The Bottom Line Pharmacy Podcast: Building a Super Culture in Your Pharmacy With Chris Cornelison
Can Culture Make or Break Your Pharmacy?
In this episode of The Bottom Line Pharmacy Podcast, Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP® and Bonnie Bond, CPA sit down with Chris Cornelison, CEO of Solutions Rx, Best-Selling Author of the Book ‘Super Culture’ and Keynote Speaker to explore the one competitive advantage every pharmacy owner can fully control: Culture.
This episodes discusses:
- Creating clarity and direction through written goals
- Navigating accountability and removing bad apples the right way
- Praising what you want repeated and building a sustainable culture
- The role of emotional intelligence and daily huddles in team dynamics
If you’re ready to shift your culture and unlock your team’s potential, this is the episode for you.
Join the discussion with us!
The Bottom Line Pharmacy Podcast is your regular dose of pharmacy CPA advice to fuel your bottom line, featuring pharmacists, key vendors, and other innovators.
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More resources on this topic:
Clip – How Supplements Can Grow Your Bottom Line
Podcast – Finding, Hiring, and Keeping the Best in Pharmacy
If you prefer to read this content, the video transcript is below:
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: So, we got Chris on the podcast today, Bottom Line Pharmacy Podcast. We got Chris on here. Now, Chris, you are, man, you’re a legend, dude. You go like way back in pharmacy.
Bonnie E. Bond, CPA, MBA: Very exciting.
Chris Cornelison: Just means I’m old.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: Well, me too, because I remember you were around and you were kind of leading the charge there with culture and leadership at PDS when that was around. And I know you impacted a lot of pharmacies in a good way with what you were doing there. So, we’re glad to have you on and glad to kind of talk with you today.
Bonnie E. Bond, CPA, MBA: Absolutely.
Chris Cornelison: Awesome, I’m super excited to be here.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: So Chris, you have a book out, Super Culture. I read it this weekend. I was like, I gotta catch up on that. So, I read it this weekend. And I’ll go ahead and tell you, I’m not a book guy, but especially a business book guy.
Bonnie E. Bond, CPA, MBA: Scotty told me he was going to tell you this today on the podcast and I was like, huh, I don’t know. He’s like, I don’t normally do these kind of books.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: I don’t, I normally… A lot of business books I don’t really do because it’s a lot of fluff, it’s a lot of, you know, just like give me the five-page summary that gets to the meat. And your book’s not that long, so it actually covers the meat, so I really enjoyed it. It was a good easy read and it was to the point. So, with that, I think you hit on a really lot of good things with this book and I agree with pretty much everything you have in here.
Bonnie E. Bond, CPA, MBA: It’s so important. I mean, that is, I mean, in any industry, it is, it’s something that we all struggle with. I mean, and it’s so important to try to, to keep your team happy and motivated and wanting to come to work you know? Oh yeah.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: It’s any business. But I guess my question to you, Chris, is, you know, just kind of get things going here. You know, what are, you know, obviously these are pharmacy owners that follow our podcast here and pharmacy owners, as you know, as you were, are you still a pharmacy owner? Are you?
Chris Cornelison: No, I actually sold my Pharmacies three years ago, sold them to an independent owner, Lee Griffin bought my stores and he’s still doing well, I still mentor him. I actually practiced there last Friday, so I still practice a little bit on the bench, but I don’t own any right now.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: Still got the itch, gotta get that.
Chris Cornelison: Yeah, that’s right. That’s right.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: But no, thinking of a pharmacy owner who’s juggling so many different things they gotta do, patient care, diversified revenue, advocacy, you name it, HR, culture, kind of give a, if you don’t mind, kind of just jumping into like, how can a pharmacy owner use their culture to help manage and better position themselves to handle all these different moving pieces, I guess is kind of one of the things we see a lot.
Chris Cornelison: Yeah, so that’s a big question. Let’s start it off with the small one, Scotty. No, but it’s a great question though, because as pharmacy owners, we are getting beat up by a lot of different things, especially reimbursement rates are probably at an all-time low. And your culture is the one competitive advantage that you do have total control over. Nobody dictates your culture but you. And rule number one in my book of a super culture is it all starts with you. And so, the first thing pharmacy owners have to do is become aware of what they want to improve. Too often in the pharmacy practice, we can get frustrated, we can get mad. My first chapters, I find it’s easier when I talk about my downfalls than other pharmacy owners’ downfalls. But I wrote a whole chapter in my book about kicking a garbage can every day and slamming my hand down and wondering why my team wasn’t performing to the level I thought they should. So I had to step back and take rule number one for myself and say it all started with me. And so what pharmacy owners have to do is step back and get some emotional intelligence and some awareness of what they want to improve. If we walk in every day and say, hey, I’m just too busy, the PBMs aren’t paying me and I can’t do anything about it, well then your whole team is going to follow suit and your whole culture is going to be about, you know, a victim mindset of this is happening to me. The minute you step back and become aware that I do have some control over my culture. And if I can get my culture to raise up to a certain level, I can create a successful environment that we can actually grow in. You see, one powerful thing about my book is nothing changed about my environment except me in the beginning. I just had to look at the situation differently. And the minute I looked at it differently and owned what was my fault in the situation, I started setting clear goals and praising what I wanted to repeat it. And it just started rolling into a great environment.
Bonnie E. Bond, CPA, MBA: That’s a great point. Yeah, that’s awesome.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: I guess that’s kind of the hardest thing is looking at yourself really, because a lot of people just, it’s hard to do and being honest with yourself.
Chris Cornelison: Yes, and it’s absolutely the hardest thing to do. You know, I think it’s around page 80. It’s definitely in chapter three. I start talking about emotional intelligence and we all want to say, I understand emotional intelligence. I get it. I get it. get it. However, anytime we’ve got a problem in our life, the first step is emotional awareness. I have to be aware that I am a part of the problem. And actually, that’s where we’re failing. Anytime in my own life, something’s not going the way I want it, the minute I say, what is my role in this situation, I step back. I got an example for you, and I’ll never name the pharmacy because I deal with literally around a thousand pharmacies now. But I was talking to a pharmacy, and they got really excited, and we helped them put in this program about just simple probiotic to antibiotic conversion because they weren’t asking either customers. They had tons of opportunities rolling in their door every day, alright. I called them back a few weeks later and they were excited about the program. They already had the existing customers. They were right there. All they had to do was add a little step to the consultation of their patient, which they were already counseling their patients. When I called them back, they were having a meeting with their marketing team. And so, the mindset, even though we just trained them on you already have the opportunity there, the mindset was were too busy and so we went to marketing. I’m a big fan of marketing. I do a lot of marketing. However, when we go to marketing, that’s to bring more customers in. And instead of executing the existing customers they already had, the mindset went straight to, we gotta have more people. But they didn’t need more people. They already had the existing customers to be successful. And it’s the not being aware is what holds us all back in every situation.
Bonnie E. Bond, CPA, MBA: Right. I mean, I think I need you to speak to my spouse about… I’m sitting here and saying, no, no, really. I mean, if you’ve got a problem, it’s you.
Chris Cornelison: At least you have some ownership of the problem. Maybe not total.
Bonnie E. Bond, CPA, MBA: I’m gonna give him the book.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: You have to invite Chris over for dinner.
Chris Cornelison: Yeah, yeah.
Bonnie E. Bond, CPA, MBA: Sorry, I was just, when you mentioned that, was like, huh, could this work for across the board for all things? Yes.
Chris Cornelison: Oh absolutely. You know, my books written to all businesses, but I take a lot of pride in a lot of teachers and coaches clinging to my book. The most rewarding thing about my book has been how many people have read it, walked up to me and said, I’m going to use this with my kids. I’m going to use this with my spouse. I’m going to make my world better because it’s a book. It is a business book. It’s about how to improve your business culture, but your culture is your environment anywhere you go.
Bonnie E. Bond, CPA, MBA: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: Yep. This is a really good book here. And I like it because it’s really, I mean, it is straight leadership in here. It starts with you. You have got to make that decision. You got to be honest with yourself. And then once you have that kind of dialed in, then write it down. I really like that because I can tell you, I know there’s a lot of pharmacies out there. They don’t have anything written down.
Bonnie E. Bond, CPA, MBA: Absolutely.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: And when you don’t have anything written down, there’s ambiguity, expectations are not, nobody really understands the expectations, but writing it down, I think, is a huge next step. You want to expand on that, Chris.
Chris Cornelison: Oh yeah, absolutely. And you hit on it. You said when you don’t write it down, nobody understands the expectations. One of the biggest hits on the culture of your company is there’s no clarity. And when we don’t take time to write things down, obviously in the book, I actually talk about writing five important documents down. The most important thing for the sake of the book is writing your culture down. What do you want your environment to look like? Because especially if you’ve got multiple locations, people don’t just walk in and know how you want to act. They don’t know how you want to perform. They may have come from an industry where customer service is not important in that industry. Maybe just speed is all that’s important and you may want your team to take a lot of emphasis on the customer, if you don’t have something in your culture document that says that matters, how does that new employee know? And you know as I was thinking about coming on the podcast, I’m so passionate about pharmacists and what it takes for them to be successful, you know the most common thing I have never seen written down? And I won’t say never, but most of the time when a pharmacy’s got a goal and they want to reach it and they’re just not making any progress and they get me to come in and help, they never have a goal written down. So, I’ve went around to a lot of pharmacies on day one where we’re kind of doing an onboarding and kind of see what’s going on. And the owner sometimes can clearly tell me what their goal is. Sometimes they can’t. But when they tell me, then I walk around to the team and I just randomly ask a few people, hey, what are your goals this quarter? And I can’t tell you how many times that nobody on the whole team knows any of the goals. And so that lack of clarity, that lack of simply writing down that our goal is to fill so many compounded prescriptions this quarter. Our goal is to offer this new over the counter lift chair that’s really good for the patient. And we make profit on, and our goal is XYZ. Having three clear goals is all it takes for the team to walk in every morning and see what those goals are. I always said you need a team huddle every morning. If it’s good enough for Google, it’s good enough for my team back in the day. So, we would have a team huddle, and that huddle was simple. Now, I always tell people it’s a huddle, not a meeting. And I was like, in the football game, if the huddle takes five minutes, then they’re going to get delay of game. So, your morning huddle, I always said, needed to be less than two minutes. Quick, quick.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: I actually wrote that down. wrote down the daily huddle to pick up on that. I like that.
Chris Cornelison: And so, the thing
Bonnie E. Bond, CPA, MBA: I follow a guy on TikTok that does this I think it’s a law firm and what he’s known for if you’ve ever seen him is he plays he’s like the President, CFO whatever he plays like some kind of crazy music just to bring everybody in it’s a real quick one minute powwow everybody kind of gets pumped up because he does something usually silly so but I don’t know stuff like that is kind of a good way to start your morning.
Chris Cornelison: Absolutely. I’ve got a huddle process that I give away free on the website. So, if you want to go pick up the template, one of the things I’ve got is the huddle process. And I can give it to your listeners really quick. Our morning process was pretty much, did we have any problems yesterday? Did we make some erroneous error that we need to address right now? Hopefully most days that’s no, and you move on to number two. Number two is, how did we do against our goals yesterday? So, if we’re trying to sell XYZ compound, did we identify any opportunities yesterday? Did we actually talk to any patients about it yesterday? And we charted that on our goal sheet. And so hopefully we get to celebrate that and then hopefully we refocus on what’s going on today. And all good huddles should leave with a plus one, even if they start with a minus one. And, you know, hey, let’s go, let’s get after it. Let’s have a good day. And this is how we do it. So, there’s total clarity on what needs to be accomplished that day.
Bonnie E. Bond, CPA, MBA: And you know, without mentioning any names, there’s a client that I work with that, I mean, I don’t know, maybe he’s read your book, maybe, but I know that these things can happen and he is a perfect example of that in that he has the lowest payroll percentage, which you know how important that is as a pharmacy owner, that of any client that I work with, and you would think that would relate to some maybe some negative things. But I have actually talked to a lot of his staff because we have a really good relationship and I’ll ask him like how, because he’ll tell you I’ll work them to the bone. But then, he’s very clear about when you said that’s what I thought about, he’s very clear about his expectations. They want to work there, they’re motivated to work there, they’re happy to be there and he takes care of them, and he has like the lowest turnover for payroll. But it’s just amazing to me how all of those things seem to work together. Its…
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: It’s Chris’s book in action with that client, because I know who you’re talking about. And anybody listening out there, to not understand how important these things are that we’re talking about here today, it’s extremely important because it can, it really does make a difference in the business. I mean, there’s, it’s hands down.
Bonnie E. Bond, CPA, MBA: Yes, it’s amazing because I don’t think he pays anybody too terribly far out of the norm of what the different positions would be paid. He will gladly tell you and they will tell you that they are worked hard, but he takes care of them, and he motivates them and it can be done and have all those pieces in one place in it. So, it’s always amazed me to see that.
Chris Cornelison: You want me to add a little something to that right on point with what you’re saying, Bonnie. When you’ve got a bad culture and you get too busy, which we all work hard in the industry, Lord knows I’ve been doing it all my life, I understand that workflow is serious and it does get busy. But when you don’t have clarity and you don’t have a good culture, you constantly just add another employee, and you think that’s going to fix your problem. But that employee comes into an environment of confusion, and there’s no clarity and that new employee doesn’t know what your daily goals are. That new employee doesn’t know how you got behind because you didn’t have an awareness of why you hired that new employee. You just hired that new employee to help and it’s so generic you just wind up with more and more and more employees with the same problems.
Bonnie E. Bond, CPA, MBA: Keep snowballing. Yep.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: Man, that’s an interesting point. So, Before you hire that new employee, look at yourself. Are you writing things down? Are you clear with your staff? Do you have the processes, procedures? And what you also mentioned in the book is the job descriptions, which I think is important, or you call them job positions, I believe, position agreements in there.
Chris Cornelison: Position agreements, position agreements.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: Which are very important because you want staff to come on board, you want them to know what they’re there to do and what the expectation is, which I’m sure is missing in a lot of cases.
Chris Cornelison: You know, the reason, shout out to my long time business coach, Paul Simpson, he really urged me to call them Position Agreements back in the day because you want to sit down when you do your buy-in review or when you hire a new employee and you want to say, these are the general skills, things that are going to take about 80% of your day up. So, you have got to cover those and make sure you can handle that. And then these are the goals we’re trying to reach with your position. And this is how your position increases revenue to the company. And this is what I think it does. What do you think you can do? What have I left off here? And then at the end of the buy-in reviews or the onboarding hiring, you literally say, I’m agreeing with you that this is the best way for you to be successful. And if you’re agreeing with that, then we both sign. It’s not a contract, it’s a position agreement. It’s an agreement between me and the employee that this is the best way to make it happen. And then we roll back into that and we actually tweak them every six months. Sometimes sooner.
Bonnie E. Bond, CPA, MBA: Yeah. Because everything’s changing and evolving. So, it could never just stay. Yeah, that’s a good point. Yeah. Well, I know even for us internally, we’ve worked really hard over the last few years to do a better job with definitely when you say expectations, that’s huge. Putting it out there, what everybody’s expected to do from every level. Definitely setting our goals. We have big goals for us…
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: You got that right.
Bonnie E. Bond, CPA, MBA: Over the next few years, we talked heavily about that at the end of last year. So, you know, we’re still a work in process too, but I think we’re trying to hit on a lot of these things. It makes a big difference.
Chris Cornelison: Awesome. Yeah, we’re all works in progress. We’re all trying to move forward, grow. Yeah.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: So, then we get to rule number three, Chris, which is praise what you want repeated. And this is your go-to here. And I got my coin, you know, I got my coin. Bonnie, I’m gonna give you my first praise that you are the superstar of the show and I am not, and you are the professional. So, here’s your praise coin.
Chris Cornelison: Yeah. Yeah.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: But no, Chris, kind of expand on that, you know, always reinforcing the good behavior, good actions, the things staff are doing that are working really well. And then that allows the opportunity for honesty, maybe when there’s issues and concerns that do need to be brought up and addressed.
Chris Cornelison: Absolutely. You know, a little tidbit, I’m working on a TED Talk right now and the TED Talk is only going to be based on the power of praise, nothing else. I believe you read my book; you don’t get anything out of it except the ability to start using the power of praise. I think your team will get better because there’s a few things I really believe about praise. Number one, you praise what you want repeated. People they’re not used to praising so I get asked the question all the time “what types of things can I praise?” and I say “well all praise counts.” So, if you want to say hey Chris, I really like your Solutions Rx shirt today. That’s two thumbs up. That counts that’s praise, but that’s not gonna help me get toward my goal. So if your goal is to sell a probiotic with every antibiotic and somebody actually takes the time to be aware that they’re filling an antibiotic you praise it “hey way to go wait it way to acknowledge that we’ve got that opportunity there.” When somebody goes down and has a consultation with the patient you praise them for actually taking that leap of faith and having the consultation. You praise them when they get told “no.” Now, why would you praise somebody when they get told no? Because you want them to try again and you want them to keep trying so you praise any action you want repeated. And the other thing that the reason I use the praise coins to train my managers for all these years and entrepreneurs and actually CEOs in corporate America I’ve been working with lately, the reason I use these coins to train the managers is because I train them to praise 10 times a day. You see the manager or the director level, they have to be aware of what’s going on around them to praise. So, I’m actually holding that manager accountable to notice the things going on that make us propel toward our goals. And we’re sending praise down to the employee that makes it happen. So, we’re praising what we want repeated and we’re holding the manager accountable to coach what we want repeated.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: I like it. I agree with that. I really liked that.
Bonnie E. Bond, CPA, MBA: I hate to keep bringing my husband into this. I hope he doesn’t listen, but truthfully, people are motivated obviously by different things. People are motivated by money. I’m personally motivated by money. I’m also motivated by praise, but I will use my husband as an example. That man will come home and if his supervisor or boss has really given him some sort of praise, just a verbal, atta boy. I mean, he, that’s all it takes for him. He could, I mean, he, I could just, he’s an example of that. Like, I mean, because I joke on him about, I’m like, man, all they need is just, I say it all the time. It’s like, and we have employees like that too. And myself, I’m, you know, they just need to be stroked. They need to know. But that is a huge motivator because I see it with him. I know that that is the case for some people. It could make all the difference in the world.
Chris Cornelison: You know…
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: And then he gets home and Bonnie and you’re like “ahhh”
Bonnie E. Bond, CPA, MBA: No, I’m just kidding. No, seriously, I see that with my own eyes. And to compare it, it has been a month and maybe this, or he’s done something that he thinks is really great and nobody has said anything, he will say, I cannot believe that nobody has noticed this. And so, it’s a big deal. I just see this through him. It’s a huge deal.
Chris Cornelison: You know…Lack of appreciation is the number one reason people leave their jobs. It’s not money. It’s money if you can’t pay your bills. But the minute you make enough money to pay your bills, lack of appreciation is the number one reason. There’s two glaring reasons people don’t feel appreciated on a day-to-day basis. Number one, there was no clarity in goals. So, we don’t go to work to accomplish anything. We go to work, hit the clock, and fill prescriptions all day. We don’t go to work and have a goal of patient care that we talk about, we get excited about, we get passionate about. So, there’s nothing to be appreciated for in that environment. And then the next thing is when we have goals, but the leader doesn’t praise people toward those goals, then they feel like nobody sees them. Nobody notices what they do. So, your job environment becomes generic. It becomes boring. And that lack of empathy is why people stall out, that’s why they get burned out, that’s why they’re stressed out, and that’s why they will leave for another job.
Bonnie E. Bond, CPA, MBA: Or why they don’t feel the need to go the extra mile because nobody even knows why am I killing myself and nobody even acknowledges or sees it.
Chris Cornelison: Yeah, why go the extra mile when nobody noticed that I did the first mile? Yeah, yeah.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: These are true words here, I’ll tell you. And another point to add to this, Chris, is what I’ve noticed is that the rock stars on your team want clarity. They want, going back to writing things down, they want that clarity. They want those expectations. They thrive on that clarity. If you don’t have that, your rock star team, they’re not gonna be engaged like they should be, or they’re gonna move elsewhere.
Chris Cornelison: Oh yeah, 100%. You know, I remember the one thing that always stood out to me about the old book Primal Leadership is, is they had all these studies and literally just acknowledging the people on your team, telling them good morning with a smile, had a direct impact on sales. I want to say sales went up. I hope I’m not quoting wrong. I think its sales went up 3 % in companies that didn’t speak to all their employees, the ones that did. Maybe it was only one or two, because I can’t remember the percentage, but there was a direct impact on companies that put that in play, ones that didn’t. Just acknowledging people. So just imagine what a high five when they make a good sale or a way to go when they do something good. Or, hey, I wanna make sure you touch my praise going today. Sometimes I let people feel it.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: And then hold them accountable. Well, that’s rule number four here, hold it accountable. So, you had the clarity, you had the expectations, you got it written down. You’re praising them but then allows you to also hold them accountable.
Chris Cornelison: Yep, here’s the key to accountability. You hold people accountable inside the same culture that you praise them with. It doesn’t make them bad people that they messed something up. And you may have to tell somebody they need to do this safer. They need to do this faster so that we can meet production. They need to get this exactly right so it sets the next team member up for success. It doesn’t make them bad people because they didn’t do it. So, you don’t attack them. You don’t necessarily have to yell at them. You definitely don’t have to insult their character. You just have to bring their attention to the thing that’s wrong. Now here’s the catch. The reason my praise coin says you praise 10 times; it’s 10 times for every time you have to hold somebody accountable too. If all that employee ever hears is you did this wrong, did that wrong, you need to do it like this, which is what my team used to hear 25, 30 years ago, then they shut down. This guy doesn’t appreciate me. He doesn’t care what I’m doing. He just gets on my butt all the time, right? But when that employee’s heard that, I really appreciate how hard you…I really appreciate the attitude you bring here. I really appreciate your attention to detail to our new goal. I really appreciate how you do this and this and this. You build comfort. You build what I call praise equity with that person. And now when I have to say, know, Bonnie, you’ve killed it. We roll out the red carpet all the time. You keep Scotty in line. You keep Austin on point. Your mic wasn’t on. We need you to tweak your mic.
Bonnie E. Bond, CPA, MBA: Can you fix your mic, please? Yeah.
Chris Cornelison: Yeah. Yeah. But you see, you’re not shut down because that’s not the only thing I said to you. Does that make sense?
Bonnie E. Bond, CPA, MBA: Absolutely. Yep.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: No, that’s awesome. And then protect and thrive, rule number five here, Chris.
Chris Cornelison: Yeah. Man, when you bust your tail and your team gets on board, it becomes a very powerful thing. When you walk into work and actually enjoy it instead of hating it, man, the world just opens up. And the upper-level leadership has to protect that all the way down to sometimes letting employees go that just won’t buy into the culture. Because whatever you let be the maximum level of accountability, that’s what your culture will fall to. So sometimes you have to remove a bad apple. It doesn’t make them bad person. It makes them a bad fit for your team. And once you get a team that’s hitting on all cylinders and hitting goals and really buying into what you want the environment to be like, then you have got to protect it at all costs. And when you protect it, it will thrive. You will hit your goals. You will grow.
Bonnie E. Bond, CPA, MBA: That’s huge because if you have even a few people that are not on board they can bring others down and it you know it can be contagious that way so.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: It rots the whole culture you’re trying to do because you got one person rogue and then everybody’s like, well, what’s this all about?
Chris Cornelison: You know, when my managers come to me and they’re having an issue, I listen to their issue and I say, can you coach them up or we coaching them out? You know, and I think it’s one of two ways we don’t have time. The rest of my team and the rest of my rock stars, they deserve to not have to work with turkeys. You know, they used to say back in the day, Eagles don’t hang with turkeys. You don’t drive down the road and see an eagle and a turkey just chilling on the side of the road. They don’t hang out. So, you don’t want to make your Eagles be forced to hang around turkeys all day they will fly off if you make them hang around turkey sauce.
Bonnie E. Bond, CPA, MBA: Yeah, you know what I need to do Scotty is I work with a lot of Chris I work with a lot of transitions so stores purchasing other stores mostly on the buyer side. We have lots of conversations with them. Hey, you’re the new owner. So just because you’re buying this pharmacy that may have the seller’s daughter is the bookkeeper for 10 years and she’s been way overpaid or Uncle Frank that’s 100 years old that sweeps the floor for 30 grand a year. You’re the new sheriff in town. You make the new rules. You’re doing the new interview. You’re bringing these people on or letting them go. But Scotty, mean, people have a really, really hard time with that process. We should give them a copy of the book when we go through the transitions. Seriously.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: Yeah, this should be…They really should. You need to be speaking at the NCPA ownership workshop, Chris.
Chris Cornelison: I’d love to then I cannot get in CPA to call me back. I would be…NCPA I’m reaching out to you right now. I want to be your keynote I want to work in these things every time I call, I’ll get it through He’s been talking to work. Come on, Doug. Give me a buzz man.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: That’s funny.
Bonnie E. Bond, CPA, MBA: I mean people feel like they have to keep that on and keep this culture and because it’s always been that way or they buy a store and That even maybe some of their key people they think they’re their key people They really push back because you start making changes. It’s in a nightmare But when you were talking about some of these things, that’s what I was kind of thinking about in a pharmacy setting I mean, that’s where a lot of change has to happen in those transitions sometimes when you start from the ground up and you kind of already have this mindset it can be easier, I think but when you switch over, it can be a nightmare in some cases.
Chris Cornelison: And you know, we always get handcuffed by that bad apple that we just can’t do without. We can’t do without them. They know everything. And again, I can’t tell you how many owners I’ve worked with over the years that when they let that person, that terrorist off their team, all right, when they let them go, the rest of the team will rise up to that moment really, really quick. And almost every time I’ve ever seen it happen, they really take that leap of faith and they let that person that was just, they couldn’t do without, when they let them go, somebody on the team usually writes the owner a thank you note says, thank you. I really appreciate you getting that person off the team and the team always gets better. I’ve never ever, ever seen a bad apple get let go. No matter how productive they were, you know, in my book, I talk about pace setting leadership, no matter how good a pace setter they were when they were pulling the culture down and you get rid of them, the rest of the team rises up and they are grateful for that. You have to protect the super culture once you create.
Bonnie E. Bond, CPA, MBA: I’ve seen it, for sure.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: Yeah, so it all starts with you Chris and how do they start with checking your book out and your information here?
Chris Cornelison: Wow, you can go to our website www.chriscornelison.com. It’s also available on Amazon. So, if you know if it’s easier for you to grab it on Amazon, be my guest. Or you can call SolutionsRx. We could ship you a copy. You can go to www.solutionsrx.com and become a customer of our supplement company. But probably the easiest way is just my website, chriscornelison.com.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: Alright, so I can’t…
Bonnie E. Bond, CPA, MBA: And look at my sticky note I just made that I’m putting on my monitor.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: Yeah, there you go. You gotta get a coin, Bonnie. I’ll give you a coin. I got it.
Bonnie E. Bond, CPA, MBA: This is good. I’m gonna just make sure I got it stuck here and every day I’m gonna try to do better. I’ve been trying to do that anyway, but 10 times I’m gonna push myself. And a lot of it is just I appreciate and I’m sure this is with lots of managers and owners is that you do appreciate so much that you just get busy and you don’t take the time to make that person aware as much as you should. And so…
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: It makes a difference. It certainly makes a difference.
Chris Cornelison: Yes, and that’s why we use the coin. The coin is to remind the leader to praise. It’s to remind them to be aware that their team’s doing these great things around.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: Chris, I can’t let you go without getting a little bonus episode here into diversified revenue in a pharmacy because you’re with Solutions Rx. So, give us, we have a lot of solutions, RXs, supplements, and so we have a lot of pharmacies that are doing supplements, and we got some pharmacies that do $50,000 a month in supplements. So, anything you wanna kind of touch on there in terms of diversifying some revenue in that space.
Chris Cornelison: Absolutely, Solutions Rx, we think we’ve got great supplements and we do. And there’s a lot of companies out there that have great supplements. What separates us is we have great processes. And I would say whether you use Solutions Rx or any other supplement company, you already have the existing markets and customers walking into your pharmacy. What are you doing with them? You have to have like the probiotic antibiotic market. Everybody, we’ve got our top six products, and we’ve identified the biggest market in those products. And we urge people to just focus on that market, the GLP-1s in our digestive enzyme product. The GLP-1 patients are already there. You don’t have to go out and market a new one. Offer them a solution to all those gastro problems. Obviously, our biggest products are drug nutrient depletion and multivitamin. You’ve already got diabetics, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol patients. You’ve got enough to ask 10 or 15 a day for the whole year every year. What are you doing with it? Because most pharmacies are letting that information go. And so, what happens is you got a patient coming into your pharmacy that you could give a lot of relief to and make their life a lot better, but they don’t know it. It’s not the patient’s job to know drug nutrient depletion exists. It’s not the patient’s job to know there’s alternatives to just taking your GOP-1 and suffering. It’s our job to have some awareness that we’re not talking to these patients. How do we put a process in play to talk to these patients? Because it can be very lucrative and very good for your patient if you actually solve the patient’s problem.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: Write it down, set expectations with your staff, then boom, train and boom.
Bonnie E. Bond, CPA, MBA: There you go.
Chris Cornelison: Daily huddle.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: Daily huddle. I like it. Well, Chris, don’t hold you up anymore. We certainly appreciate you hopping on and sharing some knowledge and wisdom with the pharmacies out there and anybody looking for a good book, go on chriscornelison.com and get you one. So, thank you again, Chris.
Chris Cornelison: Absolutely. Thanks, guys.
