Using Coaches | Blair Thielemier, PharmD, Pharmapreneur Academy

Speech to text:

Mike Koelzer: [00:00:00] Blair for those who haven't come across you online, introduce yourself and tell our listeners what we're talking about 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: today. So my name is Blair Thielemier, and I built the pharmacy's first online business course for entrepreneurial pharmacists called the Pharma Preneur Academy. 

Mike Koelzer: You and I talked about a year and a half ago and got into the details of why you did this.

And so on. Is there still room left for a pharmacist that says I'm so sick and tired of the damn PBMs. I just want to throw the whole thing out the window. Probably go to a new career choice. Is that wrong? Is there still room left in the pharmacy? 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: So let me tell you about one of my clients who recently left her job.

She. Went and created a non dispensing pharmacy that focuses on mobile point of care testing, working with collaborative providers and also offering remote opportunities to log in and get to talk to a pharmacist, do a comprehensive medication review or an annual wellness visit type of service. And she was actually recently able to leave her position as a hospital pharmacist.

And she's already hired her first consultant pharmacists to work under her, to help her deliver some of these services. So yes, there is hope in the pharmacy world. 

As much as the PBMs are a pain in the ass. Sometimes I want to say the same thing about employees. 

Mike Koelzer: We almost gave someone listening a little bit of a carrot, and now you threw in the employee part.

I'm joking somewhat, but most of the people that come your way, I don't mean this to sound bad. Are people coming to you more than creating a new job? And I think in the business world, you always hear, like, if you don't have an employee you're just creating a new job for yourself. Is that the case, or do you think that people come with the goal of not only building their own thing, but also building a business and you can define business in that case of having employees, let's say.

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: So I would say it's about 50, 50. Most people will start with the idea of, I just want to replace my income. And then eventually, if they have that entrepreneurial spirit, they will start thinking, OK you know, now I want to have a bigger impact. I want to leave a legacy. I want to create a firm, not just me so that I can scale.

It's really where people will end up naturally going as they kind of progress through business. 

Mike Koelzer: It's kind of like Maslow depending on how bad your job sucks. You're trying to get away from, I mean, I can see a lot of, let's say you might have a real estate agent or something. Who's already quite a ton of.

I'm sure they have their headaches too, but it seems like maybe they're not running from something as quickly or as harshly as a pharmacist might who's in a terrible situation. So sometimes you take a pharmacist who in a bad situation, they might go to somewhere that gives them like 50% of their income and work twice as hard as long as they can get away from that.

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: Yeah. And I, and I hate to see that. I mean, I understand that I've been there when I lost my job. I thought, do I need to go get an MBA? You know, what, what else can I do with, you know, with my skills? Like, I'm, I'm great at going to college. Maybe I just need to go back to college. Right. And when we. When we start getting into that scarcity mindset, it really blocks the creative, innovative ideas for what we can do while still using our pharmacy knowledge.

Mike Koelzer: Last week I was online and I think it was a Ted talk. I think the guy was, he called himself a human Walker, like, like. And I think his joke was, I just caught some of it. He said, no, I don't put a leash on the people, but I think he was a human Walker and I might've made some of the stuff. I didn't watch the whole thing, but basically the gist of it for me was there is unlimited advice out there.

But like in this [00:05:00] guy's case, we all know we should exercise. We all know we should eat well. And that kind of stops there's unlimited advice, but that connection, and I think there's a ton of businesses there, whether it's an app or actually a human being speaking. Sally, I'm knocking on your door. It's quarter to seven in the morning.

Come on. We have to go for our three mile walk. I'm going to walk you this morning. The information doesn't matter. It's getting from the, the head to the feet or the head to the communication with families. I think there's a lot of room there. There's a ton of information. There's a lot of room there to make something 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: happen.

That's what I'm trying to bring to the business coaching world is this whole other side of me that I embraced. Meditation and energy and dealing with emotional trauma and generational trauma and really taking a hard look at why we do the things that we do. And how are we keeping ourselves small? How are we not sharing our purpose that we were put here on earth to share in this retreat that we just did?

It was fantastic because we did things like sound healing. We did meditations, we did breath work. We did. Um, you know, a lot of exercises that help to break down those barriers and create vulnerabilities so that we could really get to the underlying issues of why we're building our business. What, you know, what are the things that's holding us back, maybe it's, you know, on social media.

When I first started my business and I launched the farmer for narrow academy, I wanted to be anonymous. And it took me a while to figure out why I was trying to dim my light, why I wasn't comfortable with using my voice. And a lot of it was societal expectations and pressures that I would be seen as unprofessional or.

That, um, you know, it wasn't in line with what people thought a pharmacist should be. And so I really held myself back there at the beginning, and I think there's also this figure of success. Or success sabotaging that happens when we aren't connected with that or aligned with that inner purpose of that goal that we want to get to 

Mike Koelzer: Blair.

Would you say that all of your clients that you coach their businesses that they're starting, arguably are all of those. Meant to meet needs that are larger. Commercial market is not hitting because you're not talking to somebody and saying, Hey, Susie, I'm going to teach you how to buy this stuff. So you can do something twice as cheap.

Hey bill. You know, I'm going to show you how to market to someone who hasn't been marketed to yet. And so on. We're going to do this faster. It's probably none of that. I imagine that all the businesses that you're helping people in. Touchy feely. I don't mean that it's void of product and void of solution, but I imagine that it's all let's get to that inner part of you kind of 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: thing.

That's a great observation on your part because it is at the core, what we believe in at the farmer preneur academy, it's leveraging our knowledge of. Herbs and biochemistry and medications and lifestyle modification into something completely new. So yes, you can use your business platform to sell a product, but it also needs to be aligned with.

The service that you sell. I know 

Mike Koelzer: all the people that come to you are perfect and you're perfect and it always works out. But if you could imagine someone that you said that guy's a pain in the ass, and I don't want to work with him anymore, what kind of a person would that be? 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: So I think early, when I started the former preneur academy, I listened to the needs of my clients.

Basically they were saying, I need to know the CPT codes. I just need to know how pharmacists can bill for these clinical services. That's all I need. Those are the people that's hardest to work with is like, no, I just, I just need the information and then I can go do it on my own. When you don't have any business [00:10:00] training, you have no idea.

Has worked in the past. You can spend a lot of time trying to get traction in business and both you, and I know it takes, it takes a long time to build a business. I mean, it's not, it's not something you can do overnight. And I never want to give people the impression that this can just lead to overnight success.

Because what we teach is really the lifelong skills that entrepreneurs need to continuously evolve their services so that they're making sure that they're providing solutions for their ideal clients that they want to work with. So I guess in short, that's the hardest type to, to work with as the people that say.

All I need is just this piece of information. And then I got it, you know, on my 

Mike Koelzer: I'm going to play devil's advocate. If I'm in the pharmacy and somebody comes in and lets say I'm selling them, I dunno, a commode or something like that. And let's say nine out of a 10 that come in. My team has to explain to them how this sits over the stool and this bucket has a chute, but you'd want to replace it with a real one.

That also comes with it. If you're going to have it over your carpeting and that kind of stuff, the 10th person that comes in and just says, gimme a commode, how much I'll take it. Goodbye per. My team doesn't have to have that 10 minute commode conversation with them. Now, I think I know what the answer is, but the person that comes in and says, Blair, just give me this and then goes, and you got your money and they got what they wanted.

Why don't you like that? Devil's advocate. You'd say that's the. No, 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: That's not the kind of client that I want. 

Mike Koelzer: Why not? You got their money. You gave me information. You are never going to see him again. Goodbye. 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: That's not in line with my integrity. So if I was going to sell you a commode, I would want to make sure that it is the best commode for you.

And this is going to add the most value to your life. So I talk about this kind of just in a fun way of showing how I would recommend selling this commode or training your staff to sell this commode. Here's what I'm getting 

Mike Koelzer: at though. Why do you care? You got their money. I mean, if someone says in that analogy, and this is going back to your client, who says, Blair, just give me the CPT code.

But let's say you get their money and they're gone. Why does that bother you? 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: I don't know. It shouldn't, but it does. Maybe it should. I just know that they're not going to get the best results. And 

Mike Koelzer: So what though? Why does that bother you? It's. 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: In 

Mike Koelzer: order devil's advocate here, I'm 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: talking, right?

Yeah. In order to make the kind of impact in order to change the perception of who pharmacists are, I think we need to be more unified in our message. And so that message doesn't need to come across as here's a CPT code that pharmacists can use to bill and get reimbursed for $120. The message that I think pharmacy needs is here's the outcome of working with me.

Here's the interventions that I'm going to make, and it comes from quality measures. So CMS created the macro legislation back in 2 20 13, maybe. And basically that shifted the pay for performance model to what we have now, which is physicians, offices, health systems, even pharmacies are being looked at for their patient outcomes.

So how do you have an impact on patient outcomes? If you're just selling them a commode and not. Selling them the best commode for them that, you know, it may still not be meeting their needs because they don't even know what their needs are. So as an expert, it's our job to make sure that people are armed with not only the product or the information that they need, but are trained how to use it effectively so that they can go out and say, You know, I can use these CPT codes to reimburse for my time, but I'm not an hourly employee.

I am a quality manager. I'm an asset that builds [00:15:00] on the quality benchmarks that you've set forth and improves patient outcomes. And as a result, that is going to bring you more revenue and be more profitable. 

Mike Koelzer: It can kind of hurt almost like your brand or your mission, somebody taking something like that.

You're almost adding to the slide back down into the product category and not. 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: Not the value, 

Mike Koelzer: not the value. You might get the quick buck, but it's hurting your mission. 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: I think it's a short-sighted business model to sell a one-off product. Everything that we try to create is something that can be replicated, creating recurring revenue, whether it's a membership site or a subscription for your patients to be able to.

You know, to come together in community or to continuously learn from you so that they can know how to use whatever products you sell them to their full advantage and get the full value. So like even using the commode as an example, the way that I would recommend training a team to sell that is we call it like, Basically the, the Mercedes the Cadillac, and then the budget friendly options.

So when you're talking to someone about, you know, the commodes that you have available, say, this one is, they are top of the line, it comes with, uh, you know, it's stainless steel, it's sturdy. There's, I don't know, some kind of special day it's auto flushing. It's like all these cool things. But most people like our Cadillac option, they like the value option.

And so this is the one I would recommend for, you know, 80% of people. This is the one most people buy here, you know, here's how it improves. You know, like the Squatty potty. Oh my gosh. Shark tank, like took that to the next level, not because it was just like this cool addition you could put in your bathroom, but because of the health benefits.

So if you're selling a commode and you're talking about the health benefits along with. That's going to get, you know, that's the benefit, that's the result of why people need to use this one versus someone who's just going to come in, buy it off the shelf and use it for a short time and be like, man, I really like it, whatever.

And just throw it away the next day. There's 

Mike Koelzer: too much effort that goes into a one-time sale in any profession, any profession that depends on a one-time sale. It's tough if you do things right, there's a lot of different ways to define that, you know, pharmacies, you can define it as you might not turn a commode into more than a one-time sale, but that person becomes a multiple sale in their life as they age or whatever one-time sales are really true.

Yeah, 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: they, they are. And even looking at such high quality probiotics and vitamin supplements, making sure that if you're dispensing, you know, something at the counseling window, that your team, even if it's not the pharmacist who's talking to them, can just be the register clerk. They know that every time they dispense a birth control or an antidepressant or a Staton, that they'd better be asking that customer.

Hey, are you taking this with cocuten? Are you making sure you're taking your prenatals? Are you making sure that you're taking a high quality B complex? Every single time at the checkout is going to help increase the sales of gore supplement products, but it's also going to help increase the outcomes of that patient.

If you're connecting it with something that they truly need, which is, you know, something that's a micronutrient that their body needs to function properly. So it's coming from a place of this. This medicine can work better. If you do X, Y, Z to help it work better, it's basically helping your body function better and tapping into.

Self-healing self-cleaning, that is, is an instinct that's built into our DNA. 

Mike Koelzer: Blurred. You really like coaches. I know you kind of promote coaching and I can see your coaching because it's like, there's something to actually be learned and you've got some neat information and so on.[00:20:00] 

Devil's advocate here. I'm saying you only say that you like coaches because you're a coach and people see that Blair uses coaches, then they'll use Blair as a coach. What do you use coaches for? 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: Oh, that's a great question. Um, I have used coaches since starting my business in 2015 and. I think when you first get started, just a general business coach is helpful.

I mean, I didn't even know. I had no idea how to. Start a website or gather emails or post on social media. Like I, you know, I was, I had no idea that there was an actual strategy that goes along with building a business. And so having a coach to kind of walk me through that strategy was really helpful in the beginning.

And you think, okay, you know, I've been in business for six years now. I don't need coaching anymore. That is not the case at all. I think I have worked with nine different coaches this year. Nine 

Mike Koelzer: coaches. 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: Yes. Nine coaches. So, the further you get in business, The more specific your coaches need to be, give me some examples.

Okay. So I redid my keynote for the upcoming elevate summit. And so I worked with my speaking coach too. Put that keynote together in a way that flows and tells my story and aligns with the flow of the rest of the event. So it kind of sets the stage and it flows right in with the whole rest of the 

Mike Koelzer: conference.

The terms have gone back and forth in some we'll call that a coach. I'm going to call that more of a consultant. I'm going to say they're helping you because I think a coach is like someone firing you up and saying, Blair, you can do this. You can do a better keynote thing. I'm going to call that more of a consultant.

True. That is true. 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: That is true. 

Mike Koelzer: Almost an employee of yours. You're telling them to do it. Well, we 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: actually do it together. All right, fair enough. We're walking through the keynote for example, and she say, oh, you, you need a, you need an audience engagement part right here, 

Mike Koelzer: And I can see where that's coaching you then.

So you're better than for this one, but also again, you know, for, for the next time, right? Yes, coach. All right, I'll give it 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: to you. Uh, work with Carol as my speaking coach, um, I work with our retreat coaches. So. Offer the salt lake city retreat. And there's a specific way that I wanted that weekend to go to first kind of put everyone in this relaxed state that they could kind of get out of their heads and all the, you know, I call it the main girl thoughts that we have about, about why we can't do the things that we really want to do.

And so there were some specific exercises that those retreat coaches or consultants helped me to put into the retreat agenda in order to facilitate the feeling and the state of being that I wanted the participants to be in at every single part of the retreat. So that whole weekend. Just flowed together nicely and ended up with a desired result because I was so intentional beforehand about what I wanted to create.

So I think to me, that's where coaches come in is they just want to help you create that intention for what you're hoping to achieve is that 

Mike Koelzer: a coach just for retreats like her business is helping other businesses putting retreats. 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: It's a, it's a husband and wife actually. Um, they live in Nashville, Tennessee, and I've been to a couple of their events that they facilitated.

And after meeting them and hearing them speak and actually being a participant in attending some of their retreats, they do like glass walks and like Tony Robbins type stuff. 

Mike Koelzer: Their whole business. Isn't just teaching other people how to do retreats, but you hired them to say, I like your retreats so much.

Yes. Kind of. How can I adapt this to 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: mine? Yes. Yeah. And I didn't make anyone walk on glass or fire or anything, but I did push them. 

Mike Koelzer: Tony got sued for that a couple of years ago. I forget the parts of it, but, 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: [00:25:00] Well, it's helpful. I've never facilitated a retreat like that before. So yes, I a hundred percent believe in going to someone who's already done it and has that.

I don't like to just wait. If I can at all help it, I'm all about, let's spend a little money to save me a lot of time in the backend and get a result that gets people coming home, fired up about the program, about, you know, our brand. And really, I think that's the best marketing that we can.

You know, possibly asked for when those retreat participants go back home and have that transformation and their colleagues and their families take notice. Hmm. What did Boyer do to you, you know, to be able to go back and like, yes, that was absolutely money. Well spent to create the type of transformation in those attendees that I intended to create.

And I might have been able to do that on my own, but having, having someone that gave me the structure and had been there and done that and had known how to facilitate a retreat like that. It gave me so much more confidence in sticking to my vision for the retreat. 

Mike Koelzer: I imagine the answer to this would sorta be like hiring a plumber to diagnose a problem.

Instead of you reading all about plumbing or a heart surgeon, instead of you becoming a heart surgeon yourself, I imagine that talking to somebody like that is better than you just reading about how to put a retreat on, because they can maybe pinpoint some problems. They can take all this information and just like right there, you need to improve this part of it.

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's the same thing as, okay. Well, if you can't afford to hire a plumber to come in and you have to do it on your own, go to YouTube and find some free resources. May or may not help you. You still may not have the skills to do it, but at least you can make an informed decision about, do I want to invest in an expert or do I want to maybe potentially burst a water sewage line in my house?

Right? It gives you information in which you can make a decision to move forward. 

Mike Koelzer: Next coach. 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: The next coach. Okay. So I have a chief technical officer that isn't necessarily my coach. She's more like a consultant, but we do have strategy meetings put on the calendar, quarterly strategy meetings, where we go in and we figure out together what, what can be automated?

What are the processes? How are we looking at it? Our funnels, for example. So in business, we have to have a way to bring in new clients as we're serving our current clients. So what she would do is basically take a look at our new customer acquisition funnel, and then she would look at the user experience.

And the onboarding process of how those people are being served. So I have a technical coach or technical strategist consultant. I've got, um, social media coaches that they helped me to. Stick to the brand that I want to convey. So I've been doing a lot more recently on Instagram and that's no accident because, um, one of my dear friends is an Instagram coach.

Uh, her name is the dietician boss and she does similarly to what I do for pharmacists. She works with dieticians to help them grow their brands online. So. I believe in hiring people, whether they're coaches or consultants, I kind of use coaches just as a catchall, but essentially adding people to our team as we grow so that we can.

Stay in our area of genius because I don't, I don't want to be trying to figure out how to launch a retreat or how to host a live event or fiddling with my keynote or whatever, because that's going to take me away from the things that I am best at. So it's like letting other people do what they're best at and just hire them to help you.

Is it 

Mike Koelzer: known that they have a coaching business. So they have these [00:30:00] other businesses along with saying that they're a coach 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: to yes. Most of the people I work with have. Their own business. So I work with a lot of independent subcontractors and consider them my team members. I think if you consider independent subcontractors as team members, they're definitely a line item on our budget.

I think we're up to maybe a dozen contractors right now that we're working with and that's consultant pharmacists. That's, um, you know, tech people. That's coaches and consultants. 

Mike Koelzer: These are part of your nine coaches you talked about. 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: Yes. And some of those people are. Just more one-off I wouldn't need a speaking coach to help me with my keynote once a month.

So that would just be more like a one-off thing. The retreat people that I'm working with, it's a four month program. The sales coaches I'm working with are a year-long program. So there's different kinds of durations that I would work with people and may just be like a one-off. And then I've also got a team that I'm building in the farmer preneur academy with an executive director and some, some in-house things that we're starting to bring into the program now.

With the onboarding, the processes and, and client, uh, client questions, customer service type stuff 

Mike Koelzer: on your coaches. We left off at like social media and then a business coach, any other coaches that come to mind, even the one-offs, the, 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: um, the other. So the folks I met out in, in the Nashville conference that I went to back in January, One of the presentations was by Eileen Wilder and she has a big business partner named Joe Joe Letty.

These are like multi-million dollar business owners. They, they come from, they come from like the, uh, The speaking industry. So speaking stage presence like that kind of stuff, they have helped me so much create our live events in a way that it almost feels like a Tony Robbins style event online. And so we hosted the first elevated summit in this new model that they helped me create.

Back in April and we've launched it a couple times this year and what we'll be doing with them and October is you're actually going to get to meet those people on the October elevate summit. So I don't know if both of them are going to be there, but I know at least one of them is going to be there.

And when I say that these people can hold you on the edge of their seat. It. I mean, it's unbelievable to see how much expertise they have in that area, because even I remember the first time I ever watched them just hanging on every word and I'm thinking, how did they create this charisma? How did they create this excitement, this energy level?

And I knew, I was like, oh, I want to work with them. I want to know how, how they do that and, and working with them. It has, it has really taken my business, my coaching, my communication style to the next level, because they have helped me be able to cultivate that energy and cultivate that enthusiasm and actually pass it on to.

The members of my team, and then also leading the pharmacists that I work with. So it's like leadership with a side of evangelicalism. 

Mike Koelzer: If I were to go out like on a basketball court, which I suck at anyways. But if you put me up against someone like a shack, you know, I mean, they're just going to kill me, right.

Or if I'm on a hundred yard dash or something like that, the Olympians are just going to kill me. Those are very objective, but I think that the problem and you see this with like, America's got talent or what, what the hell is the other one? Not star search, but what's the one with American idol, American idol, American idol.

You get such bad people out there. I think because singing is subjective, you know, along with some arts and things like that. But the [00:35:00] point is, I bet those speakers. Some of those speakers are as good at what they do as shack compared to me out there. And people think, oh, they can't be that good. They think it's subjective.

But objectively, if you could measure the silence of the audience, meaning that they may be paying attention, you know, in my case, they fell asleep, but paying attention, you know, to the silence, if you can measure that objectively, some of these people are as. At what they do as Shaq against me on the basketball court.

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: Absolutely. Absolutely. And this is, this is what Joe and Eileen, I mean, have absolutely mastered. They hold your attention for as long as they want to hold your attention. Like it's, it's magnetic, it's something so special. And I just, I remember seeing that and thinking I. And I've never thought that like, oh, I just can't do that.

I've always thought they know something that I don't. I want to figure out what that is. And I want to learn how to do that in my own way. I mean, I may not be doing it in the exact way as they do it, but I want to be able to. Take what they can share with me, put it together, create something new that is entirely my own and be able to speak from a place and be able to motivate those who are listening to what I'm saying into going and taking action.

Because that's the piece that we don't get from all sides of the pharmacy conferences is like how to, how. Get inspired, but also how to stay motivated and keep moving forward. That's what. I think part of it 

Mike Koelzer: with some training, these speakers could probably take practically any subject, whether it was changing the tire or car or staying in shape or whatever.

And they would use some of the same probable principles of maybe some storytelling and then dynamics of this and that. So they'll take what you're feeding out and then coach you into how to be. The attractive slash convincing to the audience and so on, 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: they, they teach you how to. I want to say not inspire, but they come from literally an evangelical mega church background.

They've worked with Joel Osteen, but they've also worked with entrepreneurs in various different spaces. So, the group that we're in is a mastermind. It's, um, it's online consultants like myself, but. I don't think anyone else's a pharmacist or even in the healthcare industry. So it's cool for me.

And this is kind of a recurring theme in my journey to take what I'm learning from. These masters of their crafts bring it back into pharmacy. Like in 2017, we launched the first ever virtual summit, the first ever virtual pharmacy conference. And in 2017, the pharmacy organizations were going, why would we need to have an online conference?

Like, why would you need it? Do anything online, everybody knows networking is best done in person. And then 2020 happens. And it's like, oh, well, okay. Maybe there is value in being able to connect virtually the 

Mike Koelzer: evangelical stuff that they're doing, basically. The topics there are bringing someone from death to life, spiritually and so on.

And so if you can add that to a lot of stuff, you know how you're bringing maybe the morale of pharmacists from death to life, you know, giving them new life for their degree and so on and saying, you don't have to go out maybe and get a new MBA or more letters behind your name, you know, and you can kind of.

Show that resurrection of their career, they thought was dead. It's hope. 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: I mean, it's yeah. Hope, right. I hope that's what you're giving people. And, and that's what I think a lot of times we're missing in pharmacy is the cynical pharmacist is, is kind of more the norm and someone being very optimistic about the future of the profession is.

Unfortunately not, but that's where I'm coming from. Let's not give up on this profession that [00:40:00] can do and be so much more than what it is, what it is today or what it has been in the past. 

Mike Koelzer: One favor that I want you to do for me. Okay. When you learn even more, how to inspire from either an actual stage or the stage online.

Call up the wholesalers and tell them that their C suite people need to learn from you because some of them are awful. I can't believe how terrible some of the people are. They get up on stage and I'm not saying I would do any better with the lights coming down on me and all that kind of stuff. But it's like, some of them have like zero training.

It's painful to sit through some of those things. It's almost too bad when they hire these people. They can't say, all right, now, get up and do a song and dance and inspire us or something like that. It's terrible. I think that's gotta be part of the hiring 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: process. I think it's leadership and it's like, how are we putting people in positions as leaders?

They aren't able to inspire and motivate and lead people. So we need more leaders in pharmacy and being able to go out and articulate your ideas and formulate goes back to the unified message of pharmacy practice and having a vision of where we see it going in the next 10 or 20 years. It's right now, kind of super disjointed.

Um, but, um, I'm hopeful that we have pharmacists who really care about the future of the profession. I do offer individual executive coaching. So if they want to hit me up, they can absolutely do it. 

Mike Koelzer: So I met up there doing it myself, but it's painful sometimes. So Blair, you're bringing hope to the profession.

How have you brought up the virtual summit? What is that? Yeah, so 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: The elevated pharmacy virtual summit is basically a two-day live event. It's a workshop, it's Q and a. It's working directly with pharmacists to cultivate their ideas, to figure out. What it is they want to create. So we start with brainstorming and creating your six figure offer.

So I'm going to talk more about how to create a six figure offer and then work your way backwards. So figuring out the number of clients and pricing those packages and how to actually get there without just doing one-off type services. So we talk a lot about recurring revenue. What do you mean by 

Mike Koelzer: That six figure offer?

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: So when you start, you want to say your goal is to replace your income. Gotcha. A hundred grand a year. So we will say we start there, uh, moving backwards. Okay. What does that look like per month? So 10 we'll make it easy. We'll just say 10 grand a month is your goal to replace if your packages are, you know, starting at 2,500.

You're only going to need four clients a month to make your golf four new clients a month. So it's basically working backwards to figure out then how do you structure the package so that it delivers $2,500 of value? And the next step we call these the four pillars of farmer preneurial success. So the first step is figuring out what that six-figure offer is and how to package it.

The second is to create an irresistible offer machine. So that is essentially the funnel that attracts people into your business so that your. You know, not having to go knock on doors, essentially you're leveraging the power of social media, word of mouth marketing, synergistic affiliate type businesses to get the word out about your, your program so that you have a steady stream of new clients coming in that keep you at that 10 K a month or whatever your goal.

And then the third pillar is your delivery methods. So we call it a five-star delivery method because it's something that you put in place, whether it's through software or through team members or, you know, through systems and checklists that make sure that your client. Get delivered exactly what they were promised.

And [00:45:00] then, so, so, it was actually over-delivering so that people are still going to say, you know, this was a five-star experience. I got exactly what was promised and, and I think this is the part where sometimes we maybe fall down on. What exactly does that look like? So making sure that you have some kind of process, some kind of standardized system that whether you have employees or it's just, you can follow to make sure that you get someone to the, the result that thereafter and then the fourth pillar would be the scaling strategies.

How to create a hyper sales method, which would essentially be multiple funnels into multiple offers. So this is kind of, once you get your first three, Pillars in place. That would be the, the final step in figuring out how, how to start creating multiple offers and multiple spokes on, on your wheel so that you can continue to, to grow that.

So that's what we're going to talk about, uh, on the elevate summit coming up October 21st and 22nd. 

Mike Koelzer: So this is coming up in October. 21st and 22nd. What days of the week are those? 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: It's a Thursday and a Friday. Is 

Mike Koelzer: this recorded or is this an actual event? No, 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: It's a live event, so yeah, they're gonna, they're going to hear from us in real time, we're going to bring people on camera.

We're going to do hot seats. We're going to have someone in the chat, facilitating conversation. Connecting ideas. We're going to introduce you to some of our, of our other members, some pharmacists who have actually taken this program and built their own things. So it's a full day, uh, Thursday and Friday from 9:00 AM central time to 4:00 PM central time.

And it's going to be workshop style. It's. It's it's really something that we're going to talk about, the four pillars, but we're also going to be doing a lot of audience engagement and on the spot coaching, 

Mike Koelzer: Does the audience get involved through chat? They're not being videotaped. Are they? 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: We do recommend that people show up ready to show their faces on video.

I know, and some people don't want to do that because it can be kind of scary, but because we're all pharmacists, because I can kind of keep with the pre-registration. I can kind of keep it, um, you know, making sure that we protect the privacy of the people that are on there. We want it to be workshop stuff.

So that's why we require pre-registration so that people can feel comfortable. Come on. It's going to be hosted on zoom. So it's in my private zoom room. It's not being recorded, but we are having real time conversations. You know, some people, if you, if you want to, it's optional can come on video and audio and ask questions of myself and the other members who are, who are leading, uh, who are on the farmer, preneur academy leadership 

Mike Koelzer: team and blur you.

And I have reached out ahead of this. I didn't know a lot about it. So now I'm glad I do. But at my website, biz of farm pod.com. If you go to that, there's a link that will get them. What tickets are entered into this? 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: Yeah, that's, that's going to be there, their virtual ticket. So we've actually not offered this free and at all in 2021 in the past, these have been because we want to keep.

The event is small and keeps it very intimate. We've always charged $197 for a ticket to this event because it is such a high level event. But since this is our last one of the year, We decided to open it up to open up the floodgates and let as many student pharmacists and pharmacists who are interested in building out their clinical services programs into the summit as possible.

So yes, they will need to, to use your. To register and then set aside those two days to come and be ready to work and focus and invest in themselves and invest in the businesses they want to create. 

Mike Koelzer: I didn't know that it was all live, which [00:50:00] is really cool because you get the advantage of live, but you're not traveling.

Parking, you're not sitting through some, whatever the hell bores me on some days like that you're there and you're focusing, you're doing it. That's cool. 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: Yeah. From the comfort of your own home or pharmacy or your office, you can log in, be present. You know, I've been comparing it to a business incubator, like we don't say we're shark tanks.

Cause that sounds kind of scary and dangerous. So we're like, uh, an incubator that's helping you to take this seedling of an idea and grow it into something else. So being able to come and brainstorm with like-minded pharmacists and connect. So you don't feel like it. Every single pharmacist you made is negative about the future, the profession.

If you're looking for optimism about the future of pharmacy, this is the event you're going to find it out. 

Mike Koelzer: They get enough pissing and moaning from me. And so after, after they get done listening to this, they can go to that link and get some, get some good stuff. Well, Blair, it's always a pleasure talking to you.

Thanks for your 

Blair Thielemier, PharmD.: time. Thank you so much for having.