Increase Retail Sales | Tyson Clarke, CEO Voista

Increase Retail Sales | Tyson Clarke, CEO Voista

(Speech to Text)

Mike Koelzer, Host: [00:00:00] Tyson for those who 

haven't come across you online, introduce yourself and tell our listeners what we're talking about today. 

Tyson Clarke: I'm Tyson Clark, I'm the CEO and founder of voice to training labs, pharmaceutical training company. I'm an Australian American around 2013. I moved into the world of pharmacy and unfortunately I came up with a training method that has taken over the rest of my life.

And I haven't been able to do anything else since 

Mike Koelzer, Host: is your customer base in 

Tyson Clarke: Australia? Yep. So we do Australian pharmacies, a little different. We don't have the same struggles as you guys, but there's some of the things in the US system. Are better and are preferable in my opinion. And some of them are not.

But the main thing that we try and that we try to leverage in Australia is the natural migration of the patients and the front of shop staff being more involved in your health decisions in Australia versus [00:01:00] here, there's a wealth of knowledge in the front of the shop. There's ladies who've been there for 15, 20, 30 years and the community comes to rely on those people as a wealth of information, a reliable health professional, and they're the most frequented health professional in Australia with chronic disease being the main focus and and lifestyle decisions being the main sort of impetus.

Chronic disease then I, just thought that those front of shop gems were something that we could really take advantage of and leverage for curbing chronic disease in the country, as well as making the businesses more money. that was the first goal, but you gotta sell it to yourself somehow 

Mike Koelzer, Host: you help them make more money.

And that I imagine is an easier way to get your foot in the door, right by saying, I'm gonna make you money doing this. Well, 

Tyson Clarke: I thought so. But pharmacists that do this terrible thing where they [00:02:00] do everything that talks them, that talks themselves out of making 

Mike Koelzer, Host: money. I don't think you could have said that any better pharmacists have a hard time pricing themselves.

they're so used to being SLAPPED by the insurance companies that it seems if they're making money on something, they must be doing something wrong about it. we gotta 

Tyson Clarke: be doing something wrong. Yeah. But, I came to appreciate it. One of the things that I've, I'm lucky because my background in cultural cultural change has really taught me to appreciate the intelligences that we have there already.

You really couldn't like when you're delivering drugs to people you really can't have a better bottleneck than a pharmacist, right? Because there's such a thing. you could go crazy. You could go bananas if it was just pure, raw capitalism it would be mayhem. So you really come to appreciate after pulling your hair out for years, working with pharmacists about not [00:03:00] making money you really come to appreciate why they're doing it and why they sort of think that way is because it's more about the patient.

They just really do genuinely care more about the patient they do about the profits. So that was my original marketing approach, like, Hey, I'm gonna make you more money. And some of them will take you up on that. But I found the message that when I'm talking to new clients that resonates with them is I'm gonna help you to become a help destination in your community.

Right? I'm gonna help you to become a trusted authority, people will come to see you and rely upon your venue as a place of health. Health where health is. So yeah. Yeah. You'd think that making more money would be a good lure for him, but yeah, it's not as good as not as good as I'm sure every time Dick and Harry is telling him that.

So I'm telling him, [00:04:00] health destinations are the main focus. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. And I think that pharmacists, especially those in, let's say independent pharmacies. Yeah. There's probably no business that does this more if they understand they're in it for the long haul. And I don't mean like three days or three months.

Three years, 10 years, 30 years. I mean, they know that if they give someone the right advice now in 15 years, that customer might pay off. Now the problem with today's business climate is that. If you don't make some money now, there might not be a 15 years from now. Yeah. 

Tyson Clarke: the kind of intelligence that I've seen that pharmacists usually bring to the table.

There's three of 'em that they've, they rely on first. You've gotta have a great memory. Okay. Because there's a lot of information there to absorb and this is what will get you through school. So they're always gonna be great students because they're fantastic [00:05:00] memory recall. And the second thing is protocol.

They can follow the rules. Okay. And that's really important too, because if you don't follow the rules in health and people die, the third intelligence that I see they bring to the table is just like a love of communicating with people in a, an interpersonal relationships, not all of them, some pharmacists are like, oh, I hate it when they touch my hand.

Ugh, there's human residue. but they're the three intelligences that they bring to the table. And it's in direct opposition to any confrontation. It's a tough sort of set of intelligences for leadership. At times, when you gotta, when you gotta kick some butt, my job is to help your pharmacy move in a slightly different direction or amplify the direction that it's going.

That confrontational situation is not something that they relish in my experience. And also sales like sales skills is also. You could make the argument that pharmacists became pharmacists and doctors became [00:06:00] doctors and electricians became electricians because they had their nose in a book and that made it so they didn't have to do sales skills.

They didn't have to rely on those intelligences. So why 

Mike Koelzer, Host: don't the pharmacists like confrontation? Is that also because their nose was in a book and things were black and 

Tyson Clarke: white, I would say. So the great thing about pharmacy in Australia is that. Only a pharmacist can only own a pharmacy and they can only own five.

They did get cheeky with it. Right. The market always finds a way, so they all joined together. A bunch of pharmacists joined together and made a wholesaler called Ks warehouse. But the rest are groups that are, independently. Then, you can only own a certain number in each state when there's only, sort of, six or seven states.

So I should probably know how many states are in my country, but I've forgotten right now. you don't live there. That's okay. no. So any profession will come to rely on the intelligences that are required for their [00:07:00] position. I really get along with electricians. Right? I get along with electricians. Most of the time I was driving my car, thinking of this yesterday.

And I was like, wonder why that is, but it's because they have a practical application of a quasi theoretical thing, right. That you've gotta run through your head, how an electrical circuit is gonna work. And I seem to really jive with those guys when I'm working with engineers. My software engineers.

It's a different story. They're more theoretical and less practical, and there's no pain in getting your finger in the wrong circuit and getting Z. So, pharmacists tend to rely on a set of intelligences that are anti confrontational and gripes about your staff. Bitching about change.

That's every industry, people don't like change, but and so the pharmacists will kind of, sort of stay away from that or any, relying on any set of intelligences you're gonna stay away from the ones that haven't served you. Right? [00:08:00] Yeah. So whereas pharmacists are really great with factual recall, right?

Cause they have to be, it doesn't mean they don't care, but the sort of the emotional intelligence might be dialed down a little bit because they rely so much on the visual. And so if you need to be confrontational, you kind of do need to have that, put your arm around them, sort of, Hey, it's not working out.

You've either gotta change this or I gotta get ready for this kind of thing. So that's a really uncomfortable conversation. If you can't meet someone, especially if you can't meet them very well, emotionally, they've 

Mike Koelzer, Host: probably improved the strength that have made them pharmacists, the analytical stuff, or the black and white thinking and the dosing and things like that.

And maybe those things attracted them to that profession. But even if they were well rounded when they went into their other skills, not the confrontational ones have probably increased over time and maybe weakened in the other areas. [00:09:00] 

Tyson Clarke: Well, yeah. And I'd say that's true for any profession. Any person, really pharmacists, flourish in a school environment.

Like if you think about school it's yeah. You need to remember stuff. You need to follow the rules and be diligent and cross the Ts and dot the I and get on have a good relationship with your teacher, guess. But yeah, so they flourish in that environment and then that moves on to a later environment this way.

If you read Robert Kiyosaki, he says students work for C students. So because the C students didn't have the intelligence that was required to Excel in school. So I deal with retail managers in Australia and they're probably the C students, but they've got fantastic skills too, to lead those really impressive people like super impressive retail managers, leading a team of staff and the pharmacist gets to be in the dungeon.

Mike Koelzer, Host: How'd you land in pharmacy then [00:10:00] after I 

Tyson Clarke: graduated from Palm, Wisconsin, I went back to Australia and I went right into consulting with a person in the personality analysis, sort of cultural change company. Yeah. And that was a lot of fun. But I didn't feel like I was doing any work where the rubber was really hitting the road.

It was sort of intellectual entertainment. I was good at it. And the money was 

Mike Koelzer, Host: good because that's your background in psychology. That's where your 

Tyson Clarke: degrees in. Yeah, just, I just got my bachelors in psych and philosophy, but I've never really stopped studying. I graduated and went back and started working.

And one of the people that I, one of the clients in that group, was the group that I was one of the business owners that I started doing coaching with. So I developed a relationship in that business. We went through a program and then I think it was probably 10 years later that [00:11:00] I ran into this guy, my business partner now, and we are doing some personality coaching.

And actually I had a bet with another mate of mine who could have the sexiest tummy in a week. And so I went into my client's store, one of his stores and one of the staff members was really nice, very well mannered and lovely. But I could tell she just ran outta steam on talking to me.

Right. She, I could tell her head was going back to stock the shelves. Yeah. And I ended up spending 250, 300. And to lose a $50 bet 

Mike Koelzer, Host: But now wait a minute. You're telling me that you had to commit to doing sit ups for a whole week. 

Tyson Clarke: I went all out, mate. We went hardcore. I had a four pack at the end of the week, but he had like a six.

So I lost that one. It's not even close anymore. [00:12:00] 

Mike Koelzer, Host: That's better than I do. I don't even set goals, but if I could set maybe a one week goal of exercising, I could maybe live with that. 

Tyson Clarke: Well, this is what you do. You talk a lot of smack to a buddy of yours about how you're gonna kick his ass. and then you put some money on the line, right?

There you go. That does that. Yeah, that's it. I think that after you turn 40 though, you gotta extend it a bit more than one week. I couldn't do that anymore. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: So you set yourself up already 200 bucks in the hole with this girl. There's no way you're gonna win that back, but she ran outta. 

Tyson Clarke: Yeah, she ran outta steam and I said to my client, I was like, Hey man, look, your staff are really lovely.

They're polite, but I don't think they know. I just jumped online and did a bunch of research about what they are thermos about just to gimme some leverage and she ran out and it meant, I could tell, like, if it wasn't me I was selling myself. If it was somebody else, then they'd be losing a lot of money.

And I said, Hey, your staff are nice, but they [00:13:00] really don't know how to close me on this. They could probably use some sales skills. And he said, then I'll never forget. He had a folder. And he brought to our next meetings like, well, actually I thought I'd tell you about this. And he started to be the rabbit hole of a strand community pharmacy.

And yeah, so I started we got. A contract together to do consulting with the business and we set some goals again. I set a ridiculous goal of increasing his front of shop GP 20%. Did you give yourself longer than a week? Yeah, six months. This one was but it ended up being probably a year, so we extended it a year.

Cause we had to do some cultural work, but I, it was a bit sort of fuzzy on the details, but you know, through inventing voice star and leveraging some other opportunities within the business and recognizing the foundation of their [00:14:00] current customers, which painted the picture for the future.

Yeah I think we really, we kicked some tail there and we did, we really, we moved the needle quite a bit, so that's how we, that's how I got into pharmacy. When 

Mike Koelzer, Host: You come upon a training situation like this. Was it that, that this young lady had no training or she was trained not enough, or she was trained 

Tyson Clarke: incorrectly.

I would lean towards incorrectly. Really? Yeah. The funnest part of my job is meeting really high performing people and stealing their methods and delivering it to everyone else. And that usually creates a new method of training. It makes new training material that didn't exist previously because what the pharmacy Guild of Australia does is it's it.

Run by pharmacists and pharmacists are fantastic at picking up new information. And if they've got an acronym, that's 17 letters long of a [00:15:00] process to follow, that's just fine to them. but to the average person, it's nuts. right. It's just too much Ram. I don't have that Ram available, dude. So even from the highest, the guards of the industry, the regulation sort of Kings of the industry, then I didn't see how the information that they were presenting and how expecting other people to do was gonna have any efficacy at all.

And it isn't right. The methods that they do, what are they called? Mystery shoppers to test you, to make sure that you're asking the right questions to a patient before you hand over a specific schedule of medicine. And we fail all the time. And so I started, I interviewed, I will never forget.

I interviewed somebody who used to work for the Gill. What is this? It's called what stops you. What does, what stop go stand for? Like, what's the acronym? Oh, that's that long acronym. Yeah. Well, that's one of them, but yeah, they've got a few, but nobody [00:16:00] remembers them. And so I, I really don't. So I reverse engineered it and I went into the field and I found the highest performers, the ones who were doing the work.

Right. Doing what they're supposed to do. And I built it based on what they were doing. Right. And using the words that they were using and built an acronym back that way. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Now, when you say high performers, it sounds to me because in Australia, the out front staff maybe has more responsibility, but I'm also hearing you saying that it's a higher profit and I'm thinking sales with their higher skills.

Do they get more sales? Just because they're so good or is it also sales skills? You're teaching them. 

Tyson Clarke: That's a good question. And that's the question I asked when I went in because the business said, look, I want, we went ahead in this direction. We want to do what's called, they called it total solutions at the time.

And I'm very skeptical. I do a lot [00:17:00] of research on everything so I never get anything done, but I wanted to test their hypothesis against the patients. Yeah. Right. I want to move in this direction. Well, why, how do you know that's a good direction? Cause if I wanna pour my heart and soul into this direction, I wanna make sure it's gonna pay for you.

So, they told me that and I went out and I found a way to sort their highest profit, just in front of shop sales, like just their retail sales, not the scripts. And I found that the top 10% of profitability patients with the highest profit in the front of the shop, just retail sales. Just 

Mike Koelzer, Host: to balance this against the us.

We're talking things like someone out front and someone's asking for shampoo or soap or a box of candy or something like that. Right. 

Tyson Clarke: Yeah, but it they'll get actual health requests in Australia 

Mike Koelzer, Host: they'll get more things that maybe don't even get back to the [00:18:00] pharmacist. Yeah. But it's things in the US that might go back to the pharmacist.

Like what's the best cold medicine and so on. Yeah. There may be more training for these kinds of questions out front. Yep. Absolutely. I can see where those merge more about health and. Financial, because I didn't see how much money you could make on maybe telling someone what flavor of pop they should buy or something.

But because those are interwoven more higher priced items for one, there's 

Tyson Clarke: a certain intelligence that doesn't allow us to just go for high priced items. In fact, you've gotta really sell it to the Photoshop star, but this is a story. So I sat down with the high performing patients and I said, why do you love us?

What do we do? Why do, why are you so good to us? And I asked them about, I did some personality analysis on them as well and asked them where they shop in the field just to sort of outside of health, just to get a sense of their natural migration in the market and who might be able to make [00:19:00] potential partnerships with outside of pharmacy.

These guys, they usually said, look, There's marina. She takes great care of me. She sells me a lot of stuff, but I trust her with her solutions and it's not stuff. She tackles it from different angles, right? She's trying to do it from different angles, this one health problem. And so that's how, and I heard that kind of answer quite a bit.

Sometimes it was people like, they were just really sick and they needed a lot of medications. So they were there a lot. Some people had sort of, interesting or unique ailments in this location. They have a naturopath on staff as well, so they could only go there. But yeah, most of the time the high performance patients were profitable because they were seeking a multiple angle approach to solve their problem.

They weren't trying to save money. They [00:20:00] wanted to solve their problem. And so, that's where I started. I was like, okay, cool. Then I go and talk to marina. I talk to the high performers. What are you doing? Tell me what it is because the content that I started training them was I realized was total garbage.

I was taking training that I'd learned in the US from retail cell phones and thinking that it's copy pasting and it's just a totally different culture. So I learned very quickly that the content that I was teaching them was rubbish, but they had some real high performers that the high performing staff that their patients pointed out.

And so that's where I sort of interviewed the high performing star. They said, what are you doing? We did a lot of role plays. How would you solve this problem? How would you solve this problem? And it, they were presenting a multiple angle solution to a lot of problems. For example, I.

For, joint [00:21:00] pain. We're gonna, let's say you've got a problem with your knee. And I come in and say, Mike, I got this problem with my knee. My ideal response from you, Mike, would be to say, okay, like in the short term, we're gonna give you some ibuprofen to take care of the pain and the inflammation long term.

I want you to take cocoon and omega three, cuz we've got a few studies that really support that being that point pointing you in the right direction to prevent it happening again that there's some knee braces over here. Look, they're 80 to $120. It sounds like a lot, but. If you're using it every day, you're probably gonna get two, three years out, it's gonna be the cheapest thing for you.

And then also here's some utilitarian medication to treat it. It's a scheduled medication that I can recommend and I'll ask my questions. Are you taking anything else? Do you have any other allergies or conditions? So, that's the sort of four quadrant approach that I was able to [00:22:00] extract from the high performers.

And then I deliver that to the remaining staff, the average performers, the ones who haven't spent 10,000 hours in the field. And yeah, we were able to that's how we were able to move the needle in a scalable way, just by taking from the top and delivering it more efficiently. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: It sounds like the information that you're sharing in Australia is great information for.

Us pharmacists or very high top technicians. Who've been around this medicine forever, because what I'm hearing you talking about, those are sales. Oh, I don't know if we want to call 'em techniques. I don't want to be too harsh about it, but those are sales things that every pharmacist can learn from this.

So say that again, the four quadrants, what were those 

Tyson Clarke: again? That's a really fun thing that I took from my cultural change days, short term, long term, internal external, [00:23:00] because I use a speech operated program. They have to say these words and internal, external ones made everybody cringe, but that was what I called it.

So that's what you're gonna do. And then after that I sort of realized what a problem that was because I was getting a lot of pushback from the staff. Yeah. And so I started doing panels and it's almost like a cultural phenomena where I'll go to a business and I'll say, Hey here, who's the best.

Who's the best at solving people's problems? And they'll say, it's Jenny and Jenny will get up and say, Hey, Jenny, I've got a problem with ex eczema dermatitis. Okay. And then I said, gimme the roles, Roy treatment, Jenna. And so generally, I'll rattle off four or five things. Then I will turn, I'll put those all up on a whiteboard and I'll write it on post-it notes.

Or I have somebody else to do it on post-it notes because I can't write and talk at the same time. and I'll ask the staff, what [00:24:00] kind of solution is this solution? And I'll give it a name and then I'll pick up another post-it I'll say, what kind of solution is. A bleach bath and they'll give, and they'll give it a name and the labels come out the same at every pharmacy that I go to.

And it became short term, long term treat prevent. So that's what they're comfortable saying. And that's the, and they we've categorized it now into like having their own definitions. We've built a definition that they agree on. Treat is in Australia, they're scheduled in front of shop medications S two S three.

So that's ones that you need to really ask about, if you're giving them a Nien like a stronger ibuprofen, then you've gotta ask about contraindications and stuff, allergies. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: In the example you gave about the knee [00:25:00] brace. Yeah. And so on now that I know what the four quadrants are.

Yeah. Gimme those examples again. And where did those fit into those four quadrants? 

Tyson Clarke: So the short term was ibuprofen. It's an immediate pain relief, usually short term pain relief and time sensitive. Gotcha. So that's the, usually the CA and not an S two S three, if not a scheduled pharmaceutical medication.

Gotcha. Sure. Long term is usually a lifestyle or it's gonna take sort of four to six months as a treatment, which is why we threw an omega-3 in curcumin in there. Gotcha. And we have a lot of success with that, and even I have a lot of success with Cucu and omega-3 now that I'm getting more athletic and I live in Wisconsin.

yeah. Then your prevention was the knee brace to prevent it happening more in the future. And then your treatment was the Batar utilitarian osteo gel 24 hours because it's a schedule too, in some [00:26:00] states in Australia. So that's interesting. That was the four quadrant approach. Yeah. So that's and we don't.

Like we train every month. Our program, we train a new ailment. Like we start with the ailment because that's what the staff care about. Yeah. And we give 'em the four quadrants, but we give 'em the four quadrants every month. So eventually our goal is to build a sort of brick house of four quadrants into the psyche of the community so that if they come across a problem or an ailment that they have not been trained on, at least they've got, how can I help this person in the short term?

How can I help them to prevent it from happening further? How can I, so that's what we're trying to build through repetition and different different ailments. All of our 

Mike Koelzer, Host: minds probably go there. We say, how am I gonna handle this today? How am I gonna handle this a month from now? And then the other one was prevention.

Tyson Clarke: Yeah, what's the fourth one? Well, pharmaceutical grade treat. Pharmaceutical grade treatment, [00:27:00] short term, long term treat 

Mike Koelzer, Host: prevent. I gotcha. Short term is not yet with the doc in us. It'd be like OTC. 

Tyson Clarke: You're not even talking to a pharmacist necessarily. You're talking to a shop in front of a shop. I know it's hard to get your head around.

Mike Koelzer, Host: It's hard in the US because it's almost like we're down a level. It's almost like the pharmacist is doing this because a pharmacist isn't writing for 

Tyson Clarke: prescriptions. Yeah. Right. And it's free healthcare, right. For the patient. These are the most frequented health professionals in the country. So you see a doctor like three times a year, you see a pharmacist, 14 times a year.

You probably see a friend shop 16 to 18 times a year. Because you don't always see a pharmacist when you go to a pharmacy. So, they're the most frequent in health professionals. They're one of the most trusted not, they're not necessarily pharmacists, but every year the survey comes out, goes, nurses are the highest trust professional, then doctors and then pharmacists.

And sometimes pharmacists add in front. Of the doctors, but most of the time we're third. So [00:28:00] very highly trusted professional and highly frequented professional. And I thought that combination of natural migration of people combined with trust, because otherwise, your barista, you see probably every day and you could get health information from them too, but you don't trust them with your health decisions.

So, or your bartender, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: If the front staff is that well trained, is there another level in the pharmacy of someone who I would just call like the cash register person? I mean, is everybody that well trained in the pharmacy? 

Tyson Clarke: Well, it depends on the pharmacy mate. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: think you're smarter over there than we are here in the 

Tyson Clarke: us.

I think they have a harder job. In front of the shop staff, they probably get paid a bit more. Yeah. But the minimum wage is higher. So I don't know whether you'd. I don't know how to correlate that across the position and across the expense, the cost of living in each country and each state. So it's hard to say, very hard to say, [00:29:00] but yeah, they are picking up health advice just to sort on the job.

One of the best ways they do it is stop, take where you gotta, or you're cleaning the shelves. You're looking at each product, you're cleaning the shelf. You're seeing the active ingredients, just learning it there. We really respect and appreciate the front shop position. And we sort of have a goal of turning that position in, into what the pharmacists want, which is to help them become a health destination.

I'm gonna go see her. She really helps me and I trust her and she gives me a full solution. The real problem is that it's usually ladies. So you'll have to, excuse me. If I say girls, there are some gentlemen who do it, but. Usually it's the ladies. And anyway, when they're in that position, they've got a real problem with being sales people.

They really don't like sales techniques. And I found this out within a couple of days of training and it's what led us to create our software is that I would, [00:30:00] because, you're trying to me, my introduction to training and pharmacy was you. I was just observing you lock a bunch of staff in a room and you somehow magically run your pharmacy at the same time.

right. And you're getting everyone trained and you pay a guy 10 grand over two days to train 25 people. And then the next month, six of your staff leave. And so, and then the training lasts three days. And then everything goes back to normal. Nothing actually happens like you might get a little uptick or you might get a little pep talk, but nothing actually happens in terms of long term change.

And that really, that, that didn't sit well with me. And so it was the first introduction to sales, to training in pharmacy. And that was a guy who was a pharmacist. And he was a good trainer, he was interesting and funny and he had jokes and he was really good at what he did, but it didn't make any [00:31:00] change.

And so then I started training staff and I was trying to teach them retail, cheeky, retail, sec sales techniques, too. Salesy. Let's go with that too. Salesy, any kind of sales, if you even call it sales or say the word sales, these people's skins start to start to crawl. And so, but first off I started trying to train these staff at each location.

And I didn't wanna put the burden on them to run their business and be trained by me because I wasn't confident that it was gonna work because I saw this other guy, I was like, this isn't gonna work. So I was training 'em two at a time. So you'd have a staff, the store of 10 staff and I'd train 'em two at a time.

And I did four or five sessions that were exactly the same. And then I went to another store, the company had 10 businesses. So I went to another store. I do training sessions two at a time and I do four sessions at that store and I go to another store. And so I was getting really good at what I was doing [00:32:00] and doing my little sales spiel.

But the girls were rolling their eyes at me. Like they had, they were not taken off on this information because it just didn't resonate with their identity about their job and who they were as people, I was teaching them sales skills and the method was just so wrong. Were those sales skills 

Mike Koelzer, Host: beyond the four quadrants we were talking about?

Yes. So these are actually techniques or skills to close the sale and do different things like that beyond the 

Tyson Clarke: quadrants. Yeah. Yeah. This is before the quadrants. Yeah, this is my, this is what led me to the quadrants to recognize that my method was wrong. Well, this is what led you to the quadrants catch.

Yeah. Yeah. So I was teaching them sales skills and that was wrong. And that, we sold that with short term long term. Yeah. But there was also, I was getting all the skill acquisition here. I was getting the skill acquisition. They weren't, and nobody's gonna learn anything from talking to a guy and doing one role play or two role plays with him once it [00:33:00] just doesn't work that way.

And so that means if they choose to apply it and if they choose to apply it on patience, that's the only way that the skill is going to be acquired and the culture is gonna change. And so I wasn't really comfortable with those odds. And so, that was the second problem was that the method of training was wrong.

And so then I thought, well, what if there's a way to deliver to each site so that they get the repetition, right? Not me, that they get the repetition and they go to each site and they get the repetition, but it's a better method than what I'm delivering. Cause I'm still getting the eye rolls at this point.

Then you know, it would be good, but then I thought, well, It's not gonna work to get a multiple choice or a written answer because a, nobody wants to do that in high repetition and B, even if I did do it in high repetition, I don't do that with a patient. [00:34:00] No patient ever says, Hey, what do you think about this?

A, B, C, or D, or can you re, can you gimme a written answer on how to solve this problem? The patients need to learn to speak about the problems. And so I thought, look, if I can I dabbled in programming a little bit. And so I thought, look, if I can combine a better method than what I'm teaching them in high repetition, using speech recognition so that they have to speak the best methods in high reps, it's gonna be really hard not to make more sales.

and that was the hypothesis. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: They have to speak these answers. And so they get used to saying these words and thinking these phrases more than just picking 'em out of a multiple choice. Yeah. They get comfortable with it, 

Tyson Clarke: right? Yep. They get comfortable speaking about it and they're giving the, they're getting the practice in the right part of the brain that controls speaking.

Right. And so then [00:35:00] when they are in front of a customer, they can speak confidently, which most probably helps the patient and probably helps the patient to have a confident practitioner as well. So that's what we are, that's what we went for to combine those three things. And that's how we came up with the first versions of voice, whatever it was called at the time your 

Mike Koelzer, Host: company is voice.

Tyson Clarke: Yes, sir. Yep. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: This teaches the out front staff who in Australia are a lot. More skilled than our out front staff in general, on average in the us. But instead of sitting them down and cramming three days into a group, that group's gonna change within 30 days when someone goes to school or something like that, right.

You're giving them little drips of this every so often. And they're not just reading it. They have to voice it back to make sure that they're comfortable with these phrases. And that ends up in a better experience for [00:36:00] the customers and also more money for the pharmacy. 

Tyson Clarke: You got it, man. That's a good pitch.

You should come work for me. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: a pharmacist is listening to this now, and they're saying maybe I can get more money out of my customers without being cheeky. How'd I do? 

Tyson Clarke: I'll take it. It's good. All right. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Without being cheeky, but Tyson, are you telling. Me, if I'm an owner speaking, are you telling me that all I gotta do is talk about the four quadrants or do they have to close?

Are there closing techniques that you have to teach these ladies or is it just enough to give people the information and then they seem to buy? 

Tyson Clarke: Yeah, that's a really important point, man, because when you're on speech operation, you have to be really finicky about what words and techniques that you use.

And so it has to be congruent with the culture we call it we're really culturally [00:37:00] sensitive in the actual language, in the intelligence of the culture. So yeah, because the culture is so against sales, we have to talk them out of being in sales and that all I want you to do is to make a recommendation.

And actually I think there are some consultants in Australian pharmacy that want to change the culture to be more salesy. And I think it's just a horrific mistake because. We go back to what we're talking about with the levels of trust in pharmacists. Yeah. You throw that, you give that pharmacist a bunch of sales techniques, people smell that, people know that, what that what's going on there.

And so then you lose your best asset, which is trust from the community. And so no, we don't teach sales techniques. We teach them comfortable ways to ask questions. Like one of the best ones that I've heard from a pharmacist is they ask, do you have any omega-3 at home so that if you've got it at home, then fine, but I'm asking you, do you need [00:38:00] this?

You should probably be taking this for you or whatever to write every element you have. But no, if we can just get them to make the recommendations, if I can get a staff member to make full recommendations, then the patient. If I can train them to do four, they might do three. Then the patient might make two, whereas they would've bought zero.

Right. So that's what we're going for. Because of this, they, no sales techniques, a totally wrong industry. And I want to keep it that way. I appreciate the intelligences that are in the industry. Now. I just wanna leverage what's already there and work right now, right. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Four recommendations. That's pretty remarkable.

And like you say, if you can get that down, Well, if it ends up being three, and the person picks two. That's 

Tyson Clarke: really cool. Yes. Well, it's, like I said, it's stolen. , it's not, it's nothing to do with me. We reverse engineered it from the patients, from what the patients want, the high value patients.

So [00:39:00] we, if you sort of take this story along the line it's always what the patients are after. And it's gotta be congruent with the staff's culture and intelligence and the business goals. And so we're able to sort of, and end the amount of time that is available in pharmacy, which is zero. And yeah.

Built it step by step with a lot of failure along the way. This is the fun way to explain it, but , it's been a lot of mistakes 

Mike Koelzer, Host: That got us to this point, even in our pharmacy, one of our side things is the whole medical equipment, so we don't bill insurance and all that. So most of the stuff's under a hundred bucks recently, we started putting in more.

Add on purchases like 

Tyson Clarke: con combinant recommendations. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. Instead of just having a walkthrough, we might also have the embroidered bag, and then we have an exercise thing or whatever. I can't think of all the stuff, but just having that stuff in the pharmacy, our team doesn't recommend this stuff.

Just having it. Some people just like to buy the gamut, they [00:40:00] like to buy all the four quadrants just in their head. Right. The electrician, they want in their head, they want to make sure all those circuits are firing. So yeah, that's remarkable. If you can get your team to go down that road, like I say with us, we wouldn't even go down the road.

We just had it in the store, but if they can go down that road, that's really cool. Is there ever any pushback from those four quadrants, where someone's trying to talk about these different things and all of a sudden someone's like, I don't want all that baloney just do this or that. Is there pushback ever even just giving good information?

Tyson Clarke: Yeah. Yeah, of course. I'm not the, I'm not the guy doing it, but I, the front of shop stopped tell me, they get the thing where, I'd, can't afford it. And when you're in sales and like I've done door to door sales in north Minneapolis, like a really kind of rough area and it, you get some thick skin, right.

And you get to hear your nose and you get back up and you do it again. Well that these people don't have that skin. They [00:41:00] don't want it. So you gotta, it's very difficult to get it through their heads. And it, I've only found a way to do it through brute repetition is that it's not your responsibility to make financial decisions for these people.

It's not even really your decision to make health decisions for them. You make the best, you give them the best solution that you can, and then they know their pocketbook a lot better than you do. They know what's valuable to them a lot better than you do. It might not be valuable to you to have a knee brace because it's 150 bucks and you think it's expensive, but I can tell you, I've got a bad knee and wearing a knee brace is heaven.

I pay $500 for five years out of a knee brace. It's just worth it to me. So we've, it's very difficult to get them out of that, cuz they're so caring and they don't wanna rip people off, but that's why we label the quadrants. This is a, there's a reason for this. It's a short term solution. This is a long term solution.

You're [00:42:00] not just trying to sell me stuff. You're giving them a solution that is needed. That is, that means something that's not just like when I first came into the industry, one of the leaders that I came across who was very competent, she said we used to have, she used to work down in Sydney and she said, we used to have the terrific three.

And I'm like, well, it's good to be recommending three things. I agree, but just. Arbitrary three things. Now you're a salesperson. You're not solving a problem. You're just picking three arbitrary reasons. And so that's why we labeled the quadrants so that I'm not recommending something that people don't need, or for no reason I'm recommending you a health solution for a long term reason or a short term reason.

And if you don't wanna take that, then that is totally up to you. I'm gonna keep doing this kind of recommendation because that's my 

Mike Koelzer, Host: job. Short term, long term and then treat prevent. Is that 

Tyson Clarke: almost long term? Yeah, a lot of the time there's a bit of an overlap. Yeah. Same [00:43:00] with treat and short term, but it might 

Mike Koelzer, Host: be a different level of invasiveness almost.

Yeah. Yep. I can see with sales, let's say, oh, I'm gonna date myself. Let's say I owned a record store or something like that. And you come in and you say, you like jazz music. I'm not trying to sell you every jazz player. Instead, what I might do is say, well, here's kind of a morning jazz to wake up gently.

And here's something, a party jazz, and here's another, you're hitting all these quadrants. So it doesn't really feel like you're piling on. It feels like you're a solution maker for the 

Tyson Clarke: person. Yeah. Yep. That's what we're going for. Whether the staff see it that way or not, they might just think it's annoying, but whether they like it or not, they're getting this.

Sort of drummed into their head that there's four ways to solve a problem for a patient, at least, right? At the very least, there's probably a million, but we're really good at remembering four things. We're not very good at remembering a million things, which is what, [00:44:00] which is my big grip with the pharmacist doing the training.

Cuz they remember so much, they've got so much Ram and the front shop staff and regular people. Don't one of 

Mike Koelzer, Host: my teammates just came to me a couple days ago and said, we need to have a hundred term quiz for our employees because some of them don't even know what this is. When someone comes and asks something, cause then they kinda like beat around the Bush, or God forbid interrupt me during my nap at the store but if I could tie that into sales, what a better way to do it, for my thing, it's like solutions instead of just learning this stuff, just solutions Tyson.

So this is not required. By anybody, this isn't like on the way to getting certified or something. These are just store owners that are trying to improve their sales or commitment to the community. 

Tyson Clarke: Yep. Yeah. Right now we charge the pharmacy. And I'm [00:45:00] not really comfortable with that. Because I sell a lot of products for suppliers and so we're, but we're moving into a way where we can make it free for the pharmacy.

We're testing something out right now with the business. Who's trying to move into the pharmacy space. Really clever idea that I think a lot of suppliers are gonna do now. They're trying to capitalize on COVID and they probably could have done it before as well, but they're offering cleaning products that complement.

Psoriasis and asthma. And I'm like, oh, that's really good. Because if I come in for some cell Unal or whatever, the product is in the US. If I come in for this product and the pharmacist says, Hey, what are you using for cleaning products at home? And it's a product here that can compliment your kids' asthma.

Then they might be inclined to take that or not. It's up to the patient. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: You're saying it'd be easier. And you'd rather, instead of charging the pharmacy, you would get the funds somehow through [00:46:00] the suppliers. 

Tyson Clarke: Yeah. We're trying not to taint the integrity of the training, cuz we really focused on the ailment.

It's a tough line to walk, but we might have found a clever way to do that. Where they say I do have this cleaning product, then I wanna compliment those sales by sponsoring solutions that are not my product. So I'm gonna train your pharmacy in my cleaning product, but I'm also gonna train you on four other products because that's what you want.

That's what you care about. The big secret that supplies don't seem to understand is that pharmacists don't care who the supplier is. They care about the patient getting a good product and solving their problem. That's who they're accountable to. And so the supplier, whether it's supplier A or supplier B, I mean, as long as it's a quality product and there's oodles of them out there, most products are high quality.

You wouldn't keep it in your pharmacist, pharmacy if it wasn't. So, [00:47:00] but I think that comes that non confrontational nature of pharmacists that's been kept the secret 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Pharmac don't fall in love with a Nike brand of medicine or an apple brand of medicine. We're all over the place with different brands.

We really want an individual product. That's good for the patient. Yeah. 

Tyson Clarke: Cuz you fall in love with the patient. I've never seen that with any pharmacist ever. Most pharmacists are trying to talk people outta more medications. Well, high strength medications, cause long term, it's not a great idea.

So most pharmacists are trying to talk people into health and out of medications. And this might be a way to sort of bridge that gap between suppliers in pharmacy. Yeah. I don't like it, I charge pharmacists and they do make money. Then nobody's ever lost money training, the highest methods, three, five times a week in five minutes a day, that is you're gonna make money on it and it's gonna, [00:48:00] but it would be, there's gotta be skin in the game for the pharmacy too.

And there's gotta be but the supplier is ultimately the one that's winning here. So, I really think it should come from them. I really think they should have invented what I invented. In my opinion, if they cared about their client, that's what I think they should have done.

But they didn't, but we're, hopefully we're gonna introduce some suppliers to this in a, in a. Geez. I'm going to keep being cheeky in a unique and clever way. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: well, I met, Lee's glad you're from Australia, cuz you've been calling me mate during our lead up to this over the last few months and I thought he better be from Australia and he's not just trying to cozy up to you with a new style of like United States 

Tyson Clarke: slang.

That would be a bit odd.

Mike Koelzer, Host: is your company now as big as you want it to be or do you [00:49:00] want to grow some more? 

Tyson Clarke: Oh no we haven't even started. We like when you're inventing a new thing and finding new ways to sell it and throwing a lot up against the wall and seeing what sticks. We've been in business seven years and we're just starting marketing now.

Well we're rebranding and all that good stuff. Will that road of 

Mike Koelzer, Host: growth be through this product with more customers? Is that your first step in growth? In other words, for you to grow, you have your product. Now your growth will be through getting more and more pharmacies signed up. You're not trying vertical growth by having a pharmacy who already has your program and trying to do something else you really would like to get more pharmacies 

Tyson Clarke: involved.

No, the problem that we've sold is scaling high performance methods in a retail environment. And we're [00:50:00] only in a, like a few hundred sites or a couple hundred sites. So yeah, we wanna get into more pharmacies. That's the main thing we wanna do. We've solved a pretty problem. Well, we've got a solution for a pretty big problem.

That really, I think could replace a lot of traveling sales staff. Because if you've got a sales staff, that's, I say I sponsor a product. I wanna sell my probiotic in your pharmacy. And I go, well, here's the product, here's the training on the product. I'm also providing you training for other ailments or other solutions that this product has.

And other products that aren't mine, because I know you care about the patient. I'm gonna hold your staff accountable for you. That's my job. As a traveling sales rep. Now I can hold your staff accountable to doing this training, cuz I know if they do the training, practicing the highest [00:51:00] performance method in high repetition that they're gonna sell more of my product and you're gonna have happier patients and be a good business and you're gonna wanna do business with me for longer.

Cause you know that I care about you. So yeah, that's the big, hairy, audacious goal is to scale in that manner rather than squeeze more money outta pharmacies. I'd rather squeeze less. Actually. This 

Mike Koelzer, Host: is a drip of information to these employees. How often then are they coming back to your visit an app, a phone 

Tyson Clarke: app or a, yeah, it's an app.

Mike Koelzer, Host: And how often are they coming back to it? 

Tyson Clarke: Well, there's new training every single week. It's one minute long at the longest one minute. That's really cool. I like that. Well, each video is one minute. The first week is one minute, cuz we're dropping a lot of information, but then we give you a really easy question.

Like, there's these four studies that show that okay. We'll do a long term solution. There's these studies that are published in Australia that [00:52:00] show that eating five servings of vegetables per day, when you've got asthma within 12 months, you're gonna see some improvements in your symptoms just by eating more vegetables.

And then the question might be after I go through the research or the relevant research in this one minute video and I'll say. Something ridiculously silly. So, I'll say this is the question. How many servings of vegetables per day did this study show? And I'll say 17, 12 or five, and the answer is five.

And so that's the first week. And so I've got that. I've said five. They have to say five. They say it. Yep. So they, that I, because it's audio. Yes. Cause I, so I have to reverse engineer the question too, right. To the video. What do I want them to say at the end of this video? So that helps the patient. Gotcha.

So there you go. There's five and then the next week will be a little bit more [00:53:00] difficult. I'll build off that. It'll only be like a 32nd video and it'll be okay. So last week we came up with a solution for asthma and it involved eating something: what was, what did they do, what were they required to eat and how many times a day?

And so would they have to say vegetables and five servings the next week, we'll be a different training. Again we pay actors to ask a question that a patient would really never ask. We're really just building off the previous week's training and say, Hey, I'm wondering what I can do in the long term to help with my kids' asthma.

And then they'll say you want to eat five servings of vegetables. And then week four is a total out in the cold role play like you would with a real patient. Hey, look, I've got this asthma, I've got C O P D or whatever. Gimme everything you can solve my problem and is the best way you possibly can.

Please help me. And my actors will do that. And then [00:54:00] the staff will respond to that in the best way they can using the four quadrants. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: A week later, they're talking about the vegetables they learn from a week earlier. 

Tyson Clarke: Yeah. They're learning four weeks of recommending that thing. So are you thinking four weeks with three to five repetitions a week of this very short training it'll pick up and they'll build that into their psyche four quadrant method.

But also a lot of information to slot into those four quadrants. When I started this business, I started looking into what are the best memories of people in the world. And if you go to these memory competitions and you see what they do. They build little pockets and they start with their hometown, like a, I remember my bedroom and then the kitchen and then the garden, and then the hospital across the street.

And, and that's what we're doing, trying to do that within the community of pharmacy is build four solid buckets of solutions for community health. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Are they answering with full sentences or just one [00:55:00] word thing the computer picks up or how does it know they got it right? 

Tyson Clarke: Well, that's why we have to make the questions so easy.

Now we're doing this in Australia and Australian speech recognition is not very good. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: and I've had that's all those crazy words you got that made and cheeky 

Tyson Clarke: and all those. Yeah. So we make the training so easy that it's impossible to get it wrong. And if you do the high reps, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: you're not trying to stump 'em, you're trying to get them to verbalize that answer.

I imagine you 

Tyson Clarke: got it. Yep. We, I won't, I'm not trying. Pressure them. We're not testing them on them. Yeah. We're not trying to disqualify them. We're trying to, and it's a real thin line that you have to walk with speech recognition and feedback. Right. So they don't actually see the translation because I get too many, I get too many, like, I 

Mike Koelzer, Host: didn't say this 

Tyson Clarke: word.

I said a swear word. Is my boss gonna see [00:56:00] this? No. Yeah. So I get a, I have a, I've had a lot of funny things like that over the years, but no, they don't see, they don't see it. But one of the fun things is that now that we've got a really great engineer he's found out what we're allowed to keep legally, what sort of information of speech we're allowed to keep and what we're not and what countries.

And so in Australia, we're allowed to keep the information for a little bit. And it's really given us a lot of feedback on making our training better and seeing how far we can push the envelope on making things harder or we need to make 'em a bit easier. And we have like end or. We have some and, or sort of logic in there so that we can require two, three part answers.

And how far we can push that now that we know the legals around what we're allowed to keep so starts, do not see that they have the option. They can see it if they really want to, but it usually just pisses 'em off. So we just, [00:57:00] it comes out default. You don't see it. We see it and it's just looking for a keyword.

Mike Koelzer, Host: They might say, have the person eat more vegetables, but your software is trying to pick up vegetables somewhere. And then you say, okay, we've got the answer. Yep. Any move on this to the US or is that too different of a setup? No, 

Tyson Clarke: I would love to do it in the us. I just, there's pharmacies that I've met with here.

And like, I've learned that the less sales that I do the better for our company. I just, I don't know what it is. I live in rural Wisconsin. There is one Pharmac, one independent pharmacy within 20 miles of here, and everything else runs through the Walmart. Then you've got the CVSs. And so this would work well in a CVS or Walgreens.

Probably cuz I've got the staff. I would love to go to an independent pharmacy, but I'm just not sure. I mean the MI even cuz [00:58:00] Australia's so small in America's so big, you guys have got a shrinking independent pharmacy market, but still five times bigger than Australia oh, I gotcha. I'd love to move into independent pharmacy.

And I think it would do really great things for those businesses. The other problem is because of the CVS and the Walgreens, the margin on your front of shop products is totally different. Like. You're not making 20 bucks on a probiotic here. It'd be 

Mike Koelzer, Host: easier to go to Australia and sell to these smaller companies that only own five pharmacies and try to go into Walgreens or something and try to sell your product.

Is that's one of the reasons, 

Tyson Clarke: right? Yeah, mate. Yeah. Yeah. It's tough. I think, once we become a bigger company, we might sort of shimmy into some of those larger groups. Yeah. But you know, we deal in content creation. That's the big bottleneck of our company is content because we make new content every single week.

We've got, [00:59:00] we're making new content every single week and we can reuse it. But I get kind of at, we've got really good content creators and now high quality guys. Yeah. And I hate all our old stuff so much with the new stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I, so I have to replace it all the time. But yeah, I think we're getting to a sort of plateau there, so that'll be good.

I'll be able to recycle a little bit more confidently using old information. The research comes out so slowly, there, there aren't too many things that you do have to keep your ear to the ground for new studies and stuff, which is, most of my job is reading studies and finding out what we can recommend and then what you 

Mike Koelzer, Host: We're saying Tyson, which makes a lot of sense.

And that's what I was thinking too. Are the margins really? Aren't there in the us over the counter 

Tyson Clarke: market? No, I don't think so. Meaning, I saw I sent a picture. I took a picture in a dollar tree. My wife [01:00:00] loves dollar stores. We miss 'em when we go to Australia. So, yeah, she was in a we're in a dollar store and I'm watching the kids or something.

And then I see ibuprofen there for a dollar in a dollar store. Like, you're kidding. How is that possible? So, yeah, he took a picture and I sent it to my partner in Australia. He's like, holy cow, you should buy that and send it to me. It'd be a nightmare with the Australian FDA, but yeah, it's, ah, it's totally different business.

So, I don't know if there's room for it in the us. But you know, it'd be a great market for us to tap into because there's five times as many and we're scalable, we're solving a real problem. It's a real health problem. And we're solving in a way that's never been done before.

Ultimately I would really like to leverage the frequency of visitation even more to sort of help the front shop staff to become almost like accountability coaches. [01:01:00] Where you sell an accountability subscription, and I train them on how to do that, to work with a patient. Maybe they're trying to lose weight, or maybe they're just trying to stick to their medications better.

And a front of shop person can have that conversation with them. They don't need to be a pharmacist to say, Hey, did you take it? What's the problem? What other habits do you have right now that we can tie it to? Do you brush your teeth? At what time should you take it in the morning or before bed? That sort of thing.

So. That frequency of visitation is the naturally occurring force in the market that we're really trying to scale for health. I'm 

Mike Koelzer, Host: listening to your stuff. And I'm thinking about my stuff with my medical equipment at my store, because we don't bill insurance companies for that. And that's why most of the stuff we don't do lift chairs and hospital beds, but we do stuff that people wouldn't mind throwing down just under a hundred bucks on, a Walker or a, well, maybe a little bit more than that for some of the transport chairs and things like that.

But I can see where this [01:02:00] quadrant thing would really be helpful for my team, because we're not talking about a dollar ibuprofen here. I mean, that might be one of the short term things, but I've got some higher price things that I could see using this for that would be worth training my team. In those quadrants because, well, there's more profit there in certain things and it takes longer to sell, but there's more profit.

Tyson Clarke: Well, if you're going up to one item, there's another thing we do where again we rub from Peter. And so if we're doing a hero product, like what you're talking about we find the best salesperson of that product or the best top 10 sales people. And then we go and talk to them and say, why are you so bloody good?

What are you doing? And my background in personality analysis allows me to separate the personality from the method. So I can say that, when I was in high school, my first job was selling shoes in retail, but I was playing [01:03:00] semi professional basketball. So it wasn. Who I wasn't charming.

I just, a lot of people knew me from my, from the beginning, playing basketball in the town. So that's not something I can replicate in other staff members, but I gotcha. If you're, if you are, five foot four, and you look like George Castanza and you're selling yachts and you're on the top three for the last 10 years versus a five 10 leggy blonde, that is the number one salesperson, right.

I'm gonna talk to George Castanza because it's something that he is doing rather than who he is, right. I can replicate what you're doing. I can't replicate who you are. You're too unique, but I can find out what you're doing and I can scale that. So in your situation, I would talk to the sales rep and.

Who's the best store with this? Who's the who, which store sells the most of these things, what are, and then they can tell you, and then you can under rebel string, Hey, what are you doing? What role do you play with me? What's the best method? Then you have all your, then create some content based on that [01:04:00] method.

Once you figure out the secret, I know what the secret is. As it's usually unconscious competence, they just, oh, I just, just do it. Sure. They don't know. No. So you gotta tease it out of 'em and it's not easy, but right. Once you get it, it's really valuable. So then you can deliver that information to all the staff at high repetition.

And if they're practicing the highest performing method in high repetition using speech, the. Method that they're going to use to deliver the information to a patient. It's gonna be really hard for them not to increase sales. So, right. That's another thing that we do that isn't so sort of culturally intelligence intensive, but it works.

Usually our hero product stuff kicks up sales three to 400% because they're just in their conscious awareness too. Like when you do stock take and then the next week you're like, oh, I remember that product, this patient could use it. It's just like that. It's just bringing it to the forefront of your awareness.

And you're talking about, and all 

Mike Koelzer, Host: that good stuff, hero products, being the ones that are most profitable or 

Tyson Clarke: whatever hero is [01:05:00] in that's your focus product. So we usually focus on the ailment SLT P training or short term, long term training. It's focusing on the ailment and trying to get you to build those buckets.

But sometimes a patient pharmacy will come to me and they'll say, Hey look. It's a really great Grus product. And I think we're not recommending enough. Can you get the rest of my staff to recommend it? And I say, well, do you have a rockstar? Who's your rockstar? And I said, well, it's John. And I say, okay, gimme John.

And I'll talk to John. Hey, John, pitch me on this. What are you gonna tell me, mate? And usually it's nothing special, right? It's just but if it's more about the context and the relatability, right? I wouldn't expect Mike to listen to Tyson. I'm just a quasi. Half a basketball career, entrepreneurialism and whatever.

I would listen to Mike who [01:06:00] is recommending this product. He does my job. He gets me right. If Mike is doing this then the person who is in Mike's position elsewhere will be more likely to listen to Mike. One of the things that, that front of shop staff and that is a real disadvantage is over corporates and daughters.

And your sales reps know where to find you . And that level of accountability is massive. So you give the wrong, so you coming from another person who holds your position, understands your level of accountability to your patients. It just goes so much further. They 

Mike Koelzer, Host: remember that, that advice or if they thought it was a, just a sales gimmick.

Tyson Clarke: Oh, totally. Yeah. Totally. If you solve their problem, you're building a relationship anyway. So, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Well, Tyson, all that stuff I talked about doing sounds good to me, but now that I think about it, I just kind of want to sit on my ass and do the podcast. So [01:07:00] 

Tyson Clarke: ah, here I was excited. I was gonna finally make a sale.

good thing. I got sales. People 

Mike Koelzer, Host: put a 

product out in the US and I'll think about it. 

Tyson Clarke: Great. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I'm not going down under to get 

Tyson Clarke: Oh no. Like our system is built for us as well. And your US speech recognition is much nicer. There's a lot more research cause there's a lot more Americans who talk.

Yeah. So no, it is definitely built for us, but it would only work for hero products and stuff like that. I think. Cause bigger priced ones. Yeah. Yeah. So where, what you are talking about would be. Would work, I think the hero products I'm, I've got a real love of culture. I and the intelligences that come with it and the language that comes with culture and how it changes when I moved here, when I was 19, and I haven't stopped, I'm 40 people make fun of my accent.

And so I, and then when I [01:08:00] go home, they make fun of my American accent. So , I'm always sort of studying like, just by default, moving here. Just differences in language and culture and really minor differences, like Australian America are not really that much different, but there are really minor differences and they become much larger when they're a part of your life.

So those are the things that sort of have led to. The nuanced, the tiny nuances in language and culture that have really just always been very interesting to me and in the forefront of my attention, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: It's fascinating to me, the psychology and its dance with sales, because ultimately, what is sales? What is branding?

What is anything? I mean, bottled water has proven that. And $10 cups of coffee have proven that there's a lot of psychology behind all this, and it starts with having the out front ladies not afraid to sell a little bit. 

Tyson Clarke: Yeah. I'm a part [01:09:00] of a group in this little town called revitalize our hometown.

And we're trying to build up this little town. And one of the interesting things about culture and money and business is you can make any cultural change you want. It just depends on how much time and money you wanna spend. If you wanna spend, if you don't wanna spend a lot of money, then you better make that change.

Very close to what the culture is doing right now. And it better be beneficial to them. At most levels at the business level, the staff level, the customer level, or the patient and the industry. So if you wanna make a cultural change, then it better be really tiny. If you don't want it to cost a lot.

If you want, if you don't care about cost, then you break in this town as a real it's something I really hope works across the street, but turned into. A commercial [01:10:00] kitchen, a bodega and a pub like a nice classy pub. And it's gonna take a while for the community to live up to that, but it'll be really great for the community better than a bar.

So, yeah, that, that's the sort of balancing act. We always play. How much money do you wanna spend on this cultural change? If you wanna spend a lot of money, it doesn't matter. But if you don't wanna spend too much money or time, then the change has to be small and you have to be able to identify where the culture is at right now.

And that's the job of the leader is to go, okay, well, this is where we are right now. And need to move us up a little bit. Otherwise I'm gonna spend a Name like that. I don't have, they're gonna 

Mike Koelzer, Host: spend the money they don't have, or if they can't pick out little changes, they're going to, they're just gonna give up.

Process together. Yeah. Tiny changes are, especially for that staff. Like we talked about that you come in and then a third of the staff has gone in a couple months and you start all over [01:11:00] again. So those tiny changes seem to be the answer, especially when it comes with the crazy world of retail stuff.

Tyson Clarke: Well, that's why it's really useful to know the intelligences of your, the intelligence strengths are I'm pretty comfortable recognizing the intelligences of pharmacists, but also front to shop have their level, their kinds of intelligences and their I guess, cultural identity. They don't identify as sales people.

Well, I better not use that word anymore unless I wanna spend a boatload of cash on turning them into sales. People, sacrificing the level of trust that they have at the same time. I don't think you know, so regardless, I don't wanna do that, but understanding their intelligences and their identity. If you wanna move a culture, you've gotta understand both those things before you implement a change and then you've gotta throw it up against the wall.

Cause as soon as. Squeeze a little bit of creativity out of this, out of the group. They're they've got a little bit of engagement. Hey, cuz every business owner knows this trick, right? You'll get somebody who pitches you an idea [01:12:00] and then you'll say, oh, I'm gonna tell my team about it. See how cool it is.

Because if your team's not cool with it, guess who's gotta do it. You're right. And if you've gotta do it as the business owner, guess what? It's probably not gonna get done. So every business owner knows that trick, but to implement it with cultural change as well is another cheeky trick. Another little shortcut to get the change happening with some engagement and creativity.

Can I call you 

Mike Koelzer, Host: mate? As I end 

Tyson Clarke: up. No, I'll be very offended by that, please don't ever use that word. It's disgusting. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Well, Tyson, it's fascinating stuff. I know that in Australia with the higher price things and maybe the higher skill necessary for out front puts this in a bit of a different category.

But I think in the us, I think we can all learn from this because even though the profit may not be there, [01:13:00] if this is not a sales technique, but truly a way to help people, that's all in all, not a really bad way to look at things of always thinking when this customer comes in, even though it may not be financial, how can I look at these four areas of their life and lend a hand?

And maybe it doesn't pay off because maybe the total sale is only 30 bucks and $3 profit, but you've helped a pharmacy. In the US they say I'm a problem solver for them, right? Yep. And during this time, when, maybe the profit's not there a lot of times, but if you can try to build that trust up, you can keep that trust up.

There's other ideas and business opportunities and so on. And so I think there's a lot of value there. Yep. Thanks. 

Tyson Clarke: Well, I think this, the same thing could apply in the US, but it's gonna take some research and curiosity, and just sort of a weird way of a weird background [01:14:00] of experiences and a different way of looking at things.

But we haven't really done it, anything outlandish it's new, but we've just, we've gone right to the patient. then we've gone to the staff and then we've gone to the high performing staff. Then we've gone to the middle performing staff and then we've gone to the training method. And then, and that's it, we've just sort of adjusted things a little bit along the way, and then adjusted the training content to suit the culture.

So it's just a lot of little changes based on some really basic curiosity and research, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: there's a lot of things that pharmacists may want to bring into their independent pharmacy in the us. They just haven't done it because they said my customers are used to spending five bucks. They don't want to spend a hundred dollars for this continual weight loss thing or smoking cessation or some other things that this could be the answer for or help some of those things to [01:15:00] have a pharmacist say, we don't do sales, but it's like, well, if you solve problems, then maybe you get some of those, hero products for those different categories.

Because I always say pharmacies in the US are kind. Cancer diagnosis, it's like right now, things aren't great, but you hold on for a few months and different treatments come and things like that. And so, this is a way to move some of that through. Well, thanks a lot, Tyson. That was 

Tyson Clarke: interesting.

Yeah. I appreciate you having me, Mike. Thank you. Pleasure 

Mike Koelzer, Host: meeting you. And I look forward to keeping in touch, mate. how is 

Tyson Clarke: that? I'll let it pause. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: All right, Tyson. Thanks. We'll talk again 

Tyson Clarke: next night. Bye. Bye.