Pharmacy Business Loans | Mike Bollinger, senior vice-president, Live Oak Bank

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] You're listening to the business of pharmacy podcast with me, your host, Mike Koelzer.

Well, hello, Mike, how are you? I'm doing well. Thanks for joining us today. 

Mike Bollinger: Thank you for having me very happy to be here 

Mike Koelzer, Host: for the listeners that haven't come across you online. Introduce yourself. And why are we talking today? What's going on 

Mike Bollinger: hot. First off. Thanks for having me. Uh, I am Mike Bollinger, the senior vice president, head of pharmacy lending at Live Oak Bank.

Uh, Live Oak specializes in niche markets for small business lending, trying to be the best bank for small businesses in America. Um, we are dedicated to the doers and as part of that, with regards to pharmacy specifically, uh, we mainly focus on acquisition financing to help people buy and sell pharmacies.

Throughout the country and any other pharmacy needs that they may have 

Mike Koelzer, Host: when I think of live Oak, I know that you have other relationships out there, but I'm thinking like this would be like, uh, what's that show the bachelorette or something on TV where I think that I'm the only one, cuz I just hear live Oak, talking to pharmacies.

How many other specialties do you have outside of pharmacy? 

Mike Bollinger: Uh, so live Oak. Self has about 30 different what we call verticals. We're a younger bank that we started in 2008, which is a great time to start a bank during a financial crisis. We had a couple guys that really understood banking, uh, really well.

They also thought that the banking system might be a little bit broken. And so they decided to come up with a new model that is really a genius model. If you think about it. And now looking back 12 years, I mean, to expand from one vertical to now 30, um, and bringing this model to. To the market, uh, it's really proven itself out.

And so we were known as the doggy bank back then, cuz we only did veterinary loans. We would bring in somebody that totally knew the vet space backwards floors inside out, and who better to loan to those people than, you know, people that actually knew what that business looked like. And so you bring in the banking experience on top of knowing the vet practices that you're gonna loan money to, then that makes for a really good loan.

And it gives you a better chance of success, not only at the borrower level, but also bank level. Yeah. And so the second vertical that we went into was dentistry. And then in 2010, we got into Pharmacy. . And so what's neat about that is at the time we brought in a guy that was actually a pharmacist, he had owned, bought and sold a couple independents, actually more than a couple independents.

And, uh, so he brought that expertise into the model and then they matched him up with a banker, like an historical banker. Um, and then the two of them, you know, just went to the market and said, okay, how can we help pharmacies get into the space? So, um, keep, keep that going then you, you know, you start going into.

You know, in insurance, uh, agents, uh, investment advisors. Yeah. Uh, education. Um, so wine and craft, beverage, self storage, we're, we're in all these different metrics, uh, or markets now. Um, and the model has stayed the same where we bring in subject matter experts. And then we use that expertise. To build a really good portfolio.

And then ultimately it makes for a better loan, not only for the, for the borrower. So my background is more pharmacy than it is banking. Um, I started working at an independent when I was 15 and here I am, you know, 43. So. I don't know the math on that, but I think it's 80 years in, in pharmacy years. so it's, uh, you know, it's kind of, it's kind of all I know.

Mike Koelzer, Host: That's really cool. Yeah, because it does make for a better relationship because there's no surprises later from the pharmacy. Like those guys didn't understand this and that you guys have a safer loan because you already know what things are. The DIR fees and all this stuff that goes on. You're not gonna get surprised later by sitting in a breakfast three years later, talking about someone's loan, they wanna renew, and they're finally finding out like what DIR fees 

Mike Bollinger: are.

That's absolutely correct. When you match up the experience

with a lending situation. It, it really, it, it really makes for a great outcome. Um, and what's proven that out is that we've done pharmacy loans now for 10, almost 11 years. Um, we spent about a thousand loans, um, and it's a, it's over a billion dollars lent to just pharmacies in that timeframe. Um, our defaults are extremely low and I think there are a couple reasons for that one, the expertise on the front end, the time that we're spending with you is not so much you know, telling me why I should loan to a pharmacy.

There's a lot of reasons that you would not want to, but if you know what you're looking at to your point DIR fees, um, the receivables that the cycles of how they pay their wholesaler and all those different things, while we're doing our due diligence, we're looking for [00:05:00] things that are really going to trip someone up down the road.

Whereas if you don't know those things and you're just looking at it for phase value, then you really don't know what you're getting. Um, so a lot of the due diligence that we're working towards is honestly looking at prescription counts. We look at controlled substance reports. We look at where you're located, that can alter, you know, whether or not you're successful.

So we put all that in place. So that's the front end. The back end is something that's very unique to the market in that Live Oak has dedicated relationship managers and their sole goal is to be a partner with you along the way until your loan is paid off and full. And what they do is every three months, six months, nine months a year, they're getting your financials for pharmacy customers.

We get their script counts. And what we're looking for is not to be a big brother, but it's really to be an ally with you. If you're running off the tracks, you might be so ingrained in the business. You might not see some things. Whereas we might see something ahead of time and then we're not afraid to go in and say, okay, let's roll up our sleeves and figure it out.

So they may bring in me. Um, and then I start looking at the stores and, or maybe talking with the, the owner to figure out what's going on. Whereas some weak links, uh, we may bring in consultants. We may bring in, you know, whatever it may be. We may build a website for you if that's what it is. At the end of the day, we're bringing that to you as the borrower, with the one goal of not letting you default and, and what we need to do to get you there.

We're, we'll, we'll roll up our sleeves and, and take you there. So knowing the experience on the front end. Then matching that with not just leaving you alone. Once we do the loan, that's really, the beginning is once we do the loan and stay with you all the way through, um, those two things married together make for a really, really good experience for the borrowers.

And if you're a first time owner with no experience, what a tremendous asset to have. The bank is sitting there on your behalf, making sure that you're following the right path. And if you do fall off for whatever reason, which is gonna happen from time to time, uh, you have a resource to call and, and we, we give that to our folks.

Mike Koelzer, Host: What usually is going to stand in the way of everything looking good to everybody, but you know, something's not gonna work. What typically is that, that nobody's seeing except you guys, and you say, sorry, this isn't gonna go. Uh, well, 

Mike Bollinger: from a personal standpoint, um, a lot of times it's personal credit. Um, that's, that's typically what you'll find.

I would say from a store perspective, we look for concentration risk. We look for anything that we think might not be sustainable going forward. And, and if we can't get something to add up, we'll ask and ask and ask until we get an answer. But, um, sometimes the things that people provide just don't add up or it's yeah, the numbers don't, it's something that we just can't quite put our finger on.

You gotta tread with those and just figure out like, is this something we just, you know, take a chance on or do we not? What does that term mean? 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Concentration risk quickest 

Mike Bollinger: An example I could give you is if you're doing a long term care acquisition, Let's say 80% of the business is made up of one facility.

If that facility happens, then you've got a loan based on a million dollars, but then now you're at 200,000 your back the loan. So, you know, there's other things, uh, it could be a PBM mix. It could be. Control substances. It could be anything. What is 

Mike Koelzer, Host: the mix of the customer? Gotcha. Or not the customer, but the, the customer of your 

Mike Bollinger: customer, uh, right.

Yeah. Of the business that they're looking to acquire or the business that they currently own. Yeah. So we're, we're just looking to see, is there anything, is there anything in the business that we can foresee that would. Prohibitive to, to go forward and, and pay back the loan. And if there's anything like that, then we try to draw that, you know, draw that out and then do some homework on it and make sure that we understand fully what is the risk and is there mitigants to that risk or is it just something that we say, okay, we know it and do we, you know, try to burden the deal a different way to make sure that it can cash flow.

If it was to lose that business? Um, we actually did a deal, um, A year and a half ago they had a large chunk of their business as one type of business and we felt they could go away at any moment and enough did. Yeah. Um, but we modeled it in such a way that they, when it went. When it went away, he was still protected because we did some things with the cash flow and made sure that it all worked, um, without that business.

So that gave us some comfort to say, yeah, it's not the best case scenario, but if it was to happen, would you need to do this and this and this, which was, you know, maybe get, unfortunately, have to get rid of an employee or do whatever he made those commitments to us. And, and about seven months into his ownership, that business went.

He did the weather and it came out. Okay. But it's because we did the extra homework on the front 

Mike Koelzer, Host: end. Yeah. It's good to talk about that [00:10:00] stuff ahead of time, too, because a lot of times people don't, but then they know what's coming. Absolutely. Is there a way, do you guys usually do a yes or no for someone who.

It's not gonna work or do you ever bring stuff down so much where you don't have to say no. It's like, okay, you don't trust somebody. It's like we'll loan you 20 bucks or at some point you say, 

Mike Bollinger: no, we absolutely say no. Um, we have to, um, but what I usually tell people is if we're telling you, no, it's not because we just wanna be mean to you.

It's because there's some legitimate reason, something that we have seen either in the business model or the way it's structured or whatever, whatever the reasoning is. Um, we want to just tell you that up front, because if I put myself in your shoes and you're gonna loan me a million, you know, million, five, or whatever the number is.

I'm responsible to pay back 1,000,005. And, if you see something, I want you to tell me about it. Um, and so usually, usually when we say no, it's, it's, there's a real reason as to why. Um, and, and some people heed that advice. Other people go somewhere else and try to get, you know, get it done somewhere 

else.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Well, it's like the whole housing market people should have been. No more often. Right. I mean that would've solved a lot of stuff from 15 years ago or 

Mike Bollinger: whatever. Yeah. And in, and in business, I mean, business is tough already, you know, on its own there, you know, you, you, you add things to it that could really.

You know, impact the business and you know, I'm a big fan. My personal mantra is I, I don't like surprises, not even surprise birthday parties. So don't throw me one of those. I'll make note of that I really just don't like surprises. So the last thing I want to do is surprise you with anything when you're buying business.

Because, um, because one, you're gonna spend a lot of time and energy. We're gonna spend a lot of time and energy. And if we know it on the front end, we're just gonna be like, look, this is what we see. Here's some things we think we can mitigate those things, or here's some things that we just cannot get comfortable with and here's why, and then it's up to them at that point.

If something 

Mike Koelzer, Host: gets lost, both sides lose. It's not like you're walking away from a sale and you're, you're in a relationship. With somebody, Mike, what are some things that looked good in 2014? I know right now you focus a lot on acquisitions, but what are some things that looked good in 2014? That doesn't look so good.

Now, what areas did you invest in pharmacy? You know, loans and so on back six years ago, that wouldn't be as fruitful now for either side. That's a really 

Mike Bollinger: Good question. Um, the. There's, there's, there's an unpopular, uh, thing, but we really have to be strategic in startups, your, your traditional startup. Um, we have really shied away from that over the last few years.

Um, and when I say a startup that that's, you've never owned anything before you find a building or, you know, a parking lot somewhere, and you're like, oh, that'd be a great spot for a pharmacy. But what you find in that a lot of times is, is people, the location picks them. They don't pick the location.

And, and a lot of, you know, when you're doing a startup, you really there's a lot of barriers to entry. Um, they can be overcome, but they, you really have to be dedicated. You have to be prepared to not have a salary. You need to. Have a good marketing plan to get people in your door. Um, and you know, that's a tough thing, um, especially in today's world.

So we stay in those. Um, and, and I would say the other thing is, is refinancing. Um, we're, we're very cautious with refinancing debt, um, in pharmacies, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: if it was bad over the last few years, the next few. Might be better, but there's a good chance. It's gonna look worse. What did you mean by the, uh, location chooses you that a location's gonna be a good one.

You're not gonna make a good location. 

Mike Bollinger: You gotta 

put a pharmacy where people will come, right? There's a giant change of behavior that has to happen for you to go from, you know, Mike's pharmacy to Mike's pharmacy. Um, and, and so. If you don't do the homework and know what prescribers are in that market and know how many pharmacies are in that market, how many scripts are being filled in that market?

If you don't do all that homework and then say, because of that homework, I'm going to put a pharmacy here because of true data due diligence, or at least homework and background. A lot of people tend and, and this is a generalization. I get that. But it does happen a lot. Unfortunately people will just see a building somewhere oh, for sale and, and then they'll go do it.

And, and, you know, that's why I said the building, the location picked them. They didn't necessarily take the location. Um, and, and that's what I mean is, is doing your homework, knowing that there's a high dense population [00:15:00] population of, you know, people that have prescriptions or how many scripts are being filled or whatever, whatever those metrics are for your specific deal.

Um, just not finding something because it's for sale. That 

Mike Koelzer, Host: That's all. And I've always said like, when people say, Hey, we should do this. It's like, all right. But you have to realize that. The population is already being serviced with that product. It's not like people are saying, I don't know where to fill a prescription.

Oh, there's a pharmacy. Now I can fill a prescription. They might not like the pharmacy they go to, or they might want to change, but wanting to and not liking is different than not having 

it at all. 

Mike Bollinger: No, you're, you're dead on because the number one question is where am I going to get prescriptions? And, and if you can't answer that, or a lot of times, quite honestly, the answer that we get is, well, I'm just gonna, you know, just crush 'em with customer service, but you stick a step, you have to get the person in the door to give them the customer service.

And if you can't get them to change their behavior from the other pharmacy that they're going to, then you're gonna not be able to give them the service that you really want to provide. And, and I, I fully believe you would do that with customer service, but you have to get 'em in the. And the change of behavior for prescriptions is a really hard thing to do sometimes.

And so it's, it's an uphill battle. Um, but some people do it strategically. Maybe look at a backfill, which is we call a backfill, but you know, maybe an independent sold to a chain and that town is no longer with an independent to service them where they would want or, um, you know, somebody sells out their files to somebody else or something like that.

Um, you know, so some of those will work, um, and they turn out to be really good, actually, if you can do it right. Um, but, but again, Then you also have the PBMs to deal with. You have the licensing components and there's a lot of barriers to entry, unfortunately, about 

Mike Koelzer, Host: the only place. And I ain't no banker of course, about the only place that I could picture new customers and, and a new pharmacy popping up without the back fill you were talking about.

And so on. Would be like in Arizona or somewhere where all of a sudden there's like this new, like miles of development, you know, cause they opened up a new highway or something like that. Are those times, or is that still 

Mike Bollinger: problematic? If you really feel it, you can get prescriptions, uh, and, and do it really well.

I mean, cuz they. This is an anecdotal number. I think it, it could really depend on your situation cuz it's all over the board now, but you know, it, it used to be estimated 80 scripts a day used to be break even well now it's, now it's closer to a hundred, um, because the margins have shrunk. Right? And so if you can't, if you can't honestly know that you're gonna get to 1 50, 200 a day, , you know, you, that's a challenge and then you, the other thing is what kind of scripts are being filled?

Cuz you can have all the population you want, but if they're all getting $4 generics or you know, a bunch of maintenance meds, you're not gonna really make a living. Um, and so there's a lot that goes into that. Um, then just the location's important. You gotta have it, but then you need to know what the scripts are being written.

You know, what types of doctors are around? Where are the people going today? I don't know if it's a geographical thing, as much as it's answering those questions to then set yourself up for the best success, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: what would it look like? If someone said we're doing great, you know, we're in a hundred year old building on main street, a new thing opened up across the street.

We wanna put up a new double size building. What kind of risk or customers are those nowadays? Is that something that? Interests you guys, or I know there's a ton of problems. I don't see. So what are the problems and stuff 

Mike Bollinger: with that? When we say startups, the way we've been talking, um, we're talking about the, you know, no ownership experience, you know, first time owner kinda people.

Um, we, we do look at expansions and expansions would be you own a pharmacy or two or three, and you wanna go start up a fifth or sixth. We could look at it. Um, because we have a track record with you as an owner, we can, we can leverage and, and cross collateralize your existing stores. Um, and so that's a difference to us like startup versus expansion startup.

Those are two different things to us. Um, or, and, and I don't know if this is where you're going with your question, but. You know, if, if you wanted to expand and, and build a bigger location or move down the street or something to that effect. Yeah. We do all of those kinds of things. You have 

Mike Koelzer, Host: some solid numbers you can go off of.

You just don't have hopes and dreams behind that. 

Mike Bollinger: Yeah. Cuz projections are just that they're projections and. You know, I've never seen projections be a hundred percent, right? Because it's, it's impossible. You'll never know what you can grow. You can grow too [00:20:00] fast. You can grow too slow and both have the same result in your cash flow.

You could run outta cash, just, it takes you longer to run outta cash or you run outta cash quicker. So, um, It's so, you know, modeling out projections is a hard thing. And when you use the SBA product, which is what we primarily use for pharmacy, although some of the multi-store owners may get, you know, a non, non SBA loan, um, it's cash flow lending, and, and you don't have that tangible asset that you're trying to.

So it makes for a great avenue for pharmacy, but it really relies on that cashflow to be sufficient to support the debt and all the other expenses that are out. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: All right. I kind of followed this whole conversation until then. What does that mean, SBA versus the other one? And how does that change stuff?

Is it cuz you don't have the collateral? Where were you going with that? Dumb that 

Mike Bollinger: down for me. Yep. So SBA is a small business administration. Um, they have an SBA seven, a product, which is primarily what you'll see in the pharmacy space. Um, okay. And then you have what would be considered more of a commercial or non SBA, um, type of loan.

Okay. Um, the main difference is, uh, a SBA loan is a really great product for pharmacy because it does not rely on a tangible asset. You can actually use the cash flow of the business to make the determination. The difference 

Mike Koelzer, Host: of a tangible asset would be like a huge machine you have or something real 

Mike Bollinger: estate would be your, your primary thing.

So if you, if you went to a non SBA lender, the first question they may ask you is how much real estate is part of this deal. And then they know that they can collateralize the deal with that piece of real estate with an SBA loan or a cash flow loan. What you're gonna be looking at is the cash flow of the pharmacy itself.

Has to support the debt service that is gonna be incurred. And that's a big distinction. The 

Mike Koelzer, Host: current cash flow has to do that. Where with the other kind of loan, you might say, well, we don't have any cash flow yet. We're starting with this collateral, but we're gonna get there, but you have the collateral if you don't need it.

So the current cash flow is like what you have to go on. 

Mike Bollinger: Right? So we're looking at historical cash flow and saying based on the historical performance. We believe that the loan could be paid back because it's performed this way for the last three years or three and a half years, whatever it's, you're using historical data to kind of predict if the store can support it going forward for pharmacy, it works out really well because a lot of pharmacies don't actually own their buildings, believe it or not.

And a lot of, if you think about the largest asset of the pharmacy is the prescription file. So as a bank, we can't come in and take that from you because of all sorts of regulations. Um, your second largest is inventory, which as the bank, I don't, I can't do anything with your inventory because that's gonna go to the whole, um, so your two largest assets are things that I can't even come after.

So. So that's where, you know, using cash flow to make the decision, is it works out really well for pharmacies. Do 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Have you ever had to go to a trade show? Unfortunately no. Yes. Those must suck. Don't swear or anything so that we have to cut this out, but do those suck 

Mike Bollinger: trade shows are, uh, uh, a necess. Very evil in a way we do a bunch a year.

Again, it kind of follows our mantra though. Like us, we want to be face to face with people. Yeah, of course. We want to physically meet you. We wanna physically engage in dialogue and right. I'm big on making, you know, relationships or building relationships with people. Sure. Um, you know, trade shows are, are great for that.

Um, now it does keep me on the road quite a bit more, um, like with the big wholesalers, their three are always in, you know, July for the most part this year, they would've been. Literally three weeks, one back to back to back three weeks in a row. Yeah. So, you know, I, I wouldn't see my family for, for almost a month, but it's, uh, but it's good to see, you know, the people that work at those wholesalers and it's good to see the customers that go there.

Um, it's also fun to see our existing customers who walk up and be like, Hey, thank you so much. We wouldn't be here without the guys. And so it is. It's necessary. Um, and, and I mean, at the end of the day, we like 'em because it does help us, you know, build the brand awareness and, and get out to people that may not have found us 

otherwise, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: As far as your job goes, what's the favorite 10% of time, the favorite four or five hours a week.

Let's 

Mike Bollinger: say one of the things that I absolutely love. And, uh, I'm biased on this clearly because we do it. Um, and I feel we do it the best is structuring the deals. Um, there are a lot of ways to structure a deal, you know, the best that it can be for both the borrower. And if there's a seller involved in an acquisition, we wanna make sure that it hits their objectives as well.

And so for me, knowing the business, like we know. And being able to use the rules that are provided by the SBA and all the different things to us. Um, kinda like 

Mike Koelzer, Host: you're an artist, like painting. You can decide what the pig from, 

Mike Bollinger: and it is a, it is art, there's art and science and, uh, [00:25:00] I have a whiteboard in my office.

And, uh, there's some times that we will literally just scratch on it for hours just to figure it out. Um, that was a deal we did about three years ago. Um, we literally structured it 18 different ways until we figured out it was the most. Advantageous for all parties to go this route. And then we presented that to the buyer and the seller and they both said, oh, that, that sounds really great for us, you know?

So, that's really exciting to me. I like getting into the weeds of the deal and, and, you know, from that standpoint, that involves me working with my team. Um, and, and I thoroughly enjoy managing my team. Um, so I think that the second half of that question is just working with my direct reports and my extended family team.

You know, underwriters, closers, whoever it may be credit that's that's honestly the, what I, what I enjoy the most 

Mike Koelzer, Host: at my pharmacy. Now I have banker hours because I used to have the hours till late night and stuff. And I got to a certain age. I said, screw it. When I think of banker hours though, are there times though where you're getting, like where they're not banker hours, where you're getting like a late night nervous phone call from someone because the business seller demanded this or so on, or is pretty much a lot of stuff like the next day is the next day and and'll handle it.

Mike Bollinger: We're pretty much on 24 7. You know, I mentioned earlier, we're dedicated to the doers in that we wanna treat everybody. Everybody as if they're our only customer and yeah. And the only way for you to really accomplish that is to answer the phone every time they ring, if they call you in a day and you can't get to 'em at least send them something back saying, Hey, I got your message, whatever, sure.

By a sundown rule that we want to make sure we follow up with everybody. That same day I was doing it. Phone calls and emails yesterday. And, you know, on Sunday, part of the process that we've employed here is just really, we want to make sure that we take care of the customer and, and that means sometimes being on call for them.

There's also some confidentiality with some of these deals and they don't want to talk here in the store. So they wanna talk after hours, or we're very sensitive to all of those 

Mike Koelzer, Host: things. Or people start worrying when, you know, late at night when they're not so busy that you're almost like a psychiatrist for me, if you were a pharmacist and.

You knew that a year from now, you were gonna come for a loan, let's say, well, let's say and expand. Let's say you're gonna go from four to five stores or something like that. You know, expand that way. What are a few things that you'd be doing now a year out if you were. A pharmacist, you know, whether it's books or making phone calls or whatever, what would you be 

Mike Bollinger: doing?

Obviously preparation is key. Um, so if, if you're gonna give yourself that year, window of time, um, the, some of the easier things would just be, you know, obviously keep your credit score up. Don't miss any payments in that regard. But then if you have other businesses that you're going to leverage or at least show that, Hey, I have a track record, just make sure that you're managing those in, in the right way.

And then you need cash on hand. So cash is one of the biggest things that a lot of pharmacists, a lot of new pharmacists owners don't have cash as enough to bring up the down payment or whatever those rules can change a little bit when you own an existing pharmacy and you're going to buy a second, third, fourth, fifth, whatever, try to figure.

First off, what kind of business do I wanna buy in a year? Do I want traditional retail? Do I want long term care? Do I want something special? Compounding: do I want a large front end, small front end? What kind of town do I want? Do I want, you know, Metro, you know, downtown or do I want rural? So a lot of that stuff is just more fundamental questions about what you want as an owner.

Um, and then just start doing your research into that from, from there, knowing what you want to buy, I would make sure that your own house is in order. Cuz if you, if you're not doing well in your current environment, in your current stores, You know, you might have to fix that before you go do an expansion.

Uh, and, and so just keeping your existing store in the optimal position possible either from revenue trends or script counts, just profit in general. So I think just really preparing yourself to, to really take the step. And then once you' the opportunity, then you're fully ready to go. The other factor is if you're going from one to two, That might be a harder jump than going from four to five.

And so knowing that leaning into some mentors or some folks that have done that jump and saying, what, what happened? What, what were the things that caught you off guard? What were the things you would've done differently? So the other thing is just rely on all your resources. Um, there, there's so many resources in this industry now that weren't there even five, six years ago.

Um, you've got pharmacy specific CPAs. Now you've got pharmacy specific lawyers and attorneys. You've got pharmacy specific banks like Live Oak, and you've got wholesalers that have tremendous resources. You've got GPOs. I mean, there's all these, you have buying groups, you have all these different resources that you didn't [00:30:00] have a few years ago and they all bring something to the table.

So tap into all those different things. How early 

Mike Koelzer, Host: would be. Too early for someone to reach out to you, let's say they've got three stores. Now they wanna double that in five years. How early should they be reaching out to you to say hello or 

Mike Bollinger: I, I mean, for me, I would say it's never too early because you, you might learn something.

You know, based on your specific situation that you may not have known. And then we could say, oh, well, because of this, you might wanna do this, this and this first, or, um, actually based on this, we could do X, Y, Z, and then it might change the structure of something. I would say it's never too early. So 

Mike Koelzer, Host: your CEO comes in and says, Mike, We're gonna send you on a year sabbatical, but it's not gonna be like traveling with your family.

You still have to do something nine to five for the whole year, but it can't be banking. Can't be a pharmacy. What would you do? 

Mike Bollinger: I would produce music. . Produce music. Yep. I'm a big musician. Yeah. When I was 16, I went to my parents and asked them for a loan to buy some DJ equipment, and paid me back all $600 with interest.

I was a DJ for many, many years until I started working full time. But the one thing that if I could ever do anything, I would, I would love to produce music. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: And when you say produce, you would produce for an artist or would you play some of the stuff 

Mike Bollinger: yourself? No, I have no musical talents whatsoever. so that's why I was a DJ.

I could play somebody else's music, but no I'm saying like produce, like in the booth 

Mike Koelzer, Host: mixing in that kind of stuff. Do you still dabble in that then as, as a hobby, do you still do some things or not only 

Mike Bollinger: recreational so like, whenever we get together in a group of friends, they always nominate me to, to DJ the party or something, but.

But we had a town hall with all the live Oak employees the other day. And, and they, you know, the president asked me to pick a couple songs for the intro and outro. So I was, you know, some of those things, but I sold my equipment. Did you have a scratch table? Uh, at one point I had it all. Um, but I ended up selling all my equipment.

At a very, very, very deep discount to a church group, a young youth church group that needed some equipment. So that's ever since then, I just never got back into it, but I bet those were some late nights. It did, but at the time I was single and, uh, you know, going to college and I was working at a pharmacy full time, going to school full time and then DJing on the side.

So it was. You know, it's quite the time, but, uh, I loved every minute of it. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Do you guys have a music vertical? It sounds like you might want to go over there once in a 

Mike Bollinger: while. Might need to start one, but that's number 31. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Take care. Thanks 

Mike Bollinger: again. Thanks for having us.

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