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In this episode, Mike Koelzer talks with Greg Cianfarani, CEO and founder of RxInsider. Greg shares insights on the evolution of RxInsider, the challenges of balancing digital and print media, and the importance of building trust in the pharmacy market. Discover how diversification, curiosity, and networking drive success in the industry.
This transcript was generated automatically. Its accuracy may vary.
Mike Koelzer: Greg, for those that haven't come across you online, introduce yourself to our listeners.
Greg Cianfarani: My name is Greg Cianfarani. I'm the CEO and founder of Rxinsider. Rxinsider is essentially a MarCom, marketing, communications, and market research company focused exclusively on the pharmacy market .
We help connect those companies that offer products and services, whether it's [00:13:00] technology, staffing services, really any kind of services to dispensing pharmacies, across every practice setting.
We have a few different publications. We have the Platinum Pages, which is the Annual Buyer's Guide. We have our 20 Ways Publications, we have our Virtual Pharmacy Trade Show. , we're performing a lot of market research, which isn't so much connecting, but educating on these companies. So that's really what we do, and we call those companies, the Pharmacy 500.
Our end users are really pharmacy management. We don't do much with staff pharmacists.
It's Really independent owners, directors of pharmacies, at hospitals, it's really the management out there. Executives at the chains.
So it's really connecting the product and service providers to the pharmacy decision makers. That's our focus.
Mike Koelzer: Greg, I know in the pharmacy, I'm [00:14:00] seeing your stuff all the time.
Much of your system of, RX insider, how much of that is.
versus print. And is that a good mix or are you heavier on one? Because that's what the companies kind of demand. Now, I have no idea if I'm close to this, but here's what I'm thinking. Sometimes you have a company like yourself, and let's say there's a split between online and print. And it seems that some companies might feel that way.
Better about one of the other ones, they feel better about print because that's supposed to be the old time solid advertising means, and then someone else might want to do online more because of the immediate feedback and all the cool stuff. So what is your split as far as getting in the minds of people?
And do you feel about [00:15:00] right? Or is that kind of. Pushed maybe by one of the sides over another one and it may not be as fruitful.
Greg Cianfarani: That's a great question, and we're, honestly, we're always asking ourselves that internally as well. Value all of those different channels.
You want to provide that content in every avenue that your end users would appreciate. So the end users, again, being those pharmacy managers, some prefer digital, some prefer prints.
And that's just the way it is. Print is very expensive. To produce and distribute. But that is how, a lot like to consume
The content.
, this is our line with our clients
Greg Cianfarani: Look, with us, print isn't just print. We take it, we convert it all to digital, and we push it through our social media, we publish e books, all of that.
So everything we do is pretty much in both formats, for the most part, [00:16:00] to kind of make everyone happy.
From a marketer's standpoint, those are typically our primary points of contact at these companies. And it really depends on their strategy and even what they're required to produce back to their stakeholders.
And by that I mean, some marketers like a good mix. Some fall one side or the other. One nice thing about digital from a marketer's standpoint is the tracking capabilities.
That's wonderful. Not everything can be tracked all the time, 100%, but you obviously have much greater tracking capabilities with digital than you do with print. But it can also be a double edged sword. A lot of digital doesn't get the credit it deserves because yes, it can be tracked, but it's also not easy for attribution. In other words, hey we sold this robot, a quarter of a million dollar robot.
[00:17:00] back, like attributing, okay, where did this lead come from? For something like that, like a capital expansion, it's almost impossible because that independent owner, let's say, that purchased that equipment, they've seen all these different mediums. They
see them at the trade shows, they see them in print,
they see them online. And that's what you need. You need to build that awareness. What it really comes down to is budget. So, if you have a super limited budget, or my boss wants to see something specific and I'm the marketing manager. I might read one way or the other. From a print standpoint, it's funny you brought this up.
We were talking, his name is Nick Shadows and he's an independent owner of Suburban Pharmacy here in Rhode Island. He was actually on one of our covers, good friend. And he was in the office about a month ago. We were just kind of chatting. And when I practiced and when I was working for an independent, I remember, Every day we would probably get a stack, like a six inch high [00:18:00] stack of mail,
Every single day.
In that, there were bills, there was a publication or two, there were mailers, there's just tons of stuff. And it was just almost information overload back then. A lot of it is considered, quote, junk mail. But what he was saying, because I haven't been on the bench in quite some time, but it's almost flipped. Like he gets very little mail, like everything's digital now,
the bills, everything.
And so when he does get something, like he mentions in our publications, I don't get much anymore. So when I do, there's a big impact and I'll look through it.
Mike Koelzer: I don't see many male come through anymore. It used to be toss toss and. Now, of course there's junk mail still, but stuff that maybe is a little bit, maybe not personal, but a little bit more focused.
So what I did was like a year ago. I took postcards and I mailed them to, let's say, I don't know, 300 doctors or something like that in the area, because [00:19:00] they're not getting a lot of stuff from people right now like that. And then, I'm always trying to turn my mistakes into what is it? Lemon into lemonade.
But say this tongue in cheek, but I'd put the wrong doctor on there. Let's say it's going to go to a group of 20 doctor groups , and I put Dr. Jones there knowing there's no Dr. Jones in the group. In my mind, I've got the male person going around to everybody and saying, who's Dr. Jones? I got this thing from this pharmacy.
We can't find Dr. Jones, so in my mind, I'm like the talk of the doctor's office for this slimy little trick I did. Well, ultimately
it's just an error on my part.
Greg Cianfarani: Savvy. Yeah.
Mike Koelzer: know,
You're right on that Greg, because people don't know Where they've seen you always it's kind of the straw that breaks
Greg Cianfarani: Yeah.
Mike Koelzer: back because if you're an attorney, they would say, find out how your customer heard from you I don't know what they get, [00:20:00] but let's say a hundredth of the customers, a pharmacy has, but in pharmacy, you can't really ask how somebody heard about you because they see it all over the place.
When I have asked in the past, it was like, I saw your TV ad on such and such. And it's like, well, I haven't been on TV in the last whatever, , I know you didn't see that and I know I haven't been on this channel, but people don't really know. they might see you the hundredth time in time one to 99, sort of built up that trust, the hundredth time, the time they're going to jump.
Greg Cianfarani: Exactly. And you kind of hit the nail on the head there with the trust. trust and awareness. People want to buy from someone that they trust. And that they're comfortable with and aware of. I'll use ScriptPro, as an example. People have seen ScriptPro, through all these different mediums throughout the years.
And, whether ScriptPro is the right automation for you, or [00:21:00] not, is irrelevant. You've heard of them, you know that they're a player, you're comfortable with them. Whereas, if you run across a pharmacy robot, and it's called Chamferani, who would feel comfortable about, like, why would I put that in my pharmacy.
Oh, well, it's the same as the ScriptPro, and they're big in Europe. Like, well, I don't care. And I don't care if it's cheaper. I'm not comfortable with that brand and that name. I haven't seen them around. They haven't built that trust with me. So, in marketing that's the sort of golden ticket, you want to build awareness. Because if they're not Aware of you, they're not considering you. And if they don't consider
you,
Mike Koelzer: right.
Greg Cianfarani: they're not gonna buy from you. Or they'll buy less. And it's just, it's important. It's not cheap, it's long term, it's not a quick little blitz.
It's critical to a successful long-term business.
Mike Koelzer: You think about the cost of stuff and it's like, in my [00:22:00] mind, it's always, how can I touch whatever touch means how can I touch more people for money per touch?
Top of mind awareness. How long do you have to be in front of people? The right medium. It's tricky. It just is tricky.
Greg Cianfarani: It is. Well, just think of something we can all relate to. There's ibuprofen, right? There's Advil and Motrin and, a generic, on your shelf., Consumers see the commercials and
they're comfortable with Advil and Motrin but if there was Some weird off brand that no one's ever heard of. Like how's that going to sell on your shelf? If it's ibuprofen, but if they've never heard of the brand they're not comfortable with it.
How much have they invested in those brands, over the years? So that consumer. I saw a Motrin commercial. I'm not going to run down to the pharmacy and buy a bottle of Motrin because I saw the commercial.
But when I am ready to buy, when I'm in that consideration phase, that's when I'll, I [00:23:00] might grab that versus another brand.
Mike Koelzer: I'm dating myself here, but with yellow pages, it's like, if you're a plumber, I guess even a pharmacy, it's like a job to make the yellow pages successful to do everything before that to 30 or 40 times in whatever period of time before that.
So when their fingers go down that list. That's really not where they're making the decision. They're not really going with the biggest ad or the flashiest ad. going down there until they find somebody that they're
Greg Cianfarani: comfortable with,
Yes.
Mike Koelzer: Let's put it negatively.
Let's say nobody wants to deal with this type of company. Well, then they're finding the one that, Discuss them the least, But that homework is done for the 30, 40, 100 times before that, where people are [00:24:00] seeing it. Just like the pharmacy robots.
When is that decision made? It's probably made with that trickle. And certainly from a company like yours that just keeps that trickle up.
Greg Cianfarani: Yeah absolutely critical is to keep that trickle up. It's funny you brought up the Yellow Pages. That's what influenced the name of the Platinum Pages, for us. Back in 2003, I think it was when we launched it, but the Yellow Pages was the inspiration for it. We said, I want the Yellow Pages of Pharmacy and that was the Platinum Pages. But you're right, people, by who they're most comfortable with. And that comfort comes from awareness but it also comes from, it comes from the perception of being a winner. And I know that, that doesn't sound right, but people want to go with the winners. I want to go with the best, if I can afford it. And a lot of that is there, there's a lot of things that wrap [00:25:00] into
the perception of being the best. Part of it is awareness. And that's why we were talking about trade shows earlier. That's why some companies have. larger boost than they need. It's that perception. So if they have a 20 by 20, they don't necessarily have to have that. They can get what they want accomplished through a 10 by 10.
But when you see that, as an attendee there's a perception there that's being built. Okay. Well, these guys, they have money. They're going to be around for a long time. They're a major player. All of that, Helps build that perception and
awareness of the company.
Mike Koelzer: Sometimes the best is just a person, there's something in their background where they've made some stupid money decisions and their best bet is going to be somebody like that. Emotionally doesn't let them down. It's hard to define best, but best for them is something that [00:26:00] is going to satisfy them.
Maybe in the positive, maybe in the negative, maybe so they're not hard on themselves and think it was a stupid idea if it doesn't work out. They can say, well, I went with the best and that's the best I could do. So there's a lot of psychology behind why someone's picking something.
Greg Cianfarani: Yeah, absolutely, and I think you alluded a little bit to it in that comment. There's also the, honestly, cover your own ass, aspect to it as well. So if I'm working for, if I'm in pharmacy operations for a chain, and, I'm assessing, let's pick something, and we'll go back to pharmacy
robots. That's my responsibility. Ultimately, we go with an off brand and something no one's ever heard of. They're maybe new to the market or whatever, and it fails. I have nothing to back me up, quite honestly. Whereas if I went with a leader and it failed, then at least I said, Hey, I went with a leader.
These guys are, they're the biggest ones out there and this and [00:27:00] that. There is a cover your own ass aspect to it as well. So I feel good about my decision. And if I'm ever called to account for it, I'm comfortable presenting this company because of all these reasons of them being at least perceived as a leader.
So
there's always that aspect too. Yeah, yeah.
Mike Koelzer: California and I say, Tim, why do people hire you? I mean, it seems like people at the company, the CMO and that kind of people should know what you do. I know you're my brother. You don't know a hell of a lot, you know?
As we've kind of talked to him, this might be more my thought than his, but it does cover your ass because then instead of saying, I'm a failure at the CEO job, or my vision for the company is not right now, they can just say, uh, Tim wasn't any good. He blew it. Well, now it's just one little decision [00:28:00] and now you're covered.
Greg Cianfarani: Yeah, I think that supports a lot of the consulting business in the world out there, is the cover your own ass, aspect
to it. It's like, hey, we brought in this big consulting firm and this is what they said to do, this is what we did. It failed, but hey, we paid them all this money and these guys have this big name and what do you want from me?
We did the best we could.
Mike Koelzer: Right. Greg, what's interesting to me as I start to monetize the show and attract interesting guests like yourself. It kind of builds on each other. So if you invite somebody, if I invite a guest, they might look and see who else were the guests. And if kind of in a certain range of whatever popularity, I'll say for lack of a better word, it's like, yeah, maybe I should jump in there too.
Same with marketers on the podcast. It gets me thinking though, about your relationship with 500 people. It's like. I guess I can see how that happens once the ball is rolling because they want to be in there too. But how the hell does this start? Where do you [00:29:00] start with this and get somebody in your history?
Where did you start to get the first people to pay you a dollar for that kind of thing? What's the genesis of this?
Greg Cianfarani: That's a great question. It's not easy. Yeah, it doesn't happen overnight and it's not easy. I mean, I'll give you the story on where we came
from.
Mike Koelzer: you
Greg Cianfarani: Uh,
Mike Koelzer: start into this?
Greg Cianfarani: sure. Well, in the 90s I was working for CVS staff pharmacist, at one of the pharmacies here in Rhode Island, and we had a big Hispanic population in the area. None of the pharmacists could speak Spanish. So I said, ah, I want to learn the basics of Spanish so I can help counsel these patients and show how to use an inhaler. The wait's going to be, there was nothing out there and we're talking late 90s.
It was, there's really nothing out there for pharmacists. You know how
We have our own language. So I said, well, I'll learn it myself. I'll do it the hard way. I'll buy some books and tapes and there's no Rosetta Stone back then
neither. None of that. And [00:30:00] I'll compile some kind of training program because, if I'm going to do this myself the hard way, I might as well, I might as well compile something and, who knows, maybe it'll help get me promoted to CBS.
Maybe I can sell it on the internet. Yeah, the new
internet thing that's out there that's probably just a trend.
Mike Koelzer: That's right. so it did. Took about two years. Compiled this program, had it, and I'm a Pharmacist, like I knew nothing about marketing, none of that. Like, all right, now what do I do? Well, why don't I try putting it on the internet? And I didn't know anything about web design, none of that. I wasn't going to spend a small fortune building out a website in the late 90s. So I taught myself some basic web skills, built a little website, called it RxInsider for really no reason. It's kind of prophetic that it's called RxInsider now, but. called it RxInsider, I think, because I could buy the domain back then it
Greg Cianfarani: was available.
Mike Koelzer: just for timing for our listeners. I [00:31:00] mean, I know that this is like 97 or so
Greg Cianfarani: Yeah.
Mike Koelzer: learning what the internet is, or,
Greg Cianfarani: Yep.
Mike Koelzer: and I had to have somebody explain to me what the web was. This is the late 90s. So this is pioneering for you. It's not like you came in late.
This was rather early in the whole web thing.
Greg Cianfarani: Yeah, it certainly was, and what really kick started RxInsider was pretty pioneering. so, I created the site, put the Spanish program on there, and of course, nobody came to buy it. Because nobody knew it existed.
So, yeah, maybe there's more to it than just creating a website.
Greg Cianfarani: So I created some tools on the site to hopefully draw pharmacists in. One tool is a bunch of cheat sheets, like inhaler actuation cheat sheets and
things like that. I created a little pharmacy technician orientation program. And I created a job board, like
a little Craigslist kind of job board for pharmacists. And at the same time I did this, I was learning about [00:32:00] search engine optimization.
So how to manipulate Google and get to the top of Google searches, which was pretty cutting edge back then. What happened, Mike, was that the job board really took off.
A lot of, uh, pharmacists coming to that, submitting their resumes through it, and that was kind of the aha moment of, wait a second, selling the Spanish training program isn't where it's at. So I also learned how much was invested in recruitment marketing. I don't know if you remember, but back then is when the colleges of pharmacy went from five to six years over a couple year
span, and
There was a huge pharmacist shortage. That was like the height of the pharmacist
shortage, around 2000.
So the timing was great. And I had all these pharmacists come through this job board, and that was really the start of RxInsider. That's when I kind of parked away from CVS. I built that. And so you asked, well, kind of how do you get started? And I had no sales experience, I had [00:33:00] no marketing, none of that.
So on my days off at CVS, what I would do, I would post. Back then, everyone had their email addresses exposed.
Like, they weren't hidden behind forms like they are now. So very easy to find, especially recruiters' email addresses. You know, I'd post their jobs, start sending them resumes, and then I'd say, hey, you want to advertise?
And there was like such a pharmacist who wanted them, they said, sure. And it was super cheap, but that's kind of what got the ball rolling was driving those resumes on our, kind of that job board which has now turned into our virtual pharmacy job expo, but that's what kickstarted RX Insider was that job board. And it grew, it became very successful. We had everyone there from all the chains, tons of hospitals. And that's what started the business. But around 2002, 2003, we kind of ran out of [00:34:00] big customers. Everyone was a part of it, which was great. And we were doing such a good job connecting pharmacy employers with pharmacists looking for jobs. So why can't we just use this same model and connect pharmacy products and service
providers with pharmacists? Pharmacy Managers, like, use the exact same system, The same same online model. And that, that's what we did, and that's what turned into the Virtual Pharmacy Trade Show. I remember I think it was an A SHP conference, I spoke to who I had to speak to, it's kind of done, had half a day left, and I'm just kind of walking around, look at all these technology companies there, I'm like, Man, we should be working with these guys.
Like there, There's a lot of them. And great opportunity, and that's, that was the, the light bulb went off. So that's when we added B2B to RxInsider and grew our virtual trade show. Then we added the pharmacy platinum pages because I didn't want to be a one trick pony [00:35:00] with just an online product.
I wanted to complement it with prints, much more expensive to do, but it would have legitimized the business that much more. Now we're more of a player because we're investing heavily in that print side. It
complimented the online, that grew and grew. At that point we had a few programmers on staff, and the company was growing. And around 2005 one of my contacts at one of the colleges of pharmacy Tipped us offside, hey, I know you've got some great programmers on staff. there. You've actually done some great work for us. The colleges of pharmacy are going to have a hard time complying with these new ACPE standards coming out in
and that group. and then over the years we added a few products on both sides of the business to where we are today. That particular product line, the software for the Colleges of Pharmacy Um, Really the premier product was called Core ELMS, E L M S. There were about 150 colleges of pharmacy between the U.
So, your listeners out there that are preceptors Most of them are using our software, core, to manage those students.
When I say manage them, provide their schedules back to the schools. um, Submitting their, end of rotation evaluations. Tracking the students' hours. All of that is managed within that software [00:37:00] and it was just a really fascinating almost Career path, in a way, or market to get into the EdTech side of things.
So, that grew beyond pharmacy. We were selling to all the allied programs, med schools, even law schools and colleges of education. And so in 2016, I split that business off from RxInsider. It became the Core Higher Education Group. And in 2022, I sold it to a private equity firm. So just Kind of a convoluted history there,
but just unique.
Mike Koelzer: What was your plan? Like five years before you split off core, What was the impetus for that? Were you like getting overwhelmed? Were you on that side of the business? Did you think somebody else, it was more valuable. What was the impetus for that sale?
Greg Cianfarani: of things. One is, originally I was thinking, okay, we're going to diversify RxInsider's offerings and really kind of own the [00:38:00] College of Pharmacy market too, and we'll have all these students coming through and we can eventually connect them with a product and service providers as they grow in their careers. Originally it was around that. It was okay, we just want to have this great, diverse, um, offering
set, but what happened was we started selling beyond pharmacy
no nursing school wants to buy something from Rx and,
you know, something with Rx all over
and so the branding was starting to get really wonky.
They call that SaaS, software as a service. And, the SaaS model, the business model, is very different from the marketing and communications model. So, even internally, it was like two different models. The
branding was almost like we were growing into two separate companies
internally as
well.
and, you brought it up, making it more valuable. You always want to keep your options open, I guess, looking down the road. And, I knew that if the companies were [00:39:00] combined, and at some point, the opportunity arose and I'd want to sell, it would be a really funky kind of business to acquire.
You've got all this Marcom stuff, all this SaaS stuff, and it doesn't make a lot of sense. So, looking at the work for that reason, too, to just make things simpler. Break it apart. And both companies kept growing, both very successful, but very different. They were, They were very different.
And yeah, the private equity company probably wouldn't have been interested in the combination. And if they were, the valuation would have been much, much lower than it was.
so it was a combination of Just the branding, the Just kind of growing apart the business model and just adding value to that, to both businesses.
The same thing with RxInsider. If somebody ever, at some point I choose to exit from RxInsider, it's a much cleaner business model than having a whole SaaS [00:40:00] company attached to it. So, just kind of cleaning things up in a way.
Mike Koelzer: Is there anything, Greg, in your future that you see is, I don't see it. I think you've done a great job of delineating the different things under RX and CIDR.Is there ever a concern of anything that would be getting too muddy where you would, you know, do a bigger split?
I can't think of what it would be, but something that is maybe held back by RX and CIDR, the same reasons you did it with core, but something that's more under the RX heading that you think would be better split and maybe not.
Greg Cianfarani: Uh, no nothing now at least. Everything makes a lot of sense. Nothing being held back. We are, and it's a little premature to talk about it, but we are going to be launching another software product, under RxInsider. It's supply chain management. I won't get into the crazy details. And that's going to be a SAS model. My initial intention is for it to be a [00:41:00] part of RxInsider, but if that takes off and other markets see value in it. It could be the same situation as Core and at a certain point I split that off. So I don't know,
but that could be the. only thing.
I do enjoy running, both business models, a SaaS model but also a
Marcom, but they are very different So we'll, you know, we'll see where that heads, down, down the road.
Mike Koelzer: Greg, how did you monetize things
In the early days.
Greg Cianfarani: When we launched that job, it was just me in my basement, for
for the most part my days off. It was pretty simple. Back then when we launched the job board, we would take a posting for 300 bucks or,
Kind of like an ongoing sort of evergreen posting throughout all the states that pharmacy chain, operated in for like a set amount per year, 8, 000 a year, 12, 000 a year, something like that. But that was it. It was a pretty simple business model.
And [00:42:00] that's how, Indeed, and Monster, and CareerBuilder, that's pretty much their model
still by job posting. And that did us well over the years. That's what gave us our big kickstart so, one mistake that I did make back then was, the website looked like trash.
I mean, it looked like a bad Craigslist. And if I would have probably invested a little bit more or, considerably more in the branding probably would have made more money and been able to demand more,
uh, because it did come off as very much a, kind of a mom and pop type platform even at the late 90s, early 2000s standard. So, I wish I probably would have done more on the marketing side building it, polishing it. and have it be taken, I don't want to say more seriously, but that comes out to perception. If you're seen as a mom and pop, you're going to be treated as a mom and pop. If you are seen as a major player, you're going to be treated as a major player . And that was one of the most significant business lessons I've ever learned.
Mike Koelzer: [00:43:00] Craigslist is good because it's bad, their claim to fame is, looks like it was built in their garage. And so you just took that one step further, you were great with your stuff by the look of it.
I think we all have to be easy on ourselves. I can't believe I look back at how much Amazon stuff I bought, like in the early , mid nineties or something, like, I bought like one CD, like I bought four things from them. Now I'm buying four things before noon, and four things afternoon, but you look at that stuff and you look at Amazon's old sites and all that kind of stuff.
And it's laughable. It's so chunky, but you know, everybody thinks that things have been like they've been forever, but Boy, things have gone fast. So what did look archaic in the past was pretty darn good. It was a present. You didn't have a ton of cash either to be hiring those kinds of people.
So I think you've done okay.
Greg Cianfarani: yeah. Well, you're right. Every now and then on a [00:44:00] Friday, it's a fun thing to do if you go to the Wayback Machine. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but it's called the Wayback Machine. It's an internet archival tool. It's been taking snapshots of websites since the mid 90s.
And if you go there and you type in something like Apple.
com or Ford or, your university,
Purdue, go
back and look at those websites back in the, as far back as, you know, it's really fascinating. Like when you look at Amazon's website in 1997, it does make you feel better.
Like, wow. Oh my God. Look at this. But that was the standard back then. It's fun. And what I'll do again, just like a silly Friday thing
is I'll go, I'll take a snapshot of our website and I'll just send it out to the company and say, Hey, Whatever the joke's going to be,
like, hey, I'm thinking about, upgrading our website and this is
what we're going to look like. Yeah, I made some updates, but it's just, it's a fun thing to, to go look back on,
especially when you look at some big boys out there.
It's kind of eye opening .
Mike Koelzer: if you [00:45:00] had to pick like 5 percent of your week, a couple hours, few hours, is there any time of the week that you still don't like but it's hard to get out from under that or don't you have those kinds of tasks at this point?
Greg Cianfarani: I really don't have many of those tasks. I still like to be involved in the interviewing and recruiting process. And that's obviously time consuming.
I'm not telling you
something that they don't know. There can be a lot of wasted time involved in it.
I do enjoy aspects of it, but I would say that's probably the biggest thing because I do want to stay very hands on with who we're hiring.
But pretty much everything else we're set up pretty well. It's well delegated and I've got an incredible team. And same thing with the way Quora operated. I like to think of it as my job is to work on the business, not in the business. And if I'm working in the business, I've got to figure out who to delegate [00:46:00] to. I don't want anything dependent on me
within the business. I just want to improve things.
And I think that's, yeah, that's my job.
That's an aspect to company value as well, is if the owner is dependent upon, whether it's customer relationships or really just anything, that's not as attractive for a potential investor or acquirer.
Mike Koelzer: Absolutely.
Greg Cianfarani: been important to me to ensure that nothing is really dependent on me.
And that's how we set things up.\
Mike Koelzer: I think back to the
book Michael Gerber the e myth, he talks about the different hats and all that stuff. And even a pharmacy owner can think about different hats in the company. Now, at that time, the pharmacist might still be wearing three or four of the hats, but the goal is kind of to get rid of them.
But it got me thinking sometimes like there's some times where Somebody might enjoy something. Let's say they have a lemonade [00:47:00] stand. They enjoy that, and they really enjoy having three lemonade stands and 10, but pretty soon they get 50, and then they get to hire this person, and they hire that person.
Pretty soon they're in, Some New York high rise, delegating out stuff, but they kind of have that dream of still being the four location lemonade stand. I suppose it's during those kinds of times that maybe you sell out and buy a little place, you know,
I'm figuratively buying a little place again to rejuvenate some of those things.
But you can almost sometimes find your way out of stuff that you like in a company.
Greg Cianfarani: That's really insightful. I very much lived through that. One of the reasons I stepped away from core, after I sold
I stayed because I wanted to see what it was like, to grow, to learn from, all these new people that were coming in.
So I just kind of liked that environment. what I didn't
like was, [00:48:00] I was losing, I really like to get in the weeds. Whether we're using a new software application internally, like, I'd like to understand what's happening. If we're using HubSpot for marketing, I'd like to understand it. You just can't do that. As you grow and as you become bigger and scale, you just can't keep your finger on those pulses. You have to depend on other people. That's just the way it goes. And, I found that I was losing touch with those things that I truly enjoy. And I wasn't creating anymore.
Like, I like to launch new products. I like to work with the marketing on the branding and the messaging. But again, back to new products. I love launching new products
And push them out into the market and see if they work and talk to people. That's what I love. I wasn't doing that anymore.
It was administrative.
And I just didn't enjoy, I just didn't enjoy the administrative that's required for scaling up, a business
and it wasn't [00:49:00] going away. So a combination of most of my day being meetings and administrative work combined with not being, losing touch with the software that we're using and not being as knowledgeable on all those details within the business. But you just can't. Like, at a
at a certain point, you just can't do that. But that is what I enjoy. Now, I think that's where my skills lie and where I'm best at. So that was one of the reasons why I stepped away from Core, back to RxInsider, and we are launching a whole new division right now.
And that's where that software is going to come into play. That's fun for me. That's what gets me up in the morning. That's what I really enjoy. Else we're doing it, we have been doing it for 25 years. I like launching new things, and it could be a new product line for our Marcom team. That's what I'm best at, that's what I enjoy doing, and that's what I'll probably always do.
Mike Koelzer: I imagine let's just pretend that your split was 50-50 between core and RxInsider.
Greg Cianfarani: [00:50:00] Yeah.
Mike Koelzer: The things you mentioned with core, I imagine though, you're still doing that with RxInsider, but it gives you 50 percent more time to, you know, mess around. I mean, am I correct in saying that both of those roles are somewhat similar?
Now, maybe you don't have two of those on your plate. You just have one giving you some time to, call it, have some fun,
Greg Cianfarani: Yeah.
Mike Koelzer: with the things that you mentioned.
Greg Cianfarani: Absolutely. Yeah. And that was another reason why I decided to actually sell Coors, because that was getting too much. These 50 things. I saw myself as holding back, honestly, both businesses.
with sort of my style and what I'm interested in, I am getting very, I get in the weeds and I have to
know all the details. I Can't do that, and if I'm running two different businesses at that level,
Neither are going to grow to the extent that they should.
So I did see that I did realize that I was [00:51:00] probably holding both companies back a little bit by trying to do too much. And that was one of the reasons why I decided to sell as well. But yeah, coming back to RX Insider, I did take a ton off my plate. And honestly, it was probably more like 70-30. I was probably more 70 percent focused on Core,
30 percent on RX
Insider. so it's allowed me to put a lot more back into RxInsider, launch a few more things, see how those take off, and yeah, doing what I truly enjoy doing.
Mike Koelzer: Greg, it seems to me like you've got desire or skill for diversification, and I think some of that's just for the joy of it, of staying creative and doing things. But I think it's a skill almost that Pharmacists have picked up knowing the dominance by the big three oligopoly of the PBMs and all that kind of stuff.
It seems like pharmacists got the monster on their back, like [00:52:00] this might not last, or I got to keep ahead of the lions. Is your diversification just for profit? Is it for fun? Do you diversify on purpose to stay one step
Greg Cianfarani: I think it's all three quite honestly. I truly enjoy it. I think I would get bored if we just sold one product year in and year out.
I think our team would get bored with
it too, so part of it is to keep engaged and motivated. Like, you know. someone in sales, for example, they truly get excited about selling something new versus selling the same thing over and over again.
So it's not just, for my benefit it's for the teams as well. Plus it's fun. I think
It's fun. And we try to hire people that have that mentality.
Greg Cianfarani: So you mentioned, is it fun? Yeah. From a profit standpoint? Yeah. We obviously want these products to succeed.
Not all of them do, maybe half fail. But, if you do hit on one that takes off, then, just like Corsi [00:53:00] LMS. I mean, that was phenomenal. I want to say, about 500 schools now across the country depend on that. Every day there are sort of brains for that department within the university. That's something I'm very proud of too. We have had some stinkers over the years that we launched. Big waste of, I don't want to call a waste of time, but. We invested a lot of time and money into them, and they just didn't work out. But, you gotta look back on it as a learning
process. And it's also, your third point, to stay ahead. If we were still selling job posts like we were when we first started, we'd be out of business now. Because the whole market changed back in 2008.
And the recruiting marketing wasn't nearly what it was ten years before. So if we hadn't diversified over the years, we probably would have failed it at some point.
We certainly wouldn't have seen the success as we have in other areas. But I've also been accused of over-diversifying and throwing out too many [00:54:00] products. Which is a downside of that. And then you
become watered down, you don't focus on necessarily your core competency, you're kind of chasing the shiny objects.
I've gotten better at that personally over the years
of chasing the shiny objects but I still do chase a lot of shiny objects and might launch some things that we don't necessarily need to so it's a double edged sword, you have to find that, strike that balance.
Mike Koelzer: Yeah. And I think personally, we all need to balance between chaos and order. You kind of need to walk that line. You don't want to be overwhelmed, but you don't want to be bored with the mill. So you kind of have to stay there. I think back on my life and I hate to say this, but I wish I had more failures because when I read like a, like, let's say an ink magazine or something and you hear someone's history, in the, maybe this is just the author pushing for this, but you always hear about, failed, this failed, this failed, and finally they made it.
And in [00:55:00] my case I can't complain about it, but I've mainly been the one at the pharmacy, and I think it would have been beneficial for me. If I played it right to go through a few more ups and downs, I think to maybe give myself some confidence that I'm not a one trick pony and that kind of stuff.
And I think there's, oh, it ain't easy, but I think some failure there is good. And so I think you're right on line to show that you guys can and grow. things and pull back if you need to and keep going if you need to. I think that's a really good quality.
Greg Cianfarani: Yeah, well, sometimes you do get jaded though, in that you put so much time and energy into it. And you don't want to cut your losses and step away. Whether it's pride, or whether it's you might just, tunnel vision, or you might just have such a passion for it, you kind of blinders on. And that's tough to do, to finally say, all right, [00:56:00] look, this isn't working, or it's barely working, and it's just sucking up a disproportionate amount of our time and focus and resources. that's really hard to do, but. Yeah, you get better at it,
and you get more confident with it.
And, it's really important to set your team up if you want to keep them motivated when you launch a new thing, but you also don't want to be so over the top and rah rah that know, if it does fail they're demotivated, at that point.
You want to cushion that, a little.
Mike Koelzer: our business, that we stressed more in the past was medical equipment, which we don't do anymore for a few different reasons, A couple on my team said just didn't feel good going out Not having the confidence that they did with other parts of our business when they had to answer questions of people, the confidence wasn't there.
And I have some people on the show, they are like, Hey, we talked about this service. Why don't we have your pharmacy, try it out and it'll be free. And I'm like, [00:57:00] no such thing as free. There's the time and there's the trust of the employees of,
Oh, here goes another harebrained idea.
and, Look how the other one went at that time and so on. So not saying don't try stuff, but there's no such thing as free when it comes to disrupting or putting something in front of your team.
Greg Cianfarani: Absolutely, Yeah. Beta testing, you're right. It's very disruptive adding any new adjustment to your workflow. Whether you're asking. A customer to try something out or you're launching something new internally, a new tool, you have to enter that process with a very measured guess, and a lot of communication with the team and everything you can to make it as least disruptive as possible.
So if it does fail, you minimize the cost because you're right. There is always a cost.
Mike Koelzer: Yeah, and sometimes companies will say, well, my employees, they're afraid of change. It's like, well, [00:58:00] maybe, but maybe it's because last time you didn't give them what they needed. You know, It was a half assed thing, and everything was late, and customers ,
were complaining, and all that kind of stuff.
Greg Cianfarani: yeah. Living through that, we had implementations with core ELMS. There weren't a lot of lessons there weren't. So there were a lot of schools, no pharmacy schools really, because pharmacy schools are pretty advanced, but a lot of nursing schools, you'd be surprised. Still doing things on, on,paper,
for the most part. When I say paper, I'm talking about spreadsheets. And Core ELMS is just, it's a phenomenal tool from every angle from an efficiency standpoint, communication, all of that. And getting some of these staff at some of these schools to engage with and start to use it, because They've been managing their processes this way since the early 90s. It's hard. It's hard to change management. it's not as easy as you think. You might have a great tool, but getting people [00:59:00] to change their ways is not easy, and it
needs to be planned out extremely well with lot of communication to make
sure that you
give your best chance to succeed with it
Mike Koelzer: Greg, tell me about the size of your team in terms of how many employees you have? And roughly who do you have? What percent of sales? What percent of this? What percent is that?
Greg Cianfarani: Sure. Well, we're not very big. We're about 20. Five or six are sales on the MarCom
side.
Mike Koelzer: phone, email, different ways they're reaching out.
Greg Cianfarani: Really we kind of see it three ways from a sales standpoint. Yes, email, phone, but also face to face at these trade shows. We don't
do a lot of traveling to our clients. Milenkovic offices. We do some. But, we find it really beneficial to get a lot of work done when we're at, let's say, an NCPA.
Because so many of our clients are there already, [01:00:00] all aggregated in one place, and so what we'll do is we'll try to set up like half hour meetings, and that's like our big meeting with them for the year, and you're
face to face, and
You can get a lot accomplished. So, there are a lot of meetings at NCPA. at these national conferences. But I would say, those three, like a mix, of those three there. So I guess you could look at it as sort of divided into three segments. We have our sales team for our MarCom side. We have our creative and operations team. So that's our graphic designers, our video
editors, our marketing team that doesn't just market on behalf of us. It's like getting our name out there, but they're also responsible for taking our client's content and pushing it through, all of our different channels, our
social media and all
that and converting. They're also the ones from an operational standpoint where, let's say, in December and January, we're compiling our platinum pages guide for the upcoming year.
[01:01:00] They're the ones that handle the nuts and bolts of, Collecting the PDFs from our clients and all that. So that's our creative and marketing team that kind of sit in between the Marcom team, but also our market intelligence team. That's our newer division and there are six or seven people within that team. And, what their role is, in a nutshell, is to follow these 500 companies and their So heavy product knowledge and what they're going to be doing this year, second half of the year, is producing pretty much a weekly report on the Pharmacy 500 on a specific supply chain category.
So it could be inventory software for that week. And we produce a full 10 page report on the players and, kind of everything there. Or it could be a teardown of you mentioned, the big three wholesalers. Cardinal Health, a very complicated, complex company. Like a nice tear down of a company like them, [01:02:00] or, Omnicell or ScriptPro, publishing that out.
So, the market learns more about these companies. So, we haven't launched a couple of these products yet, but that market intelligence team is going to be producing quite a bit of content to help them. Really educate the market. Our Marcom team does that already, educating them through sort of the advertising and marketing side. The Marcom team is going to be doing it through research. Be a little bit of a different model and that's what we're building that software around is to house all of that data and be able to produce all different types of reports and information .
Mike Koelzer: All right. So Greg, besides having to rebuild your early website and thinking you should have done that now, what advice would you give yourself at that age slash
A new pharmacist with that entrepreneurial spirit.
Greg Cianfarani: we take students from,
[01:03:00] Seven different pharmacy schools. We take out these students as a rotation site, as an elective, and I always like to give them this advice. We position ourselves as a very unique rotation. And so we attract pharmacy students that want a career path in more non traditional pharmacy. So my advice to them, and my advice to myself , back when I was at CVS, is to be extremely curious. you know, you want to network, you want to Stay involved with your university, try to stay involved with your state associations, try to get to some national meetings and dig into the different products and services out there, and you're going to discover so much, you're going to meet so many people, but you're going to discover, opportunity, and opportunity being Wherever you want your career path to head, you're not going to [01:04:00] discover this opportunity by not being involved and not being curious.
And that was what I sort of did for my first ten years of my career at CVS. It's like I didn't get out there, I didn't meet anybody, I didn't dig and yeah, I spent ten years as a staff pharmacist at CVS. And that was great. CVS was wonderful to me. And I love the job, but I kind of look at it as, Hey, man, I lost maybe eight years of my career because I could have started what I'm doing now eight years sooner a way, but that's my advice to new pharmacists is be curious, meet, network, and in a true way, not just fire off LinkedIn invites, but try to meet people. And that's where opportunity arises to help support you in your Oh, golly, Greg, what a pleasure meeting you. It was fun to get into the depths of your closing comments there about getting involved in meeting people, you put your money where [01:05:00] your mouth is. is. Spreading that out with your focus, but really touching a lot of people. I know you have a lot of stuff going on, Greg. i appreciate you spending time with us and it was a pleasure meeting you.
Mike, it was a pleasure meeting you too, and thank you for having me on your podcast. I
i appreciate it.
Mike Koelzer: Thanks, Greg. Talk
again soon.
Greg Cianfarani: Absolutely.
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