Speech to text:

Mike Koelzer, Host: [00:00:00] Jason, for those that haven't come across you online, introduce yourself and tell our listeners what we're talking about today.

Jason Chenard: I'm Jason Chenard. I'm a practicing pharmacist and a pharmacy manager in a corporate store.

but my wife and I also own our own two pharmacies. And, I'm the founder of a pharmacy leadership and wellness platform@layeredleadership.ca.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Alright, now Jason, you own two pharmacies, but you're not working at those. I'm imagining it's because your wife kicked you out,

Jason Chenard: That's, that's, that's a logical answer, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: But that's not the answer. 

Jason Chenard: That's, no, I shouldn't say that. Actually, this doesn't happen without my wife. She's a base of a lot of the systems that we've created together in the last decade and a half. We graduated the same year out of U of T, in oh eight and never thought we would be owners.

When we graduated, the corporate world was big and it was taking over, and things are starting to change where pharmacists are,venturing out and taking it upon themselves and using the newer scope and different activities that were being used,and making it happen.

And,the world has shifted to be, at least in Ontario, probably 50-50 in terms of corporate pharmacy and independent pharmacy. And I think there's pros and cons to both. Of course. The company I work for is a great one and the stores that we operate are,are, about an hour outside of where I practice.

So, we've hired a pharmacy manager in each of our stores to sign the prescriptions, deal with the patients, that allows me to sort of be the vision and the strategy, take care of the staff, take care of it, and set the overall plan. And, when we were buying the first pharmacy from the owner, it's in a small rural town in Northern Ontario, and all the conversations kept having the theme of, " I'm tired.

You know, burnout wasn't the word he was using, but it was certainly part of the theme. And that's when I had a decision to make. Do I go and be the guy over there and be him? Or can I keep the good situation that I'm in, in the corporate pharmacy and still have potentially a bigger impact in not having to be the guy there, sign every prescription and do every shot, but still create impact.

Maybe create a new job for somebody in a position that the store didn't have before, so that we could be available to the community and be available to whatever the future brings. And a year down the road, an opportunity came to create the second location. And, things like that wouldn't have been possible if I would've been the guy singing every prescription and been there sort of handcuffed to the dispensary.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Jason, why was the first purchase though an hour away? What precipitated that to buy one that far away?

Jason Chenard: An hour drive wasn't much for our geography here. You know, it, it's a nice smooth drive on a four-lane highway that you know, you can put a podcast in or think about the workday and not be in front of your

patients. When you get to the outskirts, this area, it's a small community. Everyone knows everybody. Super nice, very relaxing things close early, and the pharmacy is a staple of the one strip of business that there is in the town.

So it's a very different culture or atmosphere. A much more relaxed one than typically in a bigger town.

Mike Koelzer, Host: I only own one pharmacy and I think if I own two pharmacies, two wouldn't set the business upright because I still could sorta do it.

You could run over there and kind of do it. When you get three or you get one that's an hour away, you're forced right away to set up the structure correctly. Instead of catching scraps from the owner, you're forced to set it up correctly. So I think that's cool that you have that distance because it forces things.

Jason Chenard: I think that if you asked any of my colleagues that know me, they would certainly. Point to the system development, automation part of my brain, and they would agree that's probably a strength.

 When I graduated, I was given an opportunity to manage a long-term care corporate pharmacy, and that was a baptism by fire situation.

I was just trying to, I was trying to figure out how to be a pharmacist, let alone to be a [00:05:00] boss, and then to manage, a thousand nursing home beds across Northern Ontario with a, a 3000 scripts a day

with PillPack technology and learn how to run that side of the business.

E everything is just bigger and meaner and less forgiving. And I think it allowed me to be a manager and a structurer. 

A lot faster.

And I look at what I do today and I think I would never have been able to do that 10 years ago.

And I. 

it's sort of a, you're, when you're forced, I think you learn to do it faster.

And I'm, I've made a lot of mistakes in those times, but luckily none of them were the type of mistakes that allowed me to move backwards instead of forwards, I suppose.

 Over the years of managing the larger teams and being part of the more corporate environments, I've had to step up and speak. I've had to run meetings and I've had to be on committees, and I've had to be the chair of, maybe it's PT or maybe it's some other 

committee. And I naturally have sort of been put in positions where I'm either the spokesperson for something or the guy that has to answer to something.

And I think, whether it be all the way from high school being part of student council or, being part of the local Chamber of Commerce and then becoming the president of that group for a while, just naturally I've been put in positions where I've been the spokesperson and had to speak on behalf of a group.

And I think, When I was able to pair that with pharmacy, naturally you're, becoming a speaker at a pharmacy conference became a goal of mine. It was something I was very interested in. If you had a message and you could potentially positively impact another group of your colleagues that you would never work with day to day, then that's a significant, significant win. 

And when you are on stage and you're talking to hundreds of strangers and you are able to connect your brain with theirs for an hour and give them something tangible that they can walk away with, I think the reach that we have as a pharmacist extends way beyond the dispensary in that moment. And that's something that you're proud of and that you see progress in.

And I've always used writing as a way of figuring things out.

And,people have told me over the years that I need to start putting this on paper, whatever this is. what I started doing naturally was over the years of trying to figure out how to be a pharmacist, a manager, a dad, a triathlete, a hockey player, I've always written my thoughts out and, when they were out of my head and on paper, then I could sleep at night and I could come back to with a fresh mind the next day and find a good solution.

And I think, three years ago I started writing. but we had the stores established and we had the kids already. And I was trying to, I realized that over two years of journal entries, Looking back, I figured out that I was trying to find what a leader was, what the definition of a leader was from a pharmacist point of view.

And it was not something that you were taught in school. But having been a pharmacy manager for over a decade, and having to recruit pharmacy managers in my own two stores, if I knew exactly what the ideal characteristics of a pharmacy leader were, then I would be able to emulate those myself and find those types of people and put them into the stores that I own.

And what was interesting was over two years of journaling, there were seven characteristics that I, I call them leadership dimensions, that just in the stories and anecdotes of being in the trenches, those seven themes, Kept coming up over and over again. Things like humility, systems and structure and discipline.

And I decided this is general enough of an idea and I should, if I'm gonna go any deeper and keep writing to figure out whatever I'm looking for, then I better trademark it and make it the base of what I'm doing because this is how it started. So that's how layered leadership started, was using those seven characteristics to help figure out what pharmacy leaders need to be and to sort of figure out what I could give them that they haven't gotten from school.

So I think of layered leadership as a sort of leadership and wellness platform for pharmacists and their teams that allows them to optimize the health of their pharmacy without sacrificing their own.

 I think [00:10:00] eating right and sleeping right is a big part of it. And that's a lot of that nutrition and sleep is weaved into different parts of the blog, the, or the weekly newsletter.

but fundamentally, I'm trying to give pharmacists something that allows them to be better leaders, to run better pharmacies. Things that you can't learn in school, without sacrificing themselves.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Boy,

not many people combined leadership in the business and leadership at home. There's very few people that pull both of them off and. A lot of people, I guess they're quite visible when you hear about CEOs or these big tech companies and Jason skirts and things like this.

 Pharmacists aren't that same profile, but that stress or that reason that those that are visible break apart, is probably often those same stresses. 

The same pressures that break apart these high profile people.

Are the same ones that can break apart all of us. we're not all that different. Stress is stressful, I guess that's what I'm trying to say. Stress is stress and it's hard to pull both of those off.

Jason Chenard: I think what you're hinting at is work life balance

Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah.

Jason Chenard: as a buzzword, right? But we use it a lot without understanding it. And I just came back from a series of talks at some pharmacy conferences in Western Canada, and I got to meet some pharmacists in other provinces.

We have different scopes and we got to share a lot of cool ideas. But the difference is that we all fundamentally do the same job, and we have the same goal and we do it in different ways. The talk was on pharmacist burnout and what we can do, tangibly at work and at home to prevent burnout.

And it's amazing how everyone has their own story, whether they've been in practice for a year or 10. Everyone has a growth curve and a stress that's new and. it's almost as if we are working in silos that we're never sharing those stories. So we never learn from each other.

And I think of the work side of the work life balance equation as, look, you've got enough time at work.

you spend 30, 40 hours there, you should be able to figure that side out. But if you don't have the life side figured out, you're not gonna come to work prepared and ready to solve the work things. I grew up as a competitive hockey player, and you're used to grinding and discipline and when you translate some of those skills into pharmacy, you end up with a very hardworking person who can put up with a lot of stuff.

And the personality of a pharmacist is this sort of type A planner, confrontation avoider, who often, we were waiving copays, we're giving discounts, we're putting patients first, and we're giving ourselves up for all of that.

So if we don't figure out how to take care of ourselves first, then we won't be doing this as long as we can.

Mike Koelzer, Host: It's also the other side of the coin too, where you get a business person who is relatively successful and that becomes their identity. And they wouldn't, maybe not think of it as a stress, but it's an easy identity producer, a lot easier than saying you're a family guy kind of thing.

Jason Chenard: Mm-hmm.

Mike Koelzer, Host: I think families have it rough because if the business guy is stressed, they have problems. If the business guy or woman, if the business person's too successful, that's a stress on the family. So families are in it for a long haul when you've got someone who's wrapped up in their business mind.

Jason Chenard: I think at the end of the day, there's a certain, there's a passion that you're, you wanna maintain at work, and in order to do that, you've gotta have things dialed in at home.

You've gotta come to work happy. And that's difficult in pharmacy because of the grind and because you could easily end up punching the clock and waiting for your shift to be over and working for someone else who feels out of touch or isn't potentially contributing the same way that you are in your mind.

 I know for me, I've learned a lot about sleep in the last few years, and that's where it starts for me. And if I go too long with that, with not getting to bed at the right time and not doing all of the sleep hygiene things that we teach patients because pharmacists are terrible at taking their own advice, right? Then I show up to work and I'm not rested. And when I'm [00:15:00] not rested, then my meal planning slips and then I'm malnourished, and then the stresses of the job are heavier. So I actually called my weekly newsletter Rested, fueled and Ready, because that's the emphasis of what I realize that makes me capable of being the best pharmacist that I can be, is that I need to show up to work and I need to be rested, and then I need to be fueled.

And then when I'm, those things, I can be ready. And ready is sort of the leadership side of the platform. And that's where we talk about workflow, we talk about hiring, and we talk about staff development. And that's essentially the emphasis of the blog that goes into my LinkedIn profile and goes into Canadian Healthcare Network.

, but the base of all of it is, Eating right and going to bed on time and taking care of ourselves so that you know we can take care of patients and our business and our staff and our family.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Sleep's a hard one because it's so good for you, but a lot of people say you can't force it. It's like, well, I can't force myself to fall asleep if I'm doing this or that. But I think what you said there, Jason, I think you can, if you set up certain structures of at least getting embedded a certain time,

Jason Chenard: it's having a power down type of routine. It's getting to bed around the same half hour to hour of each night and waking up around the same half hour to hour and each day, whether it's a work day or a day off, or a weekend or a stat, 

You can't come home from work and shell out all of the shifts in your mind. Right. you've gotta be able to decompress it and then shift it off and trust that you can solve it the next day and take off where you stopped. And then you can't go home and have a drink every night cuz alcohol will degrade your quality and it'll just sort of shut off the frontal lobe and it sedate you instead of get you into good sleep quality with good rem and then you can't come home and binge eat because you didn't eat properly all day.

Mike Koelzer, Host: All right, we're gonna finish things up now. Jason, I was following along and kind of nodding my head until you got to the bingey part. we like to binge eat, actually I've got an eating disorder. I've got bulimia. I've just never gotten around to the throwing up part. There's a lot of things that are taboo,

Alcohol is, um,whatever. All the things that we know are not good for us, but there's some stuff that's not as taboo and so that's where it's easier to go. It's not good for you, but it's easier to binge eat things that aren't so obvious. , but it's still just numbing yourself down.

Jason Chenard: Because of the pharmacy nonstop day, we have to ensure that we have the home part sorted out the right way. So that it's therapeutic. for the difficulty that the pharmacy workday offers.

I know for me if it's a 12 hour day and I have had half a lunch here or there, 

or I haven't planned food properly, then I'm gonna come home at nine 30.

When I should be starting the power down process and getting high quality sleep with a cool room and a dark room and doing something relaxing that doesn't involve screens before bed, but you haven't felt like you have had very much fun all day and you get home and you're still stressed and you're still pumped from the drug interactions you had to sort out, or the confrontation you had in the evening with a patient or something that didn't work well.

And then you want to have a snack and you wanna watch the rest of the hockey game or you wanna do something. And

I think having the systems and knowing what works best for you at home will be in best balance if you, if you know what those things are sleep-wise and nutrition-wise, and that will set you up really well for the next day.

But it's so easy. To let that go.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Now our hours are shortened at the pharmacy. In my. Habits are much better than they ever were. I walk in the morning and I get to bed at a certain time. It's just more of a natural flow. I think a lot of the listeners, and , you've come across it, it's that evening shift and then you're up early the next morning and then this and that.

 And it's tough on people. But I think if you look at it, there's probably only a couple different types of those. There's one where you work light and one maybe where you work early, something like that. And if you think it out, you can probably set up a structure. It might not be the same structure each day, but [00:20:00] it might only be structure A and B, not like willy-nilly eating a box of honey bunches of oats one night.

Jason Chenard: I think you're right. I think it's having a plan, and that if you can consciously plan that out, then you're gonna have the answer ahead of time as opposed tohaving to ad hoc your way through what comes next and what comes after that. And if you have a plan and you have a reason for doing it, then it should be easy for me to follow. That plan will involve making sure that I've got enough energy for the family and, and for training.

When I graduated pharmacy, I started running and I grew on me and I ran longer and longer distances. And then one year I decided to sign up for a half marathon and I had never done anything like that before and I was learning how to, how to ramp up volume. And so I started swimming a little, not knowing anything about what I was doing, but when you look up swimming on YouTube, you get a whole bunch of triathlon videos.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah.

Jason Chenard: And I went, well, this is awesome. Why am I running for two hours when I could do biking and this? And it grew on me and I signed up for my first race the next summer and had nothing special of a performance, but I realized this was something that I can grow into. And this is something that gives me lifelong goals.

And it should set up the type of lifestyle that a pharmacist would be successful in at work.

Because if you're gonna be a triathlete and you're gonna train all winter for the summer races, then you're gonna have to get to bed on time and you're gonna have to eat the right way. And you're gonna have to wait for the train, and you're gonna have to do cardio.

And you've got this nice mix of three sports to keep you cognitively fresh so that you're not bored in one area over the other. And it should be a nice balance between a hobby and an obsession.

Right. I'm never gonna become a professional triathlete because I'm a pharmacist and that's what I signed up for.

But at the same time, what things can I grow in resilience outside of work and so that I can bring some of those skills to work?

Mike Koelzer, Host: See Jason, you ran the half marathon. I did The other half that wasn't done. This sounds better than it is since 2012, I've done 11 triathlons. Now I'm not gonna tell anybody that the 11 were from 2012. 13, 14, and 15, it was back when, what distances do you do, Jason?

Jason Chenard: I do what's called a sprint. I don't know if

they're 

different in the 

states, but I do the sprint. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: The ones I did were Olympic distances. So what was that? Point nine swim? run was a 10 k and the bike was, I forget what it is now, 40 miles or something like 

Jason Chenard: That's, yeah. And you're miles and I'm kilometers, so we're even more messed up. I'm swimming 750 meters.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Okay, so about a half mile.

Jason Chenard: Yep. Half mile. and then I am transitioning into a 20 K bike ride.

Mike Koelzer, Host: yeah, so that's 12 miles. I think ours might have been 25 miles.

Jason Chenard: Sounds about right. It's Olympics should be about double

the sprint at each sport. Yeah. And then it's a 5K run.

Mike Koelzer, Host: yeah. So these were 10 K runs I'm not fast enough to do a sprint, so I just did it to get out 

there in the middle of it. Very cool. 

How many years have you done that?

Jason Chenard: About five. I did a try, which is half of the sprint of everything. So that took me about 45 minutes a number of years ago, and that's when I realized like, this is something I have to invest in 

here.

this is, I'm hooked. and since then I've had some progress and, I think when you look at your local neighborhood, people around you, there aren't that many males in their thirties that are doing this.

And when you go to race day and you're competing against other men that are in their thirties, you realize there's a whole community here and there's a lot of disciplined people.

You think about that all winter and that, there's nobody on my street that's doing this when I'm leaving my house at 6:00 AM on my bike.

Mike Koelzer, Host: right.

Jason Chenard: But you imagine the competition out there and it motivates you to keep training.

Mike Koelzer, Host: It's a cool thing. , I did 'em back when I graduated high school. These were some of the first ones back in the mid to late eighties. And then I had a renaissance, 40 pounds late or something like that. I was out running one day when I kind of started, this is [00:25:00] 2012 and this lady runs by me and she says, good for you. it wasn't a fist bump or anything like that. It was like, good for you. Like even a guy like you is doing that. Then Jason, I was a swimmer in high school and so I swam in the triathlon. I was maybe in the. Top 25% just because, if you're not a swimmer , it's not easy to start swimming.

But then biking, I was way down in the 25% on the bottom and then running, I was even further down so I'd get out of the water , relatively in front. Swimming's hard if you haven't done it your whole life.

Jason Chenard: Yep.

Mike Koelzer, Host: I don't think I ever passed anybody the whole time I did triathlon, I just had these people passing me.

Jason Chenard: I'm the opposite. I'm a terrible swimmer, so I pass people on the

bike 

because '

Mike Koelzer, Host: em.

Jason Chenard: It's fun. Yeah. I get past a lot, but, I suppose it depends on the race, but I come out of the water in the middle of the pack or less, nothing special. And I have, I usually have time to make up and I now can make it up on the bike.

And my run is, I would say, just solid. It's not top, I'm not winning any runs, but, I think, the local races that I do are, we make family trips out of them. It's a weekend or it's something we bring the kids,so I'm gone for maybe three, four hours of the weekend. No big deal.

The kids can sleep in a little. And, so it's something that brings us out. And we plan vacations around some of those schedules in areas that the kids like. And,I think last year was a competitive year for me. I found a neighbor around my age and we pushed each other. 

So last year I was, I podium in my age group and that had never happened before.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Wow.

Jason Chenard: when that happens, you sort of want to keep going, right? And you wanna work harder at it.

Mike Koelzer, Host: So this is back like what, 10 years ago? So this is my mid forties. And I actually won my age group.

Jason Chenard: That's us.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Well, not so much Jason, because my age group was people who were 45 years old, three months, 12 days, and born before noon. So it was only like a five minute wide age group, but in my mind, I won.

I did it just for attention, kind of in my family. I don't tell others, but I did it for attention. And once I'd come home and my wife would no longer say, Hey, good job. My kids would not say, Hey, good job.

I stopped. If I'm not gonna get accolades from them, then I'm not doing it. But good for you in doing them now over the years, it means you've got a better, a different and a more advanced drive than I had. 

 My thing is I practice sight reading on the piano every day. And the cool thing about that for me is, No matter what happened at work or with relationships, even if you felt you went backward during the day, it's a way to say that for yourself, you've committed and you're moving forward, whatever that is, it's symbolic in a sense that you're doing something that is different or more important than work, at least in that little area.

Jason Chenard: I think it's about progress and it's about shifting gears from what you do during the day,

Mike Koelzer, Host: right? The variety. Is what keeps us fresh. And in pharmacy you don't necessarily feel the same progress because you're not really creating a ton day-to-day. great, you filled X prescriptions or you gave X vaccinations and that's all very good.

Jason Chenard: But there's something else to say about progress for something that's just you. And I think the individual part is important and it allows you to fulfill an identity that you're creating for yourself.

Mike Koelzer, Host: I talked to a cohort years ago and we're still in contact now, but years ago, and I was telling him how much I enjoyed piecing together a remodel of my first house in the basement. I didn't know what the hell I was doing, and he said, Mike, the reason you enjoy that so much is because you think about your job.

Basically. You go there in the morning and the place looks exactly the same as when you left. And he said, we don't get the pleasure as pharmacists to see that concrete movement and. Quite often you feel like you're spinning your gears.

Jason Chenard: No doubt. And that might be mitigated if you own the store,

Perhaps there's things that you want to create, programs that you can invent and they're up to you when you can decide to do it. or maybe there's, maybe it's just about money for some

people.but I think [00:30:00] if it's your store, perhaps you have more opportunity to create or make decision making potential. But I think either way, humans will thrive on progress and on. Fulfilling an identity and doing good things.

Mike Koelzer, Host: One of the cool things about being an owner is, you get to kind of surf that line between the normalcy of life and a little bit of chaos.

You're right in that line it's kind of a nice place to be. You're not overwhelmed, but you're not bored and boy owning your own place, you can really get skewed into the chaos. But the one thing I like about ownership is typically, especially with self-directed projects, you have that luxury of dipping into that chaos a little bit and into the boredom a little bit just to be on that line. But when you're working for somebody, quite often you're in that boredom side or you're in that really chaotic side and you don't have your own choice of kind of going in that nice line down the middle.

Jason Chenard: I think the pharmacist gets the chaos side. At the beginning of a new learning 

So you certainly get that when you graduate. If you get promoted to a managerial type of position that's gonna exist, then you become an owner, perhaps. And that exists again. I remember when I first became an owner, the first two years were like drinking out of a fire hose.

you're learning the financial part of what you've been accomplishing for a long time and can only imagine how things work. And then you have to understand how the business really works and you have to understand what you have to do to maintain it. And then covid happened for us, and we've gotta change the way things are done in the pharmacy.

And I think, knock on wood, at this stage in my career, I think we're just starting to feel a little stable where that curve has flattened out a little. And I have a little more time to invent, and like you said, I can venture into chaos, but at my choice. Yeah. And if it's your choice, you welcome it, but if it's forced upon you, 

It's stressful. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Right. Like if someone said, Hey, Jason, tomorrow I want you to wake up at 5:00 AM and hop on your bike and then, bike over to a freezing swimming pool and get into your Speedo, at the Y M C A, you'd go crazy.

But if it's your own chaos, that's a blessing then that's a cool thing.

Jason Chenard: Well, not only do we know that you wear a Speedo,

Mike Koelzer, Host: I'm being generous with the Speedo, let me tell you.

Jason Chenard: No, I think that is the idea here that, maybe I haven't thought deeply enough, this is probably a blog at some point, but the idea that if we have the ability to choose our challenge, we will be very successful. Yousif when some people find out that I do triathlons and they go, why? 

like, they don't understand why you would do that to

yourself or why you would choose to do that.

But it's not for me. It's not something, it's not a switch. It was a gradual process that grew like a plant. And here I 

am and I'm sure that same person has something else that I would ask them why or how how are you, Provincial chess champion,

Mike Koelzer, Host: 

Jason Chenard: And,you swam competitively as a kid, or you played this varsity sport, or you are a cello player, how is that even possible?

But, those are challenges that person chose to seek out, and thus they're very successful at

Mike Koelzer, Host: I was halfway decent in high school. The one time I thought I beat someone. This is a 200 yard race, so was that eight laps? He was leading me, I could tell by a body length and then all of a sudden he is nowhere.

And I passed him and I was going in for the win and I realized that he lost a swimming suit on the last turn. That was my big win in high school.

Jason Chenard: So he made a choice too.

Mike Koelzer, Host: He made a choice to stop there. 

Jason Chenard: 

Yeah, Jason, what is your most negative emotion as you go through this in terms of something that, maybe you're not proud of, but you can't shake? 

I think early on in my career I had a mentor that pointed something out to me and I wasn't self aware enough. Or I didn't have enough examples from life yet to figure it out. And I think this is something that I have written about this year and feel better about now. I am still not perfect, but another few years of [00:35:00] examples in my life will allow me to get better at it with practice.

And that's not taking something so personally, 

accepting feedback and not being, not carrying it as long as I should.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah, that's tough.

Jason Chenard: Yeah. Whether it's a patient confrontation with who, they come in and they've got their own experience and history and baggage, and our job is to help them. And I'm the innocent bystander that's in their way. And they attack your character and they say things about you and they put things on Google my business.

or it's, it's, apparent that, for the coaches,the kids sports teams that I'm coaching or, it's another employee who is talking negatively about the way we're doing something.

or it's something that you overheard that a colleague said about you. pharmacists are in a leadership position every day, whether they like it or not.

And whenever you're in a leadership position, the fingers get pointed at you.

we're not trained to, to process that

properly.

 and if we are, when we're in school, we probably don't have enough life experience to be able to digest it all in one setting. It just takes time.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Boy, years ago, I was fairly narcissistic, probably , up until 10 years ago.

I wanted everybody to love me. I wanted to be the mayor, I wanted too much of an image and, That got blown to crap after a few things in my life, 

Jason Chenard: It was probably the Speedo. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah, probably the Speedo. Now I can count on one hand the people that I know support me. It was a combination of, well, a lot of it when business goes down and I say, you can hide a lot of stuff if you cover it up with a hundred dollar bills, but when things start going south,you find out who some of your enemies are. I was talking to my wife just the other day about it. She didn't wanna look bad in front of something I said, get used to it.

I said, I got a ton of people that don't like me. But I said, that's leadership. all the things I think about whether I treated someone this way or did this or that, it's usually because of my leadership position. It was rarely just when I was a member of something.

And so I think you put yourself in those positions and you do have to remind yourself, I've never been a big one to say, well, business is business, but it is business. Because you wouldn't be in that position if you weren't in the business. You wouldn't have that relationship of dominance over submissive things in real life.

So it is business, but it's hard.

Jason Chenard: I think you said the word narcissistic or you could insert other words. but I think there's a theme there. Whatever the word to describe it is, if you are going to be successful, you have to have an element of. I don't know if it's selfishness or, yes, it's drive and motivation and all these discipline and all these things, but there's also, you have to want it.

And if you want it, you care about yourself or you care about being the best at something, you know? Um, so I don't necessarily think that some of those words are bad, but they have, you have to be self-aware and they have to be presented the right way.

Mike Koelzer, Host: You were saying it earlier about, getting on stage or coaches and things like that, and I feel sometimes guilty.

I coach my kids a little bit and stuff. I feel kind of guilty for not doing more of it, but there's some coaches that really feel like they should be there, that's their thing. And when you talk about being on stage or being in front of people, whether it's social or podcast, or on stage, there's enough people that don't wanna do that, that would never do it.

And 

if everybody felt that way, there'd be nobody to do stuff like that. So, I think you're right. You have to have some of that drive, whether you end up being a coach or, whatever. You have to have a little of that drive, but it gets kind of confusing whether it's a good goal or, or, or, Not so good, but if you don't have it, nobody would be coaching.

Nobody would be speaking. Nobody would be doing anything. So you have to have some impetus for that.

Jason Chenard: The, there's, there's a characteristic, a personality characteristic that certainly has someone that puts themselves out, that puts themselves in a vulnerable position to be attacked,

and that person is comfortable being the guy or the girl that is going to have to answer to something when it doesn't go well.

And that person [00:40:00] has to be comfortable in themselves to understand the why and the process that they've developed, so that when it doesn't go well, they don't take it personally. And they say that this is the best decision that could have been made, given all of the data points that I know. And I think being a hockey coach, being a boss at work, being an owner of a business, I think I'm more empathetic to others where I'm not invested.

I'm a Leafs fan. When I listen to the executives of this professional hockey team and how much gossip and how much media attention they're getting, I listen to it and I empathize with them. In that they have to stand there when they lose in a press conference and they have to be the leader of this organization, the face of it.

And they have to know that during the year they did everything that, and navigated everything in the best way possible. And that when the media points to them as it being their fault, they gotta sleep at night. And the only way they can do that is knowing that they had the best processes and there's some information that they can't even share.

And I think that's a big part of being a leader is under being okay, potentially allowing the other party to walk away thinking that they won

Mike Koelzer, Host: and not having to defend everything that you're doing because you're comfortable. With yourself, you're comfortable with the process that you developed and the people that are surrounding you.

 I think to handle that well, that pressure, you have to have a feeling that you're supposed to be there. And if you're supposed to be there, sometimes you pick the worst of two evils. 

] All right. I just gotta say it. I'm a hero. I'm a hero. I'm 500% on cpr.

 I had a guy who, about 25 years ago, he dropped outside of our store from sudden cardiac death or arrest, you know, and

Jason Chenard: I knew CPR from my swimming lifeguarding years, and I went over game cpr and he had a nice long life. He just passed away about two months ago. Another lady fell in our store and I wasn't so lucky with her.

Mike Koelzer, Host: She died. It's remarkable because you hear about C P R stuff and I've done it twice, just like in my pharmacy. It was really strange to think you were there. My wife, she doesn't like that stuff, doesn't like blood, doesn't like it, if someone gets in a bike accident, she doesn't want to think about it.

In my mind, it's like, this already happened. I'm there. A terrible situation happened and I'm not gonna make it worse. I'm gonna pick the best of two evils and do something. I cannot fail in an accident. I cannot fail because I'm supposed to be there. It's already happened. I'm just gonna try to make it better.

And I think that kind of like you're seeing with the leaders and the coaches, they know that they're supposed to be there. And if they're supposed to be there, I don't think those arrows hurt so much because, They've gotta make some choices.

Jason Chenard: I think there's probably an instinctual part of being a leader where you want to be the person who can positively impact something. And you're not just okay with staying on the sidelines and hoping that someone else does it, and you actually feel more comfortable being part of the answer 

 if you had two choices, you could stand on the sidelines and hope that someone creates the right, that finds the right answer. Or you could be involved in the trenches and be part of the process of coming up with what is hopefully the right answer. I would pick the second option. two years ago my kids started playing hockey and I grew up playing competitive hockey and I'm comfortable with the game.

And,I asked them, I said, do you want me to coach? And they said, yeah. And that's a proud moment for a dad. Your kids want you around and they want you around, in front of their friends and they want you to, be the creator of the culture and everything else that has to happen around a sport.

And I said, look,when parent feedback comes back or a decision that you made on the bench is being scrutinized. I would rather be in that position than be a fan in the stands and saying, [00:45:00] ah, he should have put that player out there, or We should have done this.

and I just feel I'd be very unhappy not having, not being part of the inner workings of what led to a solution to a problem. I would rather be in the trenches and part of the solution

Mike Koelzer, Host: I hate the thought of coaching. A lot of it's because I don't trust that I should be there. I just hate that thought, but other things. When you're there, you feel like it's your, whether it's your God-given role or something inside of you, you just feel like for some reason you're there and then a lot of stuff bounces off you cuz you're like, well, you are the guy.

Jason Chenard: Perhaps it's a sense of control, or you're getting constant updates about the situation. So it's being, you're able to monitor it as opposed to being left in the unknown.

And you have the ability to adjust, if anything is going astray, as opposed to waiting for a boss to make a decision,

And I think the world needs both. The world needs people that are going to be told what the job entails. in a dispensary that might be to stand here at this point of the day and to do this and to do it this way. And they might be given an opportunity to give their opinion, and then they don't want anything to do beyond that,

in terms of controlling the situation.

And then there are others who instinctively want to give their opinion and, and roll with it and experiment their opinion to see if they're right and then adjust. And as long as they're capable of realizing when they're wrong and making, bringing in the right people to fill the gaps that they have, then they're probably going to be a very good leader.

But they have to be willing to put themselves out there and be vulnerable.

 If we were all bosses, then we wouldn't get much done.

Mike Koelzer, Host: And like you said, if we were all, I can't think of the right word, but maybe it's,Are you looking for the word hero? 

Jason Chenard: Maybe the leader is the hero?

Mike Koelzer, Host: the guy that saved someone's life? The CPR

Jason Chenard: Yeah. That's a good example. The same story happened to me where someone collapsed in the grocery store, pharmacy that I work in. And, naturally when that happens, all the eyes come to 

you. And if I don't, I have to behave a certain way

now.

and if I'm a, if I have to lead the group here and instinctively, if I'm not the person to start that and to put myself out to, to be vulnerable and test the hypothesis that are going through my head, then we need a leader at this moment in time.

And if there isn't one around, then we're all gonna be in trouble.

So I think the world needs leaders and the world needs followers, and it's about putting the right people in the right mix so that we have the right mix. If we're all leaders, we're gonna be arguing about what's right and nothing's gonna get done.

And if we're all followers, then nothing will really get beyond the starting point.

Mike Koelzer, Host: My guy, when I was giving him cpr, I already had my hero speech ready. I was getting all psyched up. You know, people are gonna raise my hand up and I'm there and this guy, the ambulance takes him away. This other lady who was there took his mom away cuz she was in the car.

Someone else does this. I'm standing there by myself, no one to even hear my speech about it. I had to go in and brag about myself to my wife. 

Jason. there's gonna be times when. Someone is in a role they shouldn't be in. There's some people that probably have to make the decision like, this is not for me. 

Jason Chenard: Every pharmacy manager went to school to learn how to be a pharmacist. Those are two different roles, very different roles, and so many times in our profession, the pharmacist is not necessarily a manager, but there's no one else behind them to take the position. And it, they're essentially a pharmacy manager with a pharmacist name tag.

Sometimes they don't want to be the manager, but there's nobody else other times they want to, or more like my situation where I wanted to be a manager, but it was early in my career and I was just starting to figure out how to be a pharmacist, 

and within the year, a manager was let go and it was either me or the stream of relief pharmacists.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah.

Jason Chenard: And, you realize that it's better if I just learn how to be a manager and then I start thinking about what courses can I take and what, we're used to having a credential to do something and there is no credential to be a pharmacy manager. Right. and I think that person at that point, [00:50:00] Needs to find mentors and needs to hear stories and have constant communication and be vulnerable and share with that mentor things that are going on so that they can learn and be self-aware.

And then if they do that for a number of years, they'll be very successful. It's when they're not doing that, that they won't be a manager much longer

Mike Koelzer, Host: Right.

Jason Chenard: either the prof, the profession will force it out of them. or they'll just, they'll, they're, they won't be happy long-term and something will change.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Job change, they'll leave the profession, I think the hard thing about young managers is that I think some of the workers can smell the blood. 

 Let's say you're a golfer. I'm not a golfer. Let's say you're a golfer, though. You wanna raise up the ranks. they don't throw you right away to the masters.

You're starting to play with your friend and then you're playing maybe someone, a high school game or something like that. The problem of leadership is you're often thrown into a role that's beyond you , you're a 23 year old kid and now you're in charge of this store or whatever, and the workers, some of them can smell it. you didn't start off as your first management job, running the lemonade stand on your corner, after you graduated from college, you're thrown right in there. and people can smell it. And I think a lot is thrown on, young leaders which actually gets easier as you move on.

You get older, you get gray hair, people start looking up to you, that kind of stuff. But it's hard. It's quite an imbalance.

Jason Chenard: I think the staff buy-in piece is not talked about enough. But the sooner you can get a team together that buffers all the problems coming your way. And I think back to when I was 24. And, I had been a pharmacist for a year and I had a smaller staff in a retail pharmacy that was well established in the community and it wasn't a problem.

Both, having buy-in from the patients. I had been there a year and I grew up in the town and, the patients, if I'm the boss, they're gonna accept that 

Marker

Jason Chenard: whether I'm,

younger or older than I currently was. What I noticed was that the older staff, I don't know what age that would be, but the older staff were automatically accepting that I was the boss.

Now, yesterday I was a pharmacist and today I'm in charge and they automatically accepted that and the younger staff I had to earn it. And if you could identify which those are, then you can attack it from a different point of view and you don't have to spend a lot of time with the person that's automatically accepting it.

Because they just do it. And I find that an older generation is used to a very paternalistic hierarchy. And if he's the boss, he's the boss. That's that. And they don't ask questions. And the younger ones are,they've potentially been there longer than you. And they're, they haven't understood the transition here.

What's made this official?

I think if you can find a way to make their life better, they'll be on your side. I remember the specific circumstance in my first pharmacy manager job where I obtained buy-in from the younger of the two full-time pharmacy assistants that were with me. And this person was, Either we got off on the wrong foot, forever reason, or we were both stressed and trying to figure out our own roles.

But I remember she was being reamed out at the cash, and I was, within months of me becoming the manager. And I stepped in front of her and I said, Susan, go ahead and go for lunch. The fact that I did that showed tangibly that I was in charge and I was willing to take the bullet.

And thenI told the patient, let's restart. Explain the problem and I'll solve it for you just in a genuine way that had composure in a calm way. But I'm coming in as a neutral third party without any emotional attachment to this situation. And she just wanted out of the situation.

Mike Koelzer, Host: And later I found out that this person had told the other, the older staff member, the one who I had automatically gotten buy-in from, that I was the best manager they had, cuz they'd had a few over the years. And from then it was a lot easier once I got buy-in in the staff and they saw me as their leader, then we could do stuff together and we could talk about the stuff and we could figure out what exactly they needed and what I needed to provide to them so that they could provide the things that I needed from them.[00:55:00] 

Jason Chenard: But if you don't have the buy-in, then what's the point of trying to solve any problems if you're not gonna stand up for each other?

Mike Koelzer, Host: When I came into my store, my dad was kind of on his way out. I think one of the problems was, it was never, Really made clear that the torch had passed. It was the people that were sort of testing your leadership, even though obviously they weren't gonna lead because I had the nepotism, I was the next guy, I was qualified in my mind. But you're right, the older people, maybe that ship has sailed or they were comfortable in being led. But it was the people that,now, were kind of testing it out. And I'm not maybe completely innocent, but. If I could have done it over, I think I would've come in. I can't see myself doing this. I pictured in my head though, I pictured coming in and firing half the staff. Let's say we had 20 firing half of 'em, because some I knew would never turn because I'd grown up with that through college.

Jason Chenard: I knew the situation. The problem there though is then you might lose the other half who feel like kind of a, a bonding, Mm-hmm. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Then you're there managing no one. 

But in my imagination, that's what I feel like I would've done. It doesn't really make sense on paper . It doesn't seem terribly healthy, but I. Some of those roles seem like they were set up and they were never gonna change. was it, Jim Collins, good to 

Jason Chenard: Mm-hmm.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Sometimes you gotta change the people on the bus.

Jason Chenard: Bingo. Bingo. I think the more difficult skill that the leader is trying to use here is to figure out the type of people that will be complementary to each other. To allow this to happen without conflict. And it will take a variety of personalities to have the best product come from that pharmacy, but putting those people in the right seats, once you have the right people is an important part.

Yes. And sometimes there are times where we have to get people off the bus

and we're better off figuring all that out first before driving it. That's what Collins is trying to say. Right. And otherwise, we're gonna drive halfway down the road 

with the 

wrong people on the bus 

and then have to 

restart. I think being part of the team and listening and allowing them to tell you what they need is a big part of it. But it's sort of, I. Counterintuitive to being a leader, right. The traditional leader is supposed to tell people what 

to do, not be told by the experts doing

what to do. Yeah. So I think, the emotional, having that emotional intelligence, 

whatever they call soft skills

are not all that soft. To

me, 

they're incredibly important and not everybody can do that.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Jason, one thing I thought was cool to hear you say is the importance of writing to get your thoughts out. I've used a hell of a lot of chat g p t lately just for not that kind of thought, just for plug-in chugs some of the show notes andthe blog post and things like that off the transcript. But, I'm not a big proponent of saying that high school kids shouldn't use chat G P T, let 'em have it, just like that and the calculator and things like that. I think though, where the problem is, writing is so important to get your thoughts from your head in a cohesive style out on paper, even if nobody sees it. That is so valuable, and I think that's where some of the AI is gonna take some of that away. It's so valuable. The thoughts that you put into those articles and you got a ton of 'em on LinkedIn now, and Medium and so on.

Those are so valuable to think things through. It's more than the output. it's what happened in your mind to get that output there. And, boy, those kinds of thoughts are needed. 

Here you're a triathlete and I'm a hero, and we still have to sit here and talk about our own idiosyncrasies of leadership and so on. So it's very much needed and the pharmacy world is gonna be a better place with you in it and you sharing those leadership skills. 

 encourage all the listeners to sign up for your newsletter and we'll put a link in the notes. So keep it going. I look forward to keeping in touch and thank you for what you're doing.

Jason Chenard: Thanks for the voice, Mike, and keep up the good work.

Mike Koelzer, Host: All right, Jason, we'll talk again soon.

Jason Chenard: Thank you.

Mike Koelzer, Host: you. [01:00:00]