Startup Pharmacy “The Pharmacy” on How to Be Successful
On The Bottom Line Pharmacy Podcast, our team talks to the owner of The Pharmacy startup in Florence, South Carolina, Jarrod Tippins, PharmD. After only six years, The Pharmacy has seen great success. What are some contributing factors to his startup pharmacy success?
- Jarrod tries to be different from other pharmacies. (He drives to Pennsylvania, picks apples and hands out those apples to his patients.)
- He creates experiences for his staff, like bringing them to see Luke Combs in Charleston.
- Clear processes and technology keep everyone moving in the same direction.
- Location, location, location.
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.
Like, subscribe and share wherever you listen to podcasts.
If you prefer to read this content, the video transcript is below.
Bonnie: Well, hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of our Bottom Line Pharmacy Podcast. Today we are super excited to have a client and good friend of ours, Jarrod Tippins from The Pharmacy, in Florence, South Carolina with us. Jarrod, how are you today?
Jarrod: I’m doing well guys, how are you all?
Bonnie: Doing great.
Scotty: Fantastic. Appreciate you getting on today, Jarrod. You are looking good, looking fresh.
Jarrod: Appreciate it.
Bonnie: How is it going there in Florence, Jarrod, with the pharmacy?
Jarrod: Life is good. Today marks six years of the pharmacy being open, fresh startup, fresh build-out, started from the bottom, zero prescriptions and here we are today averaging around a thousand scripts a day.
Bonnie: Yeah, it is awesome.
Jarrod: Six years later and today is truly the six marks. November 29, 2016 we opened the doors here at The Pharmacy in Florence, South Carolina.
Bonnie: That is super, congratulations on that. I mean…
Kendell: Yeah, congrats.
Bonnie: Yeah, wow. That is a big part of what we kind of want to talk about today is, you know, startups and really how to be super successful with the startup. I work with lots of startups as you know, it is how you know our relationship started, but I will say, I do not have a problem saying it. You were probably the most successful startup that I have ever worked with in our client base as far as how quickly you were able to become profitable and successful and the growth happened so quickly. And again, like you mentioned, I just want to throw it out there, I mean you, you were pure startup, this was not a backfill, this was not any kind of runoff from some other sort of pharmacy. You built your building from scratch and started right there in Florence. Obviously the average for lots of startups, we like to say is, you know, can be 18 to 24 months is what we would like to see for pharmacies to become profitable is to start showing some positive income. But you did that within a couple months. So tell us, what do you think was the biggest factor in allowing you to be successful quicker? Was it just luck or were there other factors you think involved?
Jarrod: So I think there were a couple of things that led to success. So one would be location. So I kind of went out on a limb and built a store on a busy corner where Walgreens was actually going to build their building. A guy that was in Rotary with me had a land for sale and I found out that Walgreens might be going there. So I kind of plucked that from them. So we have about now that within six years, at that time it was around 30,000 cars on one road and 20,000 on the other, right in, right out. Great location. So now that has probably increased 5,000 to 7,000 on each side as this area continues to grow. So location, location, location I think is key and people always say it and I always say, you know, just throwing some numbers out there, if you borrowed $3 million and you cannot pay your note that you will be broke. And if you borrow $800,000 and you go in a strip center on a side road that nobody knows about and you cannot pay your note, you are going to be broke. So I always knew I wanted to go big or go home. So we wanted to go on a major corner and be able to have people there.
The second thing was as kind of a theme around here everybody who works with me kind of knows that I always talk about meaningful relationships, building meaningful relationships within the community. So I did not grow up essentially here in Florence. So I grew up around 30 minutes away from here in Lake City, South Carolina. And so when I got to Florence, I started getting involved, I got on the board for county disabilities and special needs. I got on the board for autism. I got on the board from a cloud foundation. So I started getting involved with Rotary Club, everything that I could be involved in. I wanted to be at the table instead of on the table. I always say that as well. So I wanted to be at the table with a lot of key stakeholders in the town and make meaningful relationships. So loving on people, you know, making those relationships. I often say if you could put love in a bottle and you could sell it, you would not have to work very long. All people are looking for is for love. So I created a master plan of neighborhoods and actually when we were very slow in the beginning, I put on shorts and tennis shoes, a polo shirt, went door to door with door hangers and koozies and introduced myself and said, “Hey, I am Jarrod Tippons, I own the new pharmacy on the corner.” I pop my own belt line, obviously everybody has seen the building going up. That is one advantage of building a store. It gives people time to talk about it and kind of see what is going on and it gives the spin of what is happening when you are building a store rather than just moving in. The building is already been there.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jarrod: So obviously people knew that the pharmacy was there. So I went around and made those relationships and it was something that was kind of unique, you know, it stood out. How many pharmacists go to people’s door and knock on the door or ring the doorbell and introduce themselves.
Bonnie: And I do remember, I remember having a call with you months into it just to talk about your financials and whatever. And you were in your car and you were delivering, I believe at the time, like you yourself were delivering some things to people. And I just remember thinking that that was super neat.
Jarrod: Right.
Bonnie: Like you said, a great thing to do when you are slower in the beginning, that is the time to get out there and get your face out there in the community.
Jarrod: Definitely, and you know, I think most people are kind of scared to start off with two pharmacists, but you know, one pharmacist being at the store, one pharmacist being out in the community, trying to get people in is kind of a smart, you know, strategy. And so I went to those doors, I knocked on those doors, met those people. So when Kmart closed down, down the road, those people who did they remember coming to their door? They remembered me, you know, they were like, what pharmacy should I go to? But it stuck out in their mind, even if it had been a year ago, it kind of still resonated. And they passed by this busy location every day. When Rite Aid closed down, what happened? People remembered me going through the door. It is just like McDonald’s, you know, I look at them and I say, you know, back in the day when they were starting, everybody had square signs, you know, that is all I see. But what did McDonald’s do? They did arches. So they stood out, their signs stood out.
So what could we do to stand out in our community at the pharmacy? What makes us different? You know, everybody can put pills in a bottle, everybody can, you know, say, “Hey, how are you?” But you know, execution is important, but also the meaningful relationships. So in doing what sticks out and is different from someone. Another example is every year I always go to Pennsylvania and I buy apples. And in the fall we give apples out at the drive-through. I mean we just do everything we can do to just kind of be different. Are you ever going to get apples at the drive-through at CVS? You are not, I know that sounds silly and it is a very small thing, but people like to this day, just a few months ago it happened. They were like, “Thank you for the apples.” Somebody just told me that last night at the dinner party.
Scotty: Those are some good apples.
Jarrod: Yeah, they’re good, they’re good apples, but…
Bonnie: Yeah and it is not like you just went and got them from the grocery store. I mean you made the effort to go and get them from Pennsylvania, bring them down, yeah.
Jarrod: Straight off the tree. Yeah, we bag them in pharmacy bags like that you would use at the grocery store to kind of take things out. So… have that logo on there. These are just the different things I think that stick out: loving on people, going the extra mile. We do not offer delivery service here, but obviously if somebody, if they needed us to take them something we would, you know, it is a small thing. So we give back to this community a lot. I think finding, you probably could say on our charitable contributions, we probably gave back over a $100,000 last year to this community and…
Bonnie: And you even put yourself out there and danced in a competition. I mean that is…
Jarrod: Right, yeah, I did dance.
Bonnie: That is really…
Jarrod: Yeah, we raised…
Scotty: That is worth the hundred thousand dollar donation right there.
Jarrod: It was crazy. So for the school foundation here, we raised around $60,000 and we just asked, got the technicians to ask people at the register, “Jarrod, our pharmacist is dancing with the stars, would you like to do a donation?” Obviously I got some corporate donations as well from friends. But you know, just those small things, being involved, letting people know who you are and having that good character and taking care of people can lead to success.
Bonnie: What things do you think maybe you are doing that is outside of, we talk about this a lot outside of just normal script fills are you doing there to you know, different, different lines of revenue?
Jarrod: Yeah, so I think that is very important. You know, when COVID first came out or was presented to us, you know, I thought maybe we could start testing. We had just got our clear waiver a few months prior to that and I said maybe we could COVID test and essentially we started with four spots. I thought four spots would be tough and anyway, we got some phones and created a designated line and soon man it blew up. We were doing 600 to 700 COVID tests a day and in a two-year span we did over 100,000 COVID tests. So that was one thing in the last two years it kind of is not our normal scope of practice, but we made it happen.
Bonnie: You killed it with the COVID response there. I mean I just have to say, I mean the, from the signage to the way everything, you know, moved around.
Scotty: Execution was on point.
Bonnie: Man it was. Phenomenal.
Jarrod: Yeah so we like in a 24-hour span, I had signs made. I had a post put up in the parking lot, I had sandbags, our post put in five-gallon buckets of sand around it and we created like 20 parking spots and we would create a queue and just pull people into those spots and we had tables lined up on the inside. I even had the guy who washes my car in a yellow jacket along with some other guys with walkie-talkies, kind of like Chick-fil-A-style executing and telling people where to go. So that was one thing that was really strong for us. Also getting into nursing homes and executing COVID vaccines along with flu vaccines just recently. So the new booster came out so we could administer the flu vaccine and COVID booster as well. So we got into a few nursing homes that was pretty good. You could make really well, you know, in one day or half a day, I mean without immunizing 100 to 200 people. So that was really big for us as well.
Scotty: Jarrod you know, you really have a model for how to do it and location, relationships, you know, pounding the pavement; you really could write a book on that. But what, going forward, where you are here six years in, I mean, where do you see the biggest challenges? Where do you see kind of what works next for the pharmacy there and how you are going to continue to grow and serve your community?
Jarrod: Yes, I am always telling my pharmacists when we have our team meeting that you know, I need to be working on the business instead of in the business and coming up with a unique idea and seeing where we could go. So I have many different thoughts about where we could go in the future, whether it be specialty and we do not have a specialty pharmacy in this county, so maybe align with the hospital systems here and maybe do 340B along with specialty. Another thought or idea that I had was maybe we could put a couple of physicians here, add onto the back of the building and do collaborative practice agreements and embed pharmacists into that practice doing chronic care management, annual wellness business, remote patient monitoring. So kind of always thinking about how can we generate revenue outside of just traditional dispensing. So our next thing is one of those things and I actually just purchased all the land next to my store. So we have about 14 acres on this corner now. So we have a lot of options to do whatever we want to. So I think I will just probably build onto the back of the store. I think infusion pharmacy is huge. I think a lot of your blockbuster drugs and where things are happening is in specialty pharmacy per se. I think we put specialty pharmacy on it, but I do not see a lot of new blockbuster drugs coming out in a non-injectable form or a pill form so to speak. So I think that specialty pharmacy and aligning with some of the hospitals and doing 340B will make us successful for sure.
Kendell: I have a question. So I love what you said about working on the business instead of in the business. Right now where I think nationwide and any industry, it is a real challenge to find the right talent that you want. How do you motivate your people? How do you find the right person and motivate them to kind of take responsibility within the pharmacy that allows you the freedom to then work on the business instead of in the business?
Jarrod: Yeah, Kendell. So I do not get to do that every day, but I tell you, creating strong policies and procedures and also every person that I hire, I always tell them, if you take care of me and take care of the patient, I will take care of you. So one example was this past weekend we went to Charleston. We had a big weekend, took everybody, we stayed in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, we went to High Cotton and ate. We had the menu set out, had the pharmacy logo at the top. You know, I just set the bar real high and wherever you set the bar in your pharmacy is where the people will go. People want to be a part of what is successful and so I give them opportunities that maybe they would not have otherwise. So we go on trips and like this past summer we went to Isle of Palms. So we closed the pharmacy down one Saturday. So we left on Friday, we went to Isle of Palms and stayed at this nice resort. We went to downtown Charleston and ate some good food. You know, I gave Christmas bonuses and so I incentivized people monetarily. But what I have learned is it is not always monetarily what people are looking for. People are looking for experiences. So I try to combine both together and push forward. Also, I have daily, weekly talks and I have read this book called Nine Lies About Work. And one of those things is you need to have a conversation with all your people, at least if it is just five minutes once a week. So I try, whether it be positive or whether it be negative, always try to take five minutes, at least five minutes with each person and have a conversation. If I do not get to have it at the store, I will call them on the phone at night or whatever. And I know that sounds a little different as well, but it is just what makes it work. This is what I like that you are doing. This is what I saw that you are doing. If I am not here and I am driving down the interstate working on something I am watching the cameras… I am listening to what is happening. Are we asking for flu shots? Are we doing…I always preach, “Let’s do the same thing the same way every single time,” when it comes to a production-type standpoint. Because it creates neuro pathways in your brain to become better and better and better. So we, if you come to our drive-through, we say the same thing every time. “Hey, how are you? What name are you picking up for?” And then we have a secondary person going to pull the bag or either we are on a walkie-talkie and somebody is outside and they are calling the names into the inside and they are pulling the bags and putting them on the bar in order where we could execute that line Chick-fil-A style. So that is another thing that sticks out in our community. We move our drive-through line. We, you know, so talking about incentivizing the people who work here, I just keep the bar very high. People will rise to the bar. If you have low expectations, you get low expectations. If you have high expectations, that is what you get. People want to be a part of what is successful. They do not want to be mundane, they do not want to be in a situation where things are not fresh, new and innovative. They want to be a part of something that is winning. They want to be on a winning team.
Bonnie: I always enjoy…
Scotty: Chick-fil-A pharmacy right there.
Bonnie: I always enjoy giving Ollin a hard time about when I see you do the trips and stuff with the staff. I am like, look what Jarrod is doing this weekend. He is like, stop it, because it is so funny.
Jarrod: They love that and that gives us a time we get a… So it does a couple things, right? So they get to experience a nice meal, they get to experience a nice hotel, they get to experience those kind of things. But our time together and building those relationships that I talked about that we were, we build with our patients among a team, it gets everybody to know everybody and where their shortcomings are and how can they help each other and different things. So you learn a lot about people when you spend a weekend with them. And so we want everybody to be aware. Everybody is aware when you work with someone where you know what people might have going on, but we do not always know what is going on in people’s lives. So they get to know each other a little bit better. And it is just like our patients, when they show up and they are frustrated, you never know what is going on in somebody else’s life. I always preach that as well. Same thing with the people who work here. You never know what is going on within their lives. So we need to have compassion and understanding so it creates, you know, a good bond between them when they have that time together.
Bonnie: And the results are there. I mean you can look at your financials and see how successful your revenue is. Your payroll is one of the lowest percentages of sales that I see as well. So, it is incredible to see such a low, tight payroll expense that you have in your store.
Jarrod: Yeah I credit that to having these policies and procedures that even my township reductions when we have somebody print them, pull them, you know prescriptions you know, I say print then rip then print again where the robot can just keep going. So the robot does not usually turn off from 8 until 12. So we get here at eight o’clock, we open at nine o’clock. So it gives us an hour, at the most, the golden hour. That is the most important hour and we can crank out most of our sync during that time. And so we are very efficient and that is how we keep the payroll percentage low even though we pay the people well. Yeah, so the payroll percentage is low, yeah. Another thing that we have taken advantage of going back to that, is at-home COVID tests: that has been a great revenue cycle. So we find out from the patient that they would like them and we put them with their sync and so in Pioneer I just created a speed code and where you put the physician name I just put “=8 HDT” that is eight home COVID tests and I populate the whole prescription in Pioneer. So they are easy to load those prescriptions in and we were proactive in that and we knew what plans would pay for the COVID tests. So we proactively floated those in. If the patient wanted that we just schedule it with their sync until we have lined up or pulled up a lot of at-home COVID tests. And we just pre-fill the bags like an afternoon when we had downtime we just put eight at-home COVID tests in pharmacy bags, staple them and have them ready. Not passing eight home COVID tests over to the pharmacist to check because that is too much and it is too cumbersome for the pharmacist, so anyway. Being efficient, creating efficient ways to do things is what we are looking to do. How can we improve what process that we are doing?
Kendell: Seems like there are people and processes.
Scotty: There is the bottom line too.
Jarrod: For sure.
Scotty: All goes to that bottom line.
Jarrod: Well I think in most pharmacies people can account that payroll is probably one of the highest percentages on there, P&L. So you know you have to monitor that. Making people efficient, you know using those walkie talkies and moving the line you know, it makes things happen.
Bonnie: Absolutely. If you are going to talk to, if a pharmacy listening out there is going to say one thing about becoming efficient inside their pharmacy what would be to you Jarrod the number one thing like you have to have this to operate to maximize efficiency?
Jarrod: Yeah I think technology is important So I try to stay ahead on the technology. So we have pill counting machines and we also have robotics as well. So yesterday just the robot itself did 560 prescriptions. So it is accounting for maybe 50% to 60% on most days. So that works out well.
Bonnie: It is amazing.
Jarrod: Of course most of those prescriptions are synchronization prescriptions. So you know, when they come out, they come out. We prioritize our prescriptions based upon color of baskets. We have green for a waiter, we have red for acutes. Like anything that is an antibiotic or anything moniker just Tamiflu that kind of thing and then we have black baskets for anything that is due in three days. Obviously if it had a control it would be due that next morning. So the night before we leave, we go ahead and push through around 60 to 100 prescriptions and leave the control in there and we will just come in and push the control through on the 30th day that way boom, at 8:20 we will have a hundred prescriptions in the print queue already and we get there at eight o’clock. Pharmacists get here at 7:50, they turn the lights on and that is the expectation at eight o’clock that we are ready to go. Technicians get here at eight o’clock. So we have it down to a time everybody knows what the expectation is. You are here at 7:50, the pharmacist knows that we are looking at the alarm. When you turn the alarm up at 7:50 when you are walking in you get the cash registers ready you get all the computers turned on, turn the pill counting machines on and have this rock and roll.
Scotty: And your staff probably love it, I mean your staff, you know they have a structured area to work, they know exactly what is going on and they probably love that. Plus in addition to all the fun things they get to do.
Jarrod: Fun times, you know. Because there are other newer people it can be intense, but…
Bonnie: Work them to the bone.
Jarrod: Yeah it can be intense but we…
Bonnie: That is why it takes some to…
Jarrod: They like it after a while for sure Scotty.
Scotty: Yeah.
Jarrod: Because nobody likes to work in a confused environment and we all know that pharmacy is in between the patient, the insurance company, the doctor, we got so many variables that could go wrong, right? So the more controlled environment that we have, it makes it better for everybody’s stress levels.
Bonnie: I think it is important like you said that you have, as the owner, to have your finger on the pulse of what is going on. And one of my many favorite Jarrod stories is again, another, we never know where he is going to pop up when we have our monthly calls. He is usually in his car. But one of the days he was in the car and he was in his parking… we were finally like, what are you doing? And he was in the parking lot of his pharmacy. But he was watching, you were monitoring the progress of the drive-through how well things were going through, so.
Jarrod: If you ask anybody here what is one of the most important things for me is going to be moving the drive through because I think and I do not know why that is most important to me but it sticks out to people that we are pretty much faster than you know, Chick-fil-A so to speak. And we can execute that line and every other pharmacy in this town the lines’ always to the road, blocking traffic; it is crazy. So nothing can make people more upset than they get to the window, it is not ready, you know. We make sure we have text messages set up for every new patient who comes here. Every new patient we write, “welcome” on the bag with a exclamation point and then we put text and a question mark that cues the person at the register to say, “Did you get a text message?” Because we do not want to return prescriptions to stock. We do not want people calling to ask us when the prescriptions are ready. They know we have trained them that the prescription is ready when you get your text message. So we are not answering a phone call to say you know, “It is not ready, it is in progress, they have not called it in yet.” They know when they get a text message that it is ready.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Kendell: And so far we have talked a lot about the processes which are really strong, very strong within your pharmacy and it obviously has led to a lot of success. But one thing that you said that I wrote down is selling love in a bottle. How do you feel your pharmacy is able to execute on that kind of vision? To sell love in the bottle? How are you giving love to your patients within your processes?
Jarrod: Yeah, so Kendell, we actually have two pharmacies within one – have Moss Compounding Pharmacy as well. So on any given day we have four or five pharmacists here. And so it gives one pharmacist kind of the opportunity to go out into the aisles. If somebody needs to talk, just like we are doing Medicare plans right now; I call that loving on people. We are taking a pharmacist out of workflow, taking the opportunity to sit down, make sure their drug benefit plan is the best for the patient, they remember that. You sit down and you talk to somebody, they will remember it. So we do that when somebody walks in the door, the pharmacist is at quality assurance, one who is facing the register, the front, they are required to speak to everybody. “Hey, how are you?” Not facedown, looking at a computer screen; like we need to have some enthusiasm. We are speaking to people. You know, pharmacists at quality station, quality assurance too. They hear somebody’s name at the drive-through. We need to make sure you know that they recognize we are speaking to them.
Some of my pharmacists are not as outgoing as the others, right? So how did I help them become engaged with patients? We had business cards printed, we had our cell phone number put on the business card. They walk out, they do not really, you know, it is harder for some pharmacists to engage with patients rather than others. So we had the card, the card is to give to the patient. “Well if there is anything I can ever… my name is Jarrod Tippins, I do not think I have met you yet. If there is anything I can help you with, here is my card. It has my cell phone number on here, if you need me you can text me or call.” How many people really text or call? Not that many, but does it resonate in their head that man this guy just gave me their cell phone number. Does the pharmacist at CVS or Walgreens give their cell phone number. Not at all. So, it is the gesture, you know, that resonates. So that is just one way we want to make sure when someone passes away, someone is sick and we find out about it, all the technicians know, let’s put a sticky note in a drawer. And we have one pharmacist who sends out notes to people for deaths, sickness, babies born. Sometimes we send a flower depending upon who the patient is and how long they have been here, how well we have known them. So we do things like that.
Bonnie: Yeah, that is awesome.
Jarrod: Every week pharmacists are required to write down five meaningful relationships, ideas or tasks that they did that week. Something above and beyond what the normal pharmacist in a normal setting would do. So every week in my mailbox they put five, they type up five things that they went above and beyond to make a meaningful relationship. Not just like, hmm, I called the doctor and got something changed. We are talking about like what are five things that you did that were like above and beyond? You know, did you deliver something to someone’s house? Did you make it happen for somebody? You know, that kind of thing. So those are just some of the things, again, expectation here, people deliver. If you write it down, it happened. If you talk about it and you just say you are going to do it, it is not really going to happen. So our theme kind of this whole year was how can we make more meaningful relationships? People want to do business with people that they know and that they know care about them.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Kendell: Wow, wow. That is… I feel like that is like a masterclass on creating relationships with patients for a pharmacist. So I appreciate you sharing that.
Jarrod: Well I think, you know, that is with anything, you know not just pharmacy, everything in life. It is just like the relationship I have with you all. Like I know that Caroline and all of you guys but really I follow on Caroline and Bonnie and Ollin you know, on my team. So I know at the end of the day they have my back when it comes to financials. I am not that strong. I know how to make money and I know how to take care of people but when it comes to like all the tax stuff and planning and you know, 401k and man, that thing I… Bonnie can tell you like it pisses me off when I get an email and I got the log to 401k and turn out some documents and all this stuff.
Bonnie: He is just, Jarrod loves to be like can you just do this for me? Can somebody please just do this for me?
Jarrod: Right, yeah can somebody just do it for me? Tell me where I need to sign and let’s keep it moving. So you know, the relationship I have with them and you know, I can just call and it is easy. That is what people want. People want access and people want you to take care of them. And that is what we try to do is eliminate barriers here. Another thing is by being involved in the community and where you live in the community. So I live in a heavily populated physician community. So I have a lot of great relationships there. I joined the country club that I live at and obviously I see them there. So I have most every physician’s cell phone number in my phone. We do not have to call the front desk and kind of go through that whole hoopla… I can send them a quick text message, can I change blah, blah to X? And it is easy and boom we get it done and the patient never even knows that it happened.
Bonnie: Take care of it.
Jarrod: Make it happen. Then my pharmacists I invite them to the event too so like if I sponsor something like at a cancer benefit or something like that. I get many tickets and we try to rotate pharmacists on that and I invite them to come and then we introduce those pharmacists to them. And how does it make those pharmacists feel that they got that relationship with the provider or community members at that point? It makes them feel good, empowers them and so we just take those tickets and we use them like that. Also for inspiring, I am rambling on now, but one thing I do for a pharmacist is you know, they wanted to go, some of them wanted to go see Luke Combs. So just one weekend we got one pharmacist to cover and we went down to Charleston and we saw Luke Combs. You know, they love the Southeastern wildlife. Exposed some of them and we are just hopping the car. I love it too, so we will just go to that and make a trip. So, you know, it is just like random things. It costs money yeah but guess what? They are going to go the extra mile and make sure everybody is taken care of and if you take care of people most of the time the financials will fall into place.
Scotty: Amen to that.
Bonnie: So guys I think we are ready for the bottom line.
Kendell: Yeah so every episode we have a play on the financial statements “the bottom line” and we try to have a key takeaway, a couple of sentences, the bottom line from the discussion today. And so who wants to kick us off with the bottom line that they have taken away from today?
Bonnie: I will go first before mine gets taken. Lots of, I mean this whole thing was full of bottom lines today. Real good stuff, Jarrod. I would say love on your patients and love on your employees both. Yeah, I knew the patient part, but the employees part is huge too. It seems like obviously you want to keep your people, I have known that, but to see that it improves efficiency, you can improve just the entire, you know how effective they are with growing your business as well is a big part of it, so…
Jarrod: Well you can add, let me add on to that. It is not just being kind to your employees all the time. Tough love is important as well. So anybody who works for me, with me. I say with me, they will tell you that I am not always easy. That I show tough love.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jarrod: And we have hard conversations sometimes, but at the end of the day they know that I have their back.
Bonnie: Yep.
Jarrod: And they know if anything they have a shortcoming or whatever, that I can, that I will always be there to make it happen.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jarrod: And I…
Scotty: Because you care. Tough love is because you care.
Jarrod: Yeah for sure… It is not easy. Do you think saying the same thing every day over and over, it is not easy like it will wear me out. I always say I wake up in the morning, I am getting pounded, I go to bed, I am getting pounded like all day long from cell phone calls or whatever and issues. The more you grow, the more issues you have, the more employees you have, the more issues you have. Flu season comes, people’s children get sick on and on and on. So we have tough love conversations as well as you rocking and rolling. You did this great, man I am proud of you for this. Here is this for appreciation.
Bonnie: Right.
Jarrod: That kind of thing. So I do not want to paint myself as the best employer because I am not. I pretty much suck at leadership. I always say that now that is my daily task is to try to improve on leadership because it is the hardest thing. And if I could give anybody words of advice is, learning psychology and leadership skills and your business is very important because everybody does it. You do not deliver the same to every single person. Try to read books on that. But I still am not where I should be and I am kind of young I guess for where I am at. So it is hard for me. Leadership is hard. It is hard for everybody, right?
Bonnie: Yep.
Bonnie: “What you got” Kendell?
Kendell: “What I got”… I am going back to this the same little quote about love in the bottle. So it was you are not selling pills, you are selling love because you know, anyone with a pharmacy license can get access to the same exact pill that you can get access to, but they cannot get access to the same love. So you are not selling pills in a bottle, but love in the bottle.
Jarrod: I love it.
Scotty: I think my bottom line is this whole, this whole podcast has got full of golden nuggets for the bottom line. But the bottom line is The Pharmacy is a model for sure for how to run a successful pharmacy and what success in a pharmacy looks like and how to do it. So yeah, I mean that is my bottom line. Hats off to you, Jarrod. Congratulations on your six years.
Kendell: Congrats. I cannot imagine what the next six years have in store for you, but I am sure it is going to be exciting and it is going to be fun to watch, so.
Jarrod: Yeah, I appreciate the nice comments and I appreciate the support that you all have given. Even in the beginning when your dad kind looked at me like I was crazy because I was this 29 year-old guy trying to borrow $3-point, probably $5 million and every bank in town was turning me away. And I finally found a meaningful relationship where I had kept working that same relationship at conferences and somebody gave me a call and said, well we do not really give loans for what you are trying to do but we are going to give you an opportunity at “the American dream.” And so I was given that opportunity and I felt like, you know, I have got to do something with this. I have to be a unicorn and show these guys that I can do it. I cannot fail and I do not have any other options. I mean, I could go back and work at CVS or whatever that you know, would not, would entail, but really at the end of the day, I had no option but to succeed. I did not have backup. No one in my family is in the medical field and really did not have a strong financial backing either. So I kind of started this deal, you know, with a $100,000 in my name and I was appreciative of that opportunity for “the American dream.”
Bonnie: You always had confidence, which was good. Whether you truly felt it or not, you came across that you did, and came across that you did what you were doing and that you had a plan. So that is important too.
Jarrod: Bonnie, I will say this. The brain is a powerful thing.
Bonnie: Fake it ’til you make it.
Jarrod: That is right. I was scared many nights for those first six months. But you know, I always say the brain is a powerful thing. If you think you can, you can.
Bonnie: That is right.
Jarrod: If you create a lot of negative thoughts and a lot of snakes in your brain, you probably won’t be successful. Mindset is important.
Scotty: That has been a… yeah. That mindset has been a theme kind of for a few podcast episodes about branching out and success in pharmacies. So that is fitting. But I guess we will go ahead and wrap it up here. Jarrod, we appreciate you coming on and of course being, a wonderful client of ours. And again, we wish you the best success going forward and look forward to doing this again. We will have to do it again next year. But thanks again and for all those listening out there yeah, feel free to email us, send us any questions or comments or any topics you want to go over and we are happy to help in any way we can to get you results there. But for Bonnie, Kendell and our guest, Jarrod, thanks everybody for listening, we will see you next time.
