Behind-the-Scenes of 'tl;dr pharmacy' | Brandon Dyson, PharmD

This transcript was generated automatically. Its accuracy may vary.

[00:00:12] Mike Koelzer, Host: Hello, Brandon. Hey, how's it going? It's going well. Thanks for joining 

[00:00:16] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: us. Thank you. Thank you. 

[00:00:18] Mike Koelzer, Host: So Brandon, for the people who don't know, you tell us who you are and tell the listeners why we're talking. My name is 

[00:00:25] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: Brandon Dyson and I co-founded the website, TLDR pharmacy.com. And basically what that is is the thing I wish existed when I was in pharmacy school.

And when I was a resident and when I was a new practitioner, it's sort of a culmination of all the things that I wish existed in the pharmacy world in terms of education. So that's been going on for a few years now. And I guess why I'm here is that this is a business of pharmacy podcasts and, you know, TLDR pharmacy is a business.

You know, we sell products, we are revenue positive. So we've, I've learned a lot of neat interests. Little things that I in, in the interim, since we've been going on about three and a half years now, did 

[00:01:09] Mike Koelzer, Host: You started this as a money making venture or was it one of these, trying to help a friend out getting through a test or something?

Was it, 

[00:01:19] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: I'd say a little of both Uh Huh, honestly, I, I, I don't think you could do the kind of stuff that TLDR does without it being somewhat of a passion project. Sure. That we had our first sale, like literally the second day of the website really, which was super cool and quite frankly amazing. But trust me, we were not making money for quite a long while.

Yeah. Especially relative to the time that we were putting in. So they're both right. There's a huge, huge hum. While you're developing a readership and kind of figuring out your voice and your style. Yeah. Yeah. But it, uh, we did launch it with the idea of maybe we'll make some money, we're gonna make some products.

Um, and it kind of. From there initially, in fact, when we first started meeting, we were gonna make mobile apps. We were gonna, you know, figure out, oh, we're gonna make some apps and that's gonna be our neat ticket. Yeah. And then at some point we did a, we just sort of did a, a hell of a 180 and did a pivot and decided maybe it's better to find an audience first and also figure out what it is that we wanna make.

And then right. Go that way 

[00:02:28] Mike Koelzer, Host: for the listeners that aren't familiar with some of the current slang and things online, tell 'em what the TL Dr. Stands for. 

[00:02:39] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: So that stands for too long. Didn't read and basically you'll find it. You'll, you'll see it around on the internet. It's the summary of the.

So what TLDR is, and it's kind of tongue in cheek because we end up writing some pretty long form posts. 

[00:02:55] Mike Koelzer, Host: I remember I listened to another podcast. I heard you say that. And I was gonna ask if that's cool. I, I like that 

[00:03:00] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: that happened almost accidentally, but it's, you know, what we're trying to do is summarize a very dense clinical topic.

Yeah. In real words, like gotcha. Real words, like for real people, like, so that, you know, if you were a patient, I'd like to think you'd be able to understand, you know, most of our posts. Right. Um, And get a general understanding, let alone, if you were a pharmacy student or a resident, certainly. Yeah.

They're written just like, I would talk to 

[00:03:28] Mike Koelzer, Host: You and no apologies need to be made because it's like Einstein's equation. I mean, that's only a half inch long, but you could fill books on it. So whatever it takes to explain it so that people really understand it. 

[00:03:40] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: Yeah. We have. A post on just warfarin.

That's about 9,000 words or maybe just over 9,000 words. And , that's kind of insane if you call yourself too long, didn't read, but , that's also shorter than the chest guidelines. And we go into quite a lot in that we go into genomics, we go into a whole lot of stuff with that post. So here's 

[00:04:01] Mike Koelzer, Host: the question, Brandon, on that 9,000 word post, do you have a TLDR 

[00:04:06] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: section?

We do on some of our, you know, we've talked about this like at, at the board meetings, which so to speak of, you know, putting a TLDR like, and some of 'em do, there's like a little checklist at the, at the bottom or at the top of a post. Yeah. Kind of know, it's weird. It's, you know, you, you can't teach warper into.

In 500 words. No. Or you just can't and that's why it doesn't really get taught to you in pharmacy school. Very well in terms of how to dose, how to make a dose adjustment. Yeah, exactly. Like you learn C two C nine, and you learn three, a four and V cor C one, and you're like, yay. And purple toes. Like you learn all of these things.

So you can rattle off the side effect, pregnancy category X, but neat. This person's INR is 5.3. What the hell do I do? Yeah. Right. That's the question the physician asked you and you're like, uh, 

[00:04:53] Mike Koelzer, Host: yeah. And you're taking both the, um, oh, well, let's say dumbing it down, but also you're, it's not your requirement to cover every single thing about it.

I'm sure you're probably covering the, you know, the most important points and so on. Correct? 

[00:05:08] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: I think so. I think, I mean, and obviously there's gonna be bias with that. Right? You're dealing if I'm writing you a post on warfarin or whatever it is, you're, you're getting it through my lens, which is yeah. My experience with the patients that I've dealt with, the providers I've done.

So that's it. By definition, it can't be all encompassing. Um, yeah. Right. But that's okay. Right. Like I can't get you from A to Z, but I can get you from A to K maybe. Yeah. And yeah. That's, especially from where I was at in pharmacy school. That's like, I was drowning. I was dying for that. That's all I wanted. 

[00:05:40] Mike Koelzer, Host: Take us back.

You said you were dabbling in the apps and then what was it? That was your first product that you were able to sell in a day? 

[00:05:49] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: So we decided at some point in time, like I was I'm, I'm a, what I would call a lifelong student, maybe. So I was looking at, you know, reading a lot on how to do an online, but you know, just online business in general, like where, where, what are the ways to make money?

And, and not that that was ever our sole purpose. Of course, like we want, this is a thing that we want to exist TLDR, but. I also don't wanna spend thousands of dollars of my own money to do a thing that costs me hours and hours. You know, I would love to get some return on my time for that. Yeah. Right.

Um, right. So I was studying a lot and at some point in time I came across, um, some, what was it? It was an article. I think it was, it was from there's a, there's a, a website called fizzle.co. Um, and they are a really awesome resource when you're first starting out for simplifying, like, what's your value proposition?

What's and, and I was following them at that time. So it sounds to me 

[00:06:57] Mike Koelzer, Host: like you kind of had a goal and a dream and an itch to explore the world of online stuff in a business. And that came before you sitting there one day and saying, golly, I gotta make pharmacy more simple for people. It sounds like that business itch came first.

I would 

[00:07:17] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: guess that. Correct. I Sam, salmon's the guy that I co-founded TLDR with and we're both sort of entrepreneurial. Sure. I would think. Um, but anyway, at some point through something I was reading or watching on fizzle, it was here's how I'd start a business. If I started from scratch kind of thing, mm-hmm and it was like, you get a blog, you get your followers, you start your mailing list right away.

And ideally what you have is you have something to entice them to join your mailing list, a lead generator or whatever mm-hmm and then something to sell. And if you launch with that, build an audience, iterate, add things as, as they come up. So we wrote before the website officially went live, we wrote our little guide called pharmacy school, the missing manual, which is a, you know, it's a PDF ebook.

Yeah. Um, Kind of the hidden lesson, so to speak in pharmacy school, the stuff that you're not taught, like how to give a presentation. Sure. So we made that, we launched the site, our opt in thing, you know, bait for our email list was chapter one of pharmacy school, the missing manual, which I think is the most beneficial chapter, which is the study system that I kind of developed and used in pharmacy school.

Which 

plus 

[00:08:34] Mike Koelzer, Host: You didn't tell anybody, but you only had one chapter. No, I'm just kidding. well, no, we 

[00:08:37] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: did. It's it? And this was probably a mistake on our part, but we waited till the entire book was ready, like, cause we wanted to be able to sell it. Right. Um, so we delayed launch but much longer than we probably should have, but whatever, because that was your product.

That was our only product. Gotcha. Gotcha. Um, and we weren't sure if that was, we didn't really know what to expect or what to do. Right. So we launched and, you know, We told everyone about it. We would peripherally get a couple emails, you know, email sign up today. Yeah. Um, somehow miraculously, like I mentioned, but we sold our first one to, to a stranger, to someone I did not know on the second day.

And I'm like, wow, that's insane. I love that. You know? Yeah. It was the neatest feeling. It was the neatest $17 I've ever made that you know, is so 

[00:09:26] Mike Koelzer, Host: cool. That is so cool. A cool feeling. I've been asking some people what if they remember their first sale and, and a lot of people don't seem to, but I know I would with a new venture, it's like, that's, that's cool.

I 

[00:09:40] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: emailed the guy. He never, uh, he never responded actually. I'm like, I love you. I don't know you, but I love you. And I wanna be your best friend. And 

[00:09:48] Mike Koelzer, Host: you, you didn't send, you didn't send pictures though. Yeah, 

[00:09:50] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: no. Yeah. I may have come on a little too strong, but 

[00:09:55] Mike Koelzer, Host: That's funny. That's 

[00:09:57] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: funny. Oh, but yeah, it was, it was such a, but to me.

I'm like, okay, if you can sell to one person, you can sell to 10. Yeah. And if you can sell to 10, you can sell to a hundred. It means it's scalable. Yeah. Um, with the right thing. And so we had that and then eventually we started looking at other things. We're like, well, we both did residency. We could teach people about residencies.

We know those are super competitive. Yeah. We were both really good at studying, um, and were always sort of made studying cheat sheets for ourselves. Okay. Yeah. And so that's really where we have, we evolved into that's like our bread and butter right now, um, and has been as, is our cheat sheet. Um, and so those things happen, we had no idea.

We were going to make cheat sheets. It's they, we made one, which we just, it was a thing that I designed as a resident actually. Yeah. I made an antibiotic cheat sheet, right? Then, it became like, Hey, we're gonna give this to you for free. When you join our list. We noticed that we were getting a hell of a lot more signups for our email list, with the antibiotic cheat sheet than we were with chapter one of pharmacy school, the missing manual.

Right. Cool. People seemed to like this. Yeah. And then we started ranking in Google for how to, we had a post on, you know, studying learning antibiotics and antibiotic cheat sheets, et cetera. Yeah. And like that started ranking in Google and we started getting people in droves and then we're like, oh, we're dumb.

Let's make cheat sheets and sell them. , you know, it kind of just happened. Wow. And 

[00:11:33] Mike Koelzer, Host: so now is, is the cheat sheet, is that a, um, is that a combination of the knowledge on it, but also it's, it's a, it's a beautiful, uh, colored thing that people order and you mail it to them or are they getting a PDF of the, of the, of, of the setup?

How is that delivered it's 

[00:11:52] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: PDF? Um, we have looked at, and may eventually do. A product. Um, it is, it is beautifully colored. You can print it. Oh, gotcha. You know, with a color ate. Gotcha. You can totally do that. Um, yeah, I forgot that can be done. And it's designed in such a way that it should fit perfectly on your paper.

You know what I mean? Yeah. The ratios are all there. Sure. The only reason we haven't gone to physical product is one, the logistics of mailing it to updates. Yeah. Things update. We, and we do periodically update them. And one of the benefits when you're buying our cheat sheet is that when we make an updated version, it gets emailed to you automatically or to whatever email you bought, purchased it with.

So. You know, at $20 for an HIV cheat sheet might sound steep except that every single, not, not that we update 'em every month or anything, but when we do update it, you get the updated version 

[00:12:45] Mike Koelzer, Host: too. Not only is the information updated, but it's like, it fits, I mean, it's right in the flow of that cheat sheet.

Boy, if you can, um, not have that physical thing to send and do a PDF. I mean, that's great for you guys. 

[00:12:58] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: I think so we both have families, you know, and it's, we're, it's just us too. And we have someone that's kind of become our editor for most of the blog working stuff, and she's fantastic, but we're still a three person company.

Yeah. You know, and I don't, the only way I'd ever get into physical products is if we find a way that it, you know, it's complete, the shipping is completely outsourced. Right. I don't have time. I ignore a desire to be running back and forth the mailboxes all day. Like it's just not what I. No, I spend my time 

[00:13:33] Mike Koelzer, Host: doing exactly.

And if you can, you know, it seems to me, and I'm just from an outsider, it seems like it, if you can get people sold on the benefits of the PDF, where, you know, one, whatever it's available, let's say at wherever there's a computer for them, it's available. And they don't, and, and their copy can always be physically fresh, not only medically fresh, but you know, a brand new sheet.

And if you know, things like that. So if you can sell that idea, which obviously you do, that's really 

[00:14:05] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: cool. Yeah. And that's, that's kind of. Like I said, that's not what we started with, but that's where we are. When you think of 

[00:14:12] Mike Koelzer, Host: growth, do you think of, and I assume you do because most humans are thinking of the next step.

Are there different kinds of these sheets or have you thought of any other thing that you'd like to dip your feet into? 

[00:14:29] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: I mean, both. Yes. And yes. Yeah. Right. You know, we, there are definitely more cheat sheets to make. Um, we're, we're working on a pretty extensive one right now, um, for things like birth control and hormones and stuff like that.

Yeah. But eventually if you're thinking sheerly from a growth standpoint, you're gonna cap out on cheat sheets eventually. Right? Sure. Like there's only, but so many cheat sheets you can do. Um, and so yeah, we've, we've considered and, and will eventually look at, you know, everything from online courses to.

Good S like to, you know, we've, we've looked at, what does it actually take to become accredited? You know, what if we started doing S we've looked at options like that, you know, those are probably like the biggest areas we've looked at as kind of, could we do it? Of course. You know, we have, we have another, um, ebook on, on getting into residency.

We couldn't not tackle that. It was such a near and dear subject to us. So we've got a guide on getting into residency as well. Yeah. Those are probably the biggest ones. 

[00:15:34] Mike Koelzer, Host: Oh, that's really cool. Do you have anybody in the industry that is trying to chase you or are you trying to chase anybody or have you found your kind of a safe spot, even 

[00:15:48] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: though, you know, every month I feel like there's another pharmacist site or podcast or something, you know, like, I don't think that's a bad thing.

I, I really don't. I. I love that there's different people doing, doing what they do. And we all sound different. I think ID stewardship is cheating, you know, like they have study cheat sheets and, but specifically for infectious disease stuff and their stuff's phenomenal, like, and I can't touch that, like that guy's an, you know, their ID specialist.

So I work in oncology, so yeah, I can't possibly keep up with that level of stuff. And I, I think it's amazing and great, you know, I, I wouldn't say to us, I, I wanna work with as many, like, I think the more online pharmacy people work together, I think we all kind of rise with the tide doing that. Yeah. Kind of 

[00:16:36] Mike Koelzer, Host: like the old theory of, uh, why at the mall do they have food courts with all, you know, nine fast food joints joined at the hip?

And I think 

[00:16:46] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: like, let's just say someone. Tried to launch a TLDR copy, like, oh, clinical, you know, it's, I don't think you could copy any currently existing pharmacy site because so much of it is their personality. Sure. MedEd does a lot of clinical stuff. MedEd 1 0 1 Eric, over there, just like we do, but yeah, he's got such a different perspective.

He does shorter posts. They're super information. I love his stuff. I love his podcast, you know, like it's great. Yeah. Like it's, it's just different. He's not writing 9,000 words on war and he's giving you case studies, you know? Yeah. Which fits a different need. We don't do as many of those in our, in our posts, you know?

Yeah, 

[00:17:23] Mike Koelzer, Host: no, that's, that's exactly right. And it sounds like, as you said, you're putting your, your personal spin on it, how you would describe it and so on. And right, boy, if I'm trying to understand something, I'm gonna try to come at something from, you know, three different angles. One way you could look at that is a lot of these business books that come out, it's like, you know, that these things are sold to the people who have already read 90 out of a hundred of them.

People kinda like to make sure they're on the right track. And they're not really like, open it up and saying, this is, this is something new. And I think just like people like to watch the same genre of movies and of music, you, you like to see the intricacies of how things are, right? How things different a 

[00:18:06] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: little bit.

Yeah. I think your audience self selects, you know? Yeah. I think I would guess, and based on my conversations, I think I'm pretty right. That the majority of our audience is a residency track student or recent graduate. Yeah. You know, um, Not that we don't have. I mean, we have nurses, we have physicians and NPS and, you know, we obviously have not residency track students and pharmacists that, you know, but my, my guess, and again, what seems to be backed up based off conversations I've had with my Le you know, our email list, our audience sort of confirms that you can read the same business idea to kind of go with your example from five different people.

But this one book is the one that resonates with you for sure at that exact time. Yeah. Right. Because they said it in this way, they said it in the way that, and I think maybe the same thing you can read, you know, 10 different resources on. You know, whatever hypertension or whatever, you know, and, and maybe the way this one person said it this one time when you were receptive to that, you know, like that's what hits you.

So yeah, exactly. The pie is certainly large enough. You know, it's not a zero sum game and I certainly am not. 

[00:19:17] Mike Koelzer, Host: Brandon, when you are lying and bed at night, kind of before you fall asleep kind of daydreaming, do you say, I can't wait till this thing is a hundred percent of what I do and I wait to quit all of the pharmacy.

Or do you say, I, I want to be a side thing because you know, I either like the, I like the practice too much, or I, I don't just feel like giving my all my time and effort to this 

[00:19:44] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: for quite a while. This was the only, especially in the early stages. This was all like, I couldn't wait. I was actively trying, I was burning out at the hospital.

Mm-hmm that I was in and I was actively trying to go down to 32 hours. Mm-hmm because I was like, we're making enough. If I had a full TLDR day, you know, every week I, we could totally supplement yeah. With, um, and then I transitioned out of that to my current role. I'm now the pharmacy manager of an oncology clinic.

Yeah. I saw that change and, uh, I, I love my job right now, so it's, it's it's I don't know it, you know, I TLDR, since it started has been like the thing that I wanna be my full time eventually, but, or, you know, and then maybe practice part-time or PRN or something. Right. But right now I really. You know, like my job.

So I don't feel that strong push to yeah. To go down to 32 hours or to part-time or anything. Well, it's nice too. 

[00:20:45] Mike Koelzer, Host: It seems that you can, um, I mean, you have to keep the things updated and stuff, but you're, you're kind of at, you've kind of at your own pace. You've never, it's not like you have shelves to fill up.

You, you've never promised that you're gonna have X number and you're only at 0.2 X, you know, the right, the X that you're at now is, is always X and it might get a bigger or smaller X, but it's, it's your decision of what, what size you want that, you know, the X to be. And it's not a percentage that you're short of or anything.

[00:21:17] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: Right. I certainly want TLDR to reach more people. Not necessarily just from a financial point of view, I mean, obviously great buyer stuff, you know, that's awesome. Yeah. Right. But it, I, I want, I want a bigger reach and, and I want, you know, I want it to grow. I it's, it's like. A baby, to me, it's a, yeah. Right. So I love the site.

So much of me is on that site and so much of Sam and stuff now, you know? Yeah. It sounds like 

[00:21:45] Mike Koelzer, Host: a ton of your sounds like a ton of your personalities in it, which is really cool. 

[00:21:48] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: Yeah, it is. So there's that aspect of it, but yeah, I don't want to, like, you know, I, I have a family, I don't want to be the kind of dad that's not playing with my son because I'm writing an article, you know?

And so that, that limits, that limits things at the moment, I've got a very full time job. I mean, being in, you know, manager and especially when you practice yeah. As much as I do, it's, you know, that's, that's demanding. I've got, I, I still teach, you know, I, I teach through Georgetown university and online.

Yeah. Um, course, you know, pharmacology. So like I have other, other things that I don't necessarily want to give up right now either because I really enjoy them. . 

[00:22:31] Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah, that makes sense. Um, something that I'm not suggesting at all, but it just came to mind. You have a guy like, um, James Patterson, he writes all the mystery novels and lives down in Florida.

Yeah. And what he's done lately. And I think, I, I guess I have no reason not to believe him, but what he'll do is he has a lot of people that he co authors with. And when I think of a co-author, usually I think of someone who writes a book and then James throws his name on it. But he says he does is he'll make like a, I don't know, like maybe like maybe every chapter he'll write out as like maybe one page of a, of course his chapters aren't very long anyway, but let's say he'll make every chapter is like a paragraph where the actual written chapter is like for paragraphs.

And then he'll give that to his co-writer and he's already got James already has the whole story written and this guy knows enough of the style to fill in the blanks. How much is that? Is that something let's say that someone said someone did say, all right, Brandon, you're only at 0.2 X and I need another, we need another, you know, five times these could you, could you do that?

Could you say all right. I, I still have my, um, I still have my flavor of this by writing 20% of this. Or do you think that your flavor of who you are is like definitely writing all of it because every sentence even just is, is, is, feels good from you? I 

[00:24:13] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: think, no, I'm, I'm very happy to, to share to, to, to all, um, I mean, I think you're seeing that, you know, we, like, I've mentioned that we brought Stefan tot and she's, she's basically our editor now.

I used to work with her. Oh yeah. She's written, she wrote a few posts just cuz she wanted to, you know, back back in the early days at TLDR. Yeah. And she loved it. So she kept writing posts and then she, she co-wrote mastering the match with us, which is our residency guide. Um, and I mean, she's just a perfect fit.

Her personality is just right there. So like, when you find someone like that, you, you, you know, like, yeah, what do I need to do to keep you doing this stuff for us? Because like, it's, it's, we're, it's only, you know, right now I don't wanna be the bottleneck for TLDR. And right now I'm, you know, I'd be a bottleneck if I wasn't outsourcing certain things like that, not that I'm not 

[00:25:11] Mike Koelzer, Host: involved, but you know, if someone said, you know, let's say they have a music idol, you know, uh, Elton John and Bernie toin or something, and they're a bottleneck for each other.

They could put out more songs with other ideas from people, but then it wouldn't be, it wouldn't have their stamp on it. So, um, bottlenecks are okay sometimes, but you don't wanna be one in this case? 

[00:25:30] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: Well, I think, I mean, I, I, I agree with your point. I don't know that there's that much art in like one of our blog posts, you know, to speak that's right.

It's because it's your factual knowledge. It's just, you know, can you use an analogy? Can you use some humor with it? 

[00:25:47] Mike Koelzer, Host: Gotcha. And if you needed to, you could throw some of that in, but the rest of it is a lot of writing sentences and moving along, 

[00:25:55] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: I think, I mean, and I do like, I think even, and something Steph does really well with all of the posts that come up on the site, you know, is interjecting that if it's not there, if we, if we take a guest post, we take a lot of guest posts from whoever writes students, professors, practitioners, anyone that wants to write on whatever topic that it's a good, good fit for our audience.

Yeah. We edit it, you know, like that's like the final version. I mean, we, we want you to be okay with it. So we're not gonna post anything. We're not gonna change anything without getting your you're. Okay. But at the same time, It's not going to be a dry read. Like if, if, if you're not going to insert humor than I am, like, I'm going, like, let me, like, let me be absolutely clear about that.

Like , it's going to fit the context of the site. Yeah, exactly. Um, it's not gonna be a bullet list of like, we've had people that have submitted stuff like that and you're, and it's. No. Yeah, no 

[00:26:52] Mike Koelzer, Host: try again. Yeah. They somehow miss the, uh, boat somehow. Yeah. I always like to say that I'm, you know, supporting the guests and things like that, but I'm too slow and out of it to, I think even get through the first paragraph on one of your guys' things, it sounds like that's some deeper stuff that this old guy here is not gonna be able to.

My 

[00:27:11] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: mother-in-law has told me that she's learned a lot and she is not a pharmacist. So I, uh, really just a oh, that's cool. Just to be clear. I, I, you know, that's, I'm sure that's great. You can, I'm sure you can keep up and it's not all clinical, you know, we have, we have non-clinical posts, we have burnout posts.

We have career posts. And my day job, I recently hired a part-time pharmacist. So I'm kind of doing a post mortem as a blog post as a oh, you know, so like that'll, that's not gonna be clinical at all. That's gonna be about market saturation and. 

[00:27:46] Mike Koelzer, Host: So Brandon, you might have mentioned, but I, I might have missed it.

How did you pick up Steph then? 

[00:27:50] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: Um, she, I worked with her and she wrote some guest posts for us. She just was like, Hey, um, I wanna write, I, she initially wrote about pharmacokinetics, which I know, you know, needed to be on there because students struggle with it. And I had zero desire to write about. So I'm like, right.

Someone just asked me to write about it. Awesome. Please do. And then, yeah. And then she just kind of took off from there. Um, and she's that cool. Awesome. She's 

[00:28:17] Mike Koelzer, Host: great. You had mentioned, you'd mentioned Google ads. You'd mentioned your blog post. Are those, are you still employing both of those as a funnel to the, um, cheat sheets?

And do you use anything else or thoughts of anything else to, you know, funnel things into your purchases? So. 

[00:28:41] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: As a, I guess, point of clarification, we don't do Google ads. We actually don't do any ads. Um, gotcha. We, our posts have ranked well in Google, so if you gotcha. And, and I, this is not like tricky black hat SEO or anything.

I think, you know, the strategy, I guess for TLDR. If, if I had to pick like here, here's how a typical transaction might go down, you're confused and you wanna know, Hey, how do I learn? I need to learn about HIV. I'm not sure about this. So you Google some something in Google, like HIV study 

[00:29:19] Mike Koelzer, Host: tips. I see.

And you, and you're ranking up there on that, right? 

[00:29:22] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: You land on what I'd like to consider the most informative blog post that exists. Like it's easy to read, you know, that's not coming. you know, national health services, you know, like that's coming like, yeah, right. I'd like to think you're coming from like, wow, that's the exact thing I was looking for.

Oh, neat. They have a cheat sheet, you know, like, or they, they summarize all of the dosing information. Like, you know, we, they summarize all of this information plus additional dosing information and some other stuff for this cheat sheet. Neat. There's an email list. Let me sign up for that. And I wanna get this antibiotic cheat sheet too.

And so you get people on the lists and, you know, we, we treat our email list nicely. Like us, we try to respect them. I'm not blasting you with a bunch of stuff. You know, we give you all discounts on new products. We periodically do. You know? I mean, so we we're, we're doing stuff. We give you some incentive.

Then you're like, to me, yeah, you, you come on, you see the antibiotic cheat sheet, which is free or whatever it is. And you're like, holy crap, this is amazing. I can't imagine what this, this one that they charge $9 for might be, you know? And then you find that we have these other ones and I believe in our products, I think they're outstanding.

Yeah. And, uh, sort of, if you've bought one thing from me, you've most likely bought multiple things. 

[00:30:42] Mike Koelzer, Host: So your blog posts, then they're typically on the same subject as the cheat sheet. I 

mean, 

[00:30:50] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: we have a lot more blog posts than we have cheat sheets, but gotcha. Yes. You know, like that's, that's the ideal kind of, you know, I have an HIV cheat sheet, so if you Google some string for HIV and you end up, um, on it, then.

That's what you, you know, you end up seeing there and it summarizes this 12,000 word post called the ultimate guide. You 

[00:31:14] Mike Koelzer, Host: Now, like when you talked about Coumadin, your 9,000 or 10,000 words were part of your blog, post Mar and the cheat sheet is more like the equations and things. Do I have that right?

[00:31:27] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: Or cheat sheet will go into a lot of, so I don't have a specific Coumadin cheat sheet. I do have an anticoagulation cheat sheet. Gotcha. And so what does that go into, that'll give you, like we go into, let's see, um, reversal agent. So like anything you might wanna know. So how do you reverse Coman and how do you reverse river rocks?

I see it'll have doses. How do you, what do you do heparin for? For VTE. What about river rock Aban, you know, for VTE? What about AFib? You know, what about like, so per indications we'll have the dose there. What about drug interactions? You know, you know, things like SSRI that you might not think about, you know, ging, like some of the herbal supplements that also can increase your, your bleed risk.

Um, so we have like kind of clinical pearls like 

[00:32:18] Mike Koelzer, Host: that. Gotcha. Can these travel with a person through, let's say, you know, first you're a pharmacy school for 15 years, that they're actually using these sheets then in, and I know you have your disclaimer about, you know, , you know, we're just, we're a couple of guys writing in these, but, but, but they, they can follow along with these and use them in let's in real life.

I 

[00:32:41] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: absolutely, I mean, I do like, I'm not even like, that's great. I reference. I reference my cheat sheets and my blog posts all the time, because I know I've looked up whatever it is that I'm looking for. And I know exactly where it is on the cheat sheet, you know? Yeah. I had it recently. Um, I'm in oncology, but we deal with on, you know, with anticoag all the time.

And I had a, yeah, one of our nurse practitioners needed to know the hold time. You know, they had a patient that was getting a Xa band and they needed to have elective surgery. And she's like, well, what's the hold time. And I'm like, almost like, as she's asking the question, like, I know exactly where the que you learned this as a resident, you learned to predict what you're about to get asked.

So that, yeah. Right. By the time she had finished, like I had, I had had the cheat sheet pulled up. I was looking at it. And then it sounds like I'm just reciting this off the top of my head. So I sound like I'm super smart. I'm not, you know, I just knew where the information was. 

[00:33:37] Mike Koelzer, Host: Oh, I don't know about that.

You sound super smart to me. And, and the thing is too, I imagine that when, when this question, let's say it's being asked, you can actually visualize that thing kinda where, where it's on the sheet, right. It's on the bottom, right. Quadrant or something like that. Facial memory. 

[00:33:55] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: Yeah. I, uh, I didn't realize I was using that. That's a thing that's well known.

That's how people memorize decks of cards and stuff like that. They memorize like walking through like the front. Sure. Yeah. Doorstep. And they're like, okay, there's this table there. And that's the ACE of space, you know, they go through it like that. Yeah. I didn't realize I was doing it in pharmacy school, but that's like, I could tell you that, oh, RFA Pentin was on the upper right hand corner exactly.

On a note card. And, and that's, I, I, my brain works that I didn't realize it, but 

[00:34:25] Mike Koelzer, Host: yeah. I showed this to my, um, my daughter's boyfriend last week because we were sitting around and. But I, it brought me back two years ago, I read a book by, um, a memory expert called Harry Lorraine. And he would, he would go to like Johnny Carson and show up and he would be able to remember all the names of people and so on.

But in this book it talked about, um, uh, a memory thing that I used to do this when I was supposed to be watching the lifeguarding, the pool at the country club and I, I was watching, but I also, you know, , I mean, so I didn't fall asleep. I'd have things in my head, but, but he would, um, he would have every number one through zero, basically 10 digits had a certain consonant sound to them, and then he would take the, um, first letter.

So let's say that, let's say you're in spades. So the ACE of spades, it, would start with an S for a spade. And then the one would be a T sound. So that's a picture of a suit, like a swimsuit. And then, the two of spades, the S would be for spade and the N is. The two is an end, so that's sun and then three is some, and then four is sewer and five is sale and six is sash and it would, and seven is sock.

It would go up with all these things. And so, just last week I was doing that where I would take a deck of cards. I gave half to my, um, my daughter's boyfriend, and then I'd look at my cards and I would, I would picture the, the, the word in my head and then have a picture of it doing something just like you were saying, Brandon, like have a picture of it getting rained on or something like that.

And then if I did the same and then I could tell him, after putting my deck down, I could tell him what's in his deck. But then if you did that, like 10 minutes later, instead of picturing him having them be rained on, um, you'd picture 'em, you know, Being on fire or something like that. So, right, right.

Anyways, it's supposed to be a cool trick, probably at the end of mine, he was out there talking to my daughters. I don't know your dad, your dad must be your dad must be drunk in there. He is. He's mentioning different words that seem to make no sense just by himself. So, but 

[00:36:43] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: he's talking about suits on fire or I don't, I got 

[00:36:47] Mike Koelzer, Host: a little, I got a little mileage out of it.

[00:36:49] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: Right. I got a little 

[00:36:50] Mike Koelzer, Host: mileage out. Um, Brandon, if, if you were not, if you were not a pharmacist right now, if someone took your degree away and they took away your TLDR ability to mention drugs and so on, what do you think you would, what do you think you would do right now? Would you strike up TLDR in a different field?

Or what do you think you would do if you couldn't touch pharmacy anymore? Boy. 

[00:37:21] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: Yeah. , it'd be so sad, but no, I think, uh, Yeah. I, I think I'd have to like knowing, knowing what I know, like I, I came from, you know, your typical, you know, I worked in some form of retail, basically my entire life, you know, I worked in my uncle, had a paint store.

I worked in a paint store, sold paint throughout college and stuff like that. I, you know, ended up working at a Walgreens I've worked at as a Wawa, which is like a gas station, food Mart kind of situation. Yeah. Like, so I've done stuff like that. None of that really appeals to, you know, it's. Yeah. So like knowing what I know now and learning, like I've learned quite a bit with TLDR on how to, how to validate a product.

Yeah. How to, how to reach an audience. Yeah. Even if it's not a pharmacy , yeah. Call action and all that stuff and right. I've extensively Studi. You know, copywriting and just trying to improve as a, like I've dropped several thousand even just, I mean, I, I drop, you know, I I'm, like I said, I'm a student, so I'm always reinvesting and getting better at that.

And 

[00:38:28] Mike Koelzer, Host: for the listeners, when you talk about copywriting, you're talking about not trademark copywriting, but copywriting for the website to make something look more appealing and things like that. Right? Correct. And 

[00:38:40] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: it's, it serves two focuses for me. So its sales copy is, you know, what, what we'd call it in the biz.

Mm-hmm so to speak. And it's, you know, obviously sales copy is great because if I get better at it, I should be able to send you an email and persuade you to buy a thing that I'm selling. So there's that aspect of it. But I also think the real root of why I love studying sales copy is that it's just about communicating an idea.

Yeah. It's about putting some idea and it, it, I don't have to be selling you anything or persuading you to do anything, right. It can be. Can I write better blog posts? Yeah. Because I've learned how to communicate more effectively with a written word. Yeah. You know, and I was, I was on, uh, Ashley Clemens's podcast a month or a couple of months ago and same, I, you know, I kind of realized it as I was saying it.

And I'm like every single time I send an email to work to the nursing manager, to my staff, to whatever I'm copywriting, I'm, I'm communicating. Yeah. You know, I'm using the same tools. 

[00:39:41] Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. And arguably you're selling something you're. Wait for them to see your point of view or, or whatever, you know.

Exactly. So it's always a sale, even though there's not, you know, there's no money involved. A financial transaction. 

[00:39:56] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: Exactly. 

[00:39:56] Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. Brandon, who do you like right now? Like what authors are you business authors? Are you interested in seeing their next book come out? 

[00:40:05] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: So I like, I love Ryan holiday. He's not necessarily all business.

He does have one. I would call it a business book called perennial seller. Okay. Um, which is phenomenal, but he's, I, I read everything he writes. He's, he's amazing. And he's got a book coming out in terms of strict books. Let's 

[00:40:23] Mike Koelzer, Host: see. A lot of times there, there's no really such a thing as a pure author anymore.

I guess it's kind of a blog slash podcast slash YouTube slash book. 

[00:40:32] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: Right. So I like, you know, REIT safety. I like it a lot. He does, I will teach you to be rich in a growth lab. Um, and I've, I've bought several of his expensive courses, but I've. It Was quite cool. From, from him. Copy hackers, Joanna weave at copy.

Hackers is another phenomenal phenomena again for writing resources, but yeah, they teach you writing, but that they're also, you can't teach some of those aspects for writing for an online business without teaching online business. Yeah, right. Yeah. I would imagine Ramit would say what I love about him. Yen, always excited.

Whenever he's doing something he's much more focused on the principles than the tactics. Gotcha. The timeless principles. So like here's so instead of, oh, you need to do Facebook ads right now, or your business is, you know, and start a podcast or, you know, instead of like this tactic, it's, it's more about a timeless principle.

It's about, you know, reach it's about, 

[00:41:32] Mike Koelzer, Host: yeah. You might want customer feedback, which is gonna have its different modes through the 

[00:41:36] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: years. Exactly. And so I guess I probably. Read more of the classics in that sense, like influence, you know, and yeah. Reading those have been, or even like how to win friends and influence people to an example, like are probably more along the quote unquote business books that I've read.

I did a hundred dollars startup and that guy just has a new book that he came out with. But I haven't read it yet. Chris Gillo I think his name is, that was a pretty good one too. 

[00:42:05] Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. I gave my kids, I think the deal still stands. I gave it to my kids years ago. I gave them seven, a list of seven books and how to win friends was one of 'em and just some of the Other standards. And I paid them, I was gonna pay them a pretty, pretty decent sum of money if they would read it. But then they had to give me a verbal report of it while we went to lunch together, they'd get a free lunch out of it too. And I thought it was the best idea I ever had with my kids. And I think like, Two of them took me up on it or something.

So it must have been the lunch part they didn't want to do with me or something but I thought it was 

a good idea. 

[00:42:45] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: It's a numbers game, you know? If I, send an email out to a thousand people, like, you know, it's all about open rates 

[00:42:53] Mike Koelzer, Host: yeah. 

Um, what would you tell a student listening right now that is pretty inspired by doing something?

Well, let's say, let's say online ish, like you've done. What advice would you give to someone who's just, well, whatever it could be someone in high school for that matter. 

[00:43:17] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: I guess the biggest lessons I've learned in online business, one probably number one is no one cares about you. Hmm. And what I mean, I don't mean that in a nihilistic sense.

Yeah. But what I mean is. You don't care that I wrote 9,000 words about warfarin and made a cheat sheet. You care about what you're going to learn out of that. Gotcha. Um, the age old, like copywriting analogy people use is when people are buying a hammer, they're not buying a hammer, they're buying a hole in the wall.

Yeah. Or they're buying a nail. They're buying a picture. Yeah. That was, that's gonna show their family on their wall. Exactly. You know, you have to think about it exactly. You have to think about that end result. Yeah. And no one gives a crap how long it takes you. No. To write, you know, no one. So like, if you're like, Hey, y'all smash the subscribe button, like follow.

Yeah. No one cares about that. Like writing a thing that people want to share. Yeah. Right, right. You know, and, and it will sort of take care of itself. Yeah. I didn't take out ads on Google. I don't do Facebook ads, but stuff goes well in Google. Yeah. And stuff gets shared on Facebook because it's a thing that's worth sharing.

Not everything. Of course. Yeah. It's worth sharing. Right. Right. So. That's probably rule number one, I would say rule number two is to always be honing your craft. Whether that be, if, if you're doing a YouTube channel or a podcast or whatever, but stay up with it, you know, like figure out like, I, I study writing, you know, I want to be a better writer.

Yeah. Um, eventually I need to learn how to be a better speaker if I'm going to do online video courses or stuff like, you know, so I need, I would need to, and I'm thinking about stuff like that. Okay. Yeah. If we do a video course, do you, you know, what am I looking at? Do I need screen capture software? Do you know?

So I like to think a few moves ahead. Yeah. And then maybe number three, I think the most beneficial thing I've ever done with TLDR is getting the email list. I cannot stress that enough. Like I see businesses that are focused on Facebook or focused on social media. Mm-hmm , you know, that's where their audience is built.

And I really strongly urge you not to do that because Facebook controls like who's, you know? Yeah. I follow TLDR on Facebook and not all of TLD R's posts show up in my newsfeed. No, for sure. And that sounds silly, but that's, you know, Facebook tries to set it up so that yeah. You know, Facebook's interests are in the interest of Facebook.

They're not in your interest. Yeah. They, 

[00:45:49] Mike Koelzer, Host: they want, yeah, no Facebook, Facebook for one doesn't care. Yeah. They want you to have your nose on Facebook. So that's, uh, you know, cat videos or whatever. Right? Exactly. They're gonna 

[00:46:00] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: keep you on there. And it's the same with Google or Twitter or yeah. Pinterest or whatever.

So, I can send an email. I mean, obviously you have to open the email, but I, I own my email list, so to speak, you know, so while I can, while I could send a thing out to 10,000 people on Facebook and Facebook could choose to only show that to 2000, right. If I send an email to 10,000 people, I'm definitely sending an email to 10,000 people.

Yeah. That's kind of, I think the single greatest tool I think in our arsenal is that I could send an email right now saying, Hey, we have a new cheat sheet. And I'm very confident about that. I'd be richer when I got home. Like if I heard it, you know what I mean? Like I'd even in, so like we'll, we'll typically, when we do these sales, like in less than a minute, we've, we've made a sale sometime.

You know what I mean? Yeah. So, 

[00:46:51] Mike Koelzer, Host: Well that, yeah. And, and in your stuff too, I mean, boy, that's you got repeat customers and you, and you have, and as we were talking about, you have lifelong customers 

[00:47:00] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: and we've built trust. Right, right. Like its people, it's the neatest. Like I, I'm not saying that from a hubris, like, you know, right.

I can't tell you how much I appreciate my readers and how much I respect them and value them. And it's because I trust them. And, and I know that they trust me because I sent that email in less than a minute. Someone's bought something. Yeah, exactly. Like that, that doesn't happen. Tactics and like, Hey, buy now, now, now.

[00:47:30] Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. And I think it's the independent pharmacy approach you're doing because you know, people come into the store. Right. And, and you don't tackle 'em to buy something. You know that they're gonna be around and there are kids and their grandkids, and it's a trust factor that you build up.

Right. What's your main feedback loop from customers, Brandon, as far as, Hey, you know, you, why don't you guys put this on there too, with that kind of thing? Is that coming from the emails or is that coming from blog comments or what? So we don't 

[00:48:01] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: do comments, um, on the blog we did initially. The only reason we took them off is that you get a lot of random spam for Russian Viagra or whatever.

Yeah. And that's 

[00:48:12] Mike Koelzer, Host: just not, there's just 

[00:48:13] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: Anything wrong with Russian Viagra. I love it. That's great stuff. Mm-hmm no, but like it's, so that was one reason. And then two, we were never alerted, like, I guess we used Squarespace and. And I guess we could have used Diskus or some other program to do the comments, but if you wrote a comment on some blog post, I, I, I don't ever find out, you know, I didn't get emailed.

I didn't get alerted in any way. Right. And so like the whole purpose of having comments is to have a dialogue. Yeah. Right. Um, and so you could, so it doesn't work and probably your barrier to emailing me is a little higher than to writing a comment, but that's okay. Because like I get, we get emails all the time.

Like, have you thought about writing about this or I think this might be a mistake and, and we've made corrections. I mean, we get a genuine dialogue with people. We read every single email, and I read every single email. I respond to almost all of them with warrants or responses, especially, you know, I, I never leave anyone hanging.

Yeah. Um, it's a significant part of my week. so we get a lot now. 

[00:49:14] Mike Koelzer, Host: I bet it is. I bet it is, 

[00:49:17] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: but it's important to me. That's it. You know, that's why I love contact. Like I love the relationship. I've developed relationships with people. Sure. Like from our list, you know, like it's yeah. It's amazing. It's such a cool, like, I didn't expect that as an unexpected side effect.

Yeah. That's 

[00:49:33] Mike Koelzer, Host: really cool. That's really cool. In your current life, uh, business wise, what are your things that you don't like, you know, anything from commuting to administration work, to dealing with a, dealing with an employee? You know, what, what part of your week is like a pain in the pain in the rear? Do you 

[00:49:52] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: mean TL DR wise?

Uh, either wise 

[00:49:54] Mike Koelzer, Host: TLDR or, or the, or, or just your pharmacy, uh, career with the, you know, the cancer stuff and then, and then doing the TLDR and so on 

[00:50:05] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: the cancer stuff. I mean, like I said, I love my job. If you're very, you're very busy. Um, you know, I'm at a very, very busy institution sometimes. You know, tensions can flare up sure.

With your team members and, and that's just, I don't, it's never fun to deal with, you know? Right. But it's, you find, you find a way that's not great. Um, especially 

[00:50:28] Mike Koelzer, Host: when you're insisting they're wrong and they won't believe you. 

[00:50:31] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: Right? Like why, why are you so stupid and you're disappointing me again.

What is it with you and disappointment, you know? Yeah. 

[00:50:39] Mike Koelzer, Host: It's not you, it's me. I think you're 

[00:50:41] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: stupid. Yeah. Like you're dumb. Yeah. And you're a bad person. No, I love my team. My team's amazing. You know, I, it's hard to complain about that. Yeah. Right. Um, if anything, it's when stuff that's out of your control happens, like it needs to happen yesterday.

That's, that's the part that I dislike about my job, I guess is yeah. Sometimes there, like today, it was 20 minutes. You guys don't know this. Mike has been very gracious, but I was, uh, 20 minutes late to this whole thing because I was trying to deal with fires. You know that, yeah. He never, there was gonna come up the whole and.

Great. You know, I'm like everything's resolved, the patients will be taken care of, which is job number one. Of course. Yeah. But, you know, yeah. With TLDR, the only, uh, it's hard to, I don't really dislike much about it. Like I love the outreach of doing podcasts with stuff like this. Um, right now I'm kind of struggling to find the voice that I want in the article that I'm writing and that can be frustrating because I wanted to post it.

You know, my goal was to have this thing published on Monday. We're now recording this on a Wednesday and it's still not ready to see the light of day, you know? So like, I feel like I'm behind, we try to have a, every two week posting schedule. 

[00:51:55] Mike Koelzer, Host: Well, I was gonna ask you, so you have, you've given yourself kind of a little deadline.

[00:51:59] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: Yeah. And I feel like I've missed deadlines and I kind of don't like that feeling. Yeah. Um, but at the same time, I don't wanna push out a post. That's not as helpful, you know, like I, we try to be funny and we try to, but rule number one at TLDR is that every post is helpful. Yeah. Right. And so it's not, it's not where I want it to be yet.

And while that annoys me, like, I'm, I don't wanna sacrifice. Yeah. Right. Qual quality just to get it out. Yeah. For a self-imposed deadline though. It's not like I'm reporting, you know, it's. Yeah. I think we delayed TLDR by maybe as much as a year, then, the launch of it, we've been talking about it forever.

Mm-hmm like with your, what, what are people gonna say go, we don't have a product. We don't have the, like, we kept X, Y zing, everything, um, right on what needed to happen. And we, we should have just launched the damn thing and it would, you know, would've sorted itself out a long time, but yeah. At the same time right now.

Yeah. I, I. I'm not worried about me being a perfectionist. I'm not at all. I'm happy to say I'm at this point, like you said, I know where it's at. I'm happy to say something's good enough. I don't think it's good enough yet. and yeah. Right. And when it's at that point, that's frustrating. 

[00:53:12] Mike Koelzer, Host: Sometimes it's that, that's where that frustration comes in.

Cuz you know the difference 

[00:53:16] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: and it's like, yeah, it, you know, I, I don't write every post anymore. Like I did in the early days, you know, I'm not. And so it's like, come on, I, I should get this, this, I got this. Yeah. You know? And it's like, so sometimes that can be frustrating, but that's not a, you know, that's yeah.

That's most of it's fun. Most of it's fun. It's fun to think about different products. It's fun to think. You know, oh, what are we gonna do now? What's next? What you know, or whatever. It's, it's a great, great 

[00:53:46] Mike Koelzer, Host: time in the book. How not to give a F you know, followed by the other words, you know, he talks about that.

Life is, um, the, the joy of life is having problems, having problems and solving them. But the, the key is to make your problems, uh, less like, like smaller and smaller problems. Like my problem, I want it to be like, does this watermelon feel more hollow than this one does? Or something like that. I want that to be my big problem in life.

Right. So Brandon, Brandon, what would you do right now? What would you do right now? Non-business related: if someone forced you into a year's sabbatical and you couldn't do anything pharmacy related, or, um, let's say even business related, what would you do for a year? 

[00:54:35] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: I'm a, I'm a. Huge nerd. And this, I love reading.

Like I love reading nonfiction. I'm just a big nerd like that. I still have small children. So like as much as I would like to go on a road trip with my wife and travel and do, it's just not real. It's not, if it happened right now, I'm assuming current life. Yeah. You know, it's not a realistic possibility for us to travel extensively.

Like, and finally go to Europe. Like we keep saying, we're gonna do so if I had a full year, I mean, there, there would be some travel, mostly, you know, us travel probably. Right. But I'd catch up on reading. I feel like between, you know, mm-hmm, the, the small children. And, like I said, it's really important to me to be active with, you know, to play with my kids every day I put 'em to bed, you know?

Yeah. Right. Um, I'd, I'd catch up on reading. That's such a LA ceiling thing, but I would love it. Reading nonfiction. Yeah. I've got, I've got the whole stack of things and in my queue, you know, and I'm, I'd. I try to, uh, there's this really cool, um, idea that I stumbled upon once of, you know, trying to read 25 pages a day of nonfiction.

It's like, if you can just get 25 pages a day, like you'll, you'll be leaps and BA you know, and that's a, that's a great example of not letting the perfect become the enemy of the good, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's like doing a 10 minute workout, you know, it's, the 10 minute workout you did is better than the 30 minute workout you didn't do because you didn't have time for it.

Yeah. Right. You know, so I try to, I would, I don't know. I think I would do stuff like that. I've got a lot of house projects that keep sitting. I'd learned something. I'd probably learned a new skill. I'd like to get into woodworking or something. You know, I would find something to do. One of my 

[00:56:22] Mike Koelzer, Host: best thing I ever did was years ago at our, at our first house, I did my best at redoing the basement, you know, putting the ceiling on and getting some old carpet and stuff like that.

And I was, that was one of the most satisfying things I've ever done. And someone I told my friend that, and he said, well, Mike, the reason why it's so satisfying to you is because when you go into work every day, you know, you go in, you do this thing, you help people, you know, that's satisfying, but, but when you leave, it, it, it looks the same the next day you come in.

Right. And it's like, did that, did that day even happen? You know? And that, and the woodworking and stuff, I think there's a special. Sauce in there for maybe pharmacists that see the same thing every day, but it maybe shows like a little, you know, a little progression, a progression in life that you can just kind of put your hands on and realize that life is moving forward.

Still. Even though sometimes it seems like Groundhog day, you know, we're at the shop and stuff. 

[00:57:14] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: That's a great analogy, a great metaphor. I love that expression. And I've, I haven't thought about it or been told about it in that way of how your job, especially as a pharmacist is kind of, you know, it, it is the same thing and it looks kind of exactly the same, even though every day is different.

You know, it's a different emergency. It's different, yeah, that's a. Thank you. That's a great way of putting that. I like that. I'm gonna steal that. Don't 

[00:57:38] Mike Koelzer, Host: tell anybody. I hope no one hears this. Cause that's like the last project I did and that was like 25 years ago, but I just haven't found a, a psychological need to do one 

[00:57:47] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: again.

Yeah. I'm the king at starting it and then like the excitement has worn off. And so like, yeah, I've still got like, oh, I've gotta finish painting the trim in that room. Oh. You know, or, and that's been about two years. That's the worst. 

[00:58:04] Mike Koelzer, Host: That's the worst. Don't even, don't even give, give yourself a mental break and don't even start 'em.

[00:58:11] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: Well, that's kind of like where I'm at. Like, I'm almost like, you know what, I've got a little bit of extra money with side hustles. Like I'm, I'm just gonna pay a painter. Yeah. To come out and finish everything. All of that. I get no joy from painting. I painted my entire house when we bought it. So like, I, you know, may I live a hundred years and never paint.

Another ceiling is like my philosophy. 

[00:58:34] Mike Koelzer, Host: I used to use this question for myself. Like in, in my pharmacy business, if someone gave me $10 million, would I like, then I'm like, uh, or let's say a hundred million. Okay. I'd had divided Pharmac cause I'd end up probably being on the, you know, 30th floor of the Ellis tower in Chicago, you know, I'd have to do that.

And it's like, I, you know, I'm, I may or may not like that, but as sometimes you don't, you don't want to not do anything. And so there's probably 10 things like around the house here, it's like, I kind of enjoy getting on the riding lawn mower and riding around. It's got like a nice vibration and, and you can pretend like you can't hear anybody, you know?

And it's like, it's like, 

[00:59:14] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: that was my dad's move. My entire childhood. We grew up on a farm too. So, I mean, it was like, it was the only hours of quiet time he loved. 

[00:59:22] Mike Koelzer, Host: So , I told my, my dad used to, um, come home like on Sundays and he would have, he'd have this. His box of crap, of papers all over the place.

And he'd kind of put his head in his hands, like he was thinking, and then he'd have like golf on or something. And I remember asking my dad, I said, dad, if I ever take over the business, is my life gonna be so crazy like that, that I have to sit here and do this. And I told my dad's friend that one time and he was laughing so hard saying that I was, I got suckered by my dad thinking that that was reality.

You know, I, my dad actually had the golf on, you know, I had his favorite beer and a pipe and he just spreads all these papers out. And if I would've looked at him, I've probably seen like, they were from like 11 years old or something, you know, you see, but 

[01:00:12] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: you haven't seen , you know, yeah, 

[01:00:16] Mike Koelzer, Host: yeah. For real, brilliant.

For real well, Brandon, uh, really a pleasure talking to 

[01:00:21] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: you. Likewise. I appreciate you having me on the show and. Yeah, I enjoyed this conversation. Thank you. Yeah. And 

[01:00:28] Mike Koelzer, Host: I, I wish you guys all the best and it'll be, and someday, if I, if I think my brain won't explode by reading something a little bit scientific, I'm for sure.

Gonna take a look and at least I'm gonna take a look at the, um, at, at the funniest that you have in 

[01:00:43] Brandon Dyson, PharmD: there. Ire. Yeah. If you just scroll and see the memes that's all you need. It'll uh, . They work, the rest will work itself out. 

[01:00:51] Mike Koelzer, Host: that'll work itself out. Yeah. All right. Brandon, you take care. Yeah. You as well.

Thanks Mike. Talk to you again. Bye. Bye.