Marketing a Certification Program | Sachin Shah, PharmD, Veganmed, Inc. Co-Founder

Transcript Disclaimer: This transcript is generated using speech-to-text technology and may contain errors or inaccuracies.

Sachin Shah, PharmD: [00:00:00] Well, hello, Suan. Hey Mike, how are you? I'm doing well. How are you doing? Good. Happy to be here, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Suan for those who haven't come across, you introduce yourself. Give our listeners your name and tell them just a bit about what's. Ha why are we talking 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: tonight? Well, first off, thank you for having me. Um, as you mentioned, my name is Sachin Shah, we are here because I am passionate.

Solving a problem. Uh, the problem that we are solving is as you know, veganism is a, is, is a growing movement and there's a lot of people out there. 6% of the United States, um, growing very fast. Medications that don't contain any animal derived ingredients. So, um, a lot of my patients would come and ask me, can you find me an Advil or a Tylenol that doesn't contain animal derived ingredients?

And it would take me eight hours to go through the package, insert and figure that out. And that's not a fun problem to have. So we decided to solve that and we launched vegan med. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I know you always are asked this question, but I gotta know what angle I'm coming at this from. So it's important for me to know if you are a vegan or 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: not.

Oh yes. So I am a vegan, but there are times when I cheat only because I don't have a choice or something like that. And, we compromise. So I, I. Truthfully, I'm an aspiring vegan. I will try as best as I can. Um, and that's part of the story too. So, but, but you know, for now, yes. Um, aspiring vegan with some cheat days.

Yeah. I 

Mike Koelzer, Host: was a vegan for a year back about two years ago because I've got two daughters that are vegans, but they would not cheat because they're doing this for. Cows with big brown eyes who they don't wanna see, you know, killed for their dad to eat and so on. So I did it for about a year. I forget why I quit, but I quit.

What's an example of somewhere where you'll be. And you say, not tonight, tonight, I'm gonna go for that ice cream sundae. What's an example 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: of that. So I've been a vegetarian all my life. So for me, going vegan is not hard, but what is included in, in part of the vegetarian diet can be dairy and cheese and things like that.

Now there are circumstances when I go to somebody's house and, and they have no idea that, you know, I'm not eating cheese or something like that. And I, I just don't want them to feel awkward. And, and I'm, I'm working in that, in that area where, you know, uh, just, just, just to make it work, I will, I will compromise and, and, and eat cheese or dairy or something like that.

But, uh, I try where I can, uh, I try to inform people when I can. Um, and we try the best that we do now. It's funny, you, you bring this up and I'll go back to some of your previous points is I, I. Fundamentally, I believe that all humans want to do good. And even when it comes to vegans, um, you know, finding clothes that are so called without any animal based products sometimes can be easy.

Finding food can be easy too at times. But when it comes to medications, people just don't know. And when, so in fact, I would say even vegans compromise, um, when it comes to medications, three out of four oral medications contain animal derived ingredients in them. And, you know, people don't know, um, you know, there's some data out there that 84% of patients out there don't know that there are animal derived ingredients in medications.

70% of doctors don't know about that either. So, um, you know, so I'm giving you an example with some data saying. There are areas where we try, we mean, well, um, but we may not have the options, but sometimes the options are 

Mike Koelzer, Host: feasible. Why don't they know? Is it because it's not on the package or it's because they don't understand that gelatin or something else is.

Animal based, you 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: put a, you know, pharmaceutical product or a supplement or something like that in front of somebody. And it has 15 ingredients with complex chemical sounding names. Um, even pharmacists have to look it up and even doctors have to look it up. So one is, it's hard to decipher what is in there.

And that's why you'll see this new age of products where it'll say ingredients, you can understand, like that's a new thing that everybody's doing. So when it comes to pharma, one of them, or when it comes to products and supplements, one of them is just, people don't know how to decipher ingredients.

The second part of it is often in the inactive ingredients that these animal based products are, are there. So fillers, you know, something to coat the tablet. And when we think of inactive ingredients there in FA in small print people aren't thinking about it, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: The OTC products are allowed just to.

In order of inactive ingredients or do they have to list everything? Well, 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: no, they have to list everything. Um, but they list all the inactive ingredients [00:05:00] and, and typically they're in the order of highest concentration to lowest concentration from a supplement standpoint. Um, but you know, when we go look for a product, generally we are thinking, Hey, I want something for pain or a rash, and you're looking at the active ingredient.

And then you just glance over the inactive vegan meds. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: So. Is that a spot where customers are buying from there? Or is it an information 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: website? We are very mission oriented, uh, and we really wanna just help people out. And we said, how can we go about doing that? So the first thing is we have an online shop or, you know, Store or whatever you wanna call it, where people can go it's free.

Um, and it basically takes them directly to like an Amazon type portal. So you go find a product, you click on it and then you go to Amazon and you buy it. Like you normally would truly, it goes 

Mike Koelzer, Host: to Amazon or Amazon, 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: like. No truly Amazon. And I said Amazon, like, because we could change things in the future.

There are other companies that are opening up like Walmart and, you know, et cetera. So I said Amazon, like, but right now we're a hundred percent Amazon. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Yes. Gotcha. So you could send 'em somewhere. And so that's just a change of direction in the background. Do you guys get some kind of a? Percentage from Amazon.

What, when you direct somebody? 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: Yes. So there is a small percent that we get when you're directing somebody to Amazon, correct? 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Oh, that's cool. And that's where sometimes people will put Amazon links on their blog or something like that, but you've done it. With the vegan part of it. 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: Correct. So for example, right now you can go to Amazon and you can find an Advil, 200 milligrams, 80 count.

And like the one that's on our webpage is like, let's say a little under nine bucks, and then you can also find another product that's Advil, 200 milligrams, um, gelatin based and you know, it may be around the same price or maybe like about a little bit more. And. You have two options. One has an animal based ingredient.

The other one doesn't, um, both are the same active molecule and it makes it easier for people to go with the one. And I think it's just makes them feel nicer when they know about 

Mike Koelzer, Host: it. Will this go to? 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: RX great question because, um, RX is the space that you wanna solve that problem as well. But right now, the way to do that is they would have to kind of email us or contact us and say, Hey, I'm looking for a, you know, Viagra or I'm looking for a Tova statin that does not have animal derived ingredients.

And we will at no cost right now. Um, just do the work for them. We'll reach out to the manufacturer and, you know, figure out all the backend stuff. You know, um, and right now, you know, we don't support any products or brands or anything like that. So this is not like one way or, you know, any kind of endorsement by any means.

And nothing I say here is medical advice. I should say that as well, but we will do the back-end work because sometimes when customers call a drug information line, they don't even know what to ask and how to do that. And, a pharmacist can help facilitate that. Um, and sometimes if you don't ask the right way, you can get the wrong answer.

And that has happened to us where. You know, two different times, same kind of question being asked you get two different 

Mike Koelzer, Host: answers. My problem is when you said dad, don't take this as medical advice. I wear a sign on my chest at the pharmacy like that all day. So nobody takes what I say as gospel truth.

Yeah. 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: So, so the, so the prescription piece is also something that we are solving the way to get to that. We realize we have our own certification mark. Now we don't call it vegan. We're calling it animal free because as you know, when it comes to veganism, the concept includes no animal testing. So we use the word animal free because it's a little bit more accurate.

Mike, what's interesting is the American medical association passed a policy a couple of years ago because this was an emerging and important topic. And they said we encourage manufacturers to disclose any animal derived ingredients that may be in these products. So for that reason, you know, pharmaceutical companies also have it on their radar and we are also working with them to try and solve some of these problems.

So the second thing that we're doing for consumers is having this. So if you had a product like, you know, Advil and you called it vegan, it would not be accurate because at some point somebody tested Advil on some animal. So, so the only real term to use is, is, you know, animal free on your 

Mike Koelzer, Host: website. It says that you've connected, you know, you've, your stuff has been touched by a billion people or that's the seventh of the world.

What does 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: What does that mean? Well, that's talking about media impressions and it's referring to my, my other life that is not connected to vegan med, but I'm happy to talk about it, which is, I am a, I am a researcher at heart, you know? So when I graduated from, from pharmacy school, um, you know, I had to make career decisions saying, what do I wanna do when I grow.[00:10:00] 

And I said, you know what, uh, I want to do meaningful things, so I'm gonna go be a poor academician um, so, so, so I decided to go and, and join academia and we worked on things that we felt, uh, were driving value to society. So for example, one of the technologies we worked on is called enhanced external counterpulsation and not too many people know about it.

But essentially what it is is blood pressure, like cuffs that squeeze on the legs and they basically help patients with chest pain or angina. And what they do is they grow new blood vessels in the heart. And the reader's digest, you know, several years ago, there was an article in there and they called it a natural bypass surgery because you're just squeezing externally on the legs and you're growing new blood vessels in the heart.

You know, it had been around for 50 years and we said, people need to learn about this. People need to know about this. So we've been doing research for the last 10, 12 years in that space. What does that mean? We, I am part of, uh, university of the Pacific. So I'm a professor of pharmacy there and I've been doing research there for the last, uh, you know, 12, 13 years.

And, um, E E C P was, you know, one of the first things that I had started working on. And, recently I joined this very interesting company called Legacy heart. And, uh, they're the premier providers of E E C P therapy around the country. So, you know, now we're now we're, we're doing some fun things there and trying to take it to the next level.

Do you teach at all? I do. Um, and I take students who are in their final year of pharmacy school. I may have a practice site at a military base, believe it or. Talk about, you know, new experiences, how many pharmacy students get to go check out a military base? So, so, you know, and, uh, when I said, we, that includes our partners at, uh, at the military base and we have been doing some E E C P research there, we've been doing some energy drink research.

We've been doing some supplement research and all of that ties into the overall media impressions, um, that we've been able to. Create and, and, and contribute to, I think I'd like to 

Mike Koelzer, Host: volunteer for that. I love when they did that blood pressure cuff, you know, on your arm. And I can just picture sitting there with those balloons or on my legs 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: And just, yeah, come on, come on down, most welcome.

And, uh, and, uh, you know, you, you will enjoy it. You gotta do 35 sessions. Um, but, but. Concept that you can squeeze outside and grow new blood vessels in the heart. It's just, it's just incredible. How long are the sessions? So it's about an hour a day for about, uh, seven weeks. So five, you know, five days a week, times, seven weeks, you know, um, Most insurance companies pay for it, FDA approved.

Mike Koelzer, Host: So basically you're talking like a, oh, you know, just like a, a bag filled with the bottom of the bag would be the legs and you're pushing it. And, that fluid has gotta go somewhere. The, and so it goes into new rivers, new, new 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: areas. You, yeah. You said it perfectly new rivers that just, you know, floods these channels in your heart and all that perfusion.

Decreases the, the, the chest pain and the workload on the heart. Yeah. Would you call 

Mike Koelzer, Host: vegan med your first entrepreneurial attempt? Let's 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: say I would call vegan med my first serious entrepreneurial endeavor. I think your first serious one, because you know, sometimes, you know, this is something that's in your DNA and maybe you were five and you did something and you tried something and right.

So, so you always have this itch and you're always sharpening that skill, but yes, what I've. in me since I was really young is to do meaningful stuff. And even right now, you know, One day, we have money. One day, we don't, one day we have pride and fame and one day we don't. So all of that is fine, but, but my, my real passion is to do meaningful things.

And since I was five, I've been wanting to, you know, just help people, help society, uh, from the healthcare in the, in the healthcare space. So that drive and passion and grit I've had. So right now, this is just a function of that passion. Uh, you know, materializing into an entrepreneurial endeavor. Tell me about your Ted talk.

Mike Koelzer, Host: How 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: Do you get on Ted? How do you get on Ted? Uh, maybe that's a different talk on its own, right? That's 

Mike Koelzer, Host: a whole thing on its own. You were at 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: a TEDx TAs, a TEDx, correct? Correct. And you know, it's a very interesting story. I, I grew up, um, You know, in, in a, in a, in a deeply spiritual, um, environment and Spiritus a is spirituality is, is the core of a lot of, um, I do.

And I think it just makes me a, a, a whole person. Now, when, when you have that in your DNA, for lack of a better word, you know, you talk about certain concepts. That is rooted in there, but you're not, you know, packaging it in, in, in that form. So, there were some concepts that I would talk about that have to do with [00:15:00] mind because you know, I'm talking to students and they need to be.

Motivated from time to time. And we, we kind of tell them about, Hey, you know, this, these goals, aspirations, and having a strong mind. And, you know, I would talk about some of these concepts. And a couple of my students said, this is really good and you probably should be giving, uh, a, a Ted talk on this. And it was a little bit of a joke and, and, and one guy was serious about it.

And he said, I really would like you to send this in. So, um, I did. And, uh, they liked it. Now, what is interesting about this is when I'd send them a small little proposal, they liked the last line of that proposal, where I said, um, I ate food, you know, one bite on the first day, two bites on the second day, three bites on the third day.

And they said, forget the rest. We want you to just talk about that. So it was so, so, so it evolved from one, one little concept that, you know, seemed like, you know, an atypical feat for people. Um, and then I had to develop that into, into, into that talk, which was on the power of the mind, which I, I, I truly believe, um, that we all as society could be spending more time in that space.

Um, COVID has, has. You know, being, uh, something that has maybe helped us appreciate that. We probably should be spending a little bit more time in that space. And now there are new apps, you know, and again, I don't endorse anybody like Headspace and others like that, that are coming up and, and they're genuinely helping people.

Did they just 

Mike Koelzer, Host: like the last line because it had a nice punch to it or was that quite a bit different from the rest of your proposal? 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: The last line was very factual. So the rest of it is conceptual. The last line was like, I did this, it doesn't matter the story. You did something. And this just seems so cool.

So just go talk about that. I think, I think that's what it 

Mike Koelzer, Host: was, is that typical in Ted that they want something that something to latch onto. I mean, a lot of other things are kind of heady. Right or, or do they usually have stuff? That's more like, here's what I wanna send you 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: forthwith. I think generally people like simple concepts, generally people like things that are easily palatable and food is something that everybody appreciates and you tell them something like I didn't eat for four days.

You know, you're at a party and you say something like that, people are gonna wanna know, uh, you know, what were you thinking? How did you do it? What did you learn from it? So I think it's something that was simple. It was digestible, um, and, and intriguing this, the whole concept of Ted is so unique, right?

How they do it. They don't really have major introductions at the start. Like you see in a movie, right. They just jump into it because in this day and age, our attention span is so short that they know that we need to get people's attention within. Yeah, the first 10 seconds or else we have lost 

them. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Well, I've taken some of that here on the podcast.

A lot of the times I'll be listening to a show and. I'll fast forward by a minute or two. And they're still talking about, you know, their first year of school, they did this and then they did this. And sometimes it's not a few minutes till they get in there. I always try to answer my questions first . People say, you never know what tomorrow's gonna bring.

I never know what the next 10 minutes is gonna bring. 

If you gotta hit that first stuff quickly, Ted must have been kind of cool because even though your student. Told you to do some of this, you probably don't have it available to go talk to your students for an hour. An idea like that. Right. You're probably throwing bits in while you're still trying to progress on the other stuff.

Sachin Shah, PharmD: Yes, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: exactly. I don't always like to say what's a goal because goals mean that you haven't done what you set out to do. It's like, well, I'm still going for the goal. It's like, no, you might have hit the goal by doing what you're doing. So would you say you have hit your goals yet in vegan med or is there more to grow?

Not just grow revenue wise, but there is more to grow. Ideas and things like that are there. 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: Yeah. You know, um, metaphorically speaking, I might even say we haven't even started, there is a lot more to do. And I say that not because we haven't literally started. Of course we have. Um, but I think there's a huge impact.

We can make this certification program that I'm talking about, the people that can benefit from having an alternative. So for example, gelatin, you know, if we made a transition to using a plant based capsule, That is 14% of the oral products out there are made of gelatin. If you may go to a plant-based capsule that is having a huge impact, magnesium steroid is in 50% of, you know, the formulations, the oral formulations out there.

It can come from an animal source or it can come from a plant source. If we switch to a plant. Would have a huge impact. And I know a lot of these large corporations have certain goals, like, you know, 25% reduction in greenhouse gasses by 2025. So these [00:20:00] little things are tangible ways that we can have a positive impact.

Now you think about companies like, you know, beyond need or impossible, you know, They're creating these plant-based, uh, meats for lack of a better word. And where, where do they position their product? Um, in the grocery aisle, they actually put it right next to the meats and that's because they wanna say, Hey, this is not only for the vegetarians or the vegans of the world, but it is also for the, for the meat eaters, you know?

And, and sometimes I have seen this, I know some meat eaters, they couldn't distinguish between the two products. So how does that apply to vegan med? That concept? It applies. The problem we are solving is not just for vegans or vegetarians, but it is also for the people that just want to do well. And when given a choice like two Advils, one has animal ingredients.

One does not, they're both equal. I would bet you know that nine times outta 10, if not more people are gonna take the choice, that's just kinder in the world. Kinder to animals, kinder to animals, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: correct. Devil's advocate. Mm-hmm some people hate vegans. 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: Yep. Why do they hate 'em? And I think that it has to do with people.

Some people hate schools and some people hate organized religion, and there's so many different things that people have a dislike for. Right. And I think that sometimes the dislike is for the actions of certain individuals. You know, within that group, it doesn't mean that the group is necessarily bad or doesn't mean that the philosophy is necessarily bad.

So, so I believe that, you know, are, are there some people out there who may be doing things that, that are extreme for lack of a better word, um, and, and they're kind of representations of that organization, um, or that philosophy maybe, and maybe, maybe that's. Um, there's a little bit of dislike or, you know, hatred or, or whatever word you want to use.

Um, but I, personally, think philosophy is beautiful. Um, but you know, sometimes it's misinterpretation or overinterpretation. Um, and then the actions may not, may not align, like I say, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I'm, I mean, I'm living with a couple of the vegans, you know, and, uh, and I think sometimes. The concept is good, but sometimes, and I'm not gonna put my daughters in this category, but sometimes by people's human nature, they can take a concept and then they can come across.

And some people truly, not only do they come across this way, you know, that they actually feel that. Better than you. And not even feel that, but by certain things, they say they, they come across as being holier than next people. And we know how that can happen, you know, from my mm-hmm, certainly from my, uh, Catholic upbringing.

Yeah. I like the concepts, but. This guy is really not a good person because they've lorded it over, you know, someone else. So it's, I think there's a difference between the concept and then maybe the people, you know, that have followed that concept. You know, 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: You know, Mike, when, when, when we were kids, we liked that, you know, plastic car that our parents might have gotten us.

And then we got tired of that. And then we wanted a real bicycle. And then we wanted a used car and then we wanted a new car. So as time goes on, you know, our concepts and things that bring us joy and our experiences change and they, and, and for they probably mature over time. So in the same way that I have learned, and this is where my guru's guidance or spirituality comes in, I have learned that, you know, I don't feel that I'm in any place to judge anybody.

Right. If I were in their shoes and I had the same exposure and life, um, experiences that they went through, I might be doing the same things. I might be doing the same type of actions from a 

Mike Koelzer, Host: marketing standpoint. You're not concerned about the person that. Doesn't like you, you've gotta go after that niche that does care for you.

I've got that at the pharmacy where I lost a ton of staff this last year, some were happy with me. Somewhere maybe not so happy with me. And I've got customers that come and go, but I try to tell myself, well, right now there's 20 people that want to work for me. There's a thousand, whatever customers that wanna be my customer.

I'm not gonna be concerned with the other 20 that don't wanna work for me now because it's not just 20, that don't wanna work for me. It's like 7 billion that don't wanna work for me, you know? And it's not just some customers that don't wanna come to my pharmacy. It's like 7 billion that don't want to come to my pharmacy.

So where does that end? If you're looking at that, you know, you've gotta really [00:25:00] just concentrate on the ones. You know, do the vegan want anything in that regard? Right? Tell me from a business perspective and a market. Perspective what that logo would be. And I imagine it's along the lines of a good housekeeping seal of approval, whether it be a charge, would it be an application process?

What's the business behind a certification like that? If 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: you were a manufacturer of a product, how does that work? So, right right now, what that, what that means is what is unique about our certification program is. We have a team of pharmacists and experts that are looking at it. And second, we have also incorporated lab testing, which other people have not right now, there's no such thing as a vegan test.

Right. But there are certain ingredients that we can test for, you know, so we do test for what we can. So we've incorporated that into over testing, which is what differentiates us from others. Right. Um, the third piece in terms of the process itself, you know, we work with the company directly. It's an annual fee that they pay, um, that, that gives them the rights to display the logo on their product.

And it can be one year or two or three years, depending on the contract. And then they renew it every, so every so often that in theory 

Mike Koelzer, Host: would end. Their product is like a store. 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: Correct. So just how, when you go into a product and we have the, you know, I'll use a pharmacy example, USP United States Pharmacopeia, um, or they, we see the organic symbol at, from time to time.

So it'll be just on the product itself. What do you look 

Mike Koelzer, Host: to see how things are going with the vegan matter? Are you looking at visits or purchases or what's the most exciting for you or something that you think means the. To you right now, as far as looking at your likes, analytics and stuff on your website.

Sachin Shah, PharmD: Helping people is what's the most meaningful because for the people that reach out to us and say, Hey, can you help me identify this product? And yes, it takes us 15 phone calls to figure that out. But you know, just, just the joy on people's faces when we can help them out. I think that's a metric.

Um, but the metric relative to what you were asking is, you know, Um, in social media, sometimes they use this term like monthly active users. So how many, how many monthly active users are coming to your webpage? Um, and, and, and we do have a good number coming, uh, and which products are the more popular ones that people are looking at, um, than they're buying off of Amazon.

And that's one aspect of it now. You know, we aren't entirely monetizing that because we do want to help people, um, to try and get access to products directly and just give them information. So part of our business model includes, you know, working with the manufacturer and charging them this, uh, you know, modest certification fee.

And so that's a metric that I'm gonna be focusing on for, for 2021. To kind of grow, um, at a, at a, at a hopefully exponential rate to work with more, you know, supplements and, and pharmaceutical great companies to get them certified. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: How has the reception been 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: from companies usually when it comes to these types of things, there are three answers, right?

There is. Yes there's. No, and we shall see. Right. um, so, so fortunately, nobody, nobody has said, Hey, you are up to no good. Or, or, or anything like that, you know, I think, I think the piece. Um, is often a challenge is, you know, the resource that they need to put in to make some of the changes. If they're not using a, um, Ingredient that is not from an animal source.

So for example, if they're using animal based magnesium steroid the effort it takes to change some of that out, or, you know, just some, some budgetary things, you know, and it's, it's the cycle or they're not making. And if it's a small company, they might have already made the lot that they might be using for the full year.

And it's already produced, so they're not making the next lot until, until the next year, but you know, people have been very receptive, um, you know, to the concept. And I think that as we grow, um, things will be, things will be great and, and be rewarding. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: So some of these you're coming to, and you're saying you've got.

A trace of animal products is there, and I'm sure they know, but they might not care. And they might just as soon have it not be if there's options that they can do. And there's probably no one that's gonna be hurt. I mean, maybe time wise, maybe financial wise, but there's no one that's gonna be hurt.

Marketing wise, probably by saying that they're all plants. I mean, no one says no one says we make these vitamins for the cowboy. We've got a lot of good animal byproducts. And I mean, right. I mean, there's nobody trying to put animal stuff into it. Correct. 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: And, and I think sometimes it's just a function of what maybe their scientists are doing.

Naturally. They're always used to using this vendor and, and that. It's an, it's an inactive ingredient. Maybe they're just not thinking about it. Um, so you know, you create awareness, you make people think about it, and then you give them numbers in terms of the [00:30:00] impact that they're having. Now, there is a lot of data out there.

For example, there was a survey that was done out of the UK, over a thousand people, and they said 69% of the people would consider even switching supermarkets. If they had products that were labeled, you know, vegan or according. That's a pretty big number. And, and, and, and in our surveys, we have found that there are people who would be willing to pay more money.

Even if the, you know, the products were animal free, they care about that. They'd be willing to pay a little bit more money for it. The other piece that we have learned is that. You know, there are people out there who will not take any animal, any products that have animal ingredients in them.

And that's a small percent, I would say 1%, you know, but the question that we had asked is, you know, if you needed a lifesaving drug and your doctor said you needed it, um, but it had animal ingredients. Would you not take it? A very small percent actually said, yeah, they wouldn't take it. And, you know, um, I'm, I'm definitely, you know, as, as a pharmacist and in healthcare, I'm not, I'm not necessarily promoting that, but I respect that person's choices, but I would love for us to have an option for them.

Right. And, you know, talking about numbers, you know, when we looked at the vegan and, and, and the, and the vegetarian market, 94%. You know, folks that we surveyed basically said they want an independent certified product that says no animal ingredients. And what is interesting is even the people that were not vegans or vegetarian 48% of them said, yeah, they would love to have a product that has no animal based ingredients.

I imagine 

Mike Koelzer, Host: my daughters probably wouldn't take medicine that had animals in it, you know, I don't know. I mean maybe if it was between that. you know, death or something they would, but I'm not, I'm not sure. I'll have to ask them that sometime. Are there still some horror stories of well known companies that are doing, you know, animal cruelty and stuff like that or, or has that ended, or 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: I, I can't say it has ended, um, What I can say is people are making efforts to try and cut it down or curb it to the extent possible.

There are even some companies that have developed alternative technologies that cut out animal testing. And if you go, for example, you mentioned PS, I'll use them as an example. If you go to their webpage, you know, there have been open declarations of some companies, you know, cutting out certain types of testing that uses animals.

Um, you know, some companies just limit. Their amount of animal usage is not using a certain type of animal so that there are efforts going on in, in, in that manner. And I, I commend the folks that are, that are kind of working on that mission. And I commend the companies that are embracing 

Mike Koelzer, Host: it. One story I was gonna mention earlier is that I had some medicine I was taking, and if I swallowed this stuff without a full glass of water, I would actually.

Nauseated and, you know, the nausea, like, like you feel like someone just stuck you right under the ear with like lemon and, and then you're, you're over the sink and you're going, , you're drooling. You're drooling like a gallon of minute and you're ready to barf. You know, I was getting that from this medicine and it was funny cause it happened right away.

It happened within two minutes. So I knew it wasn't a body. Drug mechanism. I knew it had something to do with not getting it down the pipe. And I ended up buying these. Vegan clear capsules. And I would put my capsule inside of these and I could swallow it right down. You know, it was, it was no problem.

It was remarkable. And I'm always like I've had so many people over the years. Complaining about stuff like that at the pharmacy. And when they leave, I say, ah, that's a bunch of BS on their head. , you know, I've said so many people have been imagining things, but boy, I tell you that was not imagining it because it was something, what are some things that.

People would be surprised or they would look for that. They say, oh, I didn't know. That was, I had no idea that it was animal stuff. What are some hidden surprises that people might come across? So, you 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: Now, we have thrown around magnesium steroid, lactose and gelatin. So I think those are, those are common ones that, that people will know, but the drug Premarin, um, it actually came from this particular sentence, which is pregnant.

MA's urine. Because that's where it's extracted from. You know, another one is shellac. Like shellac is often used in nail Polish, pharmaceutical glaze, and that's, that's coming from insects. And then Carmines a coloring agent and it's, it comes from what they call Cockney bugs. You know, so they have these reddish tints to them and, and [00:35:00] that's where they get, get the, get the color engaged in.

And, you know, we talked about common ones. Glycerin is a common one that can be animal sourced as well. Um, Lin comes from sheep wool and then heparin, there are some synthetic ones out there, but typically, you know, heparins coming from a, from a, you know, por scene or a bine source, he R H E P a R like, so heparin you take the first.

Two thirds of that, um, comes from the Latin word, like a dog liver. So, so back in the day, that's where, that's where they were. They were getting it from. So now it's, you know, from my understanding like mu mucosal, tissue of sled animals is, is where they're pulling it from. And so here's the fun fact. I actually grew up in Africa.

I was there till 17 years, east Africa, Tanzania, and you know, the Serengeti, you know, the, the. National parks were all there. And, and I, I grew up, um, having seen lions, tigers, elephants, you know, quite, quite often, not too many tigers in Africa, but you know, when we would travel to other countries like India, we saw tigers.

But yeah, so, you know, maybe there was, you know, a latent influence because now you go to Africa and you don't get to. There's huge herds of elephants because they're dwindling down. They're getting poached. Were you born there in Africa, born and raised, born and raised. What 

brought 

Mike Koelzer, Host: you 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: to the US school?

Um, so I came to mass college of pharmacy in Boston and, uh, it was college. Is your family still in Africa? My family just moved out of Africa. So they're currently in India and you know, they kind of are globeTrotters. Now 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I drive home and every day I come home, I always see like, And I'm right in the city.

I mean, I'm not in the high building city, but you know, the grand rapids is, um, two miles from my house. Okay. So I'm basically in this city, I have all kinds of neighbors and stuff, but there's always deer running back and forth, you know, deer, all these deer. And I think that's pretty cool. You know, that this big of an animal running around now, when you talk about Africa, it's not like you'd be driving home.

And this draft would go across the street. These are all in like the bigger preserve. Are there any African animals that are just running around 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: neighborhoods? I am young enough to have only heard about this in, in, in terms of stories, but like when my, when my parents moved there, you know, in, um, in, in the early eighties, you know, they used to tell us that just up until about five, 10 years, They used to have lions come to where our neighborhood was, but then cities grow and, you know, the, the, the animals kind of get further deeper in, but like, yeah, we could drive an hour and a half, two hours and, and you are in like the thick forest and, you know, it's, it's, lion's galore, so it's not too far.

Mike Koelzer, Host: In the US, is that like, though there's a national park and you needed a sticker to get in there and that kind of stuff. It's huge. But you had to know you were driving into it because it's a sign or something like that. 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: Correct. And then again, just like the national parks here, it's not like there's necessarily a fence.

So some of the local communities, and you might have seen this on, on TV, like the Maise the, the indigenous folks are living. And, and yeah, and they will have, you know, lions and elephants as, as part of their, their backyard. oh, cuz they're 

Mike Koelzer, Host: living there. They're living there. Yeah. Kind of like here where the national park, the road going in might have a, a little booth or something like that, but all around it.

There's not a fence around Yellowstone or something like that. Correct? Correct. So what animals would you still see? Like where we might see deer still. Are there any animals around the cities in Africa? 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: Not the big cities. No, you won't, you won't see, see things like that there. Other than the usual, I don't mean elephants.

Mike Koelzer, Host: I just mean like deer or something. 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: Um, yeah, so you can, you can see, see deer, um, you know, slightly, further away from the city. So I, I wouldn't say that, you know, at least in, in, in Tanzania, in the big cities, you wouldn't see that is it's. It's now all further. You know, and it's not, it's, it's, it's very modern.

You see, you know, High Rise buildings, you see hotels, you see, you get, you get all the fancy food, like, you know, international food and all of that. So it's not like, you know, you are, you're in the middle of no nowhere, uh, you're not, you're not writing zebras and elephants to school. Right. So I bet that's hard to get across to people.

Yeah. Yeah. But you know, the thing that Africa's known for is the big, you know, five game animals, which are the lions, the Leo. the rhino, the elephant, uh, and the Buffalo. So, uh, those, those are fun to watch. And the draft, of course, the giraffe 10 years 

Mike Koelzer, Host: From now on, I know that you're going to be doing good for the world.

I know you're going to be serving people, but if you had your choice, what might that look like? What might you be doing? Would you be in this big business? Would you be at college still? What might your life look like in 10 years? 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: Well, I'll [00:40:00] start with where you started. I would still be in the business of sharing happiness and doing meaningful things, but how do you do that?

I probably wouldn't be doing this, uh, through multiple platforms that I'm engaged with right now. I would probably, you know, cut some of them out. Um, ideally I would want, um, you know, vegan medicine to flourish really well, and I'd be spending a lot of time there. Um, but. It wouldn't be unreasonable if in about 10 years, uh, we can bring in or, or sooner ideally bring in another leader who can take that and, and move the mission forward.

And I could possibly spend some of my time in some other meaningful endeavors that are, that are, I think. Equally important or can, can, can contribute to healthcare and science in a meaningful manner. What might that 

Mike Koelzer, Host: look like? Would it still be businessy? 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: Yes, it, it, it could be businessy. I believe that we, there are a lot of things in the space of the mind, transcendental meditation, yoga that needs discovery.

I think that there are. There is true science there that we need to understand that transforms into changes, physiological changes in the body. So I think we need to appreciate that there's other pieces of science and, and this may sound like science fiction, but it is not where Mike, you know, the blood pressure machine.

Right. And we think of it as two numbers, the systolic and the diastolic. The blood pressure waveform has a shape. It's not just one 20 and 80. It goes from one 20 to one, 18 to one 16 and the, and the time it takes to get from there from one 20 to 80, all of that is meaningful. Now there are things that you can decode with artificial intelligence and other things.

You can decode that for doing disease diagnostics. And I think that. We can, we're gonna get into a space where you can use noninvasive technology. We can use that type of system to diagnose things like cancer. So imagine now wearing a blood pressure cough, and you can say, oh, this person might be pregnant or this person might be having cancer.

And part of this comes from an ancient science called IIC science that comes from the Indian subcontinent. And they used to do that. Even the Chinese doctors used to do that, where they would take it, and you might have seen images of this. They take like three fingers, they put it on your wrist and they tell you, oh, you have this medical condition going on.

And it seems like voodoo, but as we are evolving, uh, we are realizing that there is some science there and we just need to unlock it. Right. Um, it's, you know, a bad analogy, but in parallel is smoking back in the day. It used to be cool until we figured out it's not, it's not good for you. It causes cancer. We just had to unlock the science and understand it a little bit better in the same way.

What we used to do thousands of years ago, from a diagnostic standpoint, we can use technology to, to, to learn from it. What 

Mike Koelzer, Host: is your medical? Research, I think you mentioned it, is it on the blood 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: pressure stuff? So I, I was trained after pharmacy school, um, out of Hartford hospital and university of Connecticut, um, had a, you know, tremendous opportunity to do clinical research training.

So, and in the space of cardiology, So my passion areas are preventive cardiology. Um, and I, and I spend time in that space. Now, if that means that we're optimizing, um, cardiovascular drugs, if that means that we're optimizing supplements. And if that means that we're optimizing devices, we'll, we'll do all of it.

Everything that I'm working on somehow ties and marries together, um, including, including vegan med, right? Um, it is in the space of medicine. It is in the space of patient care and optimizing. Unique problem that we need solved and, and, you know, it has a bigger, bigger, bigger impact, um, than, than what can be easily be seen because it's not a machine it's not a broken arm that you're fixing.

Right. But, but, but it's, it is a problem that impacts everybody. So, um, As long as it's within healthcare, as long as with this within drug supplements and devices, and ideally within cardiology, I'll be playing in that space. I don't plan to retire, Mike. So you know, this 10 year goal and 20 year goal, um, I intend to work, um, to the next to, as long as that I can let me 

Mike Koelzer, Host: throw this out at you.

If you could get into something quickly like vegan med and kind of get it going with some leader coming in, like you've really. Put your mark on it. Could you do that every three years? If your finances are allowed, would that wouldn't be too soon? It almost sounds like your more startup idea. Let's get it to a certain spot, but maybe long term management of something is not in your desire.

And it's more of a pattern. Having the idea, doing something with it and then 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: recycling, [00:45:00] it comes down to building a team. And I think that I wanna do good work with good people. And so, for example, if there was an offer on the table and it had the opportunity to make a lot of money, but if the team was not cohesive, I would surely walk away.

So for me, with, with vegan med, if we can build a good team and do meaningful things, and if I can spend that time and have a greater production on another project, Then it's one, plus one equals three type of a scenario, but, but I don't know what the future holds. If vegan med does really well or, or something else does really well.

And we can fund some of these other projects, then we would have more control, more autonomy to do them in the way that we would like to do them. And that's a possibility too, you know, I, I do have to say I'm very grateful for the people that I've crossed Paths with and, you know, just very meaningful relationships and, you know, just be a dream to work with with, with many of them over time.

Well, such 

Mike Koelzer, Host: and golly, nice to meet you. That was really interesting information. It took me to an area that I. Never 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: thought of, well, thank you for having me on here and, and thank you for what you do. You know, you are also a pharmacist, so I understand there was a background, but you using your unique platform are letting other voices be heard around the country.

So thank you for what you do. What 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I like the podcast platform. I like a lot of things about it, but it's cool because. Episodes, you don't really get dated per se. You know, they're not news. They're more of a deeper introspection or deeper journey into what's going on. And I think they have some staying power because of the interesting guests that we're on.

So it's an honor to add you to the 

Sachin Shah, PharmD: library. Well, the pleasure's mine and thank you again. All right. SA you take care. You too. Thanks, buddy. All right. Thanks. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Bye.