Creating Branding Hooks | Stanley Warren of Pharmacy Stan

Speech to text:

Mike Koelzer, Host:Stan, for those that haven't come across you online, introduce yourself and tell our listeners what we're going to talk about today. Pharmacy Stan: I'm pharmacy, Stan, and 

I'm trying to bring epipens to market for $50 or less. 

My mission is to me. Health care about patients and not shareholders 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Stan right off the bat there.

You've got. Good hooks like in the ad industry, which I'm not a part of, but let's pretend that I was, they'd say in the ad industry or in the writing of songs that you need a hook and you threw out two hooks, right there. One was a very succinct message that you want to have EpiPens under $50, but the other one was.

Pharmacy Stan, you've named yourself into this stage name of pharmacy. Stand out of all the guests I've had. They're all somehow related to pharmacy, at least in my mind they may be, but none of them have ever come on and say, I'm pharmacy, Jim or pharmacy. Barbara. Where does that come from in your mind to say.

Your pharmacy, Stan. 

Pharmacy Stan: So pharmacists there on came from. Transition to using LinkedIn to develop a network and an audience to get my voice out there and, and try to do what I can. I came across a few creators on LinkedIn, um, that are not in the pharmacy industry. And they really talked about personal branding.

I've been in the industry for 19 years. What would I call myself? Like Stan already has a unique name. So I've been in the industry 19 years. I'm a pharmacist, Stan. I'm sure that helps get me a lot of profile views. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: It's interesting because in marketing, sometimes the obvious is not stated. Like I forget when it was even a month ago, we had a call someone's like, do you feel prescriptions?

You know, or something like that in marketing, they always say so. Show the solution. So the solution of pharmacy is how to be a fan of well being, you know, the happy family and things like that. But sometimes as marketers, we forget to say something like we fill prescriptions and we want to fill your next prescription.

Now I'm not saying that's your frontline message, but sometimes we lose that. So pharmacy staff. That's a great hook. 

Pharmacy Stan: Thank you. Yeah. I, you know, at first I, I remember texting my friend who's, um, one of the higher ups at medley pharmacy and saying, Hey, what do you think about the name pharmacy, Stan, I think I want to use this.

And he's high up in the food chain as far as that stuff goes. So I figured whatever he said, I would respect that opinion. And he said, I love it. And I was like, great. So do I, and I. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I know that I reached out to you, I think on Twitter. So that's your Twitter handle and probably across the board too. 

Pharmacy Stan: Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Um, and I have people who follow me, who asked me for my last name. They're like, I follow you as pharmacy Stan. And I haven't, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I know the secret 

Pharmacy Stan: Now, you know, there's no hiding my last name. It's just that LinkedIn cannot accommodate pharmacy, Stan, and then foot war. Somewhere in a, in a good place that is still there.

Mike Koelzer, Host: You're like the share of pharmacy. I might be dating myself, but what's another first name, you know, Madonna, you know what I mean? You're like the first name of a pharmacy where it doesn't matter your last name. Alright. So Stan, what attracted me to you then besides the pharmacy, Stan was your other hook and right in here.

I don't know, LinkedIn or Twitter, it says your goal is to have $50 epi pens. And what fascinated me about that is I have no idea in hell if that's possible, but again, it was just a cool hook. So where did that come from and how did you decide to put that out there even though. You potentially could fail at that?

Pharmacy Stan: Oh yeah, absolutely. Um, as far as failure, I mean, right now I haven't succeeded, so I've had investors come to me, but they don't have the same mission as I do. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: What I thought was cool is you come at it from both angles. Being the average Joe, on the street, along with someone that had this idea, you know, a lot of times people will only come at this from [00:05:00] pharma or they'll bitch about it as a consumer, but you had a nice little combination there to have that hook.

Pharmacy Stan: And for me, it was really like what really sticks home is how many times in my career I've been in retail pharmacy for 19 years now. And I'm 35. So I started at 16. I've seen so many parents with like, say three kids, get prescriptions for EpiPens for all the kids. And only feel one, if any, and hope for the best, because it's too expensive to get three EpiPens every year for three children.

And then. When I started talking to my mom about this and I was asking her, I knew that my S my stepdad he's allergic to bees, so they have pens. And I asked, you know, do you have any expired ones? So I can, you know, send it to my engineer friend and see if we can reverse engineer this and find out how feasible that would be.

Um, and every single epi pen they had is in the fridge. And. They have five of them and they're not, they're not hurting for money. So it just really stuck with me that, you know, this is something that people would get, could get behind, you know, get if we can get it out there. And in the course of really talking about this and, you know, networking, um, I've had, uh, Having conversations with friends about it.

And then 

I've had moms come over and hug me out of nowhere, like out at the bar, just because they're so happy 

by, 

You know, just somebody wants to do something good. And like I said, I don't know that there's many margins in it and it might fail completely. But at this point I feel obligated to go as far as I can.

for it 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Who would think that epipens would be a chick magnet? First of all, that'd be better though. If they're single moms and not, not from the school, you know, family night or something like that, you know what Stan thought, I saw this on LinkedIn, you had mentioned Michael Moore because I was just going to say, and that probably is what actually got me thinking about this question.

That would be like a cool documentary, like a man on the street, seeing how far they can get in. FDA world, is that what you're doing? Are you recording it? Are you videotaping this one? That'd be cool. And go into the FDA, put a camera in their face and they say, get out of here. And you're like, I don't have to, this is my right.

You know, all that kind of stuff. Are you doing that? I 

Pharmacy Stan: haven't started yet, but right now it's just been a very big transition phase. This, this 2022. So we'll see where it goes. There was a part of me the other day that thought about, instead of staying in Miami to go to DC so that I could really.

Become annoying. Um, but I don't want to, I don't want to live in the cold. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Right. 

Pharmacy Stan: But I, I do think there's a lot of value in what you're, you know? Yes. I posted something that I would love to do a Michael Moore style documentary on, on this. He did one on it. Um, but I wanted to really touch base more on like the pharmacy side presently, uh, because of the working conditions.

That's where that came from. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: You're not a pharmacist. Nope. Sometimes I envy them. I almost think that if someone took my license from me that I wouldn't want to do it, you know, sometimes it's easier when choices are forced on you though, and you don't have to make them yourself, you know?

There's a cool freedom that someone like you has. And I think also of Antonio Chacha, who's not a pharmacist, but real deep in the, in the pharmacy world. And there's a certain beauty about that freedom to be in the industry yet. Not maybe be tempted by that job around the corner and have some freedom to do.

Pretty cool things. 

Pharmacy Stan: Well, you know, tempted by the job around the corner. That was me. 10 years ago, I started off as a technician, the pharmacy technician at CVS when I was 16 and I worked my way up. Um, I got my degree in finance. I had wanted to go to pharmacy school, but from one relationship or another, I never went.

I was supposed to graduate in 2008 originally, and then, you know, the great recession happened. So finance wasn't really looking like a great place to be. And somehow I still ended up in the pharmacy. And when I went to leave CVS, my boss, um, I had to try to want it to go into pharmaceutical sales at the time. And I had actually gotten, um, you know, an interview and an offer if the drug got approved.

But my boss at the time. Tell me. No. When I put in my two weeks notice and she asked me, had I ever [00:10:00] considered being a district manager? Hmm. And that was the beginning of when I found out how hard I could work and how much I could 

Mike Koelzer, Host: handle stressor time, both or 

Pharmacy Stan: both 80 to 90 hours a week for a good two years.

And, you know, I was young and didn't know how to handle that. So that's ultimately why I ended up divorced, but you know, there's not any ill will against her. It was just how I met how I couldn't manage the stress because I wasn't prepared for it. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: That level, the problem with working more hours, it's kind of like a double whammy because you're working longer hours.

There's more on your plate. You have less time to come down after being at work. So it stays on your mind more; it's like those extra hours can be killers. 

Pharmacy Stan: Um, I think I put in 51 days straight without a day off. And I worked as many as 96 hours. One day. I, my future boss, um, was supposed to come in and I worked like 21 hours, right after working 16 the day before, and then showed up for the visit, which she never came for and spent another 12 hours.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Those were in store hours, like working as a technician, even though you were the manager, it wasn't just all managerial duties. Right? 

Pharmacy Stan: I was a store manager at the time. Yeah. So I oversaw the front store and the pharmacy. Um, I spent a lot of time in my pharmacy, which kind of, because of my background is where I, where I loved and, you know, the front store piece was really just to teach me management skills that I could scale and.

Go from being, you know, a store manager to a district manager. And then there were hopes of regional and area vice presidents at one time. Was there 

Mike Koelzer, Host: a straw then that broke the back? When did the 80 to 90 hour stop? 

Pharmacy Stan: Um, in September of 2017. And when my wife's ex-wife asked about divorce, I just, I took time away and it was just, it was time to make a change in life.

Mike Koelzer, Host: It was forced on you, but then it's like, I'm going to make a change anyways. It's a good sign to make a change then. Yeah, 

Pharmacy Stan: I had made, you know, I had made a lot of mistakes at that age. I was, again, it's a learning process when you're going from one job to another. And then just trying CVS is extremely metric driven, as many people have mentioned.

And so I've lived and died by metrics for those 15 years. And. You know, or did really well, but when you're always trying to be in the top three top three, um, it definitely can be brutal on, um, on how you manage your stress. And I was only doing that because I was chasing the next title, the next paycheck, because I'm not a pharmacist then, because, you know, I was trying to make up for that salary difference.

Uh, Kim along with not being a banker, but also not being a pharmacist. What 

Mike Koelzer, Host: is the carrot they put out there to keep you at those kinds of hours that you mentioned at the title and maybe some more 

Pharmacy Stan: money. Yeah. Cause when, once you become a district manager, then you're making a pharmacist salary with. Can be quite a bit 

Mike Koelzer, Host: larger.

They would have you up at a pharmacist salary, even though you're not a pharmacist, but you're in that managerial role, 

Pharmacy Stan: overseeing 20 stores, you 

Mike Koelzer, Host: manage the store level, but it would be another step or two to get up to managing all the different stores. Yeah. I 

Pharmacy Stan: was in the leadership program, so I was, oh, it was about a year ago.

Mike Koelzer, Host: What kind of a life would that be with 20 stores? Maybe less, because you're not doing actually the, the, with all due respect, the grunt work in the store 

Pharmacy Stan: for the most part, you're going around and telling people that they're not meeting objectives and trying to find out why. And you, you know, why, especially if you're not far removed from the store, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: You know why, but you gotta play the game.

Right. 

Pharmacy Stan: And you have to find a way to connect and communicate with the pharmacist and tell them, you know, Hey, look, I'm still a cog in the wheel at the district, like the district manager and, and, you know, potentially even the next couple of steps, still take orders from way above them. Um, and so I'm just the 

Mike Koelzer, Host: messenger.

I'm good at going around and telling my kids they're not cleaning up and stuff like that. But when I was talking to, I forgot who it was, someone a month or so ago. And Oh, I knew who it was, it was blood. But to know I was talking to blood and she was saying that her managers were not pharmacists, which was kind of news to me.

And now you're saying that too, that from the other side that you could have would have been a manager going and talking to [00:15:00] pharmacists. 

Pharmacy Stan: Yeah. They don't ideally like to do that. And they've really gotten away from it over more recent years, but just gave me. No tenure as a technician, at least pharmacists in my district.

Weren't apprehensive about the idea because I did know what I was talking about. I wasn't telling them how to run the business on a clinical portion. I was just from an operational standpoint. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Here's the problem. I think when you've got different responsibilities in the pharmacy that are not always.

Going in the same exact direction. Here's what I'm talking about. I had a pharmacist in charge about five years ago. I put this person in place when I was, well, I didn't want to be at the pharmacy. I didn't like the stress. I didn't like a lot of stuff. And I was able to, just to not be there so much. And so I don't know if that was a good choice or not, but I worked a lot on site and managed a lot off site.

The problem with putting another pharmacist in charge there that's not tied into the finances of the business is that they don't have as much regard for how long stuff takes like a C2 order would come in, you know, and instead of doing it some other way that I would think of to do it more efficiently, they would write.

Almost in the longest way possible, you know, check it three times, do this, do that, make the customer wait for an inordinate amount of time. And they had no regard for that financial part or even the customer waiting. And it didn't work out very well. I, when I came back in, I'm glad that role was mine again, in a way, because.

I don't blame them so much. I mean, they have their license on the line, but when your license on the line being anxiety goes up and when the anxiety goes up, they check and double check and triple check. And it's kind of a, it's not a good recipe, 

Pharmacy Stan: But that, that financial like liability and the game, it's just, it's really hard to get them to, to operate, you know, in the best interest of the business, unless you really.

Break down every reason why it's important. And it's 

Mike Koelzer, Host: interesting, you say that about not having the best interest in mind, because normally when people say that they're usually talking about an employee that's, you know, not smiling and rude and all that kind of stuff. And this was almost like the other direction that was like to detail.

Too much of that thought it was from that anxiety, but yes, what you say is right. I'm both. You're not looking at it like an owner does. It's easy in society now for people in certain positions of authority, too.

Fall into the trap of having too much caution when you're next on the line. And you're in some authoritative role, they're always going to lean towards more caution. And the example I give is like, once in a while, I would swim, you know, like at the high school pools and stuff like that. And if you're the custodian in charge of the pool, you know, The pool boy has.

I like to call them. Um, if you're, if you're in charge of the pool, you're going to get in trouble for having the water green. You're not going to get in trouble for looking around and, and throwing another, a couple of cups of chlorine. You know, because erring on the side of caution, it's like, I don't blame people.

I don't want to get fired for green water. Who's going to complain that much? You might complain about chlorine being too high, but you can kind of shrug it off as being a chemical reaction or something like that. So that's a struggle with manager versus owners, and then you throw a pharmacist in the mix there too.

That can be a crazy mix. 

Pharmacy Stan: Now everybody's afraid of everything being political. So we're making everything even more difficult to act on. Um, I know, even in my posting on LinkedIn, you know, I look at healthcare very apolitical, and it's very difficult to talk about all the current subjects without getting in, you know, being baited into conversations.

So it's become frustrating. Uh it's even on LinkedIn, I've had to learn to stay away from engaging in any conversation about. Things that can get political. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. I've had some people propose a show to me like an episode, and it's like, they'll say I want to do this and this. And. Then discuss this. And I'm like, eh, no, none at this time, you know, and on LinkedIn, you know, I, [00:20:00] I bop in with my stuff about the show when I'm out of there, because it can get, I haven't seen a ton of it on LinkedIn.

Certainly Facebook is crazy with ideologues, but LinkedIn, you haven't seen too much, but you know, I just don't look a lot for it. You know, 

Pharmacy Stan: I try to stay off other social media. LinkedIn is really the only platform that I'm active on. I 

Mike Koelzer, Host: try to get off all the social media, but all the cat pictures, just keep drawing me back.

How many cats do you have? None of the cats suck. The only good cat is a sausage. When I was a kid, we had cats in our family and it's like, I still remember, you know, those old parks, you might be too young for this old park at coats. They had the fake fur on top dark blue, and it was orange on the inside, you know, a very matching combo, you know, and I'd put it on.

I'd be like, uh, halfway to school, walking a mile. And I start smelling, you know, ammonia, you know, and I'd smell. Pee all over the place. It's kind of cool to see a cat, how they like to walk like lions and stuff, but it's like, thankfully my wife is allergic to them and. Yeah, you don't have a cat 

Pharmacy Stan: with Joe exotic and tiger king.

We're staying away from cats. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I can't get those memories out of my head. And then something that you'd be watching TV and mittens, you know, her name was mittens. You can imagine what she looked like black with a white paws and she was never declawed, which I don't think you're supposed to do nowadays.

But then she'd like to run up our drapes. At our house, the curtains, and she'd get stuck up there and I'm, I'm thinking, just leave her there, you know, but then, you know, he'd have to get up and pick her up and stuff like that. So, all right, Stan, on your LinkedIn, you call yourself besides pharmacy stamp, you call yourself a disruptor.

Where does pharmacy need to be disrupted in your mind? At 

Pharmacy Stan: every single level of the supply chain, if there's a current entity out there that is difficult or, you know, creates unfair practices against smaller businesses, there needs to be equal businesses starting to create competition and, you know, eliminate that barrier.

Mike Koelzer, Host: The problem is though I stand with that is that you got all the lobbyists that are working on these politicians and they start what I've seen. They start making these laws and these fees. Oh, well, you know, you're talking about it with the epi pen, you know, it's like, They put these huge laws in place, these huge fees in place.

I think a lot of them, that VA WD VOD, I'm not really familiar with, but I know it made a lot of, uh, smaller wholesalers, harder to start up or compete or something like that. And so they make it so hard. It's hard to break into any of that. Right? Right. 

Pharmacy Stan: Yeah. I mean, if they get to, if they have the ear of the most powerful, obvious, and they get the year of the politician, And they can pay to get their message into all the media.

You know, you often see Wall Street Journal and Business insider. They quote, pick mama. And you know, that's what the public thinks is real because that's who got their message into the media that the public reads. Um, they don't believe that there's an issue with the number of independent pharmacies declining or, you know, they believe that it's pharma that is the cause of high drug prices.

When 

Mike Koelzer, Host: you talk supply chain, you're talking from the wholesalers all the way through to the manufacturers and probably even the raw products. Right. And all of that can be disrupted. 

Pharmacy Stan: Right. Because you think of it like the pharmacy supply chain and you have like, Usually you think of it as okay. From the manufacturer, then it goes to the wholesaler.

Um, then it goes to the pharmacy, the PBM takes their cut. They kind of Jack the price up. And then, you know, the patient gets this end result, which they get the super inflated price. However, on the pharma side, which I've learned in my, in this experience with trying to create this epi pen company or, um, they also have a whole supply chain.

Mike Koelzer, Host: We're going to have a runoff on this. I'm going to ask you two questions, then you have to pick the best. Okay. Right now I say, Stan. In regards to making some changes in pharmacy or healthcare, not necessarily [00:25:00] epi pen itself, but just some cool changes for the world in pharmacy. And I say, Stan, you can have any private position at any company, any level.

Private as a non-governmental any level to make changes. I want to know the position in the company that you would go to. And then what political position would you take then, then we're going to go for the runoff. And then which one of those two would you like to have? I would become 

Pharmacy Stan: the CEO of. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: You'd be the CEO of the pharmacy, what lobbying group for the PBMs.

Pharmacy Stan: Right. And I would sabotage it my best that I could until they kicked me out. They paid very well. So I get paid pretty well until they told me to get up, take a 

Mike Koelzer, Host: hike, you'd go in and sabotage them. 

Pharmacy Stan: Um, I don't know. That might be an answer that I rushed. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: That's a pretty good one though. Here's what I hate about pick-me-up is that I always picture like a 60 minute interview, you know, with, um, I dunno, who's JC Scott.

I don't know who that is. I kind of like the one Gale, the cl. Oh, no, I'm thinking about the I'm in the better Walters, but not Barbara Walters. Who's the one I kind of like she's blonde. What's her name at a figure that out here it's I'm not Barbara Walters, Leslie stahl. Um, I kinda like Leslie stahl. All right.

So Leslie stahl is across from. No financial people she's across from manufactures, you know? And she can just nail people on a question because it's relatively simple, you know? For finance. Why do you have people in, in this mutual fund instead of this one, you know, there's a 3% difference and you know, food thing, how did you let this out in a head E coli in it or something like that.

And I just like watching these people squirm, but with a picnic or something, They've done such a good job of smoking mirrors that Leslie wouldn't even know what question to ask. She couldn't even begin with them. That's a problem of their opaqueness, 

Pharmacy Stan: right? The industry is too complex for most people to really ask questions and understand the practical application.

That's why, you know, I'm open to sharing any and all of my ideas because. Good luck executing them. Like I'm not afraid of anyone stealing anything that I have to say. And plus I encourage competition. So 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Sometimes I'll be watching a football game and I ask myself what position? There's an old fart like me, what position could I go out there with and not be found out?

The longest, you know? And so it's like, they pull me from the stands and they say, Hey, this position guy just dropped dead. Here's his uniform. You have to go out and pretend you're the starting player. And I'm trying to think which one I could be. Maybe like, I don't know. I could be called a defensive tackle, but I'm too small for that.

I could say like a middle linebacker, but I'm a chicken and I'm too slow. I don't know what position, you know what I would be. I got it. I would be the on-site kicker because that's, as far as I can kick it anyways, you know, you know, 10, 12 yards it'd be perfect. I'd be a fat ass out there. I, I know I wouldn't fit their pants, you know, to be bursting at the seams and you're talking to 

Pharmacy Stan: the wrong guy.

I don't, you know, I'm five 11 and 160 pounds, so I'm not, not the large guy to be out there for many positions other than running. And, you know, hoping that. Defensive wine took all the hits for me. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Aright stands if you fall into the pick-me-up mode. All right. You're the pick of my CEO. I wonder how long you would like to fake it and also sabotage them.

Pharmacy Stan: Probably not all that long in reality. It probably wouldn't get very 

Mike Koelzer, Host: far. You have to stay there long enough to really sabotage them though. 

Pharmacy Stan: And now that I've made my presence online, I could, I could never actually do it technically. Yeah. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: They'd say here's our new CEO pharmacy, Stan, you'd be the undercover boss.

You know, you'd have to put some kind of a cheesy mustache on or whatever. Cheesy PBM CEO's [00:30:00] look like. 

Pharmacy Stan: Hey, JC Scott and I have already had some, some interactions, you know? Yeah. I posted on my LinkedIn when I. Pretty unknown at the time. And I posted calling them out about the discrepancy and nav the number of independent pharmacies and, uh, you know, again, we've had a civil conversation because I, I know that like, can't just, you know, you only get one chance to speak to a lot of these people.

Right, right. And, um, Scott Newman said this already. And, uh, you know, I think I've already worn out my one chance with JC cause Seesaw more posts and comments about and I think he blocked me, but there's no harm, no foul, because I don't think we're going to come to any kind of agreements and make the world better.

Doesn't necessarily 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I want that on the show. I always want to paint people in a good light, you know, I don't want to embarrass them. It's not Leslie's stall after all, but I couldn't have anybody on it just wouldn't feel right. You know, to not lay into them, even though I wouldn't. So I just can't have a mind.

So Stan. All right now, political. What position would you have? And you can be president if you want to. Um, 

Pharmacy Stan: no, I would want either the drugs yard, either that or some like probably the head of FDA. Yeah. I find it embarrassing that as the leading industrialized nation, that 60% of all new drugs that are approved are actually just line extensions of drugs that already exist.

The biggest problem with healthcare is, is what I would say. You know, the first, one of the first like three hooks that I gave you, you know, my mission is about making patients the priority over shareholders. Um, what two, eight iterations of the same drug do to progress humanity or cure any kind of disease or condition?

So we need to change the incentive of where, you know, if they want it to be so profitable and take bonuses that are 20 to a hundred million dollars a year, they should have to have similar to, you know, pharmacies of these performance networks that were established with us. Pharma should also have some sort of, you know, the FDA or.

Some overseeing agency should say, Hey, like you can only bonus out your executives. If you guys do something that is actually good for humankind every year. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I don't know the difference really between the FDA guy and the drugs are, but I would, I don't even know what the hell is R is, but I'd like to be Azhar I'd like to tell my wife would be proud of me if I came home and I said, I'm, Azhar now.

I'm a czar. I don't think I get the same reaction. What is Zara? Is that like the all-knowing? Is that like Oz? Azhar oh, 

Pharmacy Stan: this is our way like the Russian, like totalitarian leader term. I don't know why he calls the position. Like the drug policy, like the person the drugs are. Yeah, it just sounds like, you know, with giving out.

Our relationship with Russia. That's not something we'd 

Mike Koelzer, Host: want of the two. Then Stan, you're going to take the political route. We're pretending here in your life. Or you can take the political route or the business CEO route. 

Pharmacy Stan: I would lean on the political route because I feel that at some point the business it's the same reason.

It's like the same reason I didn't go to pharmacy school. I had learned how to be a tech. And at one point I saw. If I went to pharmacy school, the only difference is really that I would be checking the product in the bottle. And this is before like clinical pharmacy was, you know, more, more avenues were really well known.

Um, but I tend to leave the idea that. If you're persistent in your business endeavors, you should at least accomplish them to some degree. So at some point you'll want something more and like that, you know, what's more is to have influence. Um, so if we keep going down this road and we have a few, if any of these companies become real or just, you know, the continued efforts, um, put me in a good place.

I can see. Some version of politics, but not like a state of life. I don't want to be like an elected official. I would only want to be like somebody that's in healthcare policy for politics. Well, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Stan boy, thanks for hanging out with us and keep making those hooks. We'll be watching. 

Pharmacy Stan: Thanks for having me, Mike, despite all the negative connotations that have come with the [00:35:00] pandemic in terms of vaccines and mask mandates.

I also think it's great that there's this new interest in investment into healthcare and the pharmacy space. Um, right now it's still at its infancy stages, uh, and meaning it's cool to invest as long as there's a high return on investment. But I think where we're going to see. You know, society says that at some point we can make it sexy to invest in a company that's going to bring 15 million EpiPens to users for $50 or less.

For example, that being just as sexy as having a 10 or a hundred X return on your investment, because the social good of people is arguably more valuable than any currency or. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: It seems like one of the overarching thoughts is like, I guess, transparency in, in these companies and in politics and all that.

And I think the internet is certainly helping with that social and the internet, you know, there's things that we all know now that we didn't know even, you know, three years ago, as far as on the negative side, you know, I guess guess it is a lot of negative stuff, corruption and, and all this stuff that was hidden by the smoke and mirrors.

And I think the internet. Conversations like this, you know, that we can delve into some of that stuff is helpful. A CEO always has to work on profit, but I'd rather see them working on profit. When I can see some of the sausage being made, not all of it because they have private corporate secrets, but at least it'd be nice to know stuff like how much.

The rod drug in this and in the FDA who allowed this to happen. And where are the records from the czar? Just seeing all this stuff, not seeing a corporate secret, but just all the stuff around it that was hard to find before. And now that you can find it, it's like it doesn't make corruption go away, but it cleans up a lot of stuff.

Pharmacy Stan: Yeah, you would think that, but you know, there's still a law in place that was put in that was put on the books, but allows for litigation to be between certain pharma companies or like the department of justice to be sealed after the case. So then you can't go back and look at it too, you know, it's another example of.

Being 

Mike Koelzer, Host: opaque. Well, right there though, it's like, I didn't know that. And so now after this show comes out, me and my black lab then we'll know that this happens, you know, it may be a few other people. So that helps with that transparency, just picking up the bits and pieces. 

Pharmacy Stan: It would be really awesome if, you know, there were positions that were just investigative journalism to dig up all the secrets and smoke and mirrors that have been created and kind of trace them to who put them in place where the money.

Was coming from et cetera. We 

Mike Koelzer, Host: can't make it too easy. We still have to have that fun. We need some smoke and mirrors. Keep it exciting. 

Pharmacy Stan: One of Benjamin Jolly's episodes. And he was talking about it that essentially playing the game and playing it well, we'll still make the PBMs when, because they have it set in their favor, no matter what, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: if it was that easy, it might've happened already.

So I think it's just got to be. A lot of communication between all the different angles that we can attack, anything that needs to be attacked. And, uh, people use their skill and desire and just attack whatever it is from different angles. And we pick on the PBM on this show, but the PBMs arguably aren't killing us, you know, it's cancers and heart disease and suicide and all kinds of stuff.

So ultimately. Pick our lanes and pick our skills and we all keep fighting 

Pharmacy Stan: PBMs. Aren't putting pharmacies out of business unless they're putting a pharmacy out of business. He's not willing to play the game or to, to, you know, adopt modern business practices. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: All right, Stan, nice meeting you. It was great to meet you, Mike, every once in a while, I'm going to see those hooks and I'm gonna say, oh golly, stand in it again.

Pharmacy Stan: The next time we'll have to talk. That'd be 10 companies actually called nude pharma. And that's the play on transparency. And I have this whole viral social media campaign too, I essentially put people behind big white poster boards with the impression that we're naked with. They can be wearing bathing suits or something behind.

And then on the poster would say something like, you know, my father had to wait for a prior authorization for surgery. And [00:40:00] instead, three days later he died. Why did he have to wait? Hashtag we have nothing to hide nude pharma.com and then try to get people to share their stories of where the health care system has failed them.

And to, you know, post these pictures that promote this body positivity. And like, you know, I don't care if I'm a small guy, a big guy, you know, uh, ma you know, man, woman, you know, whatever you identify as whatever you are, you have nothing to hide and that's the appearance, you know, the transparency 

Mike Koelzer, Host: part. A teaser out there.

A hook. Sounds great. All right, Stan, we'll talk again soon. Thanks for all you do. It was very nice to meet 

Pharmacy Stan: you. Thank you for having me. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Likewise. Thanks a lot, Stan. Bye. Bye bye-bye.

Pharmacy Stan: Um, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: You've been listening to the business of pharmacy podcast with me, your host, Mike Kelzer. Please subscribe for all future episodes.