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Joe Williams owns three pharmacies. He loves solving problems and has turned that into a business helping other independent pharmacies with their operations.
This transcript was generated automatically. Its accuracy may vary.
[00:00:15] Mike Koelzer, Host: Well, hello, Joe.
[00:00:16] Joe Williams, PharmD: Hey, how are you, Mike?
[00:00:17] Mike Koelzer, Host: I'm doing well. Thanks for joining us today. It's a pleasure to be here. Tell our listeners who you are if they haven't happened to have come across you online yet.
[00:00:26] Joe Williams, PharmD: Well, sure thing. Um, my name is Joe Williams. I'm a multi-store, uh, pharmacy owner in North Carolina and, uh, kind of by happenstance, I've become, I've been called the inventory guru.
I've been called, um, operation, the, the efficient operations guy. I've got all these different nicknames, but basically who I am is I'm the, uh, the primary consultant or the, uh, founding consultant of NDR consulting. We're just small. uh, pharmacy consulting business that tries to work with owners and operators and just pharmacists in general, to make their stores run smoother and try to take as much pressure off of them and try to maximize different, uh, more efficient models within their stores.
[00:01:08] Mike Koelzer, Host: Okay. So operations, those get to be some tough things, but the tougher things are dealing with these things we call humans. And do you get to avoid that with your consulting or are you stuck sometimes with them being part of the operations? Because I hate dealing with humans a lot of the time. Well, I mean, God knows.
I hate dealing with me
[00:01:32] Joe Williams, PharmD: too, so yeah, no, no. Uh, human. I have a great friend. We were talking this morning and I, we, we had this thing, we said that, that people are both the best and worst part of being a pharmacy owner or operator. Right? Yeah. So if it weren't for them, we couldn't do it. Right. My focus tends to be the, the people that I tend to spend the most time with when I'm working in a store is either the owner, uh, some sort of an operations manager, the pharmacist in charge staff, pharmacist, or maybe they have, um, a subset of techs that are like their superstar techs.
Yeah. Because see, what I do is, my goal is to work myself out of a job with every client that, that, that hires me honestly. Gotcha. And, and I tell 'em that from the get go, you know, I, I tend to spend your money, like it's mine. Sure. And, and so when we sign on, I wanna know what your goals of the call are, and then we're gonna jump right into it and we're gonna get to work and it's not gonna be Joe fixing every little thing that's wrong with your store.
Mm-hmm , it's gonna be Joe. Teaching you fundamental principles and talking you through my logic of why this needs to be this way and why this needs to look like this. And, and my favorite part of every call that I have is that aha moment. And you'll hear it. I have. This was yesterday, today's Thursday.
This was Tuesday. I was on the call and there was a team of people that I was working with at the same time remotely because of COVID. And I heard the, oh, and when I heard that in the background, I got so excited because I just realized that this person now was gonna be able to teach that entire staff around them.
Exactly what had just occurred in their brains. And so, you know, I'll get along with the owner. What are your goals? What do you wanna accomplish? What do you wanna do? Some of them have been pioneer users since day one, years and years ago. Yeah, this morning, I helped, um, someone who had only been using the pioneer software for about two months.
And I tend to focus just on pioneer users, just because that's what I'm most efficient at. And I feel like I can provide the greatest level of return for those client stores. Sure. Right. Right. And so this lady this morning, two months in our call was extremely different for someone who'd been a user for two months than a user who has been on pioneer for five or seven years.
Sure. Because they're, they're at different places. And that's one of the things that I offer, everything that we do for our clients is catered to their store. This is not the canned method of every store. And it's gonna, you know, be that way. My, you own a store, your, and you and I did this the other day on another PO on another video, you do things very differently than I do.
Yeah. It doesn't mean that yours is wrong or mine is wrong, or mine is right. Or yours is right. It just means we do them differently so I can take any systems that are in place in a pharmacy right now. And I can make them help that owner and teach that owner how to make those processes more efficient.
How many
[00:04:31] Mike Koelzer, Host: calls are you on with a typical client for a typical job? I mean, I know somebody might call you again in six months, but how many calls are you on? Is it one call or is it like three calls like a week apart
[00:04:46] Joe Williams, PharmD: or what? No, no, no. It depends on the store and it depends on the owners. So I get some owners that they'll walk in and they'll say, listen, I, I just got this system.
I know nothing about it. I need you to make me better. So at first I wanna understand all of these things, you know, how can I do these things? That was kind of how the call went this morning. And, so I took that owner in a two hour session, which probably took me six months to learn working. Gotcha.
So that's what I try to provide. I, I, I tell folks that most owners, whether they'll agree with me or not, have more money than they do time. Yeah. And so time is their most valuable asset. And if I can, for the little bit of money that's required to get me together with them. And the only reason I even charge is so that I can justify taking myself away from my own stores is so that they can get ahead of the curve where it takes others four to six months to figure out.
[00:05:43] Mike Koelzer, Host: So th that's usually with one call.
[00:05:47] Joe Williams, PharmD: So, the intro call is like the fundamentals of whatever it is their goal is. Okay. So if you said to me, Mike, like if you called me Mike, and it was our last call was about deliveries that we, that we, we did on the Facebook group. And it was, you know, we would've spent two hours and I would've taken you entirely through the whole delivery model soup to nuts, how to do this, how to do that the whole nine yards.
Then after the call, I'll send you out, basically a workbook. Explains in further detail and drills all the way down so that you can hand that to your technicians, to your cashiers, to everybody and say, this is how we do this now. Gotcha. And then you can implement that to the staff. And then after that call I'm, I'm, I'm kind of bold in this.
I just put myself out there. So my, my contact, my direct contact information is on everything. So if you have a call, you, or I had a question, excuse me, or there's any questions about those detailed documents? You just gimme a call or just shoot me an email. I don't even charge for that because it's usually like a five minute thing.
And again, I do this just to justify helping folks, the taking and taking myself away from my own businesses. Right. So they can call me or email me. I'll answer those. Now, if it's been. if it's been a month and they're calling me four times a week, right. It's time to schedule another session. Let's sit back down, let's put all this stuff back together and we'll go again.
So, so, so far the way that it's gone and I didn't start doing these, these virtually until COVID, I've always done this on site. So I would, oh, you have, yeah. I would fly to a store or I would drive to a store with, if it was within driving distance and I would spend a day or two there, like I'd go in and do an inventory overhaul.
I would go in and in two days I can take a store from no inventory system. Just complete chaos. Doesn't make any sense at all to a perpetual inventory system that buys smarter and saves the store money and reduces their cost of goods. In two days,
[00:07:47] Mike Koelzer, Host: when you are talking to someone. And probably some people like it differently.
Like if I was doing something, I typically, if, if I think I might be able to understand it, I typically want to know the process that got me there. So in the future, I can maybe make some changes and so on, but are, is some of this stuff, like you're physically setting it up and they don't really almost like calling like the pioneer help, you know, how they go in and do this and that.
And they don't explain everything. They just, they just say, we'll get this working for you. Are you doing that for setup or do you like teaching them the whole process?
[00:08:29] Joe Williams, PharmD: They do. So my, my goal is, is, is I, I, I tell store or operators, I said, all right, I'm gonna let you drive. Okay. Gotcha. I'm just the navigator that's sitting there.
So, they're actually doing it. Exactly. I, I try not to, the only time that you'll catch me doing it is if we've ran overtime, and, and I don't, unless, unless I just don't like you , I'm not gonna charge you if we go over the scheduled time by a little bit, if I'm like, all right, we gotta just finish this last little bit.
So I'm gonna do it real quick. And so I'll, I'll knock out some last minute stuff, but for the most part, I'm sitting back and I'm going all right, do you know how to build a category? Cuz we're gonna need a category for this kind of stuff that you won't getcha. They say, no, all right, go to this, go to this, go to this.
And then I sit there and I say, okay, this is how all of this works. This is how all of this ties in. This is why you do this. This is why you do that. And it's not just, Hey, I'm gonna get this working for you. Because again, my, my goal is to work. 'em out of a job. I, I, next time they need to build a category.
It doesn't need to be, I need to book a session with Joe, it's, I'm going to create a category. I'm gonna go build a trigger. I'm gonna go, you know, adjust my pricing model, et cetera, et cetera. Cetera. What's
[00:09:35] Mike Koelzer, Host: the worst personality that you either could. coach consult or have on your team, which kind of personality drives you nuts.
Um,
[00:09:49] Joe Williams, PharmD: we've always done it that way. Um, I get that a lot and they don't wanna adjust to anything that I've taught them or two. And, and is sometimes
[00:09:57] Mike Koelzer, Host: this, the, the person that actually hired you doing this, the
[00:10:00] Joe Williams, PharmD: one that is paying me is the one that's paying you as seeing this is how we do it or, or probably probably my least favorite is that's not gonna work here.
And I, and I get that. I get that more than I get anything because I, I D I've done this with stores that are doing like 40, like the store that I'm sitting in right now. Um, when I bought it, it was doing like 70 a day. Let's say, well, that does more than 600 a day. Now is Brisson Brisson. This is Brisson.
And so, um, I've done it in stores that have done like 40 a day and set them up. I've done it in stores that are cash only, and don't even want me to look at their pharmacy. They only care about their retail side. Gotcha. I've done it in stores that do 1500 prescriptions a day. And I, and my system works in all of them.
And so, and it's because, because again, those two stores are alike, so we make the necessary tweaks and changes to adjust to them. And then some it's, it's an all out completely custom, um, setup for that store.
[00:11:07] Mike Koelzer, Host: Like, so the person says we've always, we've always done it that way. Do you ever just say I'm outta here?
so
[00:11:14] Joe Williams, PharmD: I, I, I say that I, I will do that eventually, but honestly what I do is I have these things, I call 'em golden nuggets and I, and I hang onto 'em or Easter eggs. However you wanna talk about 'em. And I had this guy that I couldn't finish a sentence and he was like, that's not gonna work. That's not gonna work.
I said, okay, just I said, just wait a second. Right. And I said, I'm gonna show you something. And I built something that probably made him 10 grand in about a minute. And I said, this, this, this, this, and I just, I just kind of took over. Yeah. And I said, I just paid for myself for as many sessions as you want to have with me.
yeah. Now stop what you're saying and listen to me. And he's like, okay, all right, what else you got? And then, but then the problem with him after that was every time I'd start talking, he's like, when are you gonna do something else like that? Again? I'm like, listen, man, you just,
[00:12:06] Mike Koelzer, Host: you gave him the,
[00:12:08] Joe Williams, PharmD: you know, you can't make everybody
[00:12:09] Mike Koelzer, Host: happy.
Unfortunately you gave him the everlasting godstopper up front. And then that, that was your
[00:12:13] Joe Williams, PharmD: no, no, there's more, there's more, that's just, that's one of them. Yeah. I've, I've got some, uh, I went in one store and uh, this was an onsite and I found a half, a million dollars of lost annual revenue before lunch.
The first day I was there. Wow. So yeah, no, every single store you're gonna go into is different. The thing is, like I said earlier, you don't know what you don't know. Right. So if you've always done it that way and that just looks like that and you really haven't thought much about it. Well, then you, you don't realize that something's not right there.
Um, right. You know, and then some, some store owners. I, I, I, I see some, and they're the most, they're the best pharmacist. They're a hundred times better than me as a pharmacist. Like they knew more about, about therapy considerations. They knew more about everything story
[00:12:59] Mike Koelzer, Host: in my life. Exactly. You know what I mean?
And that's just my customers.
[00:13:02] Joe Williams, PharmD: Right, right, right, right. But, they don't know how to manage a lemonade stand, you know, quite frankly. Yeah. You know, and so the ones that will call me and they will just say, Hey, listen, I love, I love taking care of my patients. I love doing this. I love doing that. My story is great.
And I've had, 'em say, but I think I'm doing well despite myself. So I want you to help me and teach me. And those are my favorites because they recognize what their strengths are. And they recognize that, you know, they may have a few shortcomings there and they're like a blank canvas. Yeah. And, and, and they don't try to, they don't try to change what I tell them.
Yeah. They're like I say, okay, here, here's what you should focus on initially, because you've got to walk before you can run, right. So I want you to start doing this and this and this and this. And sometimes it's just fundamental things like, you know, it might be to call my friend, Jim and Benjamin jolly and let him get your DIRs plugged in.
Sure. And then circle back with me a little while later, and I'll show you a lot of operational things that you can use those for and how you can benefit from 'em, you know? Yeah. Uh, there's any number of things that we may be that we may do, but those people are my favorites because they're, they're, they're bright, intelligent, hard working people.
They just need some help and some key areas and you can make small, subtle changes in a store like that. And you can just see those stores climb up and do super, super.
[00:14:22] Mike Koelzer, Host: You can see 'em take off because they're so open to it.
[00:14:24] Joe Williams, PharmD: Absolutely.
[00:14:25] Mike Koelzer, Host: Absolutely. How long would you put up with that? If that was one of your employees?
Well, what
[00:14:29] Joe Williams, PharmD: Me with my employees? Yeah. Oh no, no, no, no, no, that just doesn't that's not gonna apply like, like less than a second if one of my stories. Yeah. Yeah. I, um, you know, I, I put a lot on the line when I bought my first store and I put a lot on the line every day, this is the way that I see it.
I put a lot on the line every day to provide a safe, secure, happy work environment for all of my employees and a good place to take care of my patients. And so if, if, if it's my employee and you don't, you don't trust and believe what I say, and it's not gonna be the way that I want it, then you're just not, you just don't fit in here.
You know, unfortunately, um, uh, I do everything that I can to look after you and, and to make sure that you are taken care of. And if you're not gonna do things my way. Well, I'm sure that the good folks at Walmart Walgreens and wherever else will let you do things. However you want to in their stores, you should go try that there.
[00:15:29] Mike Koelzer, Host: All right. Joel. So you come into Brisson and the stores are like a hundred years old, right? Right. It is. Yeah. All right. You come in some young punk that just got his pharmacy degree, his MBA, you walk in, here's the new owner and you've got some of the baggage. You've got these old ladies and these old guys that have been doing stuff forever.
That was day one. Did they know like, this is how we do things or did you have to grow into that by saying, you know what, this is bull crap. I've dealt with this now for six months. And I'm the owner. Did you know, from the first day that you were like, this is it.
[00:16:09] Joe Williams, PharmD: So let me tell you how that went. Yeah. So I remember, I remember this really well because, um, When I, when I came here, it was, there were only two staff members and one had been here for more than 30 years.
Just two that, well, they lived with 70 a day. Yeah. All right. Gotcha. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so, um, they had two staff members and one was a part-time tech, uh, and the other was, um, a 30 plus year employee. Okay. Well, maybe it wasn't 30 at the time, but it's well over 30 now. And, um, the 30 plus year employee pretty much ran the store.
Yeah. I mean, she did. She did. And I did get a lot of them, this is how we do this here. and, uh, and I said, I said, okay. And I see, I had worked, I, I worked as a, I didn't go to pharmacy school until I was 27. So I had a career before pharmacy school in management. My undergrad is in business too. Oh, okay. Gotcha.
Gotcha. So I had worked for a multibillion dollar company, a retailer, and well, I can say it here, I guess. Can mm-hmm it's a, I worked for Walgreens as a store manager. Oh, you did. That's what led me to go to pharmacy school. Oh, that's fascinating. Yeah. When I graduated from college, I was recruited into their management training program.
I worked my way up. I was a store manager, um, in less than two years. And, uh, I had 43 employees at the store that I was running when I stepped down to go to pharmacy school. No kidding. Mm-hmm yeah. So, no. Yeah. So, I have made a lot of HR mistakes on their dime. Gotcha. You know, so, so, and, and, and when you're, when you were in, when I was a, what they called an NGT or an assistant manager, and even an executive assistant, they would bounce us from store to store.
So I knew what it felt like to go be the new manager at a store. Yeah. And, and so when I came in and, and I'd made the mistake, like I was like, like you described that young cocky guy, right. Straight outta college. When I went into that first store in the second store, And, um, so the ones that you owned, no, this was at Walgreens the Walgreens assistant manager.
I was that young cocky. I'm still that young cocky guy now. I like to think, but you know, it was worse when I was 22 at Walgreens. But, um, and your hair's nicer now because it is, it is. I grew it out. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:18:22] Mike Koelzer, Host: You had an army cut back then. Yeah, I had to flat top too. My, yeah, I
[00:18:26] Joe Williams, PharmD: did. So growing it out
[00:18:28] Mike Koelzer, Host: It was a good decision, but you look, you look better than last week though.
Oh yeah. Last week was during the COVID it was terrible, but,
[00:18:34] Joe Williams, PharmD: uh but when I, when I, when I came here, I did get the, this is how we do this. And so I, this is what I did, honestly, Mike, I had this, uh, this. Spiral bound calendar. I started my sync program on day one, and I started developing my method for ordering day one as an owner.
Uh, my, the previous location, I worked at the owner. He didn't focus as much on those things as I wanted to because you know, it was my money now. And so I had this whole model that I started building on paper from day one and I would write down my daily volume. I didn't have, I didn't have pioneers.
Then I had another operating system. And so the reporting wasn't as good. So I just did a lot of stuff on paper and I kept track of all my pills. I mean, I remember days feeling like 22 prescriptions, 19 prescriptions, scared to death waking up at three in the morning, but chest pain not gonna be able to pay your bills.
Yeah. And I did it their way as, as she said for a few months, uh, three months, because I was trying to get acquainted with the town. I knew how valuable, um, her name is miss Brenda. How valuable Miss Brenda was to me. And she knew everything. Their mama, their grandmother, their child, their grandchild, everybody.
She knew everybody. So I needed to make sure that I, that I had a great relationship with her and I didn't want to come in and make her feel like what she thought, what she did didn't matter. Right. Because she wanted to see the store succeed. She'd been there so long. Yeah. They'd just been doing it a different way for a long time.
And I remember in April that if I bought it in January, that April, what year is this? Joe?
[00:20:11] Mike Koelzer, Host: 2015.
[00:20:12] Joe Williams, PharmD: 2015. Okay. Yeah. So that April, I said, it's my time. It's my store. I'm gonna start doing it the way that I want to do it. We grew by 50% within three months.
[00:20:26] Mike Koelzer, Host: All right. What did miss Brenda say during that conversation?
Or didn't you tell didn't you tell her she saw
[00:20:31] Joe Williams, PharmD: it. She saw it happen. Yeah. And she just didn't respond initially. She was like, I don't know about this. People are not gonna like this Joe people don't like this people don't like this and I'm like, no, miss Brenda, this is how we're gonna do it. Yeah. And, and then, and then I went through, um, those growing pains because, um, miss Brenda and I, and, and the, the, the part-time tech that we had, she, she went off to college, so we replaced her and then we, you know, we just kept adding.
Yeah. And I did have that revolving door. Sure. There for a little while, as we would go through these growth phases, because the thing about growing as fast as we grew was you would go from overstaffed to significantly understaffed overnight, you know, where you didn't have enough support. Exactly too. I'm the kind of guy because I'm a cash flow broker.
That's all I care about is cash flow. Yeah. Um, cuz if you got good cash flow, the profits will be there. And um, and so I would wait until. It was like, the train was starting to rock back and forth on the tracks and it was gonna tilt any time and then I'd bring somebody else in. And so that gotcha. She, Ms.
Brenda did have to have, and I still do that to this day cuz we keep growing. This store has never stopped growing, but she, uh, she, um, has to be patient with me at those times. And she's still here. She's still running my front end. Uh, I tell her, I tell her how much I appreciate her and how all of this. None of this has been possible without her.
I mean, I give her that.
[00:21:55] Mike Koelzer, Host: For our listeners. And Joe mentioned that we were talking the other night about deliveries and so on, on a, on a Facebook group thing. And you had mentioned that your lovely lady that takes care of the that's, her BI bimonthly billing. Uh, and it's like, we all know in pharmacy that you don't wanna get overrun by people by any means.
Right. But all the stuff you just talked about about miss Brenda and knowing people and all that, there's really tenderness there that you've gotta work around to be successful, not to be a format by any means, but to be, but to know
[00:22:33] Joe Williams, PharmD: you gotta know how all that puzzle fits together. Right? Yeah. And so in our case, there's technology that could replace some of the things that we're.
And, and this Brenda's like, no, I wanna do it this way. Yeah. She comes in two hours early on those days of the month and I'm, and does it, and with a smile on her face. So, you know, you know, one day whenever she claimed she's gonna retire, I told her she can't, but if she ever did, then that would, we would roll technology into that somehow.
But, uh, but no, no, no. If it weren't for her and if it weren't for the relationships with the customers that she would introduce me to, and, and they would introduce me to those family, additional family members, the store never would've been, it would never would've grown. It, it, it just never would have, it was, it was like a perfect, it was a great, a good, perfect storm of, um, of being patient and, um, and just making sure that we focused on those patients, that she, as she would bring 'em along.
And then eventually I would introduce the technology and the new programs and all those things. Yeah. And then it just started growing exponentially from
[00:23:30] Mike Koelzer, Host: there. And then when you bring people on, they're coming into a system and they have no idea if it's been going on for a week or five years, they just slide into the system.
Yeah, exactly. Joe, you have three pharmacies.
[00:23:43] Joe Williams, PharmD: Mm-hmm well, we're opening the third, um, Lord will. And later this month
[00:23:47] Mike Koelzer, Host: the clinic is at, or is that already open?
[00:23:50] Joe Williams, PharmD: So Brisson drugs is open. It has a clinic inside of it. It has an urgent care inside of it, but you have another
[00:23:56] Mike Koelzer, Host: clinic, somewhere clinic. I
[00:23:57] Joe Williams, PharmD: have a clinic pharmacy.
I've only seen clinic pharmacies. Yeah. I've owned that since January, 2018.
[00:24:02] Mike Koelzer, Host: And then don't you have another one fruit, pork or something like
[00:24:04] Joe Williams, PharmD: that? Fairmont Fairmont Fairmont company is a brand new location. It's a new build. So new construction. Um, the one
[00:24:11] Mike Koelzer, Host: they tore down the dry
[00:24:12] Joe Williams, PharmD: cleaner on that's right.
That's right. So I tore down. It was a laundromat. Yeah. I tore, it was actually a laundromat and a bootlegger. And uh, we tore down the laundromat and the boot liquor sauce. What a pool of whiskey making. Well, they, yeah. Yeah. They, I don't think they made it, but they'd go to the liquor store and buy and bulk and then sell it by the.
The only reason I knew that is because when I cleaned, cleaned everything up to get it ready for demo, that house was full of all kinds of stuff. And I started asking around and they were like, oh yeah, that's the bootlegger. And I said, oh, okay. I didn't realize that. That's good to know. Thank you.
[00:24:43] Mike Koelzer, Host: Our pharmacy was a, I found the old DDO pharmacy or something back before we bought this, like 1920.
And I think it was a church. And they said that we could never, and we don't sell alcohol now, but they said, well, you can never sell alcohol on it. That was like really? That
[00:24:58] Joe Williams, PharmD: was like, yeah, it's in your lease or it was in the,
[00:25:00] Mike Koelzer, Host: the offer to purchase the thing. Yeah. So the third, the third one's coming along.
How many do you want? Oh,
[00:25:06] Joe Williams, PharmD: I don't, I wouldn't be willing to put a cap on it. Give me a
[00:25:08] Mike Koelzer, Host: figure, a hundred. You want a hundred
[00:25:10] Joe Williams, PharmD: stores? Yeah. I, I, you know, see what I've learned in this business is volume is key. Okay. So there's, there's people. I hear this argument all the time. You know, you've got to focus on quality over quantity, and that is true.
I agree, 100%, but the way that you get a better cost of goods in our industry today is through volume based pricing.
[00:25:34] Mike Koelzer, Host: Right? Most people would seem to know the damages of having too much inventory, you know, too much invested in you, no cash flow. You go out of business. When people hear about efficiency, the one thing they don't wanna do is make their life tougher.
And one of those things that make things tougher in their mind is like crap. I ran out of this or this didn't come in time or Mrs. Smith's gonna be upset with me and so on. They don't believe it can happen. What. Percent. And I know that you do a ton of sync and so on, but out of the, just the population that's coming in off the street to say, oh, you're a new pharmacy.
I wanna fill my prescription today. What percent in the most efficient system, can you fill their full prescription that day? Assuming that it's an average prescription. In other words, what percent of the customers that walk in off the street are going to leave with a full prescription that day versus a partial prescription at one of my stores.
[00:26:54] Joe Williams, PharmD: Yeah. 97%,
[00:26:58] Mike Koelzer, Host: three per 3%. They might have to come back or can you stop back tomorrow
[00:27:01] Joe Williams, PharmD: or whatever? Yes. Yes. Well, no, that's, that's not even fair cuz let me, let me consider the numbers in a store like ours. I mean, we may have three IUs, four IUs in a day out of 600. Yeah. Yeah. Out of 600. We may have three or four IUSS a day.
so less than 1%. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. People off the street, just because they've never been to a new store. Doesn't mean they're gonna want a drug that nobody's ever been on before. So essentially this is the, the, the, the mindset, the model, right? Yeah. So if your patients are in sync, you're running them days ahead of pickup, if you're doing it.
Right. Okay. Mm-hmm , I mean, that's just the only way to do it. And then your reorder points are based on that logic that you don't order it until you've run it until they need it. Right. Yeah. But you still know the drugs that are staples of your community. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so you still keep a day supply, you know, sometimes I keep zero day supply, but for the most part, you, you live somewhere between one to two to three days supply, depending on whether or not you're open on the weekends.
And depending on the store, I don't advise the store to have any more than a three day supply of inventory. Like this store that I'm sitting in had 36 terms of inventory last year. Little to nothing on our shelves, if possible. And the more expensive a drug is, the more aggressive we get in it. So most of that stuff that you're talking about, where that person that's walking in off the street, nine times outta 10, those drugs are cheap, you know?
So I, so I'm okay with having some extra lisinopril amlodipine Smide. I'm okay with those things because that's not those aren't dollars tied up, right? When you get into drugs where the price per unit price per, um, milligram, or each starts climbing up to say $10 or higher, you need to be more aggressive because that's where 90% of your revenue or your inventory dollars live are in those items.
Those things that cost, you know, the 1% of 1% that OSA mine, that's less than a penny appeal. yeah, I don't care. How big a bottle you have on your shelf. I don't care if you have four of 'em on your shelf, cuz it's, it's like $5 sitting over there, but if you've got 10 bottles of jam met and three Haron over there in the corner, just in case, then you're fat on inventory and you need to cut it down.
[00:29:16] Mike Koelzer, Host: And none of this happens without a sink.
[00:29:19] Joe Williams, PharmD: It can all happen without sink, but you can only get to a certain level of efficiency without it because, and, and, and it doesn't have to be sync in the way that you consider it. So I know I have a friend who has a very, very well run store and he does not use sync at all, but he'll go into, um, into his system and he will look at what he filled in that same calendar week in the previous month.
And then he will consider that when he's placing his orders. So he will, he will, he will load up. Now, my problem is, is that really. it's, it's kind of, it's more of a manual process. Yeah. You know, I don't care what software you're on right now, whether it's pioneer or any other one. Um, aside from a, a few of the smaller ones, they all have the technology inside of them, not to mention the countless numbers of external platforms that can help you with sync now.
Right. So that you can see what you're gonna be doing. Um, my I, the reason that I love pioneers so much is because I refuse to use all these different platforms. I want everything under one roof, and I can do that inside of that pioneer system, you know? And so it's, it's all right there on one screenshot and two, it correlates everything together.
As far as like, even, even setting your reorder points, you can ask it to yeah. To consider sync patients versus non sync, it will adjust those inventory or those reorder points. Based on
[00:30:50] Mike Koelzer, Host: that, I suck at sync. I'm a three time failure, really. No,
[00:30:55] Joe Williams, PharmD: I would see you as being super efficient at it, brother. No, I
[00:30:58] Mike Koelzer, Host: suck at it.
So what's your shortcoming? Um, laziness.
[00:31:05] Joe Williams, PharmD: Now it will work for you because here's the thing. And this is what I have to talk to my staff about in a traditional pharmacy setting without sync. The trigger is the bail ringing when the front door opens or when the phone rings. Right? Right. So that means now I go to work or you look in your e-script queue or your faxes and there's something and there's something for you to do.
So, that's when you work. Yeah. When you have a sync population, like we have, you never get to let your hair down. So when you come in, you go to work and you work as hard and as fast as you can, when you walk back in from lunch hard and as fast as you can. And it, when it's 10 minutes, till time to close, you still need to be working as hard and as fast as you can, because of what tends to happen.
And I've seen this in a lot of different stores. let's say that they're working on a day by day basis in sync, and you tell them that you want them to stay three or four days ahead. They'll get two days ahead. And all of a sudden they'll let their hair down and they'll relax a little bit because they're ahead.
And the next thing you know, they're on the day off, or they're a day ahead again, and they'll catch and, and it catches backup with them because the time never stops, unfortunately. So tomorrow is coming for most of us every day. So you have to continue to work around the clock more, you know, so to speak on the clock, to make sure that you continue to stay ahead, should be music to people's ears.
Oh yeah. Now I'm talking about technicians within stores, like in my stores, you know, this is something that I've dealt with where they feel like they can relax. No, an owner is gonna be super motivated because they wanna see that field number climbing their pharmacy every single day. Gotcha, gotcha.
Gotcha. Right. Because you know, not in every case. But in most cases, the GP climbs with the field, you know? So, um, and then, and then too, when you, when you have, when you have the volume or when you have a significant pool of prescriptions that you can deal with, that's when you can start focusing on, well, not, not then, but then you can really begin to focus on finding that more quality prescription in there.
And you learn how to, you learn how to look at your reports and figure out what needs to happen and you know, which plans make the most sense and when AWP matters and all of those things,
[00:33:23] Mike Koelzer, Host: the quality prescription, as in something you're making a good profit on that you wanna repeat by doing some marketing and things like that, or,
[00:33:31] Joe Williams, PharmD: or maybe you've got other patients who are on the same plan and they're using a drug from the same therapeutic class and, and you can put them on a, a drug that will result in the same copay for them that would likely provide a better, um, therapeutic outcome for them.
And the pharmacy makes a higher gross. That's a win, win, win.
[00:33:53] Mike Koelzer, Host: What hour of your week do you say this sucks? Do you have one of those? Do you have a Friday morning at 10:00 AM where you have to do X and you say this sucks?
[00:34:06] Joe Williams, PharmD: No, I love what I do. I have a ball. Yeah. I, uh, I do. I probably love it too much.
It causes problems sometimes, but yeah, no, I, uh, I mean every now and again, you get, you get beat down. Sometimes you just wanna, there's a pharmacist on some of the boards. I don't know her name, but I think she lives in Costa Rica and I'll see her sometimes. And it, it looks to me, you know, sometimes I just wanna be like her and I just wanna say, you know, what the heck with it?
I'm moving to Costa Rica. But, but I, I just have so much fun doing what I do. I like working with the staff. I like, I like meeting people like you and Steve and some of the, and Joe, and then some of the other guys that we met the other night and, uh, I like learning, um, I think the, the consulting is, is, has been one of my favorite things because I just really enjoy problem solving and figuring stuff out.
And so I'd figured out a lot of my problems here. Well, a lot of my pharmacy problems, I figured out a lot of those here. And, uh, I, I kind of get bored, to be honest with
[00:35:09] Mike Koelzer, Host: you, you, you go from an entrepreneur to
[00:35:11] Joe Williams, PharmD: a, a manager. Exactly, exactly. And I was a manager for a long time, and now I have some really good managers that work with me and that I get to work with.
And I like letting them run those, run the stores and take care of those. And I want to create a new program. I want to go out and, and, and garner new business, or I want to find a new opportunity for us. And, then I want to figure all those things out. I wanna, I want to, I wanna cut the path through the woods and, and say, all right, everybody, this is how we're gonna do this and take 'em down that path.
That's what I love doing. You're gonna go to a hundred
[00:35:46] Mike Koelzer, Host: stores.
[00:35:47] Joe Williams, PharmD: Well, you know, who knows, but. All right. 200 stores. Oh boy, there you go. Mike, my guy.
[00:35:53] Mike Koelzer, Host: So you're gonna be there. And then you're obviously not signing up for shifts at Fairmont. You're not gonna go sign up for a shift there. You've got all the managers and so on.
Right. But now you love consulting. Mm-hmm but I imagine let's just say you're consulting to grow to a hundred stores a week or something like that. It already is a
[00:36:13] Joe Williams, PharmD: hundred stores. not a week, but a hundred stores. Yeah.
[00:36:17] Mike Koelzer, Host: So congratulations. Thank you. But you love that consulting, but if you follow the same model of a hundred pharmacies, yeah.
You're not gonna be consulting anymore. You're gonna be teaching your 10 consultants how to, and now maybe you find joy in that, but you've just worked yourself out of a joyful thing that you like. What do you do with
[00:36:39] Joe Williams, PharmD: that? There's always problems to be solved, Mike and I've already started doing that.
I'm already grooming another pharmacist. Actually two pharmacists come to think of it, to help with the consulting. So
[00:36:51] Mike Koelzer, Host: It's not so much the consulting you love, it's the problem solving. Exactly. And if I told you, you're not gonna talk to any individuals at the store level, you're gonna be dealing with problems and issues with your 10 consultants.
You're okay
[00:37:06] Joe Williams, PharmD: with that. As long as I get to solve problems, I do enjoy the aha moments. So, you know, even, even now, you know, as a pharmacy owner with, with the stores that I have and all the other businesses and things I have, I still go make deliveries. You know, I still, I still will go and deliver a prescription to a patient because I enjoy talking to those patients.
So if I had a hundred stores. And I had a consulting company with a thousand clients. I'd probably still go deliver miss Jones's, you know, lisinopril tour, just so I could stand there and talk to her at her front door while Jeopardy's owning the background every now and
again.
[00:37:42] Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. You might do a little consulting project.
If it's in your blood, still get up, pick up a
[00:37:47] Joe Williams, PharmD: store. Maybe I want to, maybe I want to go down to, I got a store I'm doing and am actually starting live stories again. I'm going down to Louisiana here next month at the end of the month. And um, maybe I want to go to Los Angeles and see my friends at Mickey Fine, you know, or to, to Beverly Hills.
And maybe I'm gonna fly out and see Jeff Gross and his crew out there. You know, you never know. So I, I don't, I don't wanna be pigeonholed in anything that I do that I am a staff pharmacist. I, because, you know, if you think about my career, you know, I started working at a hardware store and, um, you know, and now I'm in these stores and doing these things I don't ever want to be.
Just that guy, that I was somewhere along that way and I don't wanna be stuck there. You know, I wanna be able, my, my, the reason that I love what I do so much is because it's ever changing, ever evolving. It's always different. There's always new challenges. If it ever got to a point where, every day it was gonna be exactly the same thing, I wouldn't enjoy it at all.
And I would, it would just be, it would be monotonous. It wouldn't be fun. And I would, I would go find something
[00:38:55] Mike Koelzer, Host: else. That's one of the reasons why I enjoy these podcasts because I, I just can't. I always say it's because I'm lazy. I'm kind of joking. It's because I get bored. I think.
[00:39:04] Joe Williams, PharmD: Yeah, no it is.
[00:39:04] Mike Koelzer, Host: You look at some professions that seem so glamorous.
Like, you know, let's say a singer or let's say a comedian even, right? Yeah. You got the audience in your hand and you're, and you're seeing their face light up and things, but you're repeating the same joke or the same song, 200. 200 times or something like that.
[00:39:23] Joe Williams, PharmD: Give me a puzzle, gimme a riddle, gimme something that I've got to figure out and make it challenging.
And I'm, I'm happy. That's where I
wanna be.
[00:39:31] Mike Koelzer, Host: There's a book I read a couple years ago now. It's how not to give a F the F word, how not to give it. And the guy's premise there. And it's probably not a new thought, but I like how he put it. He said, life is all about problem solving. The goal though is to have less pressure.
with problem solving. In other words, it's not really fun to have a problem where you 're gonna get your next meal, right? Or is your kid gonna have a bed to sleep in tonight? Yeah. You know, that's scary. But even when you're like 90, you just don't sit around, then your problems are, do I make pumpkin pie or apple pie?
And then you spend the whole day going to the supermarket and you call your friends and you call your kids and say, I don't think the apples are very good. And I'm very upset about, you know, you, you get into it, right? Yeah. Yeah. But ultimately the problem is not life or death, but solving problems is fun.
Oh no.
[00:40:34] Joe Williams, PharmD: It's, it's what I get outta bed for. It's fun. Yeah. And, uh, it's, I, it, and I, and I it's, it's not what I like about it is it's not black and white, you know, it's, that's the stuff that I think I'm really good at. And that's the stuff that consulting really has. It's really what it's based on. Yeah.
When it's not a black and white situation, when there's some gray, then you need to figure out that gray area. That's what I'm really good at. So, um, yeah. And, and, and so yeah, if I could, if I could do this and, and I don't wanna say until retirement, because I don't remember my plan to retire, I think retirement is deciding what you want to do that day.
Sure. Yeah. But right. You know, when I'm 90, like you said, the situation that I wanna be in is, do I go help a consulting client? Do I go to a pharmacy? Do I do this? Do I do this? Do I do this? You know, I want to have, yeah. I want to have those
[00:41:28] Mike Koelzer, Host: options, the freedom to do what you feel like that day, but you're still
[00:41:30] Joe Williams, PharmD: solving problems.
Exactly. And I, I think, I think, you know, cuz I, I see too many people that retire or, and I mean, unfortunately this probably happens to your patients and you've seen it happen as they retire. And two months later they're dead. They die. Yeah. They die because they, they, they walk away from their job or they walk away from whatever they've been doing for the past 30 years.
Right. And they just go and, and just sit there and just, and just, and that's the end of it for 'em and that's, that's just terrible. And, um, you know, I, and I, I, you know, I, I did worry about that at one time with me as far as like how I work and, and, and all of those things happening and, and not, you know, not really having the number of hobbies and things that I used to have, because I, I, I was forced to work a lot to get my stores up and going.
Yeah. Right. But, but you know, if you stop and you think about it, my hobbies now are. consulting. Um, yeah, helping other owners be successful. I mean, I still love to do the things that hunt fish camp and all those kinds of things that I like doing. But my hobbies just aren't the same. I still have hobbies.
They're just not the same. And I'm one of those lucky people that can honestly say that my hobbies are what I do every single day. I've always
[00:42:41] Mike Koelzer, Host: explained the freedom that I like to have. And sometimes that ebbs and flows depending on how much the pharmacy needs me, not in a creative way, but just in like a lazy work that I don't like doing kind of way, but I've always said that my joy is not the freedom to not work, but the freedom to work on what I wanna work on.
That's what you're saying, where you can get up and do this or that or
[00:43:07] Joe Williams, PharmD: whatever. I'm finally. And I, and I'm, and I'm starting to get to a place like that. It's taken a long time and, and two. I, uh, I just, I don't like to spend money. Like, I, I, I don't, um, I don't spend a whole lot of money, so I told you how we would run staffing where we would wait until the train was going off the tracks.
And so I was doing that with pharmacists for the longest time where I was, I was working full time and I worked six days a week for, I don't know how long for
[00:43:30] Mike Koelzer, Host: just years. Yeah. And then as you mentioned, you were taking deliveries till, oh
[00:43:33] Joe Williams, PharmD: yeah. Till 10 o'clock at night and doing all that stuff, get up in the morning and do it, everything.
And you finally start to realize that you are the rate limiting factor for your business. And, and, and, and when I, when I finally got there, it was, um, I guess it was about two years ago. I finally got there and I said, you know what, when I'm not out here and I'm somewhere else working on the business, whether it's developing something or figuring something out or marketing or whatever, I'm doing more for the longevity of my business, When I'm not on that bench working.
And I, and I, and I, and I talk to owners like this. Now I've got a particular client in mind, in, in my mind right now from California, who is super bright. She's just brilliant. And I keep telling her every time I talk to her, I'm like, you have got to stop micromanaging your store. You need to take a step back and empower your people and let them do, you know, what you teach them to do.
And then you go out and do these other great things. And, um, and I like coaching her along. And I'm even telling her, you need to call Travis and get with him, let him help you. And all this, you know? And, uh, when I finally realized that that's when things really started to grow. And, uh, and so, and then, then the, the people thing came into play where you're like, you're talking about.
So I had to go out and start hiring pharmacists, uh, not only because of growth in the stores, but now I had to replace myself. And, uh, I actually ended up, I've hired, I've hired three pharmacists this year. and, uh, just to prepare for all of these things and make sure that nothing was gonna suffer. And so my payroll's heavier than it's been before, but the thinking is if consulting's gonna pull me away, I don't need to let my own store suffer.
So I had to consider that, you know, we had to plan for the growth of the new store. We also have to, to make sure that none of the staff thinks, well, Joe doesn't care about us anymore because he's consulting instead. It's well, he's given us this extra help to make sure we're okay. And that's, you know, so
[00:45:41] Mike Koelzer, Host: as things start taking off kind of exponentially, you realize that came from that work you did, and you can begin to put like an hourly return on your hours where maybe you didn't see it happening when you were scratching on the notepad, waiting for miss Brenda to acclimate for a few months.
I see it then. Yeah. But now you can say, Hey, that. Five hours. I spent back in 2017, that one Saturday, that's like the 10th of my business now Uhhuh . And if, if you put the return on that into those 10 hours, you're like, I should probably repeat that and pay someone else. It seems like too much money to be there.
[00:46:24] Joe Williams, PharmD: It's not, it's not, I'm telling you. I, I, I, uh, my first big expenditure that I spent on things like development and education, all those things was through Amina. Um, Abubakar and Olivia I've heard a lot about Amina. Oh, Amina's fantastic. She's fantastic. And, um, my first big class was with her and I walked away from that class.
There's so much. I did not know that I just got, and I've actually been back. It's called the Avon Institute. I've actually been back to the Avon Institute and, um, and did a three day class where they're there to learn more about some of the things that she teaches and she's, she's in pharmacy. She is in pharmacy and she does a lot of, I won't call 'em collaborative practices, but she can teach you how to use your pharmacist, um, to help your area physicians in ways that you could not imagine.
I saw, I saw it there, you know, when I was with her and I said, you know what? This is so much value. And I was away from my store for three days. Um, and, and away from all of you know, everything for three days and you worry about that, you know, it's like, okay, I usually only reserve this for family vacations and things, but here I am doing this, but, but you walk out of there and you realize that that was.
Exponentially more than what it costs to be here, what it costs for a PRN pharmacist to fill in which in our case, we didn't have to, but, you know, theoretically, um, yeah, just, just tremendously more than, um, than what it cost. If you get too short sided or you get that tunnel vision, and you only focus on the little bit of money that it would cost to do that, you're really holding yourself back on, on the potential return for what, what could come from it.
It happened when I purchased the second store, when I bought a clinic pharmacy, and now there were two stores that I had to figure out how to manage. And what I realize is I wasn't always at that store, but yet it was okay. It was, it was growing, it was being successful. The patients loved the staff.
Everything was good. And I'm like, so things can't exist without Joe being the only thing around it. And it, and it kind of gave me that perspective. And so. I started making some of those subtle changes here at Brisson where I was away a little more, you know, and, and, and by way, I mean, I just wasn't on the front counter more.
And, um, I kept doing that suddenly in investing in things, figuring things out. Um, and before, you know, it, you look back at your P and LS, your profit loss or your balance sheet, or what have you, and you realize that you're growing. And in some cases you're growing even faster. And, and I said, this, this makes more sense.
I mean, since we've done these things, we, um, we've been really involved in Troy Medicare and being able to do that. We did a much better job with Medicare open enrollment this past year. We've got a three 40 B agreement now. Uh, I mean, we, we, all these things that had I been, if I just was that bench pharmacist with tunnel vision on only the patient standing in front of me every day that would've gone right over the top of my head.
And I never would've seen that opportunity pass me by. .
[00:49:38] Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah, for sure. You said that if you start consulting more or as you started consulting more, you'd bring those three pharmacists in this year to make sure. One of the reasons I think you said is to make sure that the staff wasn't, I'm putting words into your mouth, I think, but maybe feeling overworked or that you've left them alone and so on.
Right? Yeah. I'm guessing you didn't have that feeling though. When you went to clinic for those days, is that because people maybe understood what you were doing there more, how does that differ from you being gone consulting and feeling I'm putting words in your mouth, but maybe a little
[00:50:22] Joe Williams, PharmD: guilty, like it's a good question.
No, no, no, no, it wasn't so much guilt. It was because when I was at, or when I'm at the clinic, I still work there. Some. I'm still available because, oh, I see. Gotcha. So it's by a phone or voiceover IP phones or, you know, we have, we have VPN tunnels between the stores, so they'll still call me, but when I'm with a client, I wanna be very, very respectful of that client's time.
So understood. You know, so like right now, I'm with you, there's a sign outside my door that says, you know, do not disturb. It's a door hanger that I use when I'm with a client. And, and that's because I would hate to be in a session with you. Let's say that, let's say that in this situation, you were my consultant.
I wouldn't, I wouldn't want you to keep getting up and going over and, and helping somebody else do something or work in knowing your own stuff while you're working with me. So now I, I really am unavailable during those times and, and some, and when I do on sites, , you know, it's the same thing where you're gone, you know, two or three days because of travel, um, during travel time I'm available.
But for the most part, when I'm in that store, I just request that they ask themselves, you know, what would Joe do? And, and they solve the problem
[00:51:33] Mike Koelzer, Host: on those days that you're gone. Do you like four hours between checking your phone or eight hours? In other words, if you're, if you're in a meeting at eight o'clock, you might go till 11 while you're in the bathroom and take a look or H how long do you
[00:51:49] Joe Williams, PharmD: go?
I'm, I'm pretty good about my phone. I, I, uh, I avoid, I avoid being disrespectful with it. Like I don't, I don't like it when I'm talking to someone and they're checking their, their, um, text messages the whole time I'm with them. But, uh, we have, um, an intranet that we use for all of our stores. It was something else that we invested in that's helped us tremendously.
And those urgent messages actually will appear on my phone. So, you know, I'm, I'm seeing those things. anytime that it's respectfully convenient. So I don't, I wouldn't say that it's more than even an hour. And if, if I see something and it's like, you know, Hey FYI, we need to talk about this. When you get back, then I'm not even paying attention to that.
But you know, we had a guy try to Dr. Not try to drive accidentally, almost drove through the front of one of my stores, uh, last year. That's something that I, okay. I'm gonna have to step to the back and call my store about this. Okay. The, my building's gonna fall down and
[00:52:43] Mike Koelzer, Host: that you might see in 15 minutes, like maybe while you're sitting in a room with, uh, Julie and Tom mm-hmm and then Julie and Tom start talking to each other, you might take a look at your phone.
Yeah,
[00:52:53] Joe Williams, PharmD: exactly, exactly. I mean, and you might even say, you know, Hey, listen, if, if, if I get an emergency call, please, you know, don't think I'm being disrespectful. And I, I think, you know, that you gotta. These people that I'm consulting for, they're independent pharmacy owners. Most of them are operators. They know exactly what I'm dealing with.
It's not gonna surprise them. If somebody comes into my store at gunpoint, they'd be mad at me. If I didn't jump out and go call my store and find out what was
[00:53:16] Mike Koelzer, Host: going on, we have a really new staff at the store. The whole team is quite new, but I tell them, I say, guys, I'm not gonna be looking at my phone.
If you need me, call me and they never call me. But I said, call me because then I will tell Joe, I'll say, Joe, the phone's ringing. I never get a phone call. Right. So let me look. I think it's something that might be more important. Exactly.
[00:53:37] Joe Williams, PharmD: And I would say absolutely answer that phone. You know, I I'm the same way
[00:53:41] Mike Koelzer, Host: in about 2015, I hired a new layer of managers and I spent a lot of time working at home.
But before that I was probably doing too much and I would want time in my office where it's kind of the same thing where it's. I want to talk to this either a new employee or a customer or something, or just a family member or whatever. And so what I did was, I came up with this method and I'm not sure if it was good or not.
I think it worked for me, but I would put an egg timer on the outside of my door and it would be a three minute delay doorbell, basically. , they'll come up and then, and they'll see, they've got three minutes before they're gonna make me get up and come to the door and say, what do you need? In most cases they say, I'm not gonna wait three minutes.
Somebody else can answer it. And, and they'll, and they'll go away. That's a pretty good idea. Yeah, Joe, in 10 years, you've got 200 pharmacies. You've got a thousand clients on your consulting coaching, and you got 10 pharmacists or, or 10 consultants working there 10 years now, is it like I'm gonna do another three.
Projects or is it just shining all those up?
[00:54:52] Joe Williams, PharmD: No, I keep doing different things. I, uh, what's your next one then? Um, I'm opening a laundromat next month. You just tore one down. Yeah, I know. So if, um, find a need, fill the need brother. When I was there, I tore the laundromat down. That was where the pharmacy's being built and I felt like the town would benefit from a nice new, modern laundromat.
So I built a laundromat and, uh, uh, there's, I've probably got half a dozen business models in my mind that I know will work. And, uh, I just, I enjoy, I enjoy a friend of mine who says I like shiny new things. So, um, yeah. And they're not the type of shiny new things that most people like, like I don't go by.
New cars and those kinds of things I'll drive a truck till the wheels fall off. And actually, I shouldn't say that, cuz I did that and then I fixed them and kept driving it. But no, I'm, I'm not, I'm not that kind of guy, you know? Yeah. But I just enjoy investing in, in, in people and, and investing in ideas, uh, and, and seeing things succeed.
And it's not, it's not about the money even. I, I get asked that it's, it's really not about that. It's about doing it's about the unknown and, and solving those problems and making those, solving the problems, successfully solving the problems. So yeah, there was a, uh, I call her a friend. She's, uh, started as a client.
She's someone that I really like talking with. She's an owner out in, um, Colorado. And, uh, she posted something on a group the other day and asked about, would you have more stores? And I said, absolutely, yes, just bring 'em on. And I looked down through the comments. And probably 75% of the responses in that same thread said, absolutely not no way.
And I, and I sat there and I thought to myself, I would hate to be someone who either didn't. I mean, and I shouldn't speak for these people because I, no, I know, know that they don't need to, they might have other goals to do. Yeah. Right. Maybe they love what they do. Right. But, you know, I, I would wanna be, I would prefer to be the type of person that loves what they're doing so much and, and they found ways to be successful and they figured out systems so that, so that they could keep doing what they're doing and expand it and share that with the world.
You know, that's yeah. That's, that's who I would rather be.
[00:57:19] Mike Koelzer, Host: So now you got all the things I talked about, plus another of your six ideas. Yeah. He knows what it is. Yeah. The week is so long. Okay. So at some point you're in your Joe chair, you know, the Joe throne chair, you've got like. a president of each of these corporations and you've got like 15 presidents reporting to you.
Mm-hmm and you're basically saying yes, no, no. Yes. You know what I mean? Would owning a thousand companies be too many mm-hmm or would you have a thousand presidents that report to 10 this and go all
[00:57:56] Joe Williams, PharmD: the way up. So I'm thinking about three different things right now. Number one is Richard Branson.
Okay. You know who Richard Branson's. I know Richard Virgin, Virgin airlines, Virgin mobile, all those things. Right. Think about that guy, that guy, he owns like 300 and some companies. And whenever you see him, he's one of the happiest people in the world at all times. I mean, you know, you gotta let your hair grow out though.
you can't keep cutting your hair out. I think he's got better hair than me. Um, but you know, if you look at a guy like that, I mean, he loves his life. He loves what he's doing and, and, and entrepreneurs go to him all the time with these great, fantastic ideas and want him to help him start their company.
And he brings them forward and they're another Virgin company and they do well. And, and then I think about it, so I think about that and he loves what he's doing. Then I think about the book, the five levels of leadership. Um, okay. I don't know if you are John Maxwell, right. And okay. Yeah. So a level five, you're describing a level five leader, basically a level five leader is a person who develops people that develop other people.
Gotcha. And, um, I'm not a level five leader. Okay. I'm like a level three, maybe. So with some people I'm a level three and I wanna be a level four and I'd love, love, love to be a level five leader one day. I mean, that is a life goal of mine. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I've got a lot of things that I need to work on to be that, but I think if I'm gonna be that guy that you're describing, I need to be a level five leader.
I don't think that I could be that person and I could be successful or even be happy doing what you're describing unless I was a level five, because in my mind, even with the 5, 6, 7 businesses that I have now, I'm still doing those things as a level three in most cases, because the week is still long enough, you know?
Yep. But, but if you're gonna grow and you're gonna have the 200 stores and you're gonna have all those things I have got to personally develop, the other thing is there's two different, uh, two other books that I'll kind of lump together. One's called the richest man in Babylon. And the other one is rich dad, poor dad.
and in both stories, there are these, um, parables and basically, well, in one story, it's parables. The other story it's like the kids', um, childhood or the author's childhood, where there were these people and that's what they did. They owned multiple businesses and they had entrusted people that would take care of their businesses.
They valued their opinion. They had a relationship in which they asked for and appreciated feedback from all of their, you know, managers and leaders within their organizations. But there was also the understanding that the owner was still in charge. So in my case, if I've gotten to, if I've gotten to be a level five leader, I like to think that it will be a lot less.
Yes. And no, it will be more like. A small core group of people that are around me that are responsible for the various entities. And we sit down and we discuss things and we talk them out and we come to a consensus or we, or we, we, we agree and commit. I mean, we disagree and commit if we can't agree. If somebody
[01:01:08] Mike Koelzer, Host: has one pharmacy that's running smoothly, you're not making decisions all day.
You're kind of like on the airline pilot coming in for a landing and just sort of just a little bit of this and that once in a while, you'll say no, once in a while, you'll say that let's not go that route, but that's that's once a week or once a month or
[01:01:27] Joe Williams, PharmD: something, otherwise you're just flying the plane and the staff around you's doing the thing.
And that's, that's what it would feel like. To be an effective, um, type of manager that I would love to be in order to be able to accomplish all these life goals that I have. You'll have to be that even within that big global organization, you'll still have to be that way. Cuz things still need to be.
And that's again, my whole model of efficiency in creating, creating processes instead of depending on people, because people change, you just said your whole staff's roughly changed, you know, things happen. Yeah. Um, we, um, we had an employee that just left us and I'm heartbroken because of it, but she moved to another state.
So she, her and her family moved away and you know, she was a great employee. We invested in her, um, right up until like the weeks before she left, we're still teaching her and uh, paying for her to do seminars and classes and things because better to invest in her and she leave than not invest in them and they
[01:02:23] Mike Koelzer, Host: stay, always be pushing forward and some are gonna go, but your culture has to be that way.
They need to know what's
[01:02:30] Joe Williams, PharmD: going on. For sure.
[01:02:31] Mike Koelzer, Host: If someone said you had to go to. any of the 50 states, would you be just as comfortable and confident doing the whole pharmacy thing wherever you are, from
[01:02:44] Joe Williams, PharmD: which perspective as an owner or as a staff pharmacist as an owner,
[01:02:48] Mike Koelzer, Host: like if someone said, Joe, I'm gonna spin the wheel and I'm gonna have you keep about your same plan, try to get to three stores and try to do consulting and do this and maybe do that.
Would you say, yeah, sure. I'll, I'll give it a shot. I, I think I can do
[01:03:02] Joe Williams, PharmD: it. Yeah. I think I could do what I do anywhere in the country. Um, I think when I first got started, I did think that I had somewhat of a benefit with my well, not somewhat. I had a definite benefit of where I got started with my first store, because it was like a small town.
Rural Southern, you know, just kind of fits my personality. I mean, the store is, the store is 20 minutes from the house I grew up in and, um, and so I knew I knew the community. I knew the people. And so it, it kind of, helped me accelerate it when I got in and got situated, but really, I don't care where you are in the world.
People appreciate, you know, people that are good to them. They appreciate people who are caring and considerate. So yes. And, and then, and luckily, you know, drugs don't change a whole lot from one part of the country to the next, you know? Yeah. And, and so, and most of our doctors now are from everywhere, all over the world anyway, just like our pharmacists are.
So I think it's become more, more global, more universal now. So I, I think, I think I could do it. All of a sudden
[01:04:09] Mike Koelzer, Host: Hurricanes come and wipe everything out and you get all the insurance money from your stores and you're sitting there with no physical locations. You've got a customer base, you've got a client base on, uh, consulting.
What's your one year plan for building up a few pharmacies? Again, those are gonna
[01:04:30] Joe Williams, PharmD: be some beautiful stores. If I could get that insurance money, they'd be different. What I've thought about doing a few times is, you know, you know, I, you know, how important sink is to me? Yeah. I have thought of a more centralized model and then run my stores, um, like a concierge desk.
So, uh, and there's, there's, uh, you know, some, some state state laws and matters that that would hinder some of these things, but it would almost be as. You know, you would go into that store. It would be super individualized, super personalized. And most of all, that high volume sink and all those things could occur in the background so that the pharmacists within the stores could just do what they wanted to do when they first went to pharmacy school, which is to care for their patients.
But the problem with that, and this is, this is kind of frustrating for me because I've tried this. If I pull patients out of a store and move them to a centralized facility, the good folks at some of our wholesalers and the good folks at the DEA and all of these other company, all these other organizations, they don't consider your organization as a whole, I guess they could, if you set things up structurally in, in the right way, from a corporate perspective for apparently I don't have it that way.
So if I start moving like a whole ton of patients out of a, a lower volume store, put them in a centralized model and then just distribute from there. The wholesalers are gonna say, well, wait a minute. Now this store is buying this, but they've stopped buying all of these things. And it's, it's all going over here to that other place.
They can't wrap their head around the model that would, in my opinion, be better for the industry, because if, if we could free up the traditional bottling or packaging of medications and just leave the pharmacist and staff within a store, leave them there solely for the purposes of patient care, just the direct interaction, you know, then imagine how much outcomes could improve.
because, you know, I can't afford to put extra pharmacists at every store just for the sake of the patient care aspect and leave and leave someone because then, you know, our model right now does not allow us to be reimbursed for that, that direct patient care. In most cases. I mean, there are, there are opportunities, but it's not widespread.
So I can't justify that additional payroll, but if I could pull everything together under a centralized roof and maybe even deliver every bit of it and you know how I feel about deliveries, how much I love it, if I could just deliver almost all of it and then allow my pharmacist to just act as that medical expert that is readily available, walk in, find a way to bill for it.
That's what I would love to see. So they'll
[01:07:22] Mike Koelzer, Host: allow some of that, like a central fill or something, but they don't let you then dispense from there. You probably have to bring it back and dispense it. That other building or something.
[01:07:31] Joe Williams, PharmD: Well, unless you, unless you were delivering it and then you'd almost be like a mail order facility and then you could, you know, you could distribute from there.
I mean, I, I, I think that's, I mean, there's, there's chains. That's one of the things that chains do in order to try to manage payroll within stores. So, you know, I don't love chains at all. Don't get me wrong, but there's some good ideas that are probably out there that exist within them to where we could free pharmacies, pharmacists up to be able to spend more time with their patients.
The only problem is if you are the one store owner, you can't, it's harder for you to compete with that. So there'll be owners that may listen to this and say, I think that's a terrible idea because they don't have multiple stores and they're not able to do those things. But, I mean,
[01:08:17] Mike Koelzer, Host: they don't have the economies of scale, but they can have the same look by putting a brick wall down their middle of their store and having exactly, you know, having all the rucks going on and back and having the, the nice, calm people out front kind of thing.
[01:08:29] Joe Williams, PharmD: Yeah. I mean, I've seen stores that you, there was this one store in particular, North Carolina, that's just a beautiful building and beautiful store and you go in and they literally have this round. That's like a reception area right in the middle of their waiting area. And the last time I was in there and I've only been, well, I should say the only time I've ever been in there, there was a pharmacist seated at that desk and they were, they were verifying prescriptions at that desk and they greeted me when I walked in the door.
And that's the kind of, I think that's what they're going for there. I don't know if they figured it all out or not. If they got it out or not. Yeah. But I was really impressed with how progressive they were with that model. Because, you know, not, and, but at the same time, not every pharmacist wants to be able to, to be at arms, reach with a patient.
Yeah. Because they're gonna tell you they can't get anything done because they're dealing with patients. They have to. That's why I said, I want them to just be the concierge, not also be that production pharmacist, trying to verify those prescriptions. Sure.
[01:09:23] Mike Koelzer, Host: Well, Joe gal, darn. We could talk all day. I know with your having your multi businesses, you gotta actually do some consulting this afternoon.
Still. No, you get to do the consulting that
[01:09:36] Joe Williams, PharmD: a baby. There you go. So yeah, I get the opportunity to help another motivated owner here in just a couple minutes. So, uh, and Mike, I tell you, man, I have, I have really enjoyed this. I enjoyed just sitting down and talking with people that love pharmacy as much as I do and, and love, you know, talking with folks and learning like you, you do.
And, uh, it's, it's truly, truly, truly been a pleasure. My friend,
[01:09:55] Mike Koelzer, Host: I'm looking forward to many more conversations in the future. I say we do this all the time. Absolutely brother. Thanks a lot, Joe. Have a good session.
