Numbers That Work | Owen BonDurant and Mark Nelson of Independent Rx Consulting

Transcript Disclaimer: This transcript is generated using speech-to-text technology and is intended to capture the essence of the conversation. However, please note that it may contain multiple spelling errors and inaccuracies. It should not be relied upon as an exact or comprehensive record of the discussion.

Mike Koelzer, Host: [00:00:00] Hello guys. Hey Mike. Hey Mike, mark and Owen for the people who haven't come across you online, each of you introduce yourself individually, and then tell us why we're talking 

Owen BonDurant: tonight. I'm Owen BonDurrant. I'm uh, one of the founders and partners of Independent Consulting. 

Mark Nelson: And my name's Mark Nelson. I'm a partner with Independent RX consulting and you know, we're really excited to be here, um, on a podcast called the business of pharmacy because that is literally what we do.

So we have a consulting firm, um, and we try to help pharmacies be more 

Mike Koelzer, Host: successful years ago. People would always call the pharmacy and they'd say, we're consultants and we're going to come in and we're going to teach you how to run your business better. And I look, and they've been to veterinarians and they go to roller skating shops.

My dad and I would get frustrated because you're like, no, you're not. , you know, you're not gonna help me. You're not gonna come in and help me. I just know it because you're gonna come in and say, cut your costs, buy low, sell high, all that kind of stuff. You guys though, I'm reading your stuff. And it's like 20 pharmacies, 30 pharmacies.

You do. Some of you are pharmacists and some of you are accountants and this and that and come from it. And I thought, now, wait a minute. This place finally has some teeth. So. What kind of teeth do you have? Yeah, we've 

Mark Nelson: helped over a hundred people start or buy pharmacies. We have numerous clients that use our ongoing services.

So we provide data analytics, accounting with consulting, which is a totally different approach from anything that you typically see out there. Um, you know, and this year it's going really well. So that's kind of why we got the teeth. Um, and the teeth are helping us in that, but you know, we've grown over a hundred percent this year. By the end of the year, we're slated to increase that by another 30%.

So, you know, the industry's changing, C's obviously affected that. Um, and people have a lot more 

Owen BonDurant: questions, Mike, to your point, you get consultants calling you to, you know, they're one day they're at a roller skating rink and the next day they're at a pharmacy. I, I think one of the big differences that we have is my family and my partner's family, Tim, we own pharmacies now.

We actually own them and operate them today. Um, and we've owned, you know, 16 at one time. We had another time when we owned 10, we've done retail. We've done compounding long term care. So the things that we're teaching people are. Things we've tested in the store that, you know, have worked and things that have 

Mike Koelzer, Host: not working.

Yeah. Things that haven't gone well too, are just as 

Owen BonDurant: valuable. Oh, if not more valuable, cuz we can tell people, you know what? We tried that and here's exactly why it didn't work over the, 

Mark Nelson: You know, last 10 years I worked with hundreds of consultants and I was laughing as you were saying that because that's the same thing I was thinking in my head and you know, anybody can come into your pharmacy.

And like you said, tell you to, you gotta do a sync program. You need to be doing MTM. You need to be doing clinical, but we use your data to actually drive real consulting and help you implement those things. Not just tell you, you need to do that. Anybody who's gone to a trade show in the last five years probably knows they should be doing that.

People need help actually getting started and kind of getting that momentum 

Mike Koelzer, Host: moving we've had just, just lovely, friendly accountants. And what I found though in the last year, I'm spending more time. Trying to teach them about DIRs and rebates and things like that. And then once you tell them, They don't believe you , you know, they don't believe you.

It's like, it's like, they've never seen that. It's like, all right, you paid for this and now, but now where does this go? And it's like, oh no, that doesn't go anywhere because it's not there. In fact, we've gotta take more of it away. After seven months, I've told my accounts that it's almost unfair to them.

Like, I don't know why they'd want me as a customer because the learning curve has gotta be 10 times what they have for a non-pharmacy customer. It seems. And then they say we see a lot of different stuff. It's like, no, I don't think you've seen this 

before. 

Mark Nelson: Um, 

It's just a different ball game. 

And like you said, uh, typical accountants don't understand it.

Owen BonDurant: Yeah. It's funny, Mike, when we get new customers, especially when they're using a local CPA, we'll call them up and say, They're switching their accounting to us and a common reaction is thank God. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: You sometimes will do the dirty work of calling the accountants. Yeah, that's pretty 

Owen BonDurant: common in the accounting world, cuz we've gotta get their files and QuickBook [00:05:00] files and you know, we need historicals to do our job correctly, but you know, pharmacy is a little bit unique.

It has rebates and DIR fees and you know, revenue, for example, can be affected in all kinds of ways. Your payer reimbursement can change, a product or a drug can go generic. The, the, the accountants can go, Hey, your sales went down, but they don't know why. Right. And they can't tell you here's what's happened.

And here's what you should do to adjust that because in their heads, they're not going, oh, you've done the exact same amount of volume, but your sales went down by a half, a million dollars. Yeah. That doesn't make any sense. They don't see that in other places. Right. Um, and actually your margin may not have changed, yeah.

Because of the mix or how you're buying things. So it's very confusing and you really need to understand the business to be able to provide it advice. And, you know, we think accounting is just, you gotta do your accounting properly, but it is just a data point to allow you to make decisions. It's one of several data points.

That you need to get. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: And that's why I was interested in talking to you guys because on your website, maybe there's others out there, but it seemed unique to me that let's say that even if your accountant starts to understand what you're talking about, then you've gotta have this Baton handoff of reports and a report then has, let's say a, report's got 10 columns on average, you know, and every column is titled a little bit differently and you only fit so many words on the top of a column.

And before you know it, three months later, you're talking to the accountant and they said, Oh, well, you know, hopefully their words are standard, but it's like, they're saying, oh, I thought that was a percentage of, you know, this you're telling me it's a percentage of this. Well, that changes things. Now you guys are actually in the computers of your clients, is that right?

Mark Nelson: Yeah, we do. Um, you know, so part of the consulting portion of what we do is, using the numbers to drive sound consulting is what I like to call it. Um, you, we log in and, and show people how to. Put their DIR fees in correctly. Um, you know, there's still today. A lot of people who don't know what DIR fees are or, or why they get them, you know, they just move them through so we help educate them.

Um, and we definitely log in set that stuff up, um, everything from D fees to the clinical portion, teaching someone how to do a sync program, you know, people who have they've been to the workshops, they've been to trade shows, they've watched, you know, digital they're at the point where they want somebody come and set it up for me, just show me how to find the correct people and help me get two or three people on it.

And you know, then they're off to the races. And so that's one of my favorite things to do. Cause you see the light 

Mike Koelzer, Host: bulbs go off. I'm a three time failure of sync. Oh, you're not alone. No, no, you're not. My son who's in the business said, he said, uh, dad, If I didn't know better. I'd think these people are trying to sabotage us.

He said, I just talked to this guy yesterday. I said, I'd see him in two weeks or something like that. And he came in the next day with like four questions, wanting something filled back on the question of getting into computers. Do you guys have any backend deals with vendors or are you using the same password that the pharmacy is using?

Like, for example, if you're getting into the databases or you're getting into their computer program or you're getting into, I don't know, whatever, what else it would be, you know, counting machines or whatever. Are you guys special? Is it sneaky? I'm joking, but like sneaky stuff or are you guys just saying, Hey, gimme your password and we'll check it up, Mike.

Owen BonDurant: You're right. We are getting data from the pharmacy systems, cuz I think I mentioned earlier. that the accounting is only half the picture rate. So if my revenue's going down, we need to know why mm-hmm . If your margin is slipping, why? And that could be many reasons. It's not as simple as, oh, you started buying poorly or the PBM reimbursement is worse.

It could be all kinds of things. You're not billing things. Right. You know, you, you missed out on du or something like it could be all kind. You've got your quantities wrong. So we've gotta go into the system and make sure of that, and look at the data. So we are pulling from the pharmacy system, things like.

Prescription counts, gross profit [00:10:00] per prescription by payer your top drug reports. And we're putting that into a dashboard that all of our clients have access to that's available on the phone or on, on a website. And then we consolidate that with the financial data so that we can start looking at what is causing the results of your financials, good or bad.

And we do that. I mean, with some systems, the client decides a waiver in the pharmacy system provides us the D data directly and other systems. We don't have that set up. So we are logging in, you know, in the evening or in off hours and pulling that data. Now they'll set up our own login as if we were a technician or something.

And we can't do anything in the system other than pull data for the most part, but it allows us to get a full picture because I've gotta know, like if someone comes to me and says, well, is my payroll too? Well, how many prescriptions are you filling? Right? I mean, you can't just go, Hey, uh, you know, your, your payroll should be 10% of sales.

Yeah. Well, I need to know what your brain and generic mix is. How many prescriptions you're filling, how many compounds are you doing? Like, we've gotta have some context because a compound's a lot harder to fill. Then, you know, 30 pills put in a bottle is 

Mike Koelzer, Host: your guys' ability to go into a system. Does that give you more than just efficiencies of time?

Here's what I'm thinking. You know how sometimes like, You're maybe working on something, all of a sudden you can't find electrical tape. And like electrical tape is in the same group as fingernail Clippers. You never wanna where the hell it is. You've seen it somewhere, but you don't know where the hell it is.

So I carry my little purse, I call it, but I've got electrical tape in there and I got fingernail Clippers in there, you know, and I refuse to go anywhere without my electrical tape, but I'm wiser now. But years ago you would say where the hell is the electrical tape. I saw it somewhere. but in my mind, you guys being able to go into the system, you're not waiting for the pharmacist the next day to ask him, show us the report of your this, because we think there might be something there.

What you guys are able to do is you're able to be in the system and you have a suspicion of something and you say, I know figuratively where the electrical tape is. I'm gonna go way over to this report. That would take a few hours to probably get the next day from whoever I have to teach to give it to us.

You're able to go there, get the electrical tape, come back, clip it, do this, do that. Is that part of it, that efficiency where you can fly around it with what would you call it? Like not the seat of your pants, but more like instinctual almost, right? 

Mark Nelson: Yes, absolutely. So the challenge is for a pharmacy today, you know, you're doing 20 more things than you did five years ago.

Wanna pay you less to do it and reimbursements aren't, you know, the same. Yeah. Our fees, like we mentioned earlier, you know, you don't have the time to do that. And one of the challenges is. A lot of the pharmacists, you know, they don't know how to get all those reports or it's a combination of eight reports that they would then have to aggregate.

And so we take that workout out of the process for them. You know, it's obviously it's fantastic when the pharmacy system can provide us that in a data feed, um, it just that's efficiency. Some of them it's, you know, a more labor intensive manual process, but as a service that we provide to make sure that we've reviewed those details and we know what to look at.

And also try to help educate the pharmacist too. Cause I want you to know how to do it and how to understand it, but telling you, you gotta take two hours outta your day. You know, a couple times a week to go pull these things for me, it it's not 

Mike Koelzer, Host: efficient at all. And this is kind of a technical question, but when you guys go into a system you're not just able to copy and paste into your spreadsheet, you probably have some things that will automatically throw stuff in there.

You're not looking at it. It's just happening. 

Owen BonDurant: Right. We'll pull down the report and it dumps into a preset group of files basically. So we use Amazon warehouse too. You know, store this stuff. When we pull it down from each system, we know what we need to get. Yeah. And it drops it in and eliminates the things that we don't need and, and that we're using.

And then it res displays it into a program. So that, cuz the problem is, you know, if you look at a pharmacy they're doing 60, 70,000 transactions, right. And that doesn't account reversals and , you know, so there any pharmacy may have a hundred thousand transactions that are coming through and the rows are just endless.

So we need to consolidate that down and [00:15:00] we're taking that data and putting it into a platform that allows you to see trends and easily read that data. Cuz again, you know, as a pharmacy owner, you've gotta work the bench, watch your inventory, manage employees. A lot of community pharmacists are out there going to funerals and I mean all kinds of stuff, right.

Uh, you don't have enough time to not only pull that data, but also then consolidate it down and get it into a view that allows you to actually make any sense of it. And so we're taking that off your hands, which does two things for us. To your point, Mike, we actually tried to do consulting without data and just tried to do business coaching.

It didn't work. Yeah. Because people would then ask us, well, what about this? Yeah. And we'd like, well, send us these 14 reports. Um, so we just said, you know what, we're gonna get this all the time. Exactly. So that we can be proactive and tell you what's going on and then teach you the owner. How to read these reports and start spotting trends.

So when I see something, not only am I going to tell you what's going on, I'm gonna go, this is what I saw. So the next time you see it on your own, you can become a more effective business owner making better decisions. Do 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Any of these computer companies, are they like sons of bitches where they don't want you to get in and do stuff?

Any of 'em like, say you're not doing this because maybe we're trying to offer something or are they all fairly cooperative? They're 

Owen BonDurant: great. Actually it makes their system better because here's what ends up happening. Mike, we'll go in there. We'll see that maybe someone's entering data wrong or they don't have their EDI feed set up correctly.

So they're getting bad data. Well, now we can get it corrected. We can work with the pharmacy system to get that data. Now, the people are more satisfied with the pharmacy system. I see, because it's kicking out information that they actually can use, or let's say your med sync coming back to what you said about med sync, Mike, I mean, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: you say my med sync let's let the record show.

I don't have one right now. I'm I'm, I'm an 

Owen BonDurant: utter failure. The common problem there is, is the technology there. Uh, the systems have the ability for you to do med sync, but we're gonna teach you the operational side. So now suddenly you're using your technology more effective making you stickier to the 

Mark Nelson: technology.

And I think too, that, you know, coming from that space, It relieves some of the burden for support, because if I had to ask you to find the reports for me and you didn't know how you're calling support, creating a ticket, and then somebody else is working on it. So, you know, generally the reaction's been fantastic because, okay, awesome.

Y'all are gonna take this off our hands. They've called us a hundred times about it. Um, so it works 

Mike Koelzer, Host: well. How many different systems do you come across with your customers so far? 

Owen BonDurant: It's what, six, seven. I mean, once you get the main ones, you know, you, you kind of run out of, you know, the QS one pioneer RX, 30 computer RX enterprise labor's prize liberties become fairly prevalent now.

So once you get through those, I mean, that's, you're, you're covering 90% of pharmacies. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Oh. And you were talking about teaching people. To read some of this stuff. And you had mentioned your dashboard. We use this program called monday.com at our pharmacy that, you know, you can put different columns and do different things.

I imagine your dashboard is something like that, where you can bring in, what do they call? 'em like, you know, you, you build your dashboard and so on. And you're saying that you'll teach your customers to view that dashboard and you can do it more easily because you're, you're saying, look, Sally, for.

10th time. I'm telling you, you don't have to look at these last 40 columns on this report. You guys have done that for them, correct. By not putting those columns on there. It sounds like it'd be easier to learn, but also easier to remember. So then the next month you're not saying, oh, damn, I gotta print these out again.

I gotta remember what columns to delete, what columns to leave in. I gotta remember what this means. I gotta remember how to do the summation and all that kind of stuff. You guys have done that. So then the next month you're almost building on you're building on something. That's pretty easy to see the first time.

And 

Mark Nelson: You know, Mike like me coming in, I'm not an accountant. And so I'm probably a pretty good example of our average customer in a lot of ways, because I haven't had to look at that data for that purpose. And the first time I saw the dashboard, it just made sense. Could pull it up on my iPhone, scroll through.

And feel better about it, okay. Everything's all right. [00:20:00] And you're not running reports and you can, you know, have that work life balance too. So it's extremely easy 

Owen BonDurant: to read pharmacy owners. They're not stupid. They have been running these businesses. Right. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Let's talk a little bit more on, and then you can make up your mind on 

Owen BonDurant: that.

The issue is, is getting that data that you can make sense of it again. I mean, there's so much of it. Right. And, also here's the problem with pharmacy data, you know, if you have five Mondays in a month. Yeah. Suddenly it's not comparable to the previous month or the year before. Oh yeah. So getting consistent, you know, data that can show you trends.

And if you pull six months worth of RX data, I mean, can you really tell if it's gone up or down or, you know, so we put it into graphs so that you can see the trending. Is it up? Is it down. You know, I wanna look at brand generic, new versus refill, you know, things like that to see where, you know, if my script count is down, is it in new prescriptions?

Is it in refills? Is it my brand? Is it my generic? Is it my retail or my long term care? Where is it coming from? And so they need basic stuff because you've gotta identify what's happening in order to actually spend time on it. Owners are just spending more time trying to figure out what should I be doing than actually 

Mike Koelzer, Host: doing for our listeners.

Typically you're paying maybe every two weeks of payroll. And so one of the months, I think you finally have three payrolls in the month and then you're. Okay. This is a month where we had three payrolls, but then look, it ended on a Thursday and we didn't get the wholesaler checks until Friday. So step down off the edge of the building.

There's no need to jump this month. Here was the reason because you know, it was one of these odd balls and that's where your thing is going to balance it out. And people could do that, but you'd have to be entering this stuff into your own database and then getting the average and then all that kind of stuff.

And that's just not 

Mark Nelson: happening. And you don't have the time for that. That's 

Owen BonDurant: something someone else can do for you. I, you know what I can't do for you to build relationships in the community. I can't do that. And guess what? You're, you're a community pharmacy owner. That's what you're good at. so go do it. Let others do the stuff that you don't need to do.

Well, I've 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I always said that right now, I'm working a lot more in the pharmacy than four or five years ago. My theory was always that the owner is the guy that's making a few important long term decisions longer than the month or two that we're talking about here. And they're also out giving Mrs. Smith a little Peck on the cheek when she turns 80 and giving her a box of candy or something.

And that's really the two roles that they play. And everybody else in theory is wearing that different hat 

Mark Nelson: and not just with the community, with the, with the physicians, with everybody. Um, you know, you are the face of the pharmacy. Yeah. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: And I think a lot of people have problems with their accountants, especially now with the DIR fees and that stuff.

And it's always like, I don't know. It's kinda like playing golf with my brother. I suck at golf, but when I play with my brother, you know, when he looks up in the sky and he starts going back and forth with his pinky and his thumb counting his strokes, you know, he is shaving a couple of those up because, because that's the same trick that I do.

And the reason I bring that up about the golf score, it seems like our accounting, especially in the old days of not knowing your inventory so well, but not knowing when the checks were gonna show up and now di and all that kind of stuff, it seems like I'm never able to hold like a report in my hand and say, this is pretty good.

You know, this doesn't have that 8% fluctuation. Well, maybe it's because of this. And maybe it's because of that. And I suppose that's a lot where the, um, the average of the months too, would, you know, would help. Yep. 

Owen BonDurant: And, and we see that a lot, Mike people don't trust. The data that they're pooling, they don't have something they can go to and go, yeah, this makes sense.

And this allows me to make a concrete decision and I'll tell you, you know, where this came from is, uh, and we, we have an interesting team. Um, you know, my dad and my partner, Tim, they're both pharmacy owners, but they had the luxury because they had so many stores working on the business all the time.

And then they happened to hire a CPA. Who's a partner in our firm and he bought into the pharmacies. So we have this unique thing where we have a CPA whose own pharmacies. And so we started combining, and at the time this was in Excel, we would pull operational reports and financial reports and started combining my dad and the CPA.

And so you have this pharmacist pulling, Hey, I need to know this and the CPA going, we need to know this. And then it kind of started merging. And going well, these two things really are independent of each [00:25:00] other and, and that started making sense to the CPA and the pharmacist, and really that's what we're dealing with.

Right. We need to be able to present data in a way that a pharmacist or pharmacy owner understands and can act on it. And, and that got developed from years of trial and error in our own operation. And, we owned pharmacies in multiple states. So we didn't have the luxury of going over and checking it out.

Right. We needed data that we told us, is this pharmacy operating while yes or no, you've lived 

Mike Koelzer, Host: it. And I imagine you've lived through ups and downs because a lot of times you're selling and buying stores because you want to, and it's fun. And sometimes you're doing it because it's not so fun and you don't want to, but 

Owen BonDurant: You have to, oh, I mean, look at my dad.

I mean, he started an independent pharmacy in 1981. I. Things were cash there. Insurance was not a thing. Right. And there was no computer. It was, you walk in, hand him cash. He handed you some bills. That was the end of the transaction. Then a few years later, we have everything on QS one. Insurance comes around.

Mail order comes to mind. Med D becomes a thing. I mean, we've gone through all this stuff. So it's kind of like when, you know, we hear L PBM BBM pressure. I mean, listen, we've had things coming at us and every business has this. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look at, I, I always, you bring this example up, but look at apple.

I mean, if Apple kept selling computers, we would have no apple. They, they adapted to the, to the changes in the, in the world, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: probably about four or five years ago, I was getting pretty burned out. There were some new rules coming out about technicians and Michigan. I had to train all these people and hire different people and stuff.

So I hired some people and kind of ran things for a while. I Sit around home, I guess, and work, you know, just get out of the store more. I was around once a week or so I'd be around, but I came back about three or four years later and it's like 30% more of the claims were being rejected. You know, something like that.

It was just an amazing change of the hassles that they're trying to, um, put stuff through. You know, you were talking, oh, one about your dad. Cuz I was in the pharmacy. Like I graduated in the early nineties. So I was doing the computers in the early nineties and my dad, like your dad probably had a memory of an elephant.

I don't know. Elephants have good memories. 

Mark Nelson: Yes 

Owen BonDurant: It is. Yep. They are his memories. He's one of these people that can hear a song and then sing it back to you after hearing it one time. I mean, who 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Does that? They had memories of elephants because they had to. And so I remember one time my dad, you know, we had done like, I don't know, I.

X prescriptions in, in the first four hours of the morning. And in his day he probably did half a X, you know, something like that. So he comes up behind me one time, Mrs. Smith is here. Did you do one for her earlier? And I'm like, well, let me, let me check. I could just feel I'm breathing down my back. He's like, what do you mean check?

I'm like, I wanna check. I wanna see if I did one for Ms. Smith because we know just like now nobody knows phone numbers and stuff, because once you don't have to use it, you don't use it anymore. You know, let someone else depend on it. And I could tell he was pissed, you know, that I could not remember exactly wife, who I filled during that time, you know?

And it's just like, you didn't need it anymore though. The computers were gonna do it for you. Yeah. 

Mark Nelson: Pharmacy today. Like it's just getting more and more difficult and you hear the golden rule. You gotta know your numbers, but it's not just knowing your numbers. It's understanding your numbers. And then knowing what you can do with those.

Mike Koelzer, Host: We got stung twice in the last year, because about a year ago, I was thinking I gotta maybe sell this place, you know, because I don't see us coming out of these hard times. And so I was pretty close to selling and the reason I didn't sell is my numbers weren't there yet. You know, I needed a few weeks even to work with my accountant at the time they weren't firm enough.

Everybody agreed, they sucked, but we, nobody just knew how bad they sucked. You know, another time was, months later when I had to renew a line of credit. And that was just not as easy as it should have been from not having the correct numbers, you know? And apparently it's not like the old days where you just say, well, trust me, you know, look, the lights are still on and I still have checks in the checkbook.

So everything must be okay, you know, but they want real numbers. And so there's two times I was stung in the last year from not being. Right on top of things, but what do you feel is like the main stress point that finally says to someone I gotta do this. I know there's positive points, you know, but a lot of times we deal with stress, right?

We make [00:30:00] decisions based on stress. 

Owen BonDurant: Typically it's, it's something to do with cash. You know, they're running low on cash, similar to, to what you were saying there of, you know, couldn't get a line of credit when they used to be able to wholesaler is, you know, threatening to, you know, put 'em down to daily terms or something like that.

The other thing that's out there is you, we get a lot of owners calling because they're very, you know, honestly, owning a small business is lonely. I mean, you, you, people don't understand, you know, you don't have friends that own other small businesses, sometimes your spouses don't quite understand. Um, and so you gotta be able to go to someone who gets it.

What's going on and you know, you go to a bank and a lot of times they're like, wait, pharmacies, small pharmacies, those are still a thing. Yeah. Right. You haven't even shown 'em the numbers and it's a problem. And, and so, you know, being able to go and, and find someone, I, I, I think people go through stresses after stress, after stress, whether it's, you know, audits or getting broken into, or what, what you said, not being able to get a line of credit.

And when they finally see that we're out there and that, that they can call even, you know, when they need help. Right. And that they've got someone who actually knows what they're going through. Yeah. Um, that, that's what we see. And we get a lot of people too, who are starting or buying a. Mike. So it's, they've, they're at a point where they've got to pick an accountant.

Gotcha. And I mean, I think the good thing that's happening in the industry is that there's a lot more industry specific services than there used to be, whether that's banks or accountants or, you know, so people are, are, are a lot less likely to go to the local person. They're searching out people who are experts in their field.

You're kind of the typical person who comes to us. Right. They're not getting the advice. They've worked with their local person for two, three years. And nothing's changed. Yeah. And, and it's not that the local person's bad, they just don't know what to do. Um, and you know, we, we, we know where to start and then, I mean, honestly, it, when you look, when we get these situations, it's typically in three areas, they need to grow revenue.

They need to control their inventory and buy better and they've gotta control payroll. That's where you start. I mean, uh, you go to these trade shows and things, and there's all these tips and secrets and right, you gotta do this and this. And really, it comes down to three things and doing them properly.

Now, those things are a little bit unique within pharmacy, 

Mark Nelson: But once you get those, then I can help you run a successful sync program and teach you how to do all those extra services. 

Owen BonDurant: So we're just picking on you, Mike, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: you would never get me to do a sync program. Oh, 

Owen BonDurant: Now one's a challenge, except one's a challenge.

Mike Koelzer, Host: If I get you guys into the pharmacy, I'll take you up on that. But I'm. I think I'm gonna bring you down, mark. I think I'm gonna bring you down to my level. I've failed so many times on that. We're 

Owen BonDurant: using that just partly because it's funny and partly because that's the buzzword that, that it's gonna solve all issues and it does do a lot for your pharmacy.

It can increase revenue, it can control inventory and it can lower your payroll. But if you don't have the basics down, it's impossible to, to 

Mark Nelson: implement it. The foundations have to be correct. And the one thing that is, in any of the marketing you see for this sync is gonna actually make your life harder.

Until you get to a certain tipping point and correct. And, and so once you get to a certain percentage of your customers in sync, you'll walk in and then I've done this, walked into a pharmacy that had done 900 scripts by one o'clock and the staff's just standing around. Like they didn't do anything because it's, it's all planned out and you're eliminating the rollercoaster of the highs and lows of a day.

And you're kind of smoothing 

Owen BonDurant: it out. Here's the other thing, Mike is, you know, they just, people just throw things out. Like, you gotta do this, you gotta do that. But what does your data say? Yeah. You know, what should you be prioritizing? You see you as an owner, as a business, can't do 30 things. Right? Right.

You have to pick the one or two, that's gonna do the best for you and your family and, and, and the staff and, and what I, what is that thing? You know, that's the mistake, you know, people just go with the buzzword and start implementing something when. You know, over here is a, their ship 

Mike Koelzer, Host: is sinking. There's no crystal ball, but at least knowing a few months down the road of this saving, you know, 10 bucks an hour is a couple thousand dollars a year and it could do this.

It could allow that. And that's stuff that I don't have a freaking clue on just because you, you didn't ever have anything to base it on. So I could see where that stuff would actually be kind of fun. [00:35:00] Yeah. And, 

Mark Nelson: And that's, you know, fun is the best word to describe it. Cause that's, you know, the bulk of what I get to do is, you know, working with the people in the pharmacy where we've got the foundation down and then I get to, you know, go through, you know, different workflows per se and technician says, oh, that saves 10 minutes.

Well, if that one step saves 10 minutes and this next step, you know, 10 minutes might not seem like a big deal, but when you add it all up, you know we've got three extra hours to do again. The clinical, the, the, the things that, yeah, right now you think I don't have time. I don't have the capacity for, and there are ways to find 

Owen BonDurant: that.

I think also what happens is that pharmacy owners do things that do only save them $10 and they shouldn't have done it. And so, you know, that's part of our job is to go, okay. Yeah, you wanna do that, but what's actually, look, that's gonna do for you in six months. And the common one I hear is, you know what, I'm gonna change around my front end.

And it's like, okay, well, how much more are you gonna sell? Why? You know, I don't know. Well, if I sell a whole lot more of this yet, right. But that's 5,000 extra dollars. And then you had the stock twice as much of it. So really you're back to zero. Yeah. Okay. So now, let's go over your inventory.

Um, okay. Let's get rid of the dead stock. And so you're gonna spend one day and that's gonna save you 50 grand. I think so many owners do things. They try 'em and then they don't really see the results and they go, ah, none of that stuff works. And, and the reason is, is because they got distracted by the glittery thing.

That seems fun rather than doing the things that really 

Mike Koelzer, Host: helped them, or they've given up something that frankly helps get 'em through their day and it's cliche, but the coffee or something, it's a. $10 a week habit. So for $500 a year, they can still enjoy something where they're really sacrificing elsewhere, but it just keeps them sane.

Owen BonDurant: Right. And they shouldn't be dropping that thing and they should be dropping the thing. That's gonna save them 

Mike Koelzer, Host: $50,000. My dad just comes home at night and he and my mom would go out for a sandwich or something late at night. And, and my dad would say that it was cheaper than a psychiatry bill for my mom.

after being home with the kids all day. 

Owen BonDurant: Absolutely. And, and there's so many things in your business, they're exactly the same way. You know, people try to. Change VI companies and it saves them, you know, $30 throughout the year. And they're like, well, I didn't see a change. And it's like, okay, well, you know that that's because it doesn't make a difference.

You don't get the vials that work and that your customers like, you know, and, and if you don't hear those complaints, that'll make your day a little bit better now, let's, you know, let's figure out a strategy to call on two doctors every month and grow our business. And that's a better use of. You know your dollars or, or your time and 

Mike Koelzer, Host: your energy, right?

Yeah, exactly. If you guys come into a pharmacy, that's kind of a crap show. You're not gonna change everything overnight. How long do you figure that your, I mean, I know you're always helping a pharmacy, but how long do you figure it takes to kind of like. You know, I imagine the first month is just trying to clean up some figures or find out if they even have the passwords for something, they should have passwords too.

And yep. But, but then eventually, like you're probably still shining things up, like in month 4, 5, 6, 7, and, and so on. Right. I mean, mark, you don't come on the first day and do sync, especially for someone who's clinically depressed from failing at it three times, three times. You don't, you don't do that right away.

Right. Well, 

Mark Nelson: I'm asked to do it right away, um, pretty frequently, but by the customer. Oh, absolutely. And, and that's just because, you know, you, you go to a trade show or you listen to a podcast or, and you hear the buzzwords of, you know, the same things I mentioned a couple times. And so that's the first thing when they call me, like, I need a sync program.

And again, that's, I keep saying sync, but it's. Been a buzzword, whatever. Right. Whatever. Yeah. Any, anything clinical, you name it and it takes a full team. So that's where the rest of our group, you know, gets in there and really has to get those foundations. Right. Because yeah, if your inventory is off, if your payroll's way off, yeah.

You're not gonna be successful. Utilizing those things. We have to get your business on track, get those foundations down and then free up the time to help educate you to make that process. So you're not a four time failure in theory, we're talking 

Owen BonDurant: in, in, in theory. Yeah. I would say, you know, in the first three months we can probably make a splash of some kind.

That's more of a one time benefit. And then as you start [00:40:00] getting to six to 12, that's when the long term effects come into play. And when we start seeing owners. getting a grasp for it on their own. You know, we'll be talking to these people weekly for like the first three, six months, and then suddenly it's every other week.

And then suddenly it's monthly, you know, and they're, and because they've got, again, pharmacies aren't as complicated as people think they are, you know, we receive an order, we fulfill an order, we sell an order. Right. And, and we have to get as many of those orders as we can. So we, we, we have patients, right.

And we need to maximize our patients and get more of them. We have drug costs, which is typically 80% of our costs. And we need to figure out how to buy that a little bit better and not have too much of it sitting on their shelf and not in our pocket. Right. Right. And then we need to do that efficiently so that we're not paying.

All of our dollars to our employees. Now, certainly our employees are important, but we can't pay. We have to take something home where else we can't service the community. And we have to look out for our families as well. So, you know, if you get those three things right, it starts getting a little easier.

Um, and so, you know, don't overcomplicate it, let's pick one of those things and do it a little bit better and master it. And so it, you know, uh, my dad always used to talk about, you know, taking little steps and my, my, he tells the story about my sister and he would go, and he told her to go to a cleaner room.

And two hours later, he hadn't heard anything going on, no walking around upstairs. No. So he goes upstairs and he's like, it was a complete disaster and he goes, Adrian, what have you been doing? And she goes, well, I took, you don't remember those troll dolls and the trolls have come back around. Right. She had about 25 of these.

Yeah. And she had put 'em in order from height and combed their hair. And she's like, I'm cleaning my room. I did it. You know, I did it. You had to give her the core of what he actually meant by that. And so you have to concentrate on the things that are. You know, important to running your business, just like, what are the important things of cleaning your room?

It's not putting the dolls in order by height. It is taking the clothes and putting them in the hamper. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: At what age do guys turn where it's gonna be hard to change their mind? How old would somebody be that would hire you? And I imagine it switches, but I imagine at some point you're like most 87 year olds don't call us because they don't really plan on changing that much.

What's your average age of your customers signing? The bottom line? 

Owen BonDurant: Customers are younger, thirties, forties. When you're younger, you're a lot more motivated to change and adapt and innovate. And you're excited. Right? Our average is probably in the late thirties. I've never actually looked at it. Um, Mike, but I would guess it's late thirties, early forties.

I think when people get into their late fifties and sixties, you know, at that point, they're just like. If I'm gonna make all these changes, I might as well just sell it to a young person that wants to make the changes. Now I don't, I don't know that that's the right choice, because if you can make those changes and you have everything running really well, that makes your business a lot more valuable.

Mark Nelson: There is no golden rule on it. You know, I have younger customers like that. It Is extremely hard to bring new ideas to because they think they know better than we do. They know computers, they don't need me to help them with that. Um, and then you have the older customers that, you know, they're looking and maybe it took a little more convincing, but you know, they wanna leave a legacy for their son.

Who's about to finish or their daughter who's about to finish pharmacy school and they know that they need to clean it up to hand them, you know, not a train wreck, I guess you could say. And so, you know, we ha we have people all across, but you own, I, I would second what you said, probably in that 36 to 

Owen BonDurant: 40, the odd part about that, Mike is for years, it was almost all 30 ish probably in the last year.

We're getting more and more people, you know, late forties, fifties, Who have decided this is my business and I'm gonna have it for the next 10 years. And I need to find someone who's willing to teach me how to do this properly. And, and I think that's maybe our brand just getting out there more. I know 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I'm in this situation or I, I didn't have to look at my accounting stuff that closely because it's like, alright, I'm making money.

I don't really have to budget that well, because there's enough money around. And as long as my taxes are correct, once a year, I'm good with that. I'm not really [00:45:00] going to use my reports probably. Cut a lot. I'm, you know, with enough money, I'll, I'll keep a little cushion in the inventory. I'll keep some cushion in the employees because the margin was there.

Most pharmacists, most pharmacists were really good at the seat of their pants. They could tell within percentage of the inventory and they knew about how many prescriptions they were filling. They were basically living at the pharmacy. And they could almost feel the breeze blow and know that something was changing.

Now, that's not true. Now you need the benefit of the computers for the inventory and for the, and I'll mark, what the hell? I'll say it for the sink, you know, and, and, you know, you need that now. Or if you had different stores and you weren't living there, you know? 

Owen BonDurant: Well, and you're also generating revenue that isn't prescriptions.

I mean, we've got MTMs that we're being paid for. And I mean, we've got all these other income sources that are coming in that aren't. just prescriptions. I mean, we're selling other stuff and we're moving more and more and more and more to that. And so to your point, Mike, it, it, it, isn't simple. And, and, and also, I think business has changed a little bit.

I mean, I, you know, I know that when my partner's dad, I mean, he, he lived for work. I mean, he basically would go to work. Go to the country club network with doctors and go back to D work. I mean, he was there 24/7, well, people want to own businesses to have freedom now. And in order to do that, you've gotta run things differently.

Um, and it also means that you've gotta squeeze more dollars out in order to, you know, have a salary without you working the bench every single hour. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: So guys of the past might be able to say, I know I did this many prescriptions, that's my metric here. It's like, I didn't see some of the stuff that happened behind the scenes of the MTMs or this or that.

So I don't have that seat of the pants as much. Right. Because there's unseen items, I suppose. 

Owen BonDurant: Right. Yeah. I know you're getting paid from different ways and the really good pharmacies are getting paid. For many different ways, right? I mean, they're figuring out how to get paid for diabetes education in weight loss programs, and they're selling vitamins and they're doing all this stuff.

It's not just, Hey, I filled 200 prescriptions. I'm good. You've gotta do all those other things to make money. And you need to know, are you doing them? Are you getting the money? It's not as simple as, as it once 

Mike Koelzer, Host: was. I knew you'd fit weight loss in there somehow.

Mark Nelson: yeah. Another thing, uh, that I see I'm getting, you know, the initial calls, um, you know, asking you. Why do people contact us? You know, they've taken initial steps, you know, they maybe haven't failed three times, but they've done it and they've failed once. Right. Um, and I'm not gonna say that word again, but, you know, yeah.

They tried something different to implement one of these new things and, you know, we'll get into the conversation and it turns out, you know, they spent 30 grand on a pharmacy system. And the analogy I use is a lot of these people I tell 'em you bought a Ferrari and you were driving 30 miles an hour in the left hand lane.

You, you were not utilizing it. And so you, when you shed light on that as well, that, you know, you, you don't have to go buy something. This, this stuff is there. We just need to show you how to utilize it. You see the attitude change and people get excited. Like, I didn't know. I could do that. Um, is, is a great starting point for me and for us, 

Owen BonDurant: you know, where I also see that perpetual inventory.

Oh, cuz I mean owners, they're like, oh, this perpetual I've always managed my inventory by myself, and it's always been fine. Well, you know, we say perpetual inventory is not a, maybe you should do it. If you're not doing it, you're costing yourself. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. But what happens is, they start it and they just expect the system to do it.

Well, no, you have to have a process for checking in your orders for doing reversals, for checking your quantities and making sure the quantities are correct. So they fail because they don't have the small things that they need to put in place to make it easy. The other thing you'll see is they'll buy stuff from secondary wholesalers and never check it in.

Right. So, well then yeah, your perpetuals off you didn't tell it that you received a hundred of this. Pills. It has no idea that you had those. So now it's all off. And so, you know, they have to change the ways that they are doing things. 

Mark Nelson: You're not utilizing an NDC verification or, you know, icon type you're gonna be off.

They grabbed the wrong model. 

Owen BonDurant: But to your point, Mike, [00:50:00] 10 years ago, you 

Mike Koelzer, Host: didn't have to do that. No, it wasn't so much of that. And now it's like, and this is counter to what we're talking about. And I'm, I'm all for computers and stuff. It's like years ago, let's say you had a state audit of sales tax 20 years ago and they'd say, all right, well, show us your inventory.

How much did you buy last month on over the counter things, we'll multiply that by 12 and then multiply it by 0.04. And that's how much you should have paid. Let's see. Oh yeah, that's right. You know, and now it's like, show us how many packs of gum you sold eight years ago between 11 and you know, one in the afternoon or something.

And because the computer's there everything's, you know, more expected to be there, but it's, it's good. It it's real good 

Owen BonDurant: overall. Oh yeah. Technology's fantastic. I mean, it makes things more efficient. I mean, Hey, you know what it has done though, Mike, if you flip that to the other. I mean, frankly audits have gotten easier.

I mean, it's not like you're going to look for signatures. They're on the computer. No, that's true. Prescriptions are scanned in, they're all there. So, I mean, I remember audits and, and I'm not even that old that, you know, people will get called back 20, $30,000. And I know that still happens, but for the average retail pharmacy, that didn't happen anymore because it's all right there.

Like, I mean, it's like here, there it is. There's their file. It's all in one picture. Um, so, so there's benefits to it. And I think sometimes it's good to talk to people and go, okay, 10 years ago, what changes occurred that you thought were a pain? Well, you fought through those. These aren't any different, they're just different changes and us as small businesses or any business that there is.

You've got to constantly be changing. You have to, and you've gotta almost as an owner start embracing that and find the people that can show you how to make that change. It's a little easier. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: No, you've gotta change. And you gotta stop bitching because it doesn't do any good. And like we already talked about, I mean, you know, ample could have bitch because someone came out with a smaller iPod, you gotta find the holes.

Owen BonDurant: Mike, my dad told Mark's story. Oh, I was hoping you were gonna do this. Okay. Earlier today. and, and so he is telling the story about golfing with his, uh, pharmacy school buddies. And so every year they have this annual outing and there's like four of 'em that are, you know, real close. And there happened to be four pharmacy owners.

And so he is like, for the past 10 years, we go up there and basically we just bitch about. PBMs and how much things have changed. And he's like, we sit around, drink some beers and you know, we talk about the good old days, blah, blah, blah. And then we get all up and we walk to our BMWs

so it ain't that bad. It's 

Mike Koelzer, Host: the truth. It's the truth. You know, there was enough spread there. Now it's like, people are a little bit more anxious because you see a lot of closings now, but yeah, you're right. Everybody's hopping in their BMW, but if you do 

Owen BonDurant: things right, you can still drive that BMW away.

Mark Nelson: That's one of the initial hurdles is that mindset is people calling in, you know, should I even open a pharmacy? Um, my friends told me that this is pointless. It's just going, you know, in the opposite direction, you know, and that's not the case. You know, there are a lot of pharmacies who are extremely successful.

But they're embracing change. They're adopting the new technologies, and embracing it. And, you know, you know, sometimes success comes through failure still back on your challenge, but, you know, just trying these new things and, and having the mindset, it makes a huge shift in the process. Um, especially when we come in, because you, you have to be receptive.

One of the things I tell people is, you know, if you read the message boards and you obviously with pharmacies, you know, bitching kind of thing, you know, there's a lot of bitching. If you read any of the message boards and forums, I stopped looking at it. I stopped listening to, I won't say wish, but I stopped listening to the news on my way to work.

I listened to, you know, good to great for the 300th time on, you know, just things that charged me. As opposed to things that have me, I don't wanna walk into work and be like the whole world's going to hell. Um, you know, so surrounding yourself by with people who have a similar mindset, you know, that are thinking positively and, and adopting those new things and who have 

Mike Koelzer, Host: done it, what kind of person could you imagine having as a client and saying, this guy's a pain in the ass.

I want to get rid of him. I know this is hypothetical, cuz you love all your customers, right? Who would you find it hard to deal with in your position that someone says, I wanna be your customer, but then it's like you found out that this personality is not one that you jive with and it might be different for both [00:55:00] of you, just someone 

Owen BonDurant: who's being mean to you or, you know, Hey you tell 'em the truth and they say.

Well, you're an idiot or why did you tell me that? Oh, listen, I'm just trying to tell you the truth. You pay me to give you 

Mike Koelzer, Host: advice. This hypothetical person actually hired you, but then doesn't want to hear it. Right? 

Owen BonDurant: Right. It's one thing to, you know, have a friendly argument. It's another thing just to be mean, right though, we don't really come across this very often.

And most pharmacy owners are pretty nice. Let's be honest. Pharmacists want to serve people. So they tend to be fairly nice people 

Mike Koelzer, Host: and they've had to deal with a lot of people and with a lot of problems, unless they're burned out, they're probably able to handle themselves. You know, I 

Owen BonDurant: don't mind if you don't always listen, but you're paying me to tell the truth and I'm not gonna lie to you.

I'm going to give you the straight answer and, you know, appreciate that. Don't be mean because I said, you need to do this, this 

Mark Nelson: And this. And I think I would second that the attitude of the person, I mean, they're paying. To give honest opinions and, and it's not, you know, often just my opinion. It's Owen, it's rich.

It's Tim. It's, it's the team. You know, we, you know, if I'm not a hundred percent certain, you know, we collaborate and that's one thing that we're great at. And then you go back and deliver that message and they don't like it. So they don't do it at that time. I'm spinning my tires. You know, I can stay on the phone.

I can do as many conference calls, whatever, but if you're not gonna take that advice and actually use it, honestly, I would rather work with somebody who is in way worse shape. But I wanted to truly change. That's what's rewarding for me when somebody says, wow, that makes a difference. They just think that there's an insurmountable problem and you show 'em like, here's three clicks in your pharmacy system.

Boom. And they like that made their day. And that makes my day. So, you know, those are the people that I wanna work with. So 

Mike Koelzer, Host: what you're describing, if it happened, it may be somebody who was feeling, they wanted a little help at one point, but maybe the next day is just a little defensive for some reason.

Or they 

Owen BonDurant: just. You know, we give them advice and they're like, well, you just, that's just not even possible. and you guys, I hired you to do this and blah, blah, blah. And it's like, well, you 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I would do that with sync. If I got you guys on

I'm, I'm warning you. If I did that, I'd want that in my contract right away that I, I get to be an asshole when it comes to that well, at 

Owen BonDurant: at least you're upfront about it. Well, that's right. That's right. 

Mark Nelson: And you know, people, you know, they, you know, they lose their temper and, and you're sometimes telling them some news that, you know, they really don't wanna hear.

And, you know, news that impacts not just them, but the business, the community, their families. So, you know, there are times where we have to deliver less than favorable news. But it's all about, you know, the reaction to that is, you know, somebody can have, you know, I call it a temper tantrum. Right. But you know, then they've called back and apologized.

Owen BonDurant: You were right. That's fine. I mean, people have bad days. It's the consistent, it's the consistent jerk that I have. . Yeah. But I mean, honestly, that, that doesn't happen often, Mike, I mean, uh, uh, most people are, I mean, especially when you're hiring professionals like us, I mean, for the most part, people come to us want help and are willing to, to listen and Hey, listen, we're not trying to say we're right all the time, either.

Yeah, absolutely not. I mean, I'm, we're not geniuses. Um, so, you know, we're just relaying experiences and yeah. Looking at it, you know, we have no emotion tied to these businesses. Great. None. Um, and so we don't know the employees, we don't know the community, we don't, we're looking at it objectively and providing objective advice.

And so we do need feedback from the client to go, Hey, you know, here's this situation, here's, what's unique about it. What if I did it this way? So we can talk through it as a team. I mean, we're your advisors. 

Mark Nelson: And I've said this for years that, you know, independent pharmacies are independent for a reason, you know, that's what I can come up with, you know what I think, and maybe you agree is the perfect workflow operation and the person beside you says, oh, that's totally wrong.

Why would you ever do it like that? And for their business, it might. And so that's where we have to come in and analyze, you know, the logistics, the staff, so many things play a part in making that work. And, and, you know, we just always have to go in with that in mind, too, that each business is unique and it's like your child, you know, so coming in and not trying to attack it.

Trying to keep a kid outta prison. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Separate question for both of you. If someone said that you were not allowed in the pharmacy anymore and not allowed to do this for pharmacy, but [01:00:00] you have this business model set up of, of knowing inventory and knowing employee wages, you know, and knowing profits and things like that.

But you couldn't use it for pharmacy separately. What other field do you think would be really cool to do this with? Oddly, 

Owen BonDurant: my neighbor owns four pharmacies, my next door neighbor, a whole nother topic, but yes, in the same area as us, he owns pharmacies and he's about my age. And we talk about this all the time.

It's professionals. So the HVAC company, the, um, the plumber, the electrician, because they have the same mentality. As a pharmacist, they are technicians, right? They're good at fixing things. They don't understand the business side. You see so many of these electricians where, you know, you can't get 'em to call you back.

Right. Well, that's a simple fix, hire a customer service company. They're, they're a dime a dozen or hire someone at $15 an hour to call people back and you will have twice as much business. Um, so I know I, it's a similar kind of problem where, you know, pharmacists are great pharmacists. They got into pharmacy school to actually avoid business.

Okay. And so did the electrician, so did the plumbers. So I just think that there's a whole market there to teach. Uh, people know how to operate their businesses a little bit better. I 

Mike Koelzer, Host: agreed. And I don't know if you're familiar with this book. There's a book out by Michael Gerber. The emo 

Owen BonDurant: emo is one of my favorite books.

That's a great book. Oddly. He has the emo accounting because accountants can't run their own business. Right. He got that. I 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I think he's got a dentist's office or something like that, too. Dentist doctors. He teaches that. Even if you are the only person in the business, you've gotta get this written down.

Pretend like you're wearing 16 different hats label, all those hats label, everything. So when you do start growing, 

Owen BonDurant: you know that if you've never read the emo, by the way, As a pharmacy owner, you should go buy it 

Mike Koelzer, Host: today. Yeah. It's a great book. It's a real fun read. 

Owen BonDurant: I see that in plumbers and electricians and painters and, oh, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: It's terrible.

The one thing that really gets to me though, is once you get someone like that, then they go too far the other way. And they come in and the first thing they wanna do is sign you up for their yearly maintenance thing. And if you give me four stars on this, my boss is gonna send me to, uh, on a cruise. So please do this and that.

And it gets too far like this marketing crap. And I wish just like you were saying, it would someone. Give me some good business without taking it 

Mark Nelson: too far as those words came outta your mouth Owen. Uh, I was kind of letting the air out because that's, I was gonna say almost the same thing. I went through the process of building a house and it was the most convoluted disconnected process that I've ever experienced.

And I found myself, you know, all my vacation, all my weekends before work, after work checking things. And you know, it was the left hand, didn't know what the right hand was doing. And, surely there has to be a better way. Sure. That there's technology. And I was getting, you know, draws for payment, hand scribbled notes for, you know, Best Buy gift cards, cuz that's how they paid the one guy.

And it's just a, in my opinion, a very overly complicated flaw process that could be really improved through technology. So that does include your plumbers, your electricians, keeping everybody on the same page, getting everybody on a Monday board or something. At least you 

Mike Koelzer, Host: guys are familiar with Monday and this is a product that used to be called DUL until a couple years ago.

They changed it to Monday. It's called Monday, which is a terrible name because it's very confusing when you're talking to someone too. Well, we'll do it on, we'll do it on Monday and it's kind of like Abbott and Costello. Like who's on first, you know, that routine very much makes you too young for that. No, no, I know that one.

Yeah, but, but just getting something like that and we've even toyed with that at the pharmacy of having just like a call center, you know, and just yeah. Hiring some college kid and just teaching 'em that board and boy that could do so much for. Businesses, you know? Well, Mark and Owen. Golly, thanks for talking to you guys.

That was really interesting. Oh, you're 

Owen BonDurant: more than welcome. Yeah. Well, thanks for having us. This was fun. Yeah. I actually just enjoyed the conversation. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: When I first started this, I said, my goal is to make this interesting and entertaining. That's what I enjoy doing. If I'm driving with someone in the car, somewhere up to, you know, my cottage or something, I would just like to do that.

And I've never made this a goal to cover every aspect of something and having [01:05:00] to hit all the points. And certainly not talking about medicine. I don't have any, any cells left for that? No, I've always made it just something that I wanted to do and not cover everything and not teach, not educate. Just. You know, just have a conversation.

I forget sometimes I'm doing this. I just like the ability to meet some really neat guys and gals like yourself. 

Mark Nelson: That's the beautiful thing about independent pharmacy is that's what we 

Mike Koelzer, Host: get to do. Yeah. Independent pharmacy is great. I mean, you can, I was on this school board years ago and we would talk stuff over and over and over for months.

And then finally the priest would come. One board meeting, he'd say, you know, basically that's stupid. We're not doing that. , it's like we just talked about this for four months and you know, the great thing about the independent pharmacy and a lot of independent businesses is you can decide overnight.

If you want to switch your same day delivery to next day delivery and then really pay it up for the antibiotics and pain medicine and make those people feel extra special because they're getting it the same day. No, no, 

Owen BonDurant: You, you have that freedom to make choices. Well, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: It was a real pleasure. You guys. I wish you all the best.

I'm looking forward to keeping in touch. Thanks, Mike. All 

Owen BonDurant: right. Thank 

Mike Koelzer, Host: you, Mike. Sounds good guys. Take care.