certified financial planner may help you achieve your financial goals, you can book a free discovery call by visiting yfpplanning.com. Whether or not YFP Planning’s financial planning services are a good fit for you, know that we appreciate your support of this podcast and our mission to help pharmacists achieve financial freedom. 

Okay, let’s jump into my interview with Dr. Lauren Castle. 

[INTERVIEW]

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

[00:01:18] LC: Thank you so much for having me, Tim.

[00:01:20] TU: So this episode has been a long time in the making. We’ve crossed paths for many years now through Ohio Pharmacy Association and other circles. We share our alma mater, Ohio Northern, so go Polar Bears. 

[00:01:34] LC: Yep. 

[00:01:34] TU: So let’s start there with your career path into pharmacy, what led you into the profession, and how you ultimately landed the work that you’ve been doing with Walmart really for over the last 10 years now.

[00:01:46] LC: Sure. So like many people, I decided I wanted to go to pharmacy school. When I was in high school, I actually had started working in an independent pharmacy in Monroe, Michigan, and absolutely loved it. So I thought for sure I was going to go to pharmacy school and become a pharmacy owner whenever I graduated. 

I ultimately ended up meeting my husband while I was in school, and that is what led me to pursue a different internship. I thought to myself what better time to just get some totally different experience. I’ve already got my path laid out. I know what I want to do. But just in case, I’ll check out the exact opposite of an independent pharmacy, right? Like the largest company in the world. 

So I joined Walmart. That summer, I just completely fell in love with it. It still felt like I owned my own pharmacy in a sense. But yet I had all of these resources and all of this capacity to literally influence millions of people. I kind of figured that out because I shared a little story on their sort of social media Internet company website about Walmart’s 50th anniversary and my experience as an intern. I didn’t really think anyone would read it or care. But that story actually got picked up, and it was published in our home office newsletters. 

So like our president of health and wellness at the time had read it and sent it down to my supervisors, and that was sort of the aha moment for me that I realized I’m just one person in a company of over two million employees worldwide, and I actually can make a difference. So that was sort of the theme of these last 12 years that I’ve really been able to continue on with.

[00:03:25] TU: I love that, starting with the concept of let me use the internship. For some, it might be experiential rotations as an opportunity to see something different. I often share with students, if I had to go back and do anything different pharmacy school, it would be to really reevaluate those precious summer internships and then those 9 or 10 months of experiential rotations because the safe plays are always going to be there, right? What a unique opportunity, where you have a month or a summer that you can see something that’s completely different and, obviously, building relationships and having different experiences. Those more traditional opportunities will be there but such unique time to see those things, and so cool to hear you take advantage of those. 

Let’s talk about some of those experiences with Walmart a little bit more because – No disrespect in any way to pharmacists that are out there working the bench day in and day out. But that was not your gig with Walmart. Certainly, you’ve done that. But as you look at your experiences with Walmart, it’s very, I would say, nontraditional in those experiences with Walmart, in terms of – You alluded to some of that with some of the posts that you were sharing early on that got picked up. Nationally, you’ve had some experiences working with them, more in that influencer marketing, personal branding, wellness side of things. 

Tell us about those experiences because I suspect, as we’ll talk about more of the work that you’re doing with the Functional Medicine Pharmacists Alliance here in a little bit, those experiences were really critical to the work that you’re doing now as well. 

[00:04:59] LC: They certainly are. I mentioned, even from the very beginning, I started sharing my story in the company. I think no matter what company you’re working for, there’s actually a book I’ve recently read that talks about how purpose is more than a side hustle, and it’s actually the way you show up for other people every day. So it doesn’t matter what type of role you’re in. If you’re in a nine-to-five job, if you’re working as an entrepreneur, you’re living your purpose every day, and you can tell your story in whatever role that you’re in. 

For me, that really looked like sharing what I was doing on social media and sharing little bits of how I work as a pharmacist for the company. Ultimately, that is what led to some additional opportunities that I had to get promoted. So networking, of course, is huge. A lot of times, people will say it’s not what you do, but it’s more around like who you know. So for me, I was always trying to reach out and connect with people on LinkedIn. So every market director, when I was an intern, I was connected with them. They knew who I was. They knew my name. They knew my face. I would show up, like you mentioned, Ohio Pharmacists Association meetings. Make sure that I was involved in professional activities as a pharmacist. 

That networking is really what led me to get promoted to a pharmacy manager to a clinical pharmacist manager whenever we actually moved to Michigan and ultimately to a market director. So five years after graduation, I became a market health and wellness director, which was sort of my big goal as an intern once I joined Walmart. That role was incredible, and I learned so much, just from managing teams, managing people, really managing a business, right? Yet again, continuing to share my story on social media. 

At the time, I had also started getting into functional medicine. So now, this was a new aspect of the story I was telling and also was picked up and seen by people at our home office. That was the moment that really kind of catapulted things to what my real dream was, right? I’d already met this milestone from just a, “Oh, I got promoted. I’m a market director. This is awesome,” to, “Well. Now, I want to go work at our home office. I want to go to Arkansas. I want to go and really make a difference for the company.”

I didn’t know what that was going to look like. But as I was talking about functional medicine and how I really felt like it aligned with some of the things Walmart does around helping people save money and live better, and you really do have everything that you need to live a healthy life at an affordable price in the stores. So that was the theme. That was the message I was sharing. I, ultimately, ended up getting to meet our president of health and wellness, and this was back in 2019. He was a fellow Ohioan, so he came out and visited. We sat down and, as we were eating lunch, started talking about this concept of food as medicine.

They were like, “This is awesome. We think this is a great idea. We would love for you to come out and share more and see how this would integrate with Walmart Health,” which at the time, they were just starting to build those as primary care centers. So I didn’t really think anything of it. I was like, “Okay, yeah. Cool. That’d be awesome. Would love to come out.” A couple weeks later, I got a phone call, and they’re like, “Hey, we need you to come out like this week to meet Steuart Walton of the Walton family.”

[00:08:46] TU: The Waltons. Yep. Yeah. 

[00:08:47] LC: Like that’s one of those calls that you never expect to get in your life. But it was my dream, right? Like as I was sitting here, trying to figure out like how am I going to get to home office, what am I going to do, you just keep taking the next step, right? You just keep living your purpose. Ultimately, that’s going to all come together. 

So I spent three months out there on a special project, basically looking at how we would integrate nutrition in with the services that we have in health and wellness. As we were getting ready to pick out our first store, it was kind of the end of the year. There was some leadership changes. They sort of paused all the projects and said, “We’re going to hold off for a little bit.” 

2020 hits and, of course, the whole world shuts down, and it’s COVID. So silver lining, of course, is that we would have never been able to do a lot of the things we wanted to do anyways. That also was the moment for me that I realized this has been an amazing journey with Walmart. But I also realized that I can’t put my dreams in someone else’s hand. So that was the moment that I came home, and I actually started my LLC for the Functional Medicine Pharmacists Alliance too. 

[00:10:07] TU: I love that. So much to unpack there. But I think one of the things you just shared, which we’ll come back and talk about your journey, really growing the Functional Medicine Alliance, spending more and more time on that, is not necessary putting your own dream in someone else’s hands. But also recognizing that the experiences that you do have working for someone else can be so valuable and catapulting what you’re working on. Also, just the experiences, the network, all of what you shared. 

But when I hear your success in, ultimately, getting to that point where you’re going to meet someone from the Walton’s family, what comes to mind is that the reason that moment happened is because you, for years, were consistently showing up and providing value. Then the compound effect of that just worked its magic, as it always does, if you’re consistently showing up providing value. That’s value in person and in the work that you’re doing every day. That’s value in developing your personal brand and helping other people, staying connected and in-person meetings, virtual meetings on LinkedIn and other things. 

I think we sometimes lose sight of that when we see someone who has gotten to the point of launching a business, or they’ve grown a following of whatever number of followers on LinkedIn, and they’ve got a great personal brand. It’s been a decade in the making, right? It started with that leap of faith, if you will, that you took as an intern to say, “Hey, I’m going to post this out there. Maybe somebody thinks this is interesting. Maybe it’s not.” But I know the value in showing, sharing my story. I know the value of showing up every day and providing value. It might be that in any one day, maybe there’s not an obvious like ROI on that. But over time, consistently, that really can take off. 

So let’s talk 2017, if I’m correct. 2017, you actually started the Functional Medicine Pharmacists Alliance, and we’ll link to that in the show notes, FMPhA.org. I’m curious, before we get into kind of why you decided to go that pathway with starting the alliance to really have the impact in functional medicine, where does your personal interest in functional medicine and this concept of food is medicine, where does that come from?

[00:12:13] LC: Absolutely. So as I mentioned, I had become a clinical pharmacy manager when we lived in Michigan, and Michigan is where we discovered functional medicine. So my husband and I, he also was working in a pretty high-level job for a big company and was having a ton of health issues, super stressed, had struggled with losing weight, couldn’t sleep, had got issues, just felt terrible all the time. 

As a pharmacist, I thought I was doing everything right to help him try to feel better. But at the end of the day, I kind of said, “I think if you go to the doctor, they’re just going to hand you a bunch of pills, and it’s not going to help you all that much. It’s just going to cover up these side effects.” I don’t know what is wrong. It seems like we’re doing everything right, and nothing seems to be working. 

We got a flyer on our doorstep for a integrative wellness center. It basically listed all these side effects and symptoms. I just handed it to Seth, and I said, “Babe, this is you on paper. You have all of these problems. So whatever these people do, I think should go check out this seminar that they’re doing this weekend and see what this functional medicine stuff is all about.” So he went to the seminar, ended up signing up for this program. We paid $5,000 out of pocket to work with these people for, basically, 12 weeks. It sort of included everything. So it had all of these different labs that we didn’t learn about in pharmacy school, supplements that I had never heard of, and this elimination diet, where we, basically, were going to cut out most of the foods that we were still eating that we thought were healthy like whole wheat bread and skim milk and, basically, eat this sort of paleo style of a diet. 

Within just a few weeks, he was feeling so much better. Pretty much all the symptoms dropped off, and he lost 20 pounds. It was just like incredible. So as I continued reading more about functional medicine, the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio was actually starting a center for functional medicine that same year. So to me, that was sort of the moment that I was like, “All right, I think there’s something to this functional medicine stuff, and Cleveland clinic’s doing it. So it’s got to be pretty reputable.” 

I decided at that point, I really think this is the future for healthcare and for pharmacy. But I knew also at the time, I was looking into other degree programs, so I did not do a residency after pharmacy school. At that point, I was a clinical pharmacist, but I was looking to get promoted to market director. So I was looking at MBA programs, things like that. I decided, well, maybe I’ll look into programs for this functional medicine stuff. 

There was one master’s program in the US that was in conjunction with the Institute for Functional Medicine, and that, of course, is also who Cleveland Clinic was working with. So I figured, all right, this sounds like it’s pretty reputable, right? So I ended up enrolling in that master’s program and was still working as a clinical pharmacist. We had just gotten engaged. We were planning a wedding, really burning the candle at both ends. But I was loving it. I just – Everything made so much sense. 

As I was starting to learn all of this new functional medicine knowledge, I started talking to other pharmacists about it. So Melody Hartzler, who you’ve interviewed on the show before, her and I reconnected. She had gotten into this through her own health journeys. Other people that I had gone to school with or had met through pharmacy conferences were getting into this space. I started to realize that we all need to come together. Like we need to form a little community and stay in touch and figure out what this is going to look like for the profession. 

That was sort of where the Facebook came from, was just this idea of like, “Let’s get together. Let’s kind of bring everyone in this space and start collaborating.” I was also starting to teach other pharmacists. So Ohio Pharmacists Association had me do a CE presentation in 2017, and that was sort of the start of it. So we introduced the Facebook group. We did the CE, recorded it. That same year, I also got invited to speak at the Michigan Pharmacists Association. In those, basically, four months, I decided to actually create a website and post my story on there and not have it just be a Facebook group. But actually set up FMPhA.org, which I always give credit to Alex Barker, another friend of the YFP team because he’s the one who told me like, “Why don’t you just make an organization?” I’m like, “I can’t make a pharmacy organization.”

[00:17:18] TU: I remember I was talking about that back in 2017. I just loved that concept. It was such a nontraditional way to think about how to influence this space and really how to try to meet many people, instead of – I mean, sure, you can meet with people one on one and have a great impact. But how can you be an aggregate of the pharmacists that are practicing functional medicine and bring them together? So, yeah, I love that idea. That’s a great one. 

Just so I’m understanding, the actual formation of FMPhA as a business, you mentioned just a few moments ago forming the LLC. When you started the Facebook group, when you’re providing CE, when you actually built the website, at that point, you hadn’t yet formed the business. Is that correct?

[00:18:00] LC: Nope, no business whatsoever, and I never set out to make any money off of this. It was truly just a – I believe in this so much, and I want to bring other pharmacists into it, that I’m just going to start sharing these resources that I’m learning and trying to connect with more people and bring us all together. 

So, yeah, it wasn’t until the Facebook group continued to grow, and we went from 30 people at the very beginning to 500 people. So then 2018, the next year, I was at Institute for Functional Medicine conference and was talking to their leadership. I’m like, “Oh, we have 500 pharmacists and a Facebook group. They want to do functional medicine. How do we actually get them more involved in the care team?” 

Because at the time, IFM really didn’t have any resources that were geared towards pharmacist. It was mostly towards physicians, and so they didn’t even know what to do with us, right? Just like a lot of the medical profession, it’s sort of like the pharmacist’s role is very misunderstood and kind of left behind or left out of the picture. So that was sort of the next step that I was like, “Okay. Well, how can we start to work with other organizations?” 

Then in 2019 is when I ended up going out to do the special project. Kind of coming back from there, I had also spoken with another pharmacist, Jerrica Dodd, and she was the one who then gave me the push of like, “Lauren, you got to monetize this thing. You have got to start actually setting up a business and really taking this seriously because you’re sitting on a goldmine in a sense because people are hungry for this. They want this.” Yeah, that was – We were at a functional medicine symposium, and I had someone that asked me, “How do I become a member? How do I join? How do I sign up today?” I was like –

[00:19:56] TU: Let me figure that out. 

[00:19:57] LC: I will get back to you.

[00:19:59] TU: But, Lauren, what I really liked about this, I don’t want to lose that there was at least two years until that point of, okay, how can I monetize this? We’re providing value. It’s growing, which there should be. Jerrica is correct. As you’re building something that’s providing value to others, like there’s a fair price that can and should – We charge for that. But you focus on providing value first. 

Pat Flynn talks about that, one of my favorite podcasts and a blog that really influenced my journey early on in the Smart Passive Income Podcast. He talks about the value of really focusing on providing resources, providing value, building your community, really making the deposits in the bank, and doing that authentically. The business will grow from there over time. I think your story is such a cool example of that. 

Before we talk more about the actual transition and how and when you made that transition to spend more of your time working on the business and less of the time on the W-2 side of things, tell us more about what does FMPhA look like today, in terms of you went through this journey of, okay, we need to monetize this. Is it a membership model? Is it they’re paying for certain resources and being a part of the community? What does it look like in terms of the business today?

[00:21:17] LC: Absolutely. So today, it is a membership, much like many pharmacy organizations that you can join. We’re bringing together pharmacist and community through the Facebook still, of course, which is a free resource. But really, the advocacy piece is sort of what’s most important to me. We partner with a few different organizations in functional medicine, one being the Institute for Functional Medicine. So when you join, you have the option to also add on IFM membership at basically a discounted rate. We also were able to work with them to get a 20% discount on their trainings, which one of the top questions that we get asked is, “Okay, I’m interested in functional medicine. Where do I get training? Do I need to get certified?” So the answer is you don’t have to get certified. But certainly, just like with any type of training, having that additional credential is going to speak for itself, in terms of working with other providers. 

We really were wanting to get more pharmacists into that organization. So part of that was how can we make it more affordable because, again, it’s not cheap. A lot of these certifications are upwards of 10 or even $20,000. So that was kind of our first big step. We also worked with them to actually get the word pharmacist listed as a provider type, right? So it’s the little things to some of these organizations that mean a lot to us as pharmacists and to the profession. 

So those are some of the things we do. We also work with A4M, which is the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine. We also have discounted rates on their training programs as well. So those are sort of the big two training programs that we’ve partnered with. Then we’re actually working on launching our very first course for members, so Functional Medicine Pharmacists boot camp will be launching in January, as of the time of this recording. That’s really the culmination of all of these seven-plus years of working in functional medicine, trying to figure out how do we actually do this as pharmacists, and answering a lot of those frequently asked questions around training and how to implement it and what types of jobs you might be able to find or create for yourself, and really just putting all of those pieces together.

The last couple of services that we also offer, of course, is with CE. We have a few different partners there. At the time, again, when I got into this, there was no CE for pharmacists in functional medicine. Now, we’ve got a couple of different partners that we work with that are offering functional medicine CE. So that’s another area. Then, of course, we have our annual meet up in conjunction with functionalmedicinece.com. We have our meet up there every year, usually in the fall. So in-person events, it’s been really great to get back together with people and actually, again, bring that networking together because you never know who you’re going to meet and where they’re at in their journey and how they might be able to help you as well.

[00:24:23] TU: Yeah. One of the things I’m curious to get your opinion on is from an outsider’s perspective, kind of following the functional medicine movement, seeing more pharmacists, clinicians start to dabble in this space, I think, for really good reasons, I’m not seeing a lot of differentiation. As I’ve talked to a couple of people that are starting up a business of which I know very little about functional medicine, but I’m looking at it from a business perspective, what really is glaring to me at first is like why you, why your services. There’s not like a compelling differentiation that I’m seeing there. 

So as someone who, I think, spent a lot of time building a strong personal brand, doing influencer marketing, really building a niche of what you’re doing out there, and understands the importance of that differentiation, what advice would you have someone for – That’s listening and say, “Hey, I’m really interested in functional medicine, about how they might differentiate themselves in this space and what they’re offering.”

[00:25:19] LC: Yeah. So I think you bring up a good point, and that was sort of another reason that I finally kind of pulled everything together into this boot camp course is that I had a lot of pharmacists that were coming and saying, “I’m studying functional medicine, and I want to figure out how to use it.” I think everyone, somehow or another, because, of course, a lot of this really picked up steam during COVID in 2020, and virtual or telehealth became kind of the norm for a little while, and so a lot of people assumed that like, “Oh, if I’m a pharmacist, I can quit my pharmacist job and launch a virtual functional medicine practice and become a millionaire.”

[00:25:59] TU: Patients will be flooding and scheduling left and right. 

[00:26:01] LC: Yes. They – Yeah, exactly. For some people, they can do that. For a lot of people, it’s not that simple. So what I really try to work with pharmacists to understand is that there’s no one way to practice functional medicine. It’s just a lens through which you are going to use your pharmacist license. So more often than not, if you want to do a virtual practice, yes, we can help connect you with the resources that you need to set that up. But is that really the way that you want to serve your patients? 

If you’re someone who isn’t necessarily a big fan of social media and putting your face out there and having to tell your story over and over and over every single day to try and attract patients in a virtual practice, what about considering working with a physician in your local practice, right? What about a chiropractor? What about an independent pharmacy? Do you have a compounding pharmacy somewhere? There’s all of these other pharmacy settings where functional medicine can be an additional service that you bring to the table to provide to reach those patients that really need it the most, right? So it’s really about figuring out your skill sets and what areas of pharmacy you are most passionate about and then thinking about how you can apply a functional medicine approach to whatever that is. 

For a lot of people, it might be figuring out how to set up a collaborative practice agreement, so you can practice at the top of your license. Or it might be walking into an independent pharmacy and seeing if you can get a job as a pharmacist there, leading their health and wellness programs. So lots of different options to think about before you just kind of go and quit the day job and start trying to launch a virtual practice.

[00:28:03] TU: Let’s shift gears here and talk about the transition that you’ve made from employee to entrepreneur, at least where you’re spending more the majority of your time now focused on Functional Medicine Pharmacists Alliance. You had this to, say, a few months ago on LinkedIn. You said, “It took five years to get here. But it feels amazing to finally have the time and space to pursue this fully.” 

It hit me right after I got back from the DiversifyRx hat I had used up all my PTO in the nine-to-five job in order to attend pharmacy conferences this year. So I did the math. I realized I could work part time for the same salary and then turned in my resignation. Tell us more about what led you. I mean, I’m sure you’ve thought about this moment several times. But what was it specifically that you said, “Hey, this is the moment. I’m ready.”?

[00:28:48] LC: Yeah. So to provide a little more background, at the time, earlier this summer, I was working for a company called Brand Networks. So I mentioned before, I sort of had been burning the candle at both ends for a number of years, working as a market health and wellness director. Of course, COVID happened. I was also a caregiver for my mom who, ultimately, passed away last year. 

After that moment, I actually had taken a 12-week leave from my market director job that my boss had suggested to me like, “Hey, Lauren. You have gone through a lot. And if you need to take some time away, you can do that.” So just one more thing to consider about before you leave your job, have you used all of the resources available for your own health and your mental health? So for me, I took those 12 weeks. I went through intensive outpatient therapy. I really got to kind of heal from a lot of that trauma and also found this new path in social media marketing with this company. So I was able to work remotely from home for a year. Still working as just a part-time peer and pharmacist, a couple shifts a month. 

Then kind of the nine-to-five was in the social media marketing, which yet, again, was sort of another very intentional choice of I know that I want to grow FMPhA, which now is a business, and I still have a lot to learn about running a company online. So what a great opportunity to be able to actually work kind of on the inside of running marketing for the world’s largest company? I probably can learn a few things, so great experience, amazing team, super fun role. 

But, yes, I was having to take time off in order to actually go to pharmacy conferences, which were finally kind of starting back up again in 2021. So I was doing a lot of traveling. Even though I was in a remote role, I still didn’t really have flexible hours. Like I still had to be available from nine to five. So as I was taking all of this time off, it hit me because we were planning for our pharmacy symposium in the fall, and I wasn’t going to have the PTO to take to go to my own conference. 

[00:31:13] TU: Your own event. 

[00:31:14] LC: I was like, “Oh, wow. Okay.” So that was the moment that, like I said, I really just sat down and did the math. It was like, “I think it’s time. I think it’s time.” So my market director had actually reached back out to me, the one who backfilled my position that I had trained and said, “Hey, I’ve got a store open. If you want to come back, whatever hours you want to work, we can make it work.” So I was like, “Yeah. I think I’m going to be a 48-hour pharmacist.” It was another one of those moments where it’s like, if you would have told intern Walmart pharmacy Lauren that she was going to only work 24 hours a week as a pharmacist one day, I would have thought that like something horrible happened, and I was like disabled. Like, “Oh, my gosh. Why can I only work 24 hours a week as a pharmacist? That’s terrible.” 

But it took a lot of like unlearning to finally see that like, “Oh, yeah. There’s more to life than working 40 hours a week for your company. You can actually have your own life and work part time, still have a good salary and full-time benefits, and do all these other things that you’re passionate about.”

[00:32:29] TU: I love the story. As you’re still working part time, obviously able to focus more full time on the business, but you’re able to do that. Why? Well, because you left with really good relationships. Well, you haven’t left technically, but you had really good relationships. Somebody who’s coming forward, obviously, they saw your wellbeing as a priority. Let’s take some time off, refocus. We value you as an individual, also as an employee. Then, hey, what hours do you want? It’s like, “What? Come again.” Like, “So I can build this business and focus on that, but still be able to maintain some type of a financial base.”

I want to emphasize that because if we hit rewind here for a moment, 2017, FMPhA became a thing, right? Here we are in 2022, five years later, this is much more of an off-ramp than it is diving into the deep end. I want to say that emphatically because I have the opportunity to talk with a lot of pharmacists throughout the year that are thinking about different business ideas. I can tell they feel this internal restlessness and pressure, much of which, I think, is externally influenced. They see what other people are doing like Lauren, like other entrepreneurs we featured on the podcast. But they don’t know the whole backstory of this was years in the making, and it’s still in the making before there’s potentially a full-time transition to the business. 

I share a similar story of working in an academic role for about six, seven years, while I was starting the business until I made that transition full time. I think that’s more of the norm than it is not, and I think there’s really good financial reasons to do that. I think there’s really good other reasons. You mentioned that as you’re working for that new firm here in the last year and a half, two years that, wow, I can get some really good experiences with one of the biggest companies in the world that, obviously, you’re able to now draw from the value of those experiences and what you’re building. 

So I think there’s so much to take away there as, again, thinking about this more of a transition, more as an off-ramp, slow and steady, being patient, which is hard, and less about jumping into the deep end. So –

[00:34:38] LC: One thing to add there too from a financial standpoint is that was something that we really thought about throughout this journey, right? Because for me, I’m still planning ahead. One of the beautiful benefits of being a market health wellness director is, of course, the golden handcuffs, the stock options, those types of things. So for me, I knew it was like, “Okay, I need to stay with Walmart to really maximize the value of what they provided me as part of my compensation and really think outside the box of, oh, yeah, I don’t have to completely leave the company. I can still work part time and run everything through our ethics department and make sure that like, yes, you can be a pharmacist, and you can work as a contractor employee for Walmart, doing social media.” Like look for the and opportunities there because those are things that are going to, from a financial standpoint, really make more of the work I want to do a possibility. 

So we’re kind of planning that out, as we think ahead of like, yeah, I still have another year that I definitely need to stay employed with Walmart. So what can I do to make the most of that time before I even consider leaving in the future? Do I even want to? Do I still want to drop back down from 48 hours to being truly part time hourly again? Then you start thinking about some of the bigger questions, right? Or like, “Oh, yeah. Well, what are we going to do for insurance and some of those things?” 

[00:36:14] TU: Retirement. Yeah, exactly. 

[00:36:15] LC: All the things you have to think about in terms of starting a business or leaving a job, especially when for us, my spouse actually had left his job as well, right? So we mentioned that that was a big root cause of his health issues. The case for leaving the job, sometimes that is the solution. But sometimes, it’s not. So really think about that, evaluate it, and think about all the options. So for us, it looked like one of us leaving the job, one of us transitioning the job. 

[00:36:51] TU: This is so great. Look for the and opportunities. I think there’s – When people are building something, there’s a lot of internal pressure, where you kind of fall into this trap, I think. I know I felt this for a period of time of like there’s option A, or there’s option B. Either I’m not working on the business, or I’m going full time in the business. But there’s always more options. There’s always more options. I think it’s having the creativity to see what those may be as well. 

I want to wrap up by asking you two questions that I’m adopting and stealing from Tim Ferriss who ask great questions on his podcast. The first question is if you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it, metaphorically speaking, getting a message out to all 300,000-plus pharmacists in the US, what would that billboard say, and why would it say that?

[00:37:36] LC: So I think for me, what I always like to tell pharmacists that are kind of interested in this functional medicine or maybe they’re starting to hear about it is, yes, there is a better way than a pill for every ill. That is the sort of mindset that we’re all sort of stuck in whenever we’re still in a traditional pharmacist role of whether it’s dispensing in retail or being a clinical pharmacist and working on making sure everyone’s meeting the guidelines to the tee. It’s always about like adding another pill and making sure that they’re on all the right medications. 

But I think through COVID, we’ve, obviously, seen that lifestyle plays such a big role in our patient’s health. So how can you start to think about ways to incorporate lifestyle, medicine, functional medicine into your patient’s health? Because, ultimately, I think that’s where the future of healthcare really lies, and a lot of times you kind of have to start with yourself too. Start to evaluate, where you can make some of these changes in your own health and your family’s health and talking to your friends about it. Then just continue growing from there and building out sort of that muscle of starting to have those conversations.

[00:38:54] TU: Yeah. I think what intrigues me so much about functional medicine is like it so much of the focus on let’s actually get to the root cause, and that takes time. I think if we take a step back and take off our bias of being trained in a doctorate program and being trained as a healthcare practitioner, we live in a system that is a for-profit healthcare system that incentivizes efficiency. It does not incentivize taking more time and not dispensing products that aren’t going to have revenue associated, right? 

So I think we just have to ask ourselves always. We should be asking ourselves, kind of look at the status quo and what we’re doing. Why are we doing it, and is it the best option that’s out there and potentially available? It’s the same thing. You talked about a little bit your personal journey and some time off and some of what I heard there, like the inner work that was being done. That takes time, a lot of time. It’s easier to prescribe a medication and to see a physician for 30 minutes. But like that work is so important, obviously, for long-term benefits, for quality of life, for optimizing who you are individually as well. So it’s just such a good reminder, I think, of like what are the incentives that are out there, and are they appropriately aligned for what we’re looking at. 

My second question here for you is what is one of the best or most worthwhile investments that you have ever made? It could be an investment of money. It could be investment of time, energy, in a training resource. What would you say that is?

[00:40:19] LC: Yeah. I think that overall, FMPhA has been one big investment. Rather than it just being like a business, it’s been this journey, this kind of life work of, yes, investing in the beginning money to go back to school and get a master’s degree and not take out more loans to do it, going and doing more training with different functional medicine schools for the sake of, hey, I want to be able to actually tell people my honest opinion of these programs. So I’m going to spend my own money to test them out, again, before I even have a full-on business or am being compensated to do these things. I think about the time. 

My husband and I, we were just celebrating Thanksgiving together. Of course, I was also doing a Black Friday promotion. So he made a comment of, “Hey, all of your discretionary time seems to go into FMPhA, and you’re spending a lot of time on this.” I was like, “Well, yeah, I am. But at the end of that Black Friday promotion, it sort of all paid off, right?” Because then he was able to see, “Oh, yeah. This is what you’ve been building for five years, right?”

Now, kind of entering this next phase for the organization of actually having courses and potentially a podcast next year and, again, putting out more of this value for other people. It has been this labor of love. At the same time, it’s fulfilling, right? It’s what I love to do, and I feel like this is what I’m here to do. So I think FMPhA has sort of been like one big investment with money, but time, and of course energy. So now, it’s like, “All right, how do we find the balance of being a functional medicine pharmacist, CEO, and founder, but then also still having time for life?” 

I think that’s probably what most people are starting to sort of see functional medicine or any type of consulting role as a pharmacist is sort of this opportunity to reevaluate what’s most important to you. Again, from like a purpose standpoint, this is the book that Ivan was reading. In it, it just sums it up so perfectly, that perfect purpose is more than a side hustle. It’s not something you turn on or off, depending on the situation or the conversation you find yourself in. Purpose is the unique way you show up every moment of every day to make life better for others. You have a purpose, and you can live it out on a full-time basis. 

[00:43:04] TU: I love that. 

[00:43:03] LC: So I just feel like when you think about investing, everyone’s going to be investing their time, their money, their energy into something. You get to choose what that’s going to look like.

[00:43:17] TU: I love that. We’ll link for those that aren’t watching the video. Lauren just shared Purpose Is More Than a Side Hustle. It was the book. We’ll link to that in the show notes, if folks want to check that out. Lauren, this has been fantastic. I knew it would be. So glad to have you on the show. As I mentioned at the beginning, it’s been a long time in the making. Where is the best place that individuals can go to learn more about FMPhA, as well as to follow your journey?

[00:43:39] LC: So FMPhA.org is our main website. You can also find me on drlaurencastle.com. I’m @drlaurencastle on every single social media platform, so happy to connect with everyone there. 

[00:43:54] TU: Awesome. We’ll link to those in the show notes. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

[00:43:57] LC: Thanks for having me again, Tim.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[00:43:59] TU: As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. 

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

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

[END]

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