Pharmacy Profit Driver – Your Team | with Patti Mara – Monthly Mastermind January 2023

Pharmacy Profit Driver – Your Team | with Patti Mara

Links Mentioned:
Bonus Performance Study

Keywords: Turning On The Most Important Profit Driver In Your Pharmacy – Your Team. Pharmacy Heroes

Transcription:

Welcome to January 2023. It’s it’s going to be an awesome year. I’m just laying that out there right now putting that into the universe. We are starting out the year with one of my favorite people on the planet. My former business coaches as we’ve been chatting about Patti Mara. And the reason we’re gonna I invited her specifically for January is in talking with a lot of you a lot of your problems right now. You know, yes, you’re worried about profitability, you’re worried about audit, you’re worried about dir fees, but the thing that’s keeping you up right now is your team, your people, it’s hard to hire new people, your current people are asking for more money, because the hospital down the road is like hiring technicians at $30 an hour, and you pay yours 15. And you’re worried about, you know, angering or alienating or pissing off your current employees by making them do more. And so instead of giving your employees structure and giving them goals to go after, you’re basically letting your techs and pharmacists like rule the roost, so to speak, because you’re, you’re worried that they’re gonna quit on you, and you won’t be able to hire new ones. And so it’s like this weird conundrum, because of just where this economy is at. And like, where our culture is at, like post pandemic, it’s, you know, it’s like, where did all these millions of workers go, you know, pharmacy is very much experiencing that as well. And, you know, when other companies can raise their wages astronomically, we are often left behind, because we’re, you know, because of our low profits, and because of those PBM audits, and because of those dir fees, we just don’t have the playroom to just suddenly pay somebody an extra $10 an hour to keep them and make them happy. So there’s just this team conundrum that, you know, not formally great pharmacies with great teams are now all of a sudden having culture issues, or having employee engagement issues, implementing new programs or just grinding to a halt. And so that is what when I’ve been talking to a lot of you, like, that’s what’s keeping you up at night, like right this moment. And so, really, there is no better person to bring in than Patty. Patty has oodles of experience of not only with business owners in general and businesses, but specifically with pharmacy owners. I mean, she’s worked with pharmacy owners, while I started my pharmacy, you know, back in, oh, 506. And she became my coach, I think in Oh, seven. So I mean, she’s, she’s, she was doing that before I came along, too. So she has a long history with pharmacy and pharmacy owners. Even though she’s not from that industry, she knows our problems and has worked with many of you, and probably you probably some of you even recognize her. And so anyways, that is what all led us to bring patty on. So Patty is going to be presenting today on some information on how to like, solve for this conundrum. How do you keep your current employees happy, yet still, you know, between the guard rails still high performing, still pushing them to implement new programs, and keep them happy. So you’re not worried that they’re like, going to leave and you know, now you’re left with because you can’t hire anybody new. So that is the story for today. So even though I couldn’t have introduced her, Patti, let me formally welcome you. And if you want to introduce yourself to people, anything else that might have left out about your illustrious career, to anybody listening here that may not know you, please welcome and go ahead.
Great. Thank you, Lisa. I really appreciate the opportunity to be on one of your monthly masterminds. So as Lisa said, we’ve got a long history we’ve, I think we met in like 2007. And I got to work with Lisa, as with your first store. And then as you you know you have these, you had these while you were having kids at the same time. I think your two oldest boys grew up in a bassinet in the pharmacy. Right as you were just you know, taking this business from the ground and making it successful. So it was it’s always been a pleasure working with you and I just love what you’re doing right now with diversifier X is filling a need in pharmacy See? So saying that when people ask who are you? What do you do, I always introduce myself saying I am a passionate advocate for locally owned businesses. I believe it’s a locally owned businesses do, they’re the hub of a community, you know, not just the employer. But it’s, it’s like, when you have a robust, locally owned business community, you have a robust community. Now you have it at the town, or, or city or village, I’ve moved to a village and we’ve just our main street or all these wonderful, really diverse boutique type businesses is really neat. So um, and, you know, I also think it’s going to be our local communities and our independent businesses that take us out of the mess of the last couple of years, like bringing communities back together. So that’s where I like to start. In 2007, I launched my first online program, it was called the profit generator. And Dan venimos, heard me give my launch speech. And so you need to he said, You need to come and work with my pharmacy owner. So I was I spoke at the next year’s conference. And that led me too. I was coaching with PDS, I coached some of the industry leaders that were in PDS, and including Lisa, and I created their business development materials are all of their business development material, improving your all different aspects, right, the foundation of business, the finances, the marketing, the all different components was, you know, that’s their, their core content that they had. And then, you know, I left after working with pharmaceuticals for 12 or 13 years to finish the book that I’ve been working on for 10 years. And that published in 2020. It’s up solutions, turning your team into heroes and your customers into raving fans. There’s quite a bit of pharmacy throughout the book. So at least if it’s okay, a launch my slides,
Yep, absolutely, you just click the Share right at the bottom. Perfect.
All right. So today, as Lisa said, we’re going to be talking about your team. And I like to talk about your team as the most important profit driver you have in your business. And I say that, because regardless of the products and services you offer, regardless of the industry, really but in pharmacy in particular, you’re relying on your frontline team. They’re the ones who are connecting with your patients. They’re the ones that are talking about what what your patients need to know, they’re the ones that are making recommendations. And they’re also the ones that are hearing what your patients are saying, and hopefully communicating that back so that you are connected to your patient base. So you’re Yes, you have to know how to market your business. And yes, you need to know what are different. You know, Lisa, you’re talking a lot about past strategies this year, this is a really important year for independent pharmacies to set up for success and continue going forward. In order to do any of that your team has to be on board. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today.
And let’s see here. So
I like to start when I talk about I’m a passionate advocate for locally owned businesses, I find that most independently owned businesses are not playing the right game of business. And what I mean by that is when I talk to a business owner, and even the team, most of the time, when I asked about the business, they tell me what they sell. And I think what you sell is the vehicle for how you create value, what you what the value you create, the outcomes you create, why people choose your pharmacy is what your business is. And unfortunately, certainly with reimbursements, we are getting to the point that your prescriptions not always but often are almost a loss leader, right? You get paid for them mostly, sometimes the DIR. clawbacks are more than the reimbursement. So you know, there’s some really wonky things going on in the pharmacy industry. So it really needs to be if a pharmacy owner thinks and the team this is important. If the team thinks that your business is dispensing medication, you’re in trouble. If the team thinks and the owner are really aware of how who is this person, what do they need and how to create value for them. We have a whole different conversation. Yes, the prescriptions are important, but they’re kind of the entry in the door. And again, I’ve said this a team are the frontline in the business. If they need to know how to deliver that value. They need to understand that it’s not just The task of filling a prescription, filling a prescription gives them the opportunity to interact with a patient, who’s the patient? What do they need? And how to create? How do they create that outcome for your patient. And then, as I said, starting this whole thing, your team is the most important profit driver in new pharmacy. So how do we set them up for success? So I’m going to talk about what’s been happening in the last couple of years, as Lisa set up beautifully, what are the current challenges with being able to hire people, and then I’m going to talk through the four pillars of team success, I’m gonna go through each of the four pillars for what are the key structure that you must have in place, so the team knows how to win in their role. So let’s dive in. We have been through a period of unbelievable change in the last couple years unprecedented change. And there’s been multiple challenges, supply chain interruption. You know, people feeling isolated, there’s just been so many challenges in the last couple of years. Now, of course, we’re dealing with inflation. I will say that in pharmacy, you’ve also had some advantages, it’s not unusual, there’s, there’s, I talk a lot about the opportunity in a closed door, you know, when one door closes, closes, another door opens. And one of the interesting things when we go through crisis or change is that it interrupts all structured, it interrupts how we know to operate. And we have to redesign based on what’s true today. Some of that means leaving behind things that we knew how to do, but are no longer being successful. And the opportunities the last couple of years for pharmacy specifically, is that you were able to keep your doors open, by and large, there were some exceptions in the early days, you know, in 2020, but by and large pharmacies doors were open, patients still needed their meds, you still had to get them their meds, it’s not like they stopped buying from you. And I’ve heard from many, many pharmacy owners that they had more interaction with patients, because the pharmacists, and the pharmacy was more accessible than their doctors were. So they’re actually increased their connection with you as their pharmacy. So there’s some opportunity that happened the last couple of years. And of course, the challenge, again, how we’ve known to operate, it has largely been been interrupted. And again, there’s some good in that, right. I, I can remember talking with business owners in 2019. And, you know, challenging them to look at their business in a different way. Because although they were still being profitable, their margin was shrinking. So we were seeing a lot of pressure in the marketplace, not just in pharmacy. There was change was coming. It’s almost like the how the pandemic was handled, or forced force the change more rapidly. So in for pharmacy, as Lisa said, at the beginning of the mastermind, and the big impact, and I’ve heard this a lot over the last couple of years has been a shortage of qualified applicants. And of course, we’re compounding that now that the stores are paying more because they’re trying to deal with not getting applicants. So they’re, you know, well, Walmart can pay technicians more because, you know, they’re looking for someone shopping in the whole store, not just in the pharmacy. So what how, what, how we deal with this, you know, the what I can eat consistently here, it’s hard to find good people. That’s, I hear I’ve been hearing that since sometime in 2020. People wanted to work remote, they didn’t want to work in the store. So it’s hard to find good people. So what what does that lead to? So what’s interesting is by having a fear that you can’t find people so and pharmacies you were running short, so your doors were open, but maybe you had a technician or a pharmacist at COVID. Or they weren’t feeling well, and you just didn’t want them to come into the store. So, you know, a lot of pharmacies dealt with sometimes a higher volume with fewer team members and had to really struggle, their systems, their processes, and their team were just flat out tired. So where that’s where that’s going is what again, what I’ve heard a lot from pharmacy owners is they just don’t want to rock the boat. They don’t want to lose their existing team members. So they just don’t want to they’re being cautious with their team. And there’s a problem in that there’s a big cost in that. So if you’re not holding your current team accountable, then it impacts your culture. It impacts you know, everyone is aware of it. So it’s that you know, the lot you want to talk people define culture as a lowest common denominator. In other words, you know, your least least engaged team member is determining how everyone else works, because everyone else is frustrated adapting to your least productive team member. And, again, if I say this, I probably would get some heads nodding, have you ever let somebody go? And then you realize you should have done it a lot sooner.
Right? Have you ever had, I will
say yes.
Oh, Lisa, you and
I used to have these conversations. I know, when I finally got rid of my technician that had been with me for literally my entire pharmacist career, she was the technician at my very first pharmacist posting, she went to she literally follow me around. So for like, 15 years, Veronica was my technician. And she had been failing and deteriorating for, you know, far longer. And I never thought I could live without her. And then we finally fired her because she did something that just was finally just like, no other option. That next day, the pharmacy ran was one of our busiest days, and we were all standing around twiddling our thumbs because it ran so much smoother, and so much more efficiently. Like than we ever could have imagined, we all looked around and said, Boy, we should have done that a long time
ago. Yeah, and sometimes your team members will come up and say thank you. Because that person, the moment you know, someone does not believe belong in your on your team. And as Lisa, as you pointed out with Veronica, sometimes they were the best team member at one point in your growth, but they haven’t grown with you and no longer are the good fit anymore. And I, I believe that everyone deserves to be an A player, your job is to make sure you have a players on your team, and you’ve set them up to win. This is this is where it’s, you could say, you know, an owners job is to run a profitable, successful growing business. However, part of that is your job to create the environment for your team to be successful. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. How do you put the structure in place, it’s not complicated, might even feel like common sense. But it must be in place. And I’ve just about every team member, I’ve talked to every pharmacy owner I’ve talked to, in the last couple of years have kind of put this on hold, because they were dealing with all the challenges with with staffing in the last couple of years. So again, what does it cost your business to not have your team set up to win, it’s, you know, productivity, it’s morale is losing people you don’t want to lose. So part of this is, it’s an interesting thing. Everyone wants to feel that they’re winning in the role. If you take a look, people want to feel like they’re winning. And so if they’re not sure how to do that, then they’re guessing. And they’re really frustrated, and you’re really frustrated when they’re guessing wrong. The impact of that is certainly productivity of your business, but it’s also morale and culture, and sometimes losing your best team members. And again, if I were to ask this, you don’t have to shake your head, you have to not. But if I were to ask this, probably everyone’s had the experience of losing a team member they didn’t want to lose, because they weren’t willing to work in an environment. That wasn’t how were they couldn’t win a players. And this is Brad smart define this, trying to think of what his book was, I’m looking on my shelf. He wrote this great book, and he defined A, B and C players. And C players are disengaged, they’re destructive in your business, whether they’re actively or passively disengaged, B players produce results, but you have to manage them to produce results, you have to show them what to do follow up to make sure it was done. A players show up and get the job done. The right fit skill set the right fit, attitude and aptitude and they want to win and they will not stay in an environment that they can’t win. So part of this making sure that we’ve got the structure in place so that your team understand what’s expected. How are they doing? And they feel like they’re all pulling together and having an impact in the community. If they don’t have that structure, they’ll go find a place they do. Alright, so this is what I’m talking about. That’s kind of the you know, the the downside, if you will, now let’s talk about there’s a mindset shift. It’s going from thinking, How do I get my team to do these things? They aren’t doing them on their own, the carrot isn’t working, and I’m afraid to use a stick. So we have to shift that thinking to how do I set up my team to win? What’s the structure to set up my team to win? This is they are the frontline and value delivery. So really, if you have even one disengaged team member, it’s destructive in your whole team. And they’re the ones having conversations with patients patients know if they care or not. There’s an interesting so so then I get the question while we have bonus system in place, well, how’s it going? And here’s an interesting thing I like I’m a fan of bonuses. And I think that having them in place in different parts that especially when they’re productivity based, and team working together based however, for me, a bonus is always the icing on the cake, you must first have the cake, the cake has to be in place. In other words, people need to know what’s expected how they’re doing, and be feel like they’re in the loop. If they have those things that your cakes baked, you can look at where do you want to put an incentive in place. And the thing is to be really careful with this because there’s a myth that in bonuses in and of themselves, create outcomes. Bonuses are almost like a hyper focusing when you want the team to focus on something specifically, and create a game around gamify it have a scoreboard track, there’s some excitement around it. That’s a good use of bonuses. What’s interesting, there the study that’s on the slide, and there’s only at the bottom, and I can send the link to Lisa, Lisa, if you want to include this, you don’t have to read the whole research paper. The bottom line, it was a really interesting motivation study with kindergarten students, kindergarten kids. And it was basically taking the work of kindergarten, which is often drawing. And every drawing they did, they got a gold star. As soon as they started getting gold stars for the drawing, they stopped drawing. It’s almost like we have an unconscious Association. If we have to get paid for it, if we have to get a bonus for it, then it must be hard work and I don’t want to do hard work. So it’s an it’s an unconscious thing. So there is a role for bonuses, but the bonuses will not get you the results if you don’t have that foundation structure in place.
So, um,
this is kind of reinforcing everyone on your team wants to feel like they’re, they’re winning. And, you know, if they’re spending time guessing, and it’s interesting without a good structure in place, and it’s not complicated, but without a good structure in place, then they spend the majority of your time guessing which impacts productivity, it also leads to frustration for you, it leads to frustration for them. And what happens is your team starts shutting down, they become less and less willing to take a risk because they don’t want to be wrong. This is Daniel Pink is an interesting, I like reading his books, he talks a lot about how the brain works. And in his book drive, he talks about what motivates people today. So I will say that money needs to be handled. And when I mean, what I mean by that is people need to be paid appropriately for their contribution to the business. We cannot underpaid people we cannot rely on other they they need to be paid appropriately not overpaid. Again, money shuts people down. If it’s not there’s a there’s an equation of effort, the results that get created and the reimbursement they get paid. So what they’re doing in the business, the impact they have in the business equals the what their salaries what they’re being paid. So money use be handled. You don’t want to underpay people, your team are very valuable profit driver of your business. However, money won’t solve it. And I say this because this isn’t about matching what Walmart or CVS will pay for a technician down the road. A whole separate a whole separate topic. Maybe I’ll do a blog posts. A whole separate topic conversation I’ve had with a couple of different pharmacy owners in the last six months is really understanding the value of working with your in your team. What’s the value of being a team member in your pharmacy? This is kind of an aside conversation, but I think it’s important
Yeah, it’s there’s those there’s intangibles, that’s something that I’m always constantly telling pharmacy owners is your your compensation your benefits to them. employee is more than just the hourly wage. I mean, that’s where the energy and the culture and some of those things come in. But as somebody who we just hired two new employees for our pharmacy, because we had two employees that were leaving, we had candidates that were willing to take four and $5 cuts in pay, because we’re open Monday through Friday and close at 630. And they they wanted the schedule. So you know, your schedule, and your hours of work and the support you give your team and even things like titles like that was one of the things that in my very first pharmacies, we were going down memory lane earlier patties, I let people create their own titles, and they were very proud of the titles that they created for themselves. I remember my head delivery driver, his name was Nick. And instead of, you know, head delivery driver or delivery driver manager, or you know, something that, you know, was maybe typical, he created, you know, Director of pharmaceutical transportation, and he just loved the way that sound. And he was very proud to like, say his title. And so you also got to think like, there’s more than just compensation. There’s all these different levers. So I always talk about it and levers that you can kind of pool and in benefits to working with you, as opposed to a hospital or a CVS or something else. Like don’t, don’t forget to apply those other benefits.
Yes. And you just nailed it. Lisa, I think it’s so important. We tend to take that stuff for granted. But it’s like, you know, if you work at CVS, you’re working evenings and weekends, do you have a young family? Right? Do you want to be part of a team that everyone contributes and supports each other? And we have an impact every day with our patients, we get to feel good every day? Do you want to be part of a team or pharmacy that’s innovative, and they’re doing new things and finding new ways to have an impact for patients? Do you want to feel that what you do matters? Right, right versus a paycheck. And it’s interesting, because again, I’ve had this conversation with two different pharmacies in the last six months. And both of them told me stories of hiring someone that as you said, Lisa took a pay cut to be with them. And we’re excited to be with them, chose them over an offer from a chain because of what they offer. But the team had to be clear of why choose your pharmacy. So I talked about the you know, you need to be clear in your marketplace. Why choose your pharmacy, but you also need to be clear with your team. Why choose your pharmacy, and that your existing team talking about what are the benefits of being part of this team, as well as when you’re when you’re hiring. So thank you for putting that. And Lisa, when it was that’s kind of an aside, because that’s also a hot topic right now of you need to be communicating all the different ways. And your team will actually tell you what they love about working with you. So, back to this, you know Daniel Pink’s right so what motivates people today? They they love what they do. They believe that what they do matter, and they see the impact of the work they do. You know, Daniel, how he put it in his book was people need to be filled feel like they have purpose, you know, in the not filling smoothies or slushies at 711, they have an impact what they do matter. So there’s purpose, there’s development, they’re learning, they’re growing, they’re stretching, and they feel like they can increase the impact that they have. So you know, bottom line, that’s this is people stay if this is handled. And the quote Lisa, you kind of said this at the beginning of the the mastermind, call more guardrails, give team members more security. Your team wants to feel secure, so that they can show up and do a great job.
Take the guesswork out.
So then, and and again, this is such an important year, this is so important. Lisa has been leaving, you know, the DIR Apocalypse at the beginning of 2024. How do you build, you know, a cash chest if you will to to navigate the double dipping that’s going to happen in the first part of 2024. And I mean, listen, that’s Lisa’s wheelhouse, you will get better strategies and ideas and, and ways of implementing it than anyone else. I know this is your wheelhouse. And if you’re going to implement them in your pharmacy, your team needs to be set up to win. They need to understand, you know, they have to have the security and confidence in what they’re doing. Take the guesswork out. So they can learn something new and apply that. Then they’re the ones that will be actually implementing the strategy to actually doing it so your cash and growth strategy will only work or fail depending on your team’s engagement. I love this. This quote is Fred, reach out. He’s he’s the guy who created the Net Promoter Score and And there’s some controversy about this. But what I like about it, his main point is that your business is on what you create your customers, and being able to track, the experience you’re creating your customers, your patients, is this determines the success of your pharmacy. I love this quote, it’s leaders put their employees in a position to delight customers, and earn their loyalty, that chain of events is what truly drives the economix economics of a business. So that’s all the positioning, that’s why this is important. Now, let’s talk about the four pillars. And again, to a certain extent, this is not is going to be common sense. Like I’m going to say things it’s like, well, yes. And some of you will have some of this in place. And some of you may, hopefully, some of you actually have all of it in place. But it’s important to reevaluate, tweak. And all four pillars are essential. So the first pillar is, be very clear on the value and how you deliver it. So again, this goes back to my first point that prescriptions is the vehicle for you to create value. And I really great exercise would be have some discussions with your team. And what did they what did they feel is the value created from with your pharmacy? Do you offer special services? Do you offer a sync program? Do people say how much they appreciate? They feel connected to you? Do you know that they you know their name? Do people trust you? Do your patients trust you? Do you offer clinical services do you offer? You know you make supplement recommendations? What is what is it you do? It’s really interesting, we could take five pharmacies in a small town. And each of you could have a different business. Because each of you will have a different focus on how you deliver value. And part of that’s because if you had five different owners, each of you have unique talents. And you want to, you know, take those talents into the marketplace differently. And you’re going to focus on different things. And you’ve built a team around you to do that. So this is really paying attention to what is it you do, what value do you create and who best you create it with? This is this is both the most challenging. And yet right there. There’s nothing to do except for look, but it’s kind of like it. I love this example. It’s like a hand right in front of your face. Right? You know, if you put a hand in front of your face, you can see everything is like you can see, but there’s a barrier there. And it’s like we take for granted all the value we create. If you the simplest way to pay attention to this is to listen to what patients say what they appreciate. And why they say when they say thank you, why are they saying thank you? And when they refer why are they referring your patients already appreciate the value create? For you, it’s being clear on what that is and having your team be clear, so they can consistently deliver it. What you sell, again, that’s the vehicle. Why do people choose your pharmacy? And how do you make your patients life easier, better? There’s many, many things you do in your pharmacy just be really clear what it is. It’s almost like you know the catchphrases, our vision, vision and mission statement, which are great. But it really all you have to do is pay attention to what you’re already doing. Because it’s not whether or not you’re creating value our or you wouldn’t be in business, you wouldn’t have patients, patients choose you for a reason. If you can identify why you give a lot more clarity to your team. So the first pillar is really being clear about the value create. second pillar are position agreements. Now for me position agreements are different than job descriptions. So it’s beyond the job description. It’s it’s not just the tasks that that role is responsible for. But it’s the standards for how those tasks are done. So it’s there’s an interesting distinction between tasks and results. People can be focused on doing well at the tasks, but how they do it may not produce the results you want to produce. And so it’s important to define what the standards of success are for everything they’re responsible for. So what are the standards of success for that role? And then I also want to see standards of success, you know, what’s company? Why is your company right? Why ground rules, if you will? And the third is how does this position contribute to the success of the business because everyone matters in the business. So I like to see cashier agreements, I want to see driver agreements I want to see A pharmacist agreements, technician agreements, they’re not complicated. And here’s, here’s actually a tip. If you take a template and review the template just to make sure it’s consistent with your pharmacy, then hand it out to your team members that fill that role. And ask them to review it and make any changes and hand it back into for the week so that they’re contributing, you know, because the rule of thumb is the person who does the job day in and day out is the expert of the job. Because they’re the ones doing it even if one time you did the same job, but no longer do, they will see things that you don’t. So have them contributed, and then take all the submissions, review them and come back with what are the what is the position agreement for that position. So second pillar, is position agreements. The reason this is so important, this is taking the guesswork out of how to be successful. Again, not just the tasks, what they’re responsible for, but the standards of success. For example, if the cashiers or the techs are responsible for greeting patients as they walk in your pharmacy, how do you want them greeted? Do you want them greeted within three steps or within two seconds or three seconds of entering the store? One of the common, one of the common challenges I’ve seen is that a patient comes up to the drop off wicket in the pharmacy to drop off a prescription. And there’s a technician or pharmacist right in front of that patient, and they’re busy on the computer.
And it might, you know, they’re working, it’s not that they’re not working, they’re working on filling somebody else’s script. But if they haven’t just taken a just a second to say, I’ll be with you in just a minute, I’m just finishing off a prescription for another patient. That’s all they would need to say. But by saying that you put the patient at the wicked at ease, and nobody’s been recognized. And they see, you know, they are seen, it’s an interesting thing. If you’re to put yourself in the patient’s shoes, if nobody acknowledges them, even though you can see them working in the pharmacy, it feels like hours pass. But if someone just acknowledges them, and they’ll be right with you, I’m sorry for the wait, then it’s like paying is a totally different experience. So part of is training the team and interact with patients that needs to be in the standards of success. And if it’s not, if you haven’t had that conversation, then that may not be happening in your pharmacy. All right, first pillar is being clear on value and the team how to deliver it. second pillar is clear position agreements. third pillar is regular team communication. You’re there. And and this is true, regardless of the size of your pharmacy. So if you have a small pharmacy with a cup of tea, you know, the owner is the pharmacist and they’ve got a couple tacks are attacking the cashier, you may feel like you’re talking all the time to your team. But if you don’t have some kind of a meeting structure, I guarantee you they’re not listening to you in the same way and you’re not communicating consistently in the same way. And that’s true if you pharmacy owner has multiple stores. I’ve actually seen this happen. And one of the pharmacy owners I work with this actually was the putting in a regular meeting structure who finally agreed to do it because he realized he had an idea that he wanted to see implemented in the store. He was the first store told the team about it. He was in the second store, told the team about it. And then something happened he had to focus on and deal with, by the time he got to the third store, he completely forgotten about it. And then a month later was surprised when that team hadn’t put in place what the other two teams had. There must be and this is a twofold This is that you’re communicating what’s important to the team. But it’s also that the team feel connected to you that they feel in the know. And again, we’re taking the guesswork out. So this is at a very bare minimum, a 1520 minute huddle once a week. Some businesses I’ve worked with do a 15 minute huddle every day. That’s how they start the day. But at the very bare minimum 1520 minute huddle once a week. Very basic structure is people report on what they accomplish the week before that you talk about anything that’s you know, they need to know about current projects, what the focus is, and then everyone says what they’re going to focus on for the next week, which is what they’re report on in the next meeting in the next week. So very simple structure, 1520 minutes, and just sometimes you make some pharmacies, and certainly depending on the size of the team, you may not be able to hold the whole team together. I’ve got some fun Obviously said work with, they’ll have two meetings and half the team will go to one and you know, people cover the bench and half will go to another and you know, and you’re just kind of posting the key content. So everyone feels that they’re connected. And other pharmacies, not many hold them. At the end of the day. Most people most I’ve worked with, depending on their size, will start, you know, one day a week, early, everyone’s in early, and if they have multiple stores are doing it on Zoom. So again, this, this is a crucial, crucial thing, you are missing so much by just not having a regular meeting and people not all on the same page. I also, I also like to see that, you know, there’s some kind of a once a month or once a quarter, that there’s a more longer an hour long, that’s more of a training meeting, but the very core minimum, are those weekly team huddles?
Yeah, you know, Patti, one of the things that I recommend to people is, there’s also different ways to do meetings, they don’t have to necessarily be the stand up in person, especially with pharmacies that maybe have different shifts, or maybe they just have afternoon employees and, you know, morning employees, and it’s like, I don’t have my whole team here all at once, you know, kind of thing. I think there’s different ways to have meetings, I think the critical point of that is regular team communication. One of the things that I created in my first pharmacy was I started creating payroll notes. And I wasn’t really creative, but you know, when you hand out everybody their their paycheck or their pay stub, because everything’s electronically to spot positive, but when you you know, you hand out that, that pay stub every every two weeks, we used to attach their payroll notes. And over every two weeks, I would kind of collect things that happened in the pharmacy, maybe we got praise from a patient, maybe something went wrong, you know, maybe we’re, you know, something’s happening. And I would just put it on the payroll notes. And so every employee got that every two weeks. And so even though we necessarily didn’t have daily meetings, we certainly had like, monthly and quarterly and, you know, quarterly, we used to bring everybody in for a couple hours, and usually do training and clean up and you know, that kind of stuff. But we had very staggered schedules with our employees, we had a bunch of high schoolers that worked after school, and you know, that kind of thing. But the payroll notes created that regular team communication structure. And so even, you know, you can get creative, especially with chat functions nowadays, and video and other things like think it’s okay to think outside of the box, it doesn’t necessarily have to be every employee standing in front of you for for communication to take place. So I would just encourage people to do what works for you, as long as you have some sort of structure of regular team communication.
Yeah, that’s a great point, Lisa, and start with what you can do today. Yep. Based on what works or doesn’t work, you adapt and try different things.
Absolutely. Yep. Nothing is ever set in stone. That’s right. That’s
exactly right. I’m a big advocate of learning from what doesn’t work. It’s, um, fail fast. Yeah, fail fast, fail fast. And when you’re, when you’re working towards especially a big goal, you’re working towards a big goal, you never know what you need to know, to reach that goal. You have to take action based on what you know, today. So as you’re doing that, celebrate when things work well, you’d be and lean into when things don’t work well, because when things don’t work well, when things fail on the way to working towards a goal, you’re actually learning exactly what you need to know to reach your goal. It’s an interesting thing, when things go wrong, you’re finding out what you don’t know where you need to refocus what piece of information you didn’t know about. I like to call that the school of entrepreneurial success. And sometimes tuition is high. Start today, with what you know, the key here is you must have communication, I want to see two way communication to because you also want to hear what the team is contributing. But start with what you can today. The other piece here, just another tip in this is have it be regular. So it’s scheduled at the same time, same day, every week, because you build a rhythm to it, and it’ll go missing if you don’t have it. Alright, fourth pillar, provide regular feedback. So you’ve got the position agreements in place, people know how to win in their role, but they need to know are they doing is their interpretation accurate? And so we need to give regular feedback. I will say that this needs to be positive as well as corrective when something goes wrong, you need to correct it. But we also have to say what goes well. It’s an interesting, you know, one of the universal laws wherever we put our attention, that’s what expands and So we want to make sure that we’re reinforcing what is working. So people do more of that, as well as dealing with what’s not working. And then set clear expectations, I actually, my methodology is always if I have to give someone corrective feedback, I will start with saying what I appreciate or value for them specifically what I can count on them for. So they’re great, specifically not like fluff, and then what’s not working and why it’s not working. And then set clear expectations, where do we need to go with going forward? Very simple. I do it every time. And, you know, we want to create a productive, engaged, committed team. And so part of that is be careful that you want to the rule of thumb is having five positives to every every corrective feedback, which means you need to actually be consciously aware of acknowledging and appreciating it, sometimes it’s routine stuff, some, but sometimes it’s like, you know, one of your team members just had a great interaction with a patient. It’s like, listen, Mary, that I just, I just kind of heard the tail end of that. And I just want to say thank you for that great conversation with Mrs. Smith. She came in here all upset, you took the time, and you walked her through, and you made sure she was comfortable and knew what was going on. And I just want to say thank you, that has an impact on her, it has an impact on us. And it, that’s exactly who we want to be with our patients. So it’s taking the time to have those conversations as well as when something’s not working. It’s an interesting thing, if you start with acknowledging what is working, people can hear what’s not working constructively. Not like they’re a bad person. Because most of the time when we hear when something’s not working, and we did something wrong, it falls on us, like we’re bad people. So we want to shift that. Let’s be constructive. Alright, so those are the four pillars. That’s it. Again, common sense, not complicated. And essential. If you don’t have one of those four pillars in place, your business is not being as successful as it could be today, without any other changes you’re doing. We’re talking about productivity engagement of your team, which also then means retention of your team, and impact with your patients. So the outcome, what we’re really looking for, is the team working together. And I will say it is going to take effort, and time and attention to implement those four pillars. It doesn’t have to take a lot, but it will take and listen, we’re already busy, all of us are already busy. And it’s worth the investment in your time and attention. Because each of those four pillars are time generators. By putting them in place, you multiply the impact of everything. So that you’re, you know, it’s it’s an interesting thing, I think, at least to use in your example, when you let your tech go that had been with you for years, and the next day, you had one of the busiest days ever. And yet, you weren’t overstressed. And that’s a time generator. That’s because you got rid of something that was going against the team all working together. Yep,
those energy vampires have a way of sucking the life out of everyone else. Yep,
absolutely. So where to start. So I’ve certainly I, you know, have labeled them the four pillars, they don’t have to do them. 1234. Start with where it makes sense. And for a lot of pharmacies, if you’re not yet, if you don’t already have a weekly huddle, start there. Because that communication is easy to put in place, and will be absolutely essential, you’ll see a dramatic impact once you start having them on a weekly basis, in a very short period of time, just the team feeling like they’re all working together. And you’ll see the impact in your pharmacy, hold them on the same time, same day. They need to be scheduled and for your team to attend start on time and on time. And then a tip you kind of said this in passing, but it’s actually a tip from Peter Drucker, the management guru, hold them standing up, you know, you want to keep them to 1520 minutes, hold them standing up, everyone sits down,
it’s very easy
to go over. So that’s the fun tip.
So then, you know, what we’re really looking at the outcomes is, you know, how do we set your team up to when they are the most important profit driver in your business? Is the team really make the difference in the margin level, the productivity level, you know, are your team having conversations about you’re on a statin and we recommend Kofu 10 Or you’re on diabetes MC medication we recommend calcium or whatever it is. That makes a huge difference for the patients as well as the as well as the business One of my favorite examples is pharmacy owner, a patient came back in and set to return an antibiotic. And the pharmacy owner happened to be there. And he said, Well, we don’t normally refund antibiotics, she came in complaining because of all the side effects she’d had. And she just couldn’t take it. And so he’s refunding, you said, but I’ll do this for you. And he’s refunding the money. And he just kind of set it aside, you know, if you were taking a probiotic at the same time, you probably wouldn’t have experienced those side effects. And it was her response that had him, you know, tag on to this and share this as a story. Her response was, Well, I wish somebody had told me that. So again, we had to set our team up to win so that they’re having those type of conversations. So clear, understanding the importance of their role, how they have an impact the clarity of purpose, and actions and decisions. And then, you know, this gives you a lot of room to have an increased skill and customer awareness. And that’s the engagement, allowing for greater and greater autonomy. And the team actually driving, I want to see a team driving the business. And that doesn’t replace the owner. It’s the it’s there’s a partnership there. And I want team members see a lot every day and what they’re doing. I want them to be contributing that with ideas that’s active.
So
this, again, this is not complicated. And, you know, conversation with Lisa, because we felt this was so important that we’ve created a program, it’s a four month program called the team success jumpstart program, you can do this on your own, that those four pillars not complicated. You’ve got all the information right now. And in group discussions, you can do this, if you want to jumpstart it, if you want to leverage your time and attention, and you went all the resources go into it, we created this Jumpstart program. So it’s a four month program. And the what’s included is each month will be a training webinar on one pillar, so one pillar per month. And we’ll have step by step. You can have team members or managers on the calls. And then there’s templates for everything. I’ve got templates for all the key position agreements in a pharmacy, you know, weekly huddle agenda, brainstorming how to handle it, what’s working for some, how do you make this tweaks for yourself? Corrective Action form? How do you track that? You actually, you talk about the controlling calendar. Lisa, that’s a big one for me. So we’ll that’ll be one of the things we just walk through how to use it, where to use it. And then we’ll also have monthly q&a office hours. So I’ll be available once a month that I’ll just be on the line and you can come on and ask questions and have more one on one time. So we’ve put this together with a program will start in March after the diversifier X conference. It the cost is $500. The point this is a group program, it’s to make it easy to leverage your time and if that works that’s available.
Yep, I will say that
normally to work with Patti one on one. She’s much more expensive than 500 or $500 an
hour, I’m just saying.
Um, and I could attest to Patty’s awesomeness as someone who you know, she has coached for many years and really, you know, we Patti and I worked together to try to make this affordable, you know, we try to put as much things into this membership. You know, I’m not one to like nickel and dime people. And, you know, we’ve been building and we’ve we’re getting ready in the next coming weeks to kind of launch them as some extra included benefits in the membership. And so four months of working with Patti and working with on your team and getting everything structured for 500 bucks is a steal of a deal. I know it is extra money. I know money is tight. But I guarantee you with you work with your employees and have more engaged employees, you will make more back than that $500 Like many many times over and you start to think about long term and the rest of 2023 You know many of you are coming to the conference in February, we’re going to be talking about strategies focusing on cash base revenue, non PBM revenue, to help you know build up that war chest if you will of cash to be able to survive through the DIR fee Apocalypse coming in January 2024. You are not going to be able to succeed with those programs. If your employees aren’t fully on board and you have infrastructure to help them thrive. That’s what’s really it’s about it’s, you know, I probably put my quote up there the guardrails. But I have just learned, the more structure I give to employees. And the more that I tell them the outcomes that I want, I sometimes I give them the leeway to figure out how to get to that outcome, but I give them the guardrails, they thrive so much better. And they actually like that you care enough to care about them kind of thing. You know, it’s kind of like one of those weird things, it’s like, the more you get on them, it’s like, oh, you care. And I’m improving. And now I care. Now I want your feedback. And I want to, you know, make you happy. But anyway, so we put together a four month program for 500 bucks, this is only for diversifier X members, Patti charges 1000s of dollars for this program outside of the membership. So she’s been very, very generous in bringing this to our members. Just because we know how important it is. So if it’s something that you’re interested in, all you need to do is send me an email, you know, my email, you can chat me out, you know, y’all have my phone, cell phone, whatever, we’re going to be creating a you know, page, you can, you know, quickly just sign up and, you know, add it in there that way, Patty, obviously knows who’s who’s in the program. And the other thing is, is this just as in for you, you know, obviously our whole mantra diversifies, the burden does not rest on the pharmacy owner, if you have a manager or maybe somebody who you’re looking to maybe elevate to kind of that mid mid level manager, or lead technician role, lead cashier, lead delivery driver, any of that kind of stuff, like your team can participate in this, if they’re gonna be the ones kind of helping you implement these kinds of things. So you don’t the burden isn’t on you to learn this and turn around and try to deliver it to your employees. Because who’s got time for that, um, you know, bring your key employees in and let them hear directly from Patti herself and then like she said, she has all the templates, all those kinds of things you need and of course we’re here to help too and provide support if you want to customize something you know, we can you know, Lisa Baker who is a phenomenal with with team can can work with you as well. So anyways, that was just kind of the program we put together just because this was such a burden and such kind of a sore on the heart so to speak of, you know a lot of our members so feel free to send me an email or a message and we’ll get you hooked up this will start in March. So we will be sending out a different additional information on this I know a lot of you are actually listening to the recording after the fact you know, usually about half of our members watch this, you know, the recording over the next 72 hours. But we will be sending you out information and let you know how to do that. And if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me I can forward them to Patti if I don’t know the answer, and we’ll make sure that you know this is a good fit for you before hopping into this but I guarantee you you would absolutely love it. Your employees would love it and would probably improve your pharmacy for not just this year but obviously you know years to come. So anyways, we’re gonna open it up to questions. I know we’re at the hour mark. But does anybody have questions or anything you can either unmute and verbally speak it or you can put it in the chat and I can help answer that
okay, don’t see anybody going off mute don’t see any messages. Speak now forever hold your peace. So that’s do your part.
All righty. I will let you guys go. If you think of something later after the fact is this you know information marinates in your brain? Obviously reach out to me. Info diversifier x.com. Send me a text send me an email, Facebook, ravens, I don’t understand smoke signals. So don’t send those. But everything else feel free to reach out. And I guarantee you that if you sign up for her jumpstart program, you will fall madly in love with Patty like I have and you will you will be blessed by her awesomeness and what she can do for your pharmacy. So anyways, guys, thank you for joining. We will let you go and we will hopefully see many of you in just a couple of weeks at the summit. If you haven’t grabbed your ticket, grab your ticket now. They are less than 100 tickets. I haven’t actually counted the last couple of days but a couple days ago. There’s less than 100 tickets left. So grab your ticket and we’ll see you in February. So adios guys bye