The Bottom Line Pharmacy Podcast Bonus Episode: Appearance on The Pharmacy Podcast Network | AtriumX Recap
Growth Mode…Activated! ✅
From the show floor at the inaugural AtriumX conference, Sykes & Company Leaders Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP and Austin Murray caught up with Todd Eury, Owner and Founder of RxPR and Pharmacy Podcast Network.
On this special bonus episode of the Bottom Line Pharmacy Podcast we touch on:
- Diversifying Revenue in Your Pharmacy
- Expanding Your Long-Term Care Base
- Real – Practical Marketing Strategies
- And Much More
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If you prefer to read this content, the video transcript is below:
Todd Eury: Welcome to a special two part series of the Pharmacy Podcast Network’s exclusive press coverage of AtriumX 2025, the first of its kind pharmacy conference that took place February 27th through March 1st in Orlando, Florida. AtriumX wasn’t just another industry event. It was a collaborative experience bringing together forward thinking pharmacy owners and industry experts to tackle the biggest challenges in pharmacy today. With co-created sessions, real world solutions and a community driven approach. This conference redefined what pharmacy conferences should be. So whether you were in Orlando for Atrium X or missed out on this one of a kind event, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Scotty Sykes.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: Yes.
Todd Eury: Scotty Sykes should be a hashtag. to hashtag Scotty Sykes. Keep yourself out of jail with the IRS with Scotty Sykes.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: Hey, that’s my job. I’ll do anything I can to protect pharmacies and put them on the right path.
Todd Eury: Yeah, all kidding aside for our listeners, Scotty Sykes is part of Sykes & Company. It’s our accountant that we use at the Pharmacy Podcast Network. You’ve helped community pharmacies for freaking years through your dads as the Jedi of all things, tax and keeping people doing things the right way and strategy. But talk to us about the temperament today, and that is we’re at AtriumX, this is the first of its kind conference, but what’s happening in community pharmacy now and your company’s thriving, but you’re also making a difference obviously in community pharmacy. Tell us what’s happening from your perspective.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: Well, the pharmacy industry is constantly evolving and which is fun, provides opportunities. So instead of looking at the negatives of pharmacy, you know, what are the opportunities? And that’s what this group here at Atrium X is, their mindset is, is what are those opportunities? You know, we’ve got those issues in pharmacy in general, but where can I expand and where can I grow this business? And that’s the mindset you have to have in pharmacy. If you don’t, you will be behind, you will not be performing where you should. So, following groups like this and individuals like this who are thinking outside the box, thinking about diversified revenue opportunities. There’s a whole bunch of topics here they’re going over, functional medicine, 503B, Telemedicine is on the top agenda today, for example. Exploring into these areas, being the healthcare center of their communities, the most accessible provider in their communities as well. you there’s just a whole lot of opportunity in pharmacy. Everybody here would, I think, agree to that. And it’s hard, it’s difficult, but it’s fun and challenging, you know. It’s all about taking care of patients.
Todd Eury: You actually take care of your patients, which are your independent community pharmacies, and you guys are the ones that are sitting there being the protectors of tax liability and mistakes and things that they might make. So, you and I have talked about this before adding on new businesses to start giving more services to the community. What is happening in long-term care at home and what should a pharmacist or pharmacy owner kind of look out for if they’re changing their business model a bit?
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: So, for long-term care at home in particular, you know, if you’re a pharmacy out there, you absolutely have to explore this area because you’re already servicing these a lot of qualified patients here. so, you know, moving into that long-term care at home space and these contracts, you know, better reimbursements in a lot of cases, is really a no-brainer because again, you’re already servicing these clients or you got to figure out how to service them, you know, because you have to have the compliance piece to it and delivery and things like that. But that’s kind of a low-hanging fruit now and you got to be on that as a mentor in the pharmacy today. I tell pharmacy owners, you want to get to 50 patients at a minimum, but once you get to 100, 200 patients, you really start to see a difference in margin. that gross margin, our belief is that gross margin’s kind of that number one KPI, key performance indicator, because that’s going to determine where you are, what opportunities you have, where the issues are. It’s all about that revenue and that margin, what’s happening there. From there, the rest of it kind of falls in place, but you got to maximize that gross margin.
Todd Eury: All right, so Master the Margin is, one of the podcasts that we love promoting and putting out through Pharmacy Podcast Network. What other resources can you share with some of the listeners of giving them heads up with what’s happening and opportunities in their business to save more money?
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: Well, we have tons of content, Todd, as you know. We’ve got a couple podcasts, two or three of those. We’re accessible. If you have questions, you reach out to Sykes & Company, you’re going to get a response from me or Austin or someone from our team, if they don’t know the answer, they’ll push it to somebody who does. We’re very responsive. So we’re accessible to anybody. We’re here to help as many pharmacies as we can. And that’s the way we’re going to do it. Shout out to Bonnie. Bonnie’s always willing to help. She makes the podcast like 10 % better. She’s the star of the show. mean, what can I say? And she loves it. She loves being the network. We love having you overseeing and someone that we can go back to with questions and appreciate it.
Todd Eury: What’s the next conference you guys are going to?
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: We’re going to APC a couple weeks in Destin. So we’ll be there.
Alright. Look out for Sykes & Company. Check them out. SykesAndCompanyPA.com.
Scotty Sykes, CPA, CFP®: Yep. That’s right. Alrighty.
Todd Eury: Hey, AtriumX 2025, the inaugural, we’re here and I’m sitting here with Austin Murray who works with the Pharmacy Podcast Network with Sykes and Company. This is a fun event to be at Austin when it’s the first of its kind.
Austin Murray: Yeah, absolutely. Anytime you have a pioneer kind of event like this, that’s a first of its kind. It’s always really interesting to see what are they, what are pharmacy owners interested in you know, what are their specific pain points? What are the problems that they’re trying to solve? And I love it.
Todd Eury: Well, one of the things that I found interesting about this conference is there was no specific agenda and Nicolette Matthey, and the team, are waiting to cultivate and come together and have the participants decide what’s the most important things happening in our pharmacy profession. What should we all be talking about that really makes sense? Let’s get away from the traditional way that conferences do things, that are the agenda set, the speakers are picked out. And sometimes the content isn’t as relative as something that is mastermind into existence.
Austin Murray: Yeah, you know, it’s interesting you bring that up because I think we live in a world now where there’s a lot of information out there. You know, there’s a lot of different choices that you have. And I think anytime you can kind of make something a little bit more personalized for the consumer, I’m all on board for that. And I think, you know, especially in an event like this where the pharmacy owner is literally curating what they want their experience to be like. I think that’s fantastic.
Todd Eury: So, one of the challenges that I see from afar, I’ve never owned a pharmacy, didn’t operate a pharmacy, I’m not a pharmacist, you’re not a pharmacist but I’ve been soaking in pharmacy for more than 20 years. So, I see things from a different perspective than the user, the operator does. And something that I’m encouraging all the listeners listening right now is how powerful your stories are, how powerful your successes are in your community. You and I constantly talk about, cause we’re content development nerds. We always talk about content development. Let’s talk about right now for the listeners of the podcast series. Why is it so important to dial into your specific sector, your specific expertise, and even your specific community with custom content?
Austin Murray: Yeah, it’s an interesting question. I think, you know, the reasons for it, there’s many different layers to it. You know, quite frankly, anything that you can do to position yourself as a thought leader, anything that you can do to position your brand as specific to that niche. You know, when you think about marketing, and if you’re reaching kind of a broader audience, your message isn’t going to be as sticky to the listener. Whereas with independent pharmacy, you can go really niche. So you can do independent pharmacy in general, or you can go even tighter and do independent retail, independent long-term care, independent compounding, which is a lot of like the content that we’re kind of doing now at Sykes is we want to focus more on, hey, how can we reach more independent long-term care pharmacies? How can we reach more independent compounders? And some of these pharmacies, they do a lot. They do a lot of overlap where they’ll have compounding and then they’ll also do long-term care as well. And so that’s kind of what we want to do is we want to take our audience, segment it down and focus on how can we create custom content so that way it’s just an easier and more educational for the consumer.
Todd Eury: It is and Austin and I are talking about a B2B environment where our business is Sykes and Company, Pharmacy Podcast Network, RXPR, is reaching out to other businesses to communicate better with, let’s say, privately owned pharmacies. But I want to make another point. You pharmacist owners out there that are listening to this podcast right now, you don’t realize maybe, or you might forget because you’re just so busy, that your community is in a time of information overload, and sometimes they have no one to trust.
Austin Murray: That’s right.
Todd Eury: Because our, even our federal government administration is in a crazy time of flux and things are very, in some ways from a consumer’s perspective, extremely destabilized. So, who is the healthcare trusted provider already embedded in the community? Has the community’s trust already? There’s been the Maple Street Community Pharmacy for 25 years. You have an opportunity to educate and to get between the false and the fake news and the Dr. Google and really deliver good content to your community, specific to your community. Not anything can. And organizations like Sykes can peel that out of how do we do it from an accounting perspective and best practice and how do we teach you to do things in steps.You and I, Austin, are content developers. And I think of my organization and thinking, well, how can we pass on some of that to our community pharmacy, independent pharmacy owners? I like how you broke it down. Long-term care, privately owned, specialty pharmacy, privately owned, community, privately owned. And now this new segment that’s getting a lot of attention, long-term care pharmacy at home and treating a home as a extension of a facility or an assisted living facility. What do you think of trying to take what you and I know and somehow pass it on to our customers?
Austin Murray: Sure. You know, when you think about content, going back to what you mentioned about content development, what I like to think about is, you know, most people are inundated with content all the time. Content is everywhere. And so, if you can I like to think of it in terms of topics. There are certain topics, there are certain pain points that people are dealing with. And if your solution or if your marketing isn’t in the top three pieces of content or things that, topics that they’re thinking about whenever they wake up, then it’s not going to resonate. It’s not going to be as sticky. So, what I like to do is I like to say, okay, what are our content or topics that we have in general and how can we bucket that out? For a pharmacy, this might look like, you know, taking some of the pain points that your current customers are feeling and breaking that down into more specific subtopics. So, you know, let’s say, for example, somebody might be dealing with a weight loss issue. Well, we can take that weight loss issue, especially with the GLP-1 situation that we have, and we can break that down into tons of different, we can layer in tons of different pieces of content just off of that using those different topics. And so, and you mentioned being more ingrained in the community. What that does is, you know, when you’re putting content out like that, that makes you stickier within that specific area.
Todd Eury: So, a shout out to our community pharmacy owners. You probably are thinking, I don’t have time to develop that content. That’s why there’s organizations out there like GRX marketing and dispense marketing and these outsourcing organizations that are ready to work with you to dial into your specific community. And if you start using hashtags of your city, if you’re like hashtag Austin or hashtag Butler or some city and people find that, that community will pay more attention to that custom content because it feels more like it’s their it’s their content. It’s something that’s been developed specifically for them. And I want listeners to think about that, customizing your content, customizing your marketing, realizing the impact that you’re making with being trusted. And then of course, I want you to take advantage of headlines. I want you to think about this. If something’s happening in the news, it’s best for you to get on TikTok or get on Instagram or get on Twitter X or get on LinkedIn or whatever your favorite platform is get one of your pharmacy technicians to help you, reach out to GRX Marketing or Dispense Marketing or whatever, or even reach out to us and be like, okay, I’m gonna make content that’s based on the headline, big headline news, they’re seeing it at the Wall Street Journal and USA Today, make a comment on it and then make it, draw it back to your pharmacy, draw it back to your expertise. And now all of a sudden, you have phone calls coming in, people are walking into your store saying, “Hey, I saw you comment about the the measles vaccine, right?” That’s hot right now and being talked about. Well, give them your opinion and give them the testimony and give them, I don’t know, give them a vaccine for God’s sakes. You know, do something at that time that engages them, but don’t lose an opportunity to engage your specific community with customized content that has everything to do with the current events of what’s going on.
Austin Murray: Yeah, going back to what you said about content, another way to kind of think of this, a lot of pharmacy owners, they’re, really busy dealing with patients, really busy running the pharmacy. They might not have the time to film like a 32nd or a one-minute reel. And the way that I like to think of it is building more of an infrastructure. So, take a piece of like long form content, for example, you know, it takes maybe an hour, once a month, and you can chop that piece of long form content. Let’s say you did like an hour, a webinar or an hour podcast for your local community on the GLP one topic. can break that podcast down into three different topics. And that one-hour podcast is enough content for a month, two months, three months. And then you can also repurpose that content. So, let’s say, for example, you’ve also got that same episode. You’ve got the short form versions of that. Well, then you can also take the transcript, and you can create things like engaging carousels, engaging static posts, things like that as kind of filler in between content as well. And it’s still revolved around the same topic. And so, you know, as we’re in this kind of one of the era that I like to say that we’re in this era of personalization at scale. So, we’re in this era of how can we personalize things for consumers and in a way to where we’re not spending a ton of time and a ton of effort and money investing in all this. How can we personalize things for our consumers in a way that is actually scalable? One of the ways you can do that is through content and creating a nice infrastructure.
Todd Eury: So, I want you listeners to really understand something Sykes and Company has been around for how many years now? 45. And it’s all been focused on the survival and the thriving of our community pharmacies or independent pharmacies, but they’re branching out into other sectors of pharmacy. They have such an understanding of what’s happening in the markets. It’s so personalized, just like we’re telling you that you need to deal and dish out content to your community that is personalized. Think about the infrastructure of your money and of your cash flow. These are the guys to reach out to. They get it. And then people like Austin are going to sprinkle in other things to expand your business when they get talking to you and account management and things that they’re doing. We appreciate your support of the Pharmacy Podcast Network. Austin, we like being here with you at AtriumX and we can’t wait to work with you in an upcoming episode.
Austin Murray: Yeah, I love it here. Thanks for having me on.
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