From Problem to New Product | Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD, 'The Prednisone Pharmacist'

This transcript was generated automatically. Its accuracy may vary.

[00:00:15] Mike Koelzer, Host: Well, hello, Megan. Hello, Megan. For those that haven't come across you online. Tell us your name and what's going on hot right now. Why are we talking today? 

[00:00:25] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: I am Dr. Megan, the prednisone pharmacist online. 

[00:00:28] Mike Koelzer, Host: What really caught my eye about you. And we just did a show a niching down last week. Mm-hmm is to see that you have attacked prednisone, one product, one website, one very small niche out of the vast pharmacy.

Yeah. And I know you have a story to go along with why you pick prednisone. But what I'm really interested in because this is the business of pharmacy podcasts. Yeah. We have no room here for empathy or sympathy. , it's all numbers. You're not gonna get me feeling sorry for you. What I wanna get into is there's other pharmacists listening that are saying, yeah, I did that.

And I was on, you know, Accutane as a kid or I was on inhalers or I was on this. And so I'm really curious about your story. Mm-hmm I narrowed that down to one and you had to both make a product. Yeah. And then market it. This all started somewhere, though. This is your chance to get us to cry, but we're business people here.

[00:01:45] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: This is the chance to cry. I had been inhaling all of this online and innovation. Information that was coming through the world two and a half years ago, I had been following a few pharmacists that I loved, like Blair Tela, Meer, and I'd been watching her summit every year and had given me so many ideas.

And then I'd been listening to this other podcast called choose I. It's about financial independence. And they had talked about nicheing and choosing what you can do to help people and starting a website. And so I had all of these ideas swirling around and I had no idea what to do. 

[00:02:30] Mike Koelzer, Host: How long had you been out a pharmacy 

[00:02:32] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: at the time?

I graduated 11 years ago. So that was nine, nine years out of pharmacy school. So 

[00:02:37] Mike Koelzer, Host: two, three years ago, you started getting more interested in some of the online, talking about entrepreneurship. Yeah. Just for kicks or did you always think you were going to. Do something online? What flipped the switch 

[00:02:53] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: being a third generation pharmacist.

My grandpa started the family pharmacy 65 years ago. My dad's been doing it. So I've come from a long line of entrepreneurs, just trying to find ways to innovate and help people. And I worked in the pharmacy for 10 years, but I live 300 miles away. So that wasn't an option to continue working there. First, we moved to New York city for my husband's graduate degree, and then we moved 300 miles away from where my family's been for the last 65 years, 300 miles away.

The pharmacy's in Salt Lake city. 

[00:03:28] Mike Koelzer, Host: Where did your husband study? At New 

[00:03:29] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: York? He's a lawyer and he was getting a graduate degree in law. Oh, 

[00:03:33] Mike Koelzer, Host: those lawyers, we don't talk too kindly of them here. I know. 

[00:03:37] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: I, no really they're they can. 

[00:03:41] Mike Koelzer, Host: Just last show. I, well, the problem with lawyers is you, you, unless you're in a certain kind of law, you either are, or have the potential always for conflict.

Yes. You know, it's always the 50, 50 kind thing. Mm-hmm , we're in pharmacy or medicine. If everything goes right, you, you can all be on the same. Everyone wins. Right. And I was just saying last week that nobody really has any pharmacy jokes. , you know, there's but there's fun. There's plenty of attorney jokes.

Mm-hmm 

[00:04:07] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: that's right. There are tons of them and he fits a lot of those molds, but he doesn't fit a lot of the other ones. 

[00:04:16] Mike Koelzer, Host: So you moved 300 miles away for his work I'm gonna guess or not? Yeah. Okay. So he could be not enough going on, not enough going on where you were or did you wanna get away 

[00:04:26] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: too? Oh, he's from here.

So we got closer to his side of the family. 

[00:04:31] Mike Koelzer, Host: Oh, okay. Gotcha. Mm-hmm you got closer to his side of the family? Yep. Okay. So when you graduated, you were never, you were never really part then of the family business because you moved, you were always gone 

[00:04:43] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: from there. Yeah. And right after graduation, I actually got a job for a managed care company.

And so I started an MTM program for that managed care insurance company and okay. I had tons of fun doing that. Like I was working from home, helping people innovating and that, that was five years of fortune 200 company fun. And then right. I, they like stole my job and all sorts of misery when I went on maternity leave.

So I've been working as a managed care consultant ever since and from, from home from home. So I've been actually working from home as a pharmacist for 11 years. 

[00:05:29] Mike Koelzer, Host: your, that was your business. 

[00:05:32] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: I, yeah, so my, I was a consultant, but I only had one client. So , 

[00:05:36] Mike Koelzer, Host: Well, that's enough if they're that perfect.

If they're 

[00:05:38] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: paying enough there, it was awesome. 

[00:05:41] Mike Koelzer, Host: Was it a, um, was it a doctor's office or something, or so 

[00:05:45] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: it was another insurance company and I was doing the prior authorizations and appeals. And. Just from my own computer anywhere I needed internet access. 

[00:05:57] Mike Koelzer, Host: Most of it just, just on screen, you weren't doing any video stuff then, or, or doing that stop screen stuff.

Yeah. All right. So you're at home. Yep. And you're supposed to be working, but you're watching YouTube videos. yeah. 

[00:06:11] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: Watching YouTube videos, listening to podcasts. And I'm, I'm just trying to understand, like, what are the options? Because I loved the pharmacist who chose Jonathan. He abandoned his Walgreens job and he doesn't even practice pharmacy anymore.

He's just a podcaster and. 

[00:06:30] Mike Koelzer, Host: Oh, that's a pharmacist 

[00:06:31] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: based show. He, so the, there are two hosts of that podcast and one of 'em is a pharmacist, the other's accountant. And so they kind of come from two different perspectives, like the money guy and the guy who was a six figure earner. And like, how do they market that at all?

I don't think he, they really mentioned that he's a pharmacist, unless you're listening and you're like, oh, you abandoned a six figure job. Like, wow, 

[00:06:57] Mike Koelzer, Host: That's cool. I'll have to check that out. And then Blair, you came across 

[00:07:02] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: her and they were both just giving me great ideas for ways to help and make money at the same time.

And I was like, but where do I fit in? You know, like I couldn't figure. My role, what made me special, what niche I should choose? How can I really personally help people? Because I've just worked for either my family pharmacy or the fortune 200 or 500 managed care companies 

[00:07:31] Mike Koelzer, Host: capture why you started looking and listening to Blair and to the other podcasts and so on.

Were you getting an it, or was it boring doing the other stuff or it was, did you want money or what were you looking for when you started tripping over these podcasts and 

[00:07:49] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: So on? Well, I mean, with the choice of FFI I wanted financial independence for sure. Like, I want to bring my husband home.

Right. Like I want us to be independent and just able to do what we wanna do and live a less stressful life. That was the first motivation. Gotcha. 

[00:08:07] Mike Koelzer, Host: So, so financial was a, was a part of 

[00:08:09] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: it. Yeah. And then, so that was kind of the chosen FHI side and then Blair's side. It was. I can help people and get paid at the same time if I find the right way to do it.

But right. It seemed really hard for someone who's only worked from home to yeah, do that. And I, and so there were a lot more puzzle pieces. I needed to find out how I could do that working from home. And 

[00:08:38] Mike Koelzer, Host: you're sitting there, like I, like I did years ago, mm-hmm saying, what do I have special? Mm-hmm I mean, I don't a pharmacist, but what do I have that is special?

And you were looking for that tagline or that, uh, niche, 

[00:08:51] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: I guess. Yeah. A niche and like something worth doing, you know, something worth right. Like getting up for and continuing to do it year after year. 

[00:09:04] Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. You didn't want to be infamous for something in the pharmacy. You wanted to be, you wanted to have an actual purpose for it.

Yeah. So. So you just sat around and locked yourself in her room and thought 

[00:09:17] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: about it. No, actually my pharmacist friend, we went to all four years of pharmacy school together. She came and visited me and we, coincidentally, had been kind of going through the same thing. Like I wanna do some sort of a side hustle and she was like, what about Amazon drop shipping?

Or what about working for an MLM? What about all of these other things I'm like, but then like that defeats the whole purpose of having gotten my degree. Like, there's gotta be a way to integrate all of this. And so I had had her over her visit and she had actually come while I was in the midst of chemotherapy.

Hmm. I had, I would, I think I'd had my third infusion of Rituxan. The two days before out of four they had said, it's gonna take eight hours. It's gonna take a whole day and it's gonna suppress your immune system. And the reason I had had to go on the chemo was because I had been on prednisone for the last six months before that for ITP.

And for anybody who actually remembers that in pharmacy school, I'm impressed. It stands for immune thrombocytopenia. And it's where my immune system was attacking my platelets. And so I had been prescribed prednisone and I had gone through the entire rollercoaster of side effects and I was completely miserable.

And then they said, well, it's not working even though you're suffering all these side effects. So we're gonna have to take out your spleen. And I was like, What you're gonna, you're gonna remove an organ. Like, no, that's not happening. There's gotta be a better way. And I did some research and some fellow pharmacists had done some great literature evaluation and found that for a young female and otherwise good health would do well with rituxan and that the splenectomy wouldn't be, you know, necessarily as effective or long term.

I was like, all right, I'm the ideal candidate. I'm doing that chemo, but I still had to take the prednisone two or my platelets would be completely gone and I could bleed to death. So that third infusion I'm listening to these podcasts. My friend comes over, we're putting ideas and nothing is fitting. And then I'm putting my toddler down for a nap.

And I had an epiphany. I was trying to take a nap. Along with my baby and I couldn't, I couldn't fall asleep because prednisone wouldn't let me, it was just this terrible insomnia driving thing. I couldn't sleep at night and I couldn't even take a nap when I was trying to recover from chemo, trying to get well.

And right then I thought. I need to help people on prednisone. I have a unique ability to help people on prednisone because I've had to suffer from it too. And I was like, really like prednisone of all the drugs that was like the most boring and miserable drug in pharmacy school. I don't wanna have anything to do with that.

And I just, I thought there is a reason that people are suffering these side effects. And so I dove into the research and I discovered that prednisone actually steals 10 nutrients, pretty much most pharmacists know that it steals calcium and vitamin D and causes osteoporosis. But I discovered it steals eight other nutrients.

And I was like, whoa, this is fascinating. And I found that. P tons of the side effects could be prevented essentially if the proper nutrients were given back. And so I created a dietary supplement and I thought I would be going to the market that fall with it. didn't happen. Hold on, jump straight 

[00:13:24] Mike Koelzer, Host: to the end.

I pretend to be a pharmacist during the day mm-hmm at work. I dunno how to pronounce all those things, but I know that chemo drug, is it fair to say that's a cancer 

[00:13:34] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: drug? Yeah. It's for BCE lymphoma. 

[00:13:36] Mike Koelzer, Host: Why did they use it in your case? Because 

[00:13:40] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: part of nobody really knows how ITP happens. It's something to do with the immune system, but one of the likely reasons has to do with the B cells and the mechanism of action of Rituxan.

And so you had too many platelets or not enough. I had almost zero. Oh, I'm supposed to have 150 to 400. And the first time they caught it, I was at 12 and they sent me to the emergency room and I was down to three. It seems 

[00:14:09] Mike Koelzer, Host: to me that if I'm sitting there and I'm suffering through this, like you were that I would pick the more sexy drug of saying I'm on a cancer drug, because that gets more, and it seems like people always hear of that.

It, and I'm, there's probably some that cause no issues to speak of. But did you have a toss up in your head at all between the prednisone and the chemo drug or was it a no brainer because the chemo drug was kind of doing okay for you compared to the prednisone. 

[00:14:45] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: Yeah. So Rituxin has this crazy infusion reaction you can get that can be fatal, but it's super rare.

Otherwise it's pretty well tolerated and causes a little bit of fatigue. And so it's like. Mm, I don't really have a lot to complain about. Like I did have this minor infusion reaction. Like they had to gimme Benadryl and stop the infusion, give me some Tylenol and all that stuff, but it was not a big deal.

Whereas prednisone is so miserable. pharmacists and doctors who prescribe it really have no idea unless they've gone through it. How completely life changing it is. Like it changes your appearance. It changes your weight. It changes your ability to sleep and your ability to interact with people around you.

Like it changes every aspect of your life and it's miserable. And so I found this pain that I knew I could help ameliorate. You've 

[00:15:47] Mike Koelzer, Host: already jumped to the product. Mm-hmm was this a combo already out there that you rebranded or did you actually have to get this made or 

[00:15:56] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: what? Yeah, so I jumped on the natural medicines database to really learn more about it.

And I've discovered that. Prednisone, legitimately steals all these nutrients and their database is so awesome. It goes through and shows each and every study showing how it's working and what's stealing what, and you can go through any drug and look for nutrient depletion. It's so cool.

[00:16:25] Mike Koelzer, Host: Interesting. And, and some of it, you just come out in the potty and some of it gets broken down. It, it gets completed different, 

[00:16:34] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: the absorption, tons of different mechanisms. Yeah. All right. And so looking through that database, I discovered that tons of drugs do mess up nutrient levels, but which of them are clinically significant, right?

Like which of them actually make any difference on the side effects or on risk for future effects and. There aren't that many that are really legitimate. Like them, I can't remember their names, but the guys who published, who wrote the book on this, like they found hundreds of thousands of depletions from all these thousands of drugs.

But the ones that really matter, I, I consolidated those down and I have a list that I can share. But one of the most, I, I think, I personally think the worst drug at depleting is prednisone. Interesting 

[00:17:34] Mike Koelzer, Host: people going through it. It's not like, um, I don't, it's not like you have someone at the, at the top of his or her game and they have, uh, you know, a sore throat.

And so they're taking medicine and a deplete stuff, but they're still doing their day to day. Successful stuff when you're, when you're on prednisone for that long there's, there's something wrong. You, you got something wrong, you got a ton of worries. Mm-hmm and if there's anything that can help it you'll take it.

Especially something well documented, like the vitamins mm-hmm or the, um, vitamins and minerals. Can we say, or all right. Mm-hmm 

[00:18:18] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: nutrients. 

[00:18:21] Mike Koelzer, Host: So you can't just say we made this. What, what do you mean? You made it? 

[00:18:24] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: Yeah, so that I thought was gonna be this really quick. Like I send a list of ingredients and turn around and it'll just appear.

I'll just have this bottle in front of me and there it is. I was wrong. It was, yeah, it was a process. I had no idea. Another influence on my thinking was Tim Ferris and his four hour work week. Yeah. And one of the things he had done was create a dietary supplement and he made it sound so easy. and marketing.

It is just pay per click you're set and right. It's not like that. Maybe it was when he did it back 10, 12 years ago. yeah, it's a different world now. Right. And so I had to do a lot more than I ever anticipated. I really thought that it would be this quick process and I would have a product and I'd be selling it.

da, but yeah, it, from the day I had my epiphany, it was exactly one year for product development until I had bottle in hand, it was, and I I've been a project manager like at that fortune 200 company, I, that was my job. I was the program manager. Like I created that program from scratch. Like, I've done this.

I knew what I was doing. Right. and it took a year. 

[00:19:55] Mike Koelzer, Host: Megan, I don't know a damn thing about this, but let me, I want to guess. I want to guess at something. Okay. And tell me how far I'm off. You decide what you want to get into and you went online and there's a company that you say I wanna get this drug.

With these ingredients, this many milligrams of each ingredient, and here's my list of nine, you know, whatever nine things. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna click how many I want. I'm gonna design the label on there and you are gonna give me back whatever I, you know, a hundred or, or whatever, or, or even like the Amazon, uh, print as you go kind of thing.

Mm-hmm and you're gonna gimme back this bottle. That's got these nine ingredients. In here. Is that even 

[00:20:55] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: close? Yeah. That's a pretty good summary of the process. And I thought that that process could go really fast. 

[00:21:04] Mike Koelzer, Host: seems that way. It seems like you're just going up to McDonald's and 

[00:21:07] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: saying, give, just order it and it'll show up.

[00:21:09] Mike Koelzer, Host: No. Where, where am I off there, Megan? Cuz that was a guess where in my off as far as are there companies like that and 

[00:21:15] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: yeah, so there are custom manufacturers for dietary supplements. There are white label people. So if you have something you like, I just want some calcium and vitamin D. They can smack your label on it and say pharmacists recommend it or whatever, you know, Jones, pharmacy, whatever you wanna call it, your own label, you can do that.

That's super easy. The white labeling. Yeah. But the custom contract manufacturing. N I thought it would be just, here's a list of ingredients. Here's what I want and make it, but I didn't like dietary supplements. I didn't believe in them. I didn't. I had come from a very skeptical doctor pharmacy program where we had a really good herbal program.

Like the professor was amazing, but all the other professors were like, dietary supplements are just trash. Like you can just, you might as well just throw, throw the money down the toilet. And so I wanted something that was good. Like, I didn't want just. To trust any company that they were gonna actually put what I wanted in there.

And that the ingredients that they did use were of inequality. So I had to vet a lot of manufacturers and that took a long time to get interviews with them, to find just people who had all the capabilities I needed. Like I wanted them to be FDA registered and all of these different criteria. And it was hard to find that information until I made an appointment with them and waited two weeks for them to be available.

And just all, all of that took months. I were 

[00:23:13] Mike Koelzer, Host: these, uh, phone appointments or 

[00:23:15] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: In person, I did, I did some visits to the manufacturers, but mostly it was over the phone to begin with. And then, you know, and I had narrowed it down to my top two. I wanted to visit them. And were they from China? No. So that was one of the things that I wanted, I wanted an American company.

Yeah. And so I did not like to fly to China or anything. No. I wanted a legitimate company and somebody with good clients who were right. They can be like, yeah, I've got this and this and this. Well, they wouldn't really tell me, but we've got the top people. And if you were to go to a trade show, everybody would say, come to us.

You know, like I wanted somebody who had a reputation to defend somebody who had been in business a while, because you wouldn't be, you might be surprised that there are a lot of shady operations and fly by night and they change their name every couple years. And I didn't want 

[00:24:12] Mike Koelzer, Host: that. Well, you know what, just by all the things, sitting at the improperly labeled things, sitting at the gas station checkout.

Exactly. You know, those 

[00:24:19] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: exactly. And so just the due diligence alone took months just to find the right manufacturer. And then the process of going back and forth with them. And my formula, I thought I would be like, okay, here's my formula. And they just go for it. But they had to like, Make their own version of it.

And then test that and then wait for the results to go to a third party lab. And so to get that legitimacy, I had to take time. And so I waited and waited and then I'm just a little company, right? Like it's just me. Yeah. And I wanted a legitimate company to do this, but they have big, huge clients who have big, huge orders and use up their entire.

Workforce to fulfill. And so I had to wait in line when they were available to make my stuff. And that was another wait. But before that was getting the materials. So then they had to order each and every ingredient and then test every single ingredient and make sure they were all, you know, sanitary and actually legitimately what they really were.

And that process was months. And so my contact from the time I contacted them until the time I got my bottle was, I don't know, July to April. Like that's how long it took. That probably 

[00:25:52] Mike Koelzer, Host: seems like a long time to you, but that doesn't seem that long to me, that's a lot of, a lot 

[00:25:56] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: of stuff going on. There was a lot there and it was busy.

[00:25:59] Mike Koelzer, Host: I know that Megan, during this time somewhere, or before this time you had to decide. You know, a few things. One is, you know, did you have any proof of concept? This was gonna go, and then you had to do all your legal stuff, which I'm sure that that jokester of a husband, not 

[00:26:22] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: exactly was convenient attorney convenient to be married, to 

[00:26:26] Mike Koelzer, Host: lawyer, the attorney.

And you had the trademark of the name and you had the design and you had, how are you gonna distribute and all that stuff. How did that all happen before you decided on the product? Or did you kind of do that by hoping this was gonna work and then did that later? Where does all that stuff fit into with the, with 

[00:26:52] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: the manufacturing?

Yeah, that's the hard part is to get a trademark, to get a patent for all of those things. You can't tell anyone about it. right. And so I couldn't and what to neutralize is the name of my company. And then my product for people on prednisone is called zone 

[00:27:15] Mike Koelzer, Host: zone neutralize. I'm looking at it neutralize and then zone

Okay. Alright. And then you had to trademark that mm-hmm then do all that. So I'm sorry I cut you off then. So how did you know that? I mean, did you have, um, a business plan, I guess, even, you know, and I know a lot of us pharmacists don't do that because we're, we're not turning it into a. Banks and all this and, or the banks know kind of who you are and stuff like that.

But did you have to show your, at least your 

[00:27:49] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: husband right. That's a really good question. So luckily, when I was in pharmacy school, I was in the N CPA, the national community pharmacist association, and I participated in the business plan competition. So I'd done that a few times and I thought I knew what I was doing , you know, and it came to starting a business.

And so I understood the business, like the financial and how to create business plans kind of thing from that experience. And so now I was trying to take all of that and pivot it to dietary supplements, which is similar, but. Very different because it's a physical product instead of a storefront, it's a right brand instead of a location, you know, 

[00:28:44] Mike Koelzer, Host: how did you know when this time's up?

When the product's ready? How did you know how many to get? 

[00:28:55] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: So I wanted to do a really soft launch. I wanted to launch with a small quantity so that I could test it. You know, I didn't wanna invest a ton of money, but in order to get the chemicals here, all those ingredients in order to manufacture it, there's, there's a minimum order quantity.

And like you have to buy a kilogram of, you know, calcium and a kilogram of that. And gotcha. Once all that adds up, I had to order 4,000. Bottle sets 4,000 bottles. Mm-hmm . And so I 

[00:29:35] Mike Koelzer, Host: Now you have two different products, those come in different, right? 

[00:29:40] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: Yeah. There's the morning and the bedtime because 

[00:29:42] Mike Koelzer, Host: morning and bedtime.

So do you have 

[00:29:43] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: 2000 of each four of each and they come together as a set? Oh, 

[00:29:48] Mike Koelzer, Host: they come in. Gotcha. Gotcha. All right. So I don't know, I'd be, I'd be excited, but also really, really nervous to have those arrive at my house as a, you know, from ups 

[00:30:01] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: or whatever. They, I didn't have, 'em sent to my house though.

Thankfully, I only had one box sent to my house. They have amazing technology to do shipping. And so I had it sent to a fulfillment warehouse in Texas. Separate from that company. Mm-hmm yeah. I wanted a turnkey solution that would do it all for me, but there isn't really one, like, they kind of have friends that they're like, Hey, you should try them, but there's not really one here.

You wanna start a supplement and we'll ship it for you. So 

[00:30:33] Mike Koelzer, Host: You are doing something similar to what your friends had suggested of doing a drop ship thing through Amazon and mm-hmm Alibaba and those kinds of things. But you decided not to go with Amazon for this fulfillment. You use this, this other place. Exactly.

Why don't you use 

[00:30:55] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: Amazon? Um, I am still trying to decide whether to go into Amazon with my product, but they are notorious for stealing ideas and oh, and pricing probably, and pricing to the bottom and things like that. Right. And so if you have a great product, you'll have it for a few years and then they might just take your idea and make their own version of it.

[00:31:22] Mike Koelzer, Host: You try to be a little bit below the radar. Yeah. When you can't 

[00:31:25] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: be a search. Yeah. And so it's a tough thing. Like how far below the radar do you wanna be? You wanna be an unfindable yeah. 

[00:31:30] Mike Koelzer, Host: You, you get one box and you do your opening and you smell it and you, you sleep with it at night, you cuddle it and your husband, this is you.

Cause you're, you're cuddling your box of, you know, your zone bottles and things like that. But the, but the rest of it is all at the fulfillment center. Yeah. What next? 

[00:31:49] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: So then I thought. If you build it, they will come mm-hmm right. Isn't that what the movie field of dreams tells us, like, yeah, 

[00:31:59] Mike Koelzer, Host: you got 'em everybody's gonna line up and 

[00:32:01] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: buy 'em.

Yeah. And I had discovered during this whole process of waiting for my product to come, that I pretty much needed to become, uh, personal brand of, of me, myself having taken prednisone. I needed to be able to tell my story. 

[00:32:21] Mike Koelzer, Host: You weren't gonna do that 

[00:32:23] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: at first. Yeah. I just wanted to let it stand for itself. And I, I had actually even wanted to do a different name.

This was my like plan B. I'd wanted a, a really cool name called RX side FX. I thought it was so fancy, like R X and then capital S I D E and then capital F. X, so, oh, that's right. I was like, this is so awesome. And then I discovered you can't use the RX symbol on a supplement. It kind of confuses people into thinking it's a prescription.

That's just not, yeah. Legal. So I had to pivot and that was another expensive and time consuming change. And that's when I was like trademark 

[00:33:07] Mike Koelzer, Host: office takes forever. Yeah. To hear back from 

[00:33:10] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: them and stuff. Exactly. And I finally got my trademark for neutralization, so I've got that, but it was a very time consuming process to rebrand again, before even anybody knew about it.

[00:33:24] Mike Koelzer, Host: When you thought. Megan that you were going to be not the face of the company. What was your anticipation of percent purchases? Was it going to be all online purchases or were you hoping for anything else? 

[00:33:42] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: My vision is that every single prescription for prednisone is offered in a bottle of neutralized zone.

Gotcha. So hopefully someday this is carried out by Cardinal and McKesson so that you can order it just like you would order in the supplement that pharmacists give along with antibiotics that there's a precedent for. That there's another company out there who makes a high quality product to help combat the side effects of a prescription drug.

Um, so I that's, that's my vision, but I. Cardinal's not gonna take it if people aren't loving it already. And so theoretically, the easiest way to do it is to sell it online. 

[00:34:32] Mike Koelzer, Host: That's the damn thing about that. Like a shark tank show. 

[00:34:34] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: Yeah. It's like, if I went on there, I'd be so excited. Like if, I don't know, maybe I was in a, 

[00:34:41] Mike Koelzer, Host: you remember macrame , you're too young for that.

You remember macrame with that brown, like string and you'd make like owls and stuff out of 'em. You don't remember that. All right. When I was a kid and, and the listeners who are old farts like me, they'll remember you made these macrame, like after school programs, you'd have a ring and you'd do this, like braiding of this, like twine, and then you'd have pot holders and things like that.

But I'd. I'd go on shark tank. And I, and I'd say I sold a macrame holder and these, but these guys on shark tank, they're like, how many sales do you have? And they're like, oh, we've had like 5 million of these. sold.""Well not enough for us. It's like, well, what do I need? I mean, you gotta walk on there and say, you're Proctor and gamble before they even like, wanna do something with you.

It seems. 

[00:35:32] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: Yes, exactly. 

[00:35:34] Mike Koelzer, Host: But Cardinal doesn't want you until everybody else wants you 

already. 

[00:35:37] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: Right. They're not going to take a risk, 

you know, 

marketing you and enabling that process unless there's a proof of concept. And so I needed to get the 

proof 

proof of concept first. 

[00:35:50] Mike Koelzer, Host: When did you know what you had to put, when you needed to step into the face of the brand?

How long was it before you knew that? So 

[00:36:00] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: I'd had this thought in April and I probably had to decide that in like. I don't know December. So it was, it was a long time when I was thinking that I could just hide behind the brand of the product and not have to be a personal brand. 

[00:36:17] Mike Koelzer, Host: Was it after you already had them available, was it months after that they were already available when you made the change or did you make that change before they even came 

[00:36:27] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: out?

Yeah, I made the change before they came out and I launched myself, my personal brand in February, and then I launched the physical product in April. So like I had a few months to lead up what year? A year ago, 

[00:36:42] Mike Koelzer, Host: year ago, 

[00:36:43] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: 1920, the year of the COVID 

[00:36:48] Mike Koelzer, Host: The other day I went around the pharmacy and I'll probably have to cut this out, but I went around the pharmacy and I wrote it down.

May 20th, 20, 20. And I spent about five minutes in March around the pharmacy saying, how cool was this? That the date was 20, 20, 20, 20. it wasn't, it was 5, 20, 20. And I went around the pharmacy and said, how cool is this? " You'll never have another date like this for another, you know, century in a, in a month or whatever.

And it's like, it wasn't until like three hours later. I'm like, it's not 20, 20, 20, 20 it's 5, 20, 20. There's no thing 20, 20, 20, 20. That's right. Everybody just let me carry on like an old, there goes Mike again. I'm like, why didn't you tell me that? They're like, well, I know, just let you had your fun.

Mm-hmm all right. How did you know Megan that you needed to be the face? When did you decide that? Because the product hadn't even come out yet. So when did you know that you were to do that? Were you doing some testing and something wasn't going, how you wanted it or what? 

[00:37:54] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: So. I had started this thinking.

I understood what the process would be like, how to get the physical product and then how to sell it. And then I learned there's a lot more to learn about online marketing and discovered that it's really in stories that you connect to people. And that it's really hard to connect as just some letters on a logo that you really need a face and a story and emotion and connection to make it happen.

And so that's what I'd learned over those months. I'd been listening to more podcasts and more online training. And 

[00:38:39] Mike Koelzer, Host: so it wasn't learning from experience. It was truly learning. People were saying to do your best product. Here's probably what you wanna do. 

[00:38:46] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: Exactly. And so I had to become Dr. Me and the prednisone pharmacist.

I didn't wanna call myself a doctor . I didn't wanna have anybody see my face. I didn't want any, anything, like I wanted to just be my private self. And you don't like any of that? I love attention but I like giving continuing education presentations. Like, I love that. Like, that's so much fun to me giving public speaking, speaking, pub, doing public speaking.

clearly, clearly I'm really good at that. 

[00:39:23] Mike Koelzer, Host: What's the difference though, between getting up in front of a crowd and, and having your, having your name somewhere else, why, why is that different if you like attention, which I certainly do. Yeah. 

[00:39:34] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: What's it different? I think the difference is when you're giving a continued education presentation, everyone in the audience.

Is a pharmacist or a technician, and it's like a narrow group and you can share as much, or as little as you want about you personally, you know, just I've graduated from this college of pharmacy this year and I've worked here, whereas online, you kind of have a lot more, that comes into what you like are obligated to share.

I mean, just if nothing else, your signature on your emails to comply with the law has to have a physical address. Like you have to have a physical address to share with the world. And I didn't really wanna do that. 

[00:40:27] Mike Koelzer, Host: you were realizing like, Hey, this is getting more tangible mm-hmm plus you had to share stuff.

You couldn't just go on there and you couldn't just have a website and say, here's my degree because nobody would care. I mean, I'll get, um, diluted. Everybody has a degree online for something mm-hmm , you know, but you knew you, you knew you were gonna have to share a lot more. Yes. And you didn't like that?

Well, 

[00:40:52] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: I, I like teaching. I love how I've been offered teaching positions at a medical school and a pharmacy school. Like I love teaching. And so I wanted to integrate that somehow into this, but I didn't know that it was gonna be necessary to actually make my product viable because I didn't, I, you know, figured everybody else understood what I understood.

The curse of knowledge, that if you're taking a prescription drug and it's causing side effects, there might be a nutrient depletion involved. That's actually kind of a huge leap year. That requires education. And in order for anybody to care about me sharing that information, I have to tell my story. and so it's a right.

[00:41:43] Mike Koelzer, Host: You're kind of creating a, um, you know, you, you saw that with a lot of, um, companies over the years, like Viagra had to almost invent, not invent the ed market, but at least invent people being open enough to talk about it. But you see it with a lot of other things where, you know, like toenail problems or something where, or the new one, like every few months online we model on.

Oh, did I say we models on Instagram? I always mess that up. Not, not scared.

The models on Instagram, they're always complaining. They were doing like under arm creases and you couldn't have the under arm crease. And so I think ladies were probably even going for Botox for that or something, but they, but they're actually inventing a problem. They're actually inventing a new problem where you're not inventing your problem, but you did have to, you do have to teach about 

[00:42:38] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: it.

Mm-hmm I, the often, like in those situations, you're making somebody problem aware, somebody taking prednisone doesn't need to be told that they have a problem. Like they know how miserable they are. They are suffering so much, but they don't have any, there's no idea in anyone's mind that there's a solution.

And so I've had to make them solution aware and it's, it's a totally different game. 

[00:43:13] Mike Koelzer, Host: And it's embarrassing a lot of times with the moon faces. Oh 

[00:43:16] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: yeah. Right. It's mortifying to have a normal face when you are healthy and then have to go on prednisone and suddenly you look obese, you feel terrible.

And it's like, I didn't just go on a binge. 

[00:43:32] Mike Koelzer, Host: You said that Jerry Lewis telethon remember that Jerry Lewis, I 

[00:43:36] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: he's old, I don't really . I'm 

[00:43:39] Mike Koelzer, Host: gonna still talk about older people. You young, you, young people are no fun. Now. Jerry Lewis was this old comedian with Dean Martin and he had the Jerry Lewis telethon.

It was on every Memorial day, but one year he came, he just had this, his face was his round as a basketball. 

[00:43:54] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: Mm-hmm, , it's really common. And you know, people, Google prednisone side effects, people, Google prednisone. There's this huge, huge lack of information online about prednisone, because there's no big drug company, who's got this huge marketing budget and this huge education budget.

That's filling that gap. And there's no, what's weird about prednisone is it's not like it treats one condition like, you know, levothyroxine, it's one of the top drugs in the world. It treats one condition like you need thyroid replacement. And so you can just target people with a thyroid problem.

Like Isabella, once the thyroid pharmacist does, whereas prednisone can be prescribed by any specialist or general doctor, and it can be prescribed for almost any condition. And so there's no simple way of finding the people on prednisone. Because it can be any person, but they're all suffering. 70% of people on prednisone gain weight and feel terrible about it.

And nobody wants them. I'm in this support group for people on prednisone. Yeah. And of those 70% who do gain weight, almost none of them had been warned by their pharmacist or their doctor that they were going to gain weight. Yeah. That there was anything that they could do about it, that there was any reason to tell them.

And I can see why, like, if you're going to be on prednisone, there's probably a really acute situation. Like maybe you're in the hospital, maybe you're unconscious. Right. Maybe like you're intubated. Like there's a lot of good reasons why nobody's talking to you about gaining weight. Like we're just trying to save your life here.

[00:45:50] Mike Koelzer, Host: Right. Exactly. Exactly. But it happens, but as it goes on, then yeah, it happens. 

[00:45:56] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: And they are like, it's just another insult to the injury. Not only do I feel terrible, but now I look awful. 

[00:46:06] Mike Koelzer, Host: You talk about, you know, searches online and stuff. Mm-hmm is Google part of your ad process at all? 

[00:46:14] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: Or? I did Google ads pretty in depth for a little while, but it was another humongous hurdle because you can't market anything with the prescription drugs name in it, unless you are a manufac.

Of a drug. 

[00:46:33] Mike Koelzer, Host: I know we had to, at the, as a pharmacy, we could not mention prescription or drug or anything unless we had bought, I think it's through the N CPA now or something unless, or maybe through the NCPDP or something, but unless we bought a.pharmacy, Domain name, which we don't use, but we own k.pharmacy.

And that's how you prove that you were a true pharmacy, but that, that was like a thousand bucks or something. You did the same thing. 

[00:47:07] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: It was the same thing. And it was so unique because if I was representing a pharmacy, then I could have gone through that same process of approval within the Google ad network that you're talking about, like getting registered with the proper authorities, their policeman for Google.

And that would've been fine, but I'm not a pharmacy. I don't sell prescription drugs. And I'm also not a lot of other entities. I'm unique. Dietary supplement talking about a prescription drug that Google had no idea what to do. And so it was months, but going back and forth with their call center in India, like how often do you get phone calls from India?

Not very often, unless you're trying to get through the Google ad network. So I had to go through that whole approval process just to even start the ads. And then I, and there were some language barriers. There were language barriers. Because it's like prednisone. I don't know what you're talking about. Like, yeah.

Yeah. So that was a whole process. Just getting approved to give them money, to advertise my product. 

[00:48:17] Mike Koelzer, Host: And then how do you felt Google 

[00:48:19] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: went for you? I gave up on it for now. I might bring it back, but it didn't really, like I mentioned, people are problem aware, but not solution aware and making that gap.

Bridging that gap within one advertisement was too much. 

[00:48:39] Mike Koelzer, Host: Google's going to let people find you mm-hmm with a Google ad, but it seems like that's a few steps later. They wouldn't even know what they're looking for basically. Right. They would 

[00:48:52] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: have no idea. 

[00:48:52] Mike Koelzer, Host: Okay. And then you might say, I have a solution.

They're like, I can't even define the problem. Real. I just feel like crap. And they're not even looking I guess. And probably your keywords. Those probably were not cheap. Well, not 

[00:49:04] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: many. , there's not a lot of competition in the prednisone world. Nobody really cares. 

[00:49:11] Mike Koelzer, Host: but it always surprises me how expensive.

Some of those words are even I was looking for prednisone. Right. It seems like somebody got something, you know, some other company, some study or something. And so they jump 

[00:49:24] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: yes. Jumped the word price. Yeah. So it's not like it was back when Tim Ferris was advertising when it was just pennies per click. It wasn't, it wasn't cheap by any means.

But compared to other search terms, it was. Relatively affordable. so 

[00:49:45] Mike Koelzer, Host: nowadays, almost with Google, like searching through all of the social media. I, I'm not sure exactly what they search, but I do know that podcast they've got on there and they're searching for podcast words and so on. You don't necessarily have to pay for Google AdWords because they, if you're, I guess if you're specific enough, it's gonna 

[00:50:08] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: come up with search engine optimization.

Yeah. I've been trying to do that on the free side of it. Right. Like having Google just find me and that took a year, but I finally am the number one hit for prednisone, nutrient depletion. It's only taken a year, but we've got it. Number one for free. So that's great. Maybe end what's cool about that is.

reaches somebody when they're past the problem. Like they know they're suffering and then they have figured there's a, there's a cause for their suffering. Right, right. They figured out prednisone, nutrient depletion might be it. And so I'm catching somebody at that point. Who's a lot more of a hot buyer.

Like if you've heard of funnels, then we're pretty far down the funnel. They're not a cold audience anymore. They're at least warm, if not hot, by the time they get to that term. So 

[00:51:09] Mike Koelzer, Host: The challenge seems to be to get, maybe get people to that term. Yes. To know that they're feeling bad with prednisone.

Not because it's something. Ate along with it or it's not because they were out in the sunshine too much or took it too out of a shower or something they're feeling crappy because of a nutrient depletion. Mm-hmm they've gotta get to that point. It seems before they 

[00:51:37] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: look for them, before even thinking there could be a solution.

Exactly. Do you consider 

[00:51:42] Mike Koelzer, Host: that your job then 

[00:51:44] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: now? Yeah. Yeah. My, I, I feel like what I've been doing for the last year as the prednisone pharmacist is finding the pain and addressing it as hopefully, as I possibly can and understanding them better than they understand themselves, like putting a face to this suffering so that they can really.

enter into this little universe that I've created and learn how to combat side effects. That it's not just my product, my product does help and people love it, but it's also tons of little things that they can do that they don't even know because nobody told them and they're free and simple, but nobody told 'em.

And so I'm trying to be the one who tells them this is how to combat side effects. 

[00:52:42] Mike Koelzer, Host: What would you consider your challenges right now? Is it for the company? Would it be, I mean, there's a ton of, I mean, look at all the things that a company does from marketing to shipping, to financial, to product availability, to customer interaction, all that kind of stuff.

What do you think about it? In my mind, I come from a marketing background. So I'm always thinking marketing, but what other struggles are you thinking about 

[00:53:21] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: and so on? Yeah, so marketing is definitely huge. Just trying to find the right balance of investing in the product to get at my actual return on ad spend and effort.

Right? Like that's, that's a real struggle right now. Um, and so I've been to go a little further with Google ads. I've paused those so that I can put all of my investment into Facebook ads. Mm-hmm so I have a Facebook page. I've spent a lot of time and energy making my Facebook present so that I can surely enable those Facebook ads to succeed.

And so that is. Trying to find the right ad, trying to find the right message to go with that ad, trying to yeah. Connect with people and make that jump from problem aware to solution aware to buying. And so that's, that's what I'm spending my energy on right now. 

[00:54:28] Mike Koelzer, Host: Are you able to in, in Facebook, and I know they've changed some of this stuff, but it used to be that you could market people that are fans of this page, or you could market people that have been to a certain website.

It seems like there used to be even more. And now this seems the more I go back to look, even though Facebook has more minutia of divisions, it seems. The divisions I'm looking for. Aren't always there. It's really the old standbys of hobbies and interests and age and renter, homeowner, or degrees and things like that.

Are you able to find a decent connection with your product and what are those if you, if 

[00:55:21] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: you found them? Yeah. So that has been one of the biggest struggles because it's incredibly creepy how much Facebook knows about us. Like they track 52,000 points of data on every single user. And they pixel you, I don't, I had no idea what piling was, but if you go to a website that has a Facebook pixel installed, they track you and then they know that you St you visited that website and then they can serve you ads to that product or whatever it is.

And so there's a huge level of creepiness involved . And so I do have a pixel on my website so that I can retarget these people onto Facebook. But I think what you're also asking is what other points of data can I be targeting? Yeah, 

[00:56:16] Mike Koelzer, Host: they probably don't have people on there that say they're a fan of P right.

yeah. What other groups are there that besides just tracking if they've been to your site, 

[00:56:25] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: There are about a hundred thousand people in Facebook's support groups for prednisone. It's really kind of insane that people have that problem. They need a support group. And so asthma allergies in prednisone or prednisone support or other like disease specific, but like all anybody talks about is prednisone.

And so there are groups, but you can't target groups like members of groups with ads. That's like, that crosses the level of creepiness, right? Like 

[00:57:01] Mike Koelzer, Host: that. But that's not one of the ad availability sections kind of thing. Yeah. 

[00:57:07] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: And so there are strategies to get people within those groups, paying attention and things like that.

But then there are pages where. you can get information from guests like, oh, Dr. Josh acts has 3 million people who like his page. If they like his page, they're kind of my target audience because they understand the need for proper nutrients . His big deal is food and medicine. And so that person who already has that belief, that mindset, and if they're also taking prednisone, they're my person.

Right? Like, that's my ideal, right. Customer avatar. And so I've been able to target people like Josh acts and other disease, wellness, health sort of pages. I can say if a person likes that, serve the ad to 

[00:58:09] Mike Koelzer, Host: them. Yeah. And I think you can do maybe like employers and things like that, but you're not gonna get.

That defined, I guess how much time Megan, are you still, are you doing with your, or the stuff that we talked about that you've been doing on your own? Mm-hmm are you still doing that? 

[00:58:26] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: So I, with the coronavirus, if anybody wants a prior authorization, they kind of have to go to a doctor's office. And if they want an appeal for that prior authorization, they really have to be visiting the doctor's office.

And since doctors haven't been 

[00:58:44] Mike Koelzer, Host: taking, I'll say like, when's the last time you saw this person, that 

[00:58:48] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: kind of part, or just to identify the problem, you know, like, oh, you have psoriasis here. Let me give you $15,000 a month. Injectable, here you go. That's not gonna happen. If they're like, dermatologists were basically shut down, right?

Like there's no acute situation. You need to go to a dermatologist . And so basically it was this perfect storm of. No more prior authorizations leads to no more appeals of the prior authorization leads to, they don't need me anymore. They can do it with their in-house staff. So I got laid off a month ago.

I'm sorry to hear that and not, I mean like a consultant, so it's not really laid off, but like, It's been my job for five years. so 

[00:59:38] Mike Koelzer, Host: Well, let's go pre COVID mm-hmm you know, let's go four months ago. Yeah. How many hours are put in still doing that? I was doing about 15 hours a week. I know when people ask me, like how much time do you spend at the pharmacy?

I'm like, I don't know. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm physically doing this or doing that, but I don't think it's been off my mind for, you know, 30 some years or whatever. Mm-hmm how much time would you say that you are then putting into the product thought or the, or your stuff? 

[01:00:05] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: Yeah, so I was, I was basically doing that for four days a week and then this for one day a week and then like another half an hour every day.

And that's what I was doing. And now I have all my time to be able to spend on my little passion project here. Um, and so it's probably 15 hours a week. Again, that I'm spending on this. 

[01:00:28] Mike Koelzer, Host: How would you grade things maybe compared to. where you thought they would be or whatever. I thought 

[01:00:36] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: I would have sold out of everything by now.

I thought I would've been having to struggle with reordering at this point. And I feel like I finally am at the point where the ball is rolling. Like I'm not just pushing the rock uphill. Like I feel like it's finally rolling, but I just thought that was, this whole process has taught me that anything in life is gonna take three times longer than you think it will.

And like whether it's a construction project or an IT software project, you just take whatever estimate somebody gives you and multiply that by three and that'll be more realistic. And so. I thought I could get my product really fast. It took at least three times longer than I thought I could.

Right. You know, be like really having a huge uptake of my product. And I think I'm finally like the ball is finally rolling, but it's, it took a year to get to this point with my product on the market. And so it's, it's kind of nice that I am not being distracted by other efforts now that all of my effort is going into this because I think that's really, what's pushing it over the hill is that I have, I have the time to invest.

So how long has it been out for it came out a year ago, April. 

[01:02:07] Mike Koelzer, Host: What do you think you'll need to do differently this year? And you've already mentioned, I think more time that you'll have, do you have any other thoughts up your sleeve of. Different directions or you just continue with more of your presence and online teaching and that kind of 

[01:02:29] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: stuff.

Yeah. I'm trying to really get the whole process of being an online marketer into a routine to make it as manageable as possible. That's one part of it. And then, um, just trying, you know, do I go into Amazon or do I? I've got some people helping me to go into the Cardinal McKesson area. And so it's that next phase that now that we've got people who have testimonials that are like, whoa, this is amazing.

This has changed my life. I can't believe it. Going from night to day, how much this hasn't changed me now that I've got that proof of concept. It's like, I can, I can take it now to say, you should have this so that any pharmacy can order it so that whenever somebody needs a prescription for a prednisone, the pharmacist can say, here it is.

And not only is the pharmacy going to go from a $4 prednisone prescription and making money off of selling the supplement to go along with it, but they can feel good knowing that. It actually works and it's a clean product that's made with the best ingredients that it's not just some gimmick, like it's legitimate as it possibly can be.

Ha have 

[01:03:59] Mike Koelzer, Host: You had any Guinea pigs? Any stores where you just said, look, here's, you know, I'm, uh, consignment or whatever, here's a dozen or whatever. These, try to see how the patients do. Have you tried that 

[01:04:10] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: yet? Yeah. So conveniently I, my dad owns, owns this third generation pharmacy. I was kinda 

[01:04:18] Mike Koelzer, Host: hinting at that, but I didn't want you to say no.

My dad told me no. Yeah, 

[01:04:23] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: he does. Last week, my sister worked there. She was telling me that one of the pharmacists was counseling a person on prednisone and saying, Hey, you know, here's this? And she was like, Hey. You're on prednisone. Look, there's this great product. And she brought it over and my dad sold it to her for 80 bucks, right there, like the pharmacy took a $4 prescription and sold it as a $80 supplement along with it.

That was just last week. 

[01:04:52] Mike Koelzer, Host: That price point of $80 there's books and books written about pricing, a product like that. One of the concerns would be pricing it too low. Yeah. You know, just for kicks, let's say that you price it at 99 cents. No, one's gonna buy it for 99 cents. They're gonna say it's junk.

It should be at the dollar store. There's nothing in it. It's from some other country. 

[01:05:14] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: Yeah. There's probably no active ingredient 

[01:05:16] Mike Koelzer, Host: anyway. And so that's a concern to take away all the desire of profit and all that kind of stuff was, was 80, like a, a nice area to put that in. Was that like a psychological price where you thought that's where people are going to think it's important enough and that kind of stuff?

Or how did you come up with that price? There 

[01:05:36] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: are the, the four PS of marketing, right. And the price is one of those PS. And so it really is. One of those things you test and you try to figure out and it's, it's a hard thing to really determine. And so, yes, the psychological aspect is definitely involved. I looked on other supplement company websites to see what their price points were.

If you were to get something that is supposed to be complete, if it's, it's a dual pack, it's one bottle of bedtime, one bottle of morning, 120 total capsules, you know, What per capsule are they charging? What, all of those things, just so that I can have, you know, comparable numbers from other legitimate supplement companies.

Sure. And so there's this really cool one in, um, Northern Utah where they created one for people recovering from surgery or from fracturing a bone or whatever, because there's a specific nutrient requirement for those situations. And they have this really complex regimen of, you know, take these four plus these two and, you know, then you'd taper down and they are charging like 160 bucks.

And I was like, okay, I'm not doing six pills a day, but mine is very specialized. I'm doing four pills a day and it's another legitimate company. And so it was just finding things like that to where it fits in the market. And then there's learning all this marketing stuff. It's been fascinating to find.

Like, I think if it was Tim Ferris, one of them was, if you charge a high enough price, you get rid of your worst customers. 

[01:07:29] Mike Koelzer, Host: yeah, 

[01:07:30] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: yeah. The, the 80 20 rule, right? Like you get people who want quality and they are quality too. Whereas the most whiny customer service draining people are those who are looking for the deal.

And 

[01:07:47] Mike Koelzer, Host: Let's say there's a benefit of being higher. Let's not pick on going lower. Let's say there's a benefit of being higher. The customer may not be that price conscious, but if you have a pharmacist, let's say, or a doctor that's recommending, you know, this product with antibiotics and this product with cholesterol medicine or something like that, you wanna be in the game, in their head with, you wouldn't want all the, all these great products to be a hundred dollars and yours be two, you know, and, and all.

Want it triple what people are, that's kind of the thing you might be playing in is the people that are ultimately going to be recommending you to, because they have to be comfortable with it, I imagine. 

[01:08:28] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: Right. And then their needs, they need a profit margin too. And so it's gotta be worth it to them 

[01:08:35] Mike Koelzer, Host: going back three years.

Megan, have you made the right choice? I 

[01:08:41] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: I think so. Good for you. I mean, the ball is slowly rolling and so is it, is it, do I have a return on my investment yet? No, but is there a, like a good chance I will. I think so. 

[01:08:57] Mike Koelzer, Host: It's not like you're saying no, I should not have done this. I should have gone into, you know, vacuum sales.

[01:09:02] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: right. I should have joined an MLM and been somebody else's marketer. No, I, I think if nothing else, like. I have learned some amazing skills. Like I've, I've given myself a little online marketing education and that I can use the rest of my life, which is really exciting. No matter what, from here, I have skills that I can, I can create an online course and market it.

I can create it. Doesn't need to be a physical product. I can use these skills in many ways. So I've, I've learned a lot, if nothing 

[01:09:38] Mike Koelzer, Host: else, what negative emotions have you felt from doing this that might be new or that you've had more of that you wish you didn't have as far as, and maybe there's none, but as far as anxiousness or depression, boredom, you know, guilt, has this brought any emotions on that?

Maybe people wouldn't think it would bring on? 

[01:10:04] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: Yeah. I mean, I think as pharmacists. We're not the most risk taking profession that most pharmacists are, tend to sit behind the counter and just do their job and advocate for ourselves and investing and taking risk is just not the type of people that attracts pharmacy.

And so I, like I came from, I wanna be financially independent. And so I save money. I, you know, I'm trying not to spend money. And so it's been hard to say, okay, yes, I can have an ad budget. I can actually spend money on this product. And so it's been this real struggle, like where, where do I invest and how do I justify that investment?

Because right. I'm my own boss and that's awesome. But it's also kind of scary that that's the whole entrepreneur thing. where do you invest your time, your money, your blood, sweat, and tears. Right? Do I invest in Facebook? Do I invest in Google? YouTube, Instagram, you know, it's that whole, what's the best use of my time and talent.

Yeah. And so that has just been, it's always been, I think, a struggle to find the focus right. Where do I invest? Yeah. Because I could go any direction. I could go a hundred percent on Instagram. I could go a hundred percent on Facebook or I can dilute myself into a little bit of all of 'em and it's, it's hard to find where exactly I should focus.

[01:11:49] Mike Koelzer, Host: There's this author. I like David Allen. He talks about, he wrote a book, getting things 

[01:11:53] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: done, and I love him. Allen, do you love David Allen Uhhuh? . The GTD method. 

[01:11:58] Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. He's, he's great. I just love listening to him. He's so calming and stuff. He's got a great Ted talk and I've mentioned it before on the show, but he was on his sailboat with his soon to be wife, I guess, or maybe wife and the winds had come up or something.

And the boat, the boat was rocking at two in the morning and, and he comes up and he's trying to save the boat, save his life and all that. And he looked up at the moon and he said it was the most peaceful time he really ever remembers. And I think the gist of it was that he knew that at that point in time, that's exactly where he was supposed to be.

Even though it was really tough, he knew that was exactly where it was supposed to be. And I think you see. In other places, I know that women certainly can have postpartum depression, but in the midst of screaming, babies and diapers, they often find their purpose there or for the woman or the man who has to put in an 80 hour week because his staff just left him or something.

There's a beauty there because you know your purpose. 

[01:13:02] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: Yes, exactly. And I felt that feeling of this is my purpose, that I've, I've been called to help these millions of people suffering prednisone side effects who have no one to help them that have this huge gap of information and real worthwhile help.

And so I've, it's been very fulfilling to have people be like, you are a godsend, you are an angel. You're exactly who I needed at this time. And. That's not selling my product, but it does give me that like purpose fulfillment. And so I have had that experience of I'm in the right place at the right time.

And that 

[01:13:51] Mike Koelzer, Host: overwhelming feeling of knowing you're going in the right direction. If you maybe take a step off the path and put a little bit too much into this advertising or do this or that, those are just minor steps in the direction of really fulfilling things that you're doing. Mm-hmm so Megan, how can a pharmacist listen to this right now?

Best help you. 

[01:14:16] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: So I think helping me is helping your prednisone patients. And there are things that they wished they'd been told, and I've kind of mentioned one of 'em, but there are three things that I want every pharmacist who dispenses prednisone to tell their patients. And the first one is. It can cause weight gain.

That is just like an epiphany for so many people on prednisone. They didn't know. And the reason it causes the weight gain is because it's messing with the blood sugars. And so you can give them two valuable tips within that first section: cut out the sugars. Cut out the refined sugars, any way of minimizing the ability for the blood sugar to go sky high, cuz that's where the weight gain coming 

[01:15:03] Mike Koelzer, Host: from because of the sugar going high mm-hmm or does that also mess with the 

[01:15:07] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: appetite?

It's the, so the combination of the sh of the high blood sugar is messing with the insulin regulation, which is causing the appetite to be dysregulated. So it's this whole cascade of, if you have high sugars, it'll lead to high appetite, which leads to high weight gain and cortisone stress. Exactly that. I mean, that's what prednisone is.

It's it's, it's the stress hormone. And then the salt. So added salt is going to make that prednisone. The, for all of you who remember the pharmacology is the mineralocorticoid aspect of the prednisone it's causing them to retain salt. So the more salt that they consume, the more water they're going to have to retain, which is weight.

Hmm. And so they're going to have the fat and the salt causing weight gain. Gotcha. You want to help them know to cut out basically refined food? They cut out refined food. That is like huge in combating the two miserable side effects of moon face and the pregnant looking belly, 

[01:16:18] Mike Koelzer, Host: because then all of the more non-defined foods are gonna have the complex carbs, their food fiber, you got all that stuff working towards a more natural system than these spikes and the water holders and things 

[01:16:33] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: like that.

Right. So the first one is weight gain. Cut out the refined foods from the high sugars and the high salt. So the second one is. that prednisone causes insomnia and people just think they're going crazy. Like they don't know that the drug is making their moods weird and that pre-sleep could have something to do with it.

And that prednisone is making them not sleep. And so giving them. Good sleep hygiene tips to go along with that are so valuable. And that's why I've got the melatonin in my bedtime zone. 

[01:17:12] Mike Koelzer, Host: You had two zones and that's one of the reasons there too. You've got some different, a lot of times, vitamins may not matter as much, but the melatonin, you don't want to be taking that eight in the morning.

Exactly. 

[01:17:21] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: And then the third thing is that prednisone causes osteoporosis. And I, we think we all know this, but are we even telling our patients what they can do? Are we telling them you can take calcium and vitamin D like the American college of rheumatologists guideline for glucocorticoid induced, osteoporosis recommends they did a study and only 22% of patients prescribed a steroid were told by their pharmacy to take a calcium and vitamin D even though it's so simple and.

I mean, I'm sure you have calcium and vitamin D in your pharmacy that you can recommend. And one of the amazing things that I wanted to share is about funnels and about up cells and down cells and how there's online funnels that have you know, you can go through this funnel where they're like, are you sure you don't want that?

Okay. I don't, but here's another option. And that's 10 times the price of whatever the last thing was and it's related. And then they 're like, no, I don't want that. And they're like, okay, how about this? And it's half the price of the original thing, and those are upsells and down cells. The same thing can happen in the pharmacy where you can say, you're in the pre zone, you're struggling here.

You're going to need this. And you can point at the higher thing, my, my product Neu neutralized zone. And I, you know, it's somewhere around $80 that you're gonna be charging for it. And. They can take that. Or you can be like, or you can try this calcium, or you can try this bone health supplement, or you can try this and upsell and downsell them on that saying, you need to be taking something.

You gotta have some sort of calcium and vitamin D and here's some options and your options can be as great as this one. Or it can be as simple as this one, but no matter what, as your pharmacist, I need you to be taking calcium and vitamin D because we do not want you coming back here for a prescription bone resorption helper, like bone Bon, Eva, right.

Or sax. Like we wanna keep you away from that. We wanna keep your bones as strong as possible while you're taking prednisone. And so get them on the calcium, however you get them on it using an upsell and a downsell strategy. And that way you're not only taking your $4 prednisone prescription, but you are helping them in those three ways.

And you're making a profit, 

[01:19:53] Mike Koelzer, Host: That's fascinating stuff that upsell and down sell a couple months ago. I heard that like when they're pricing three items too, like the middle, it is really the one they wanted to sell. And they put that just a little bit from the mm-hmm top one, but they make the lowest one ridiculously expensive ounce for ounce and blah, blah, blah.

And it kind of sucks that pharmacists haven't done much of that just because they feel like they've been slapped around by the insurance companies. That doesn't matter what you wanna sell something for. Here's the price gonna get? 

[01:20:23] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: Doesn't matter what you bought it for. We're gonna pay you 

[01:20:26] Mike Koelzer, Host: this. I mean, it's been talked about a lot by smart people and the right people, but it's neat that that's still.

Around. And it's cool to know that it's valid. I mean, just the melatonin and that's valid, you know, and along with the vitamins and even as a pharmacist, you're not sure who to trust, but sitting here talking to you, Megan, for this time, I think I should get a bottle of it just in case I ever go on prednisone.

[01:20:51] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: Seriously. I had somebody buy it last week. Who's not even ever taken a steroid, but she's like, I have such high stress. I think I need it just cuz I have high cortisol. I'm like okay. here you go. 

[01:21:05] Mike Koelzer, Host: How do you expand from here? If you ever decide to, would you consider being another. Pharmacist, like I thought I might be the butter pecan pharmacist.

Would you ever throw in another pharmacist thing or would you add to this line, or how would you do that now that you are positioned as the prednisone pharmacist? Would you do something else in that line because you don't wanna be, well, maybe you do, but you, maybe it's hard though, to be the prednisone pharmacist and also the, you know, inhaler pharmacist or something.

How would you deal with that? 

[01:21:36] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: Yeah. Yeah. So how would 

[01:21:39] Mike Koelzer, Host: you deal with too much success? 

[01:21:42] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: How would I deal with too much success? I, I think, um, the next step, when I've got the physical product sales really going, is going to be on the digital product sales. So I'm gonna be creating a course and creating education that people pay for instead of just the free stuff that I'm currently doing.

And so that's, that's my next pivot that I'm planning to do. 

[01:22:08] Mike Koelzer, Host: For people that wanna repeat what you did or for prednisone 

[01:22:13] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: users for prednisone users. So that's, that's my next thing to do with a physical product. You have an inventory, you have to ship it, you have all of these things. Whereas a digital course, like it's a hundred percent profit and I know there's a need and I know how to speak to that need.

And I want to give them the education and. Basically all those tips I gave you expanded on that. Like, those are the foundation, that's the core of, of my course, basically, but diving into how and why, and the like the real steps to take, to make a change in their life to actually lose the prednisone pounds and all of those miserable things that they're suffering, giving them real tools.

And so that's my first thing that I'm planning to do once I've got the physical system really going, if 

[01:23:07] Mike Koelzer, Host: you owned the whole prednisone thought process, that there's probably enough to do in. Until you are dying, right? I mean, there's probably enough in prednisone. Yeah. I 

[01:23:22] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: mean, and I'd love to do studies, you know, like there's prednisone that was approved in 1955 by the FDA and it's ancient.

Like it, it was grandfathered in and didn't get safety and efficacy studies. It doesn't, there's actually no good list of side effects. Like whatever they have published in the package inserts is so out of proportion to what people actually suffer. Like if you know, when they approved Lyrica, they know 10% of people suffered this specific side effect and 3% suffered this one.

Nobody has any idea what that is with prednisone. No one. And so I'd love to do studies and really have clear data about what people suffer. And how we can help them because every doctor's prescribing it, like twisting their arm, doing it, you know? And if there was a better way to give them that same help, then it, you know, that would be win-win for everyone.

[01:24:28] Mike Koelzer, Host: You know, how big an issue is or a problem when you have another product that says we ain't that product and that's with like, non-steroidal, anti-inflammatories , you know, it's so bad. We have to say, it's not this. Yes. It's some exactly 

[01:24:44] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: right. Yes, exactly. And, you know, in pharmacy school, we learned all about how bad ibuprofen really is, how it causes heart disease.

And it. But it's nonsteroidal. It's not as bad as that terrible prednisone that causes not only heart attacks in strokes, but all of those other, like 150 side effects, 

[01:25:06] Mike Koelzer, Host: Do you think ice cream can cause weight gain? 

[01:25:08] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: I think so. 

[01:25:10] Mike Koelzer, Host: I haven't read any good studies on it though. All right, Megan, pleasure talking to you.

We'll be following you. Awesome. I talked to a lot of cool people here, but I'm actually gonna use some of the stuff you taught me. I'm gonna, I'm gonna talk to, uh, uh, what, who the hell am I kidding? I'm gonna forget it by tomorrow, but that's why I asked you for the link 

[01:25:26] Megan Jolley Milne, PharmD: trays.com/wholesale. . Thanks Megan.

Thanks Mike.