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Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Cardinal Health Counter Talk podcast. I'm your host, Jason Kalori, and today we're going to be talking about medicine shop and the overall benefits of joining a franchise. Plus, we will learn more about how co-branding works and explain how you can maintain your local brand presence while leveraging the strength and scale of a national brand. Today, we'll be talking with Tony Ibrahim, RPH, a medicine shop multi-store owner that includes several co-branded locations. We will also be chatting with Lance Mint, a franchise business consultant for Medicine Shop International for about four years, but has been with Cardinal Health for about 15 years. Welcome to the show, Tony and Lance. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you. Tony, I'm going to start with you. I always like to get into the pharmacist's personal journey. What was your journey into the pharmacy profession? Why you chose to become an independent pharmacist? Hi. Thank you so much for hosting me today. From the get-go, after finishing high school, I was driven into pharmacy school. Once I entered the pharmacy school, I found like, hey, this is something that I like and I can't do. But after finishing and start being a pharmacist, I found that I had a direct impact on patient outcomes. So I said, you know what? That makes sense to me. I'm going to continue doing this. And it happened that I worked, when I started all of this, I worked in the chain environment. And although the chain gives you a certain type of experience, at the same time, and I understand why, there's like certain limits and constraints that they put us that they put in place due to business needs maybe and sometimes regulations that those like constraints limit um how much here i can give to my patients or deliver okay so based on that at one point i said you know what it's better if i move into the independent uh pharmacy ward and they did this and it helped to remove like a lot of those barriers while the practice and compliance with the legality of the pharmacy environment and being able like to provide a more patient approach care. Yeah absolutely. All being an independent pharmacy gives you like more control over the services that you can provide, the type of workflow inside the pharmacy that you can do, and how you can engage with a patient. It differs a lot when you work in a chain than when you are on an independent pharmacy. It's day and night. Absolutely. Yeah. And also at the same time, and also just one more thing I want to mention. From a business point of view, like being a pharmacy owner, it helps a lot for the long term. not only to support me and my family, but after doing this for a while and having multiple stores, there's something unique that you can do to your people, that you can create jobs, that can create long-term opportunities for your staff and your people that they won't be able to find it in a chain. So that combination of clinical care and patient care and also your staff, your people, your family care. That's like what drove my decision in the first place. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, less barriers. I love the point that you brought up about, you know, being able to connect with your patients on different levels, which is something I think chains definitely struggle with. So that's great. Well, tell us about your pharmacies you own with your group in California and some of the services in the community, you know, the communities you serve, you know, what makes your pharmacy stand out? We operate a network of pharmacists across California, like ranging from Northern California to Southern California. And we have pharmacists like in urban centers and also like in underserved rural communities. And being doing this, this allows me like to tailor my care delivery based on the local population needs, differs from one area to one area. Part of the services that we provide, besides structural clinical consultations, we do adherence-driven services like mid-sign characterization and compliance packaging. We do immunization. We do point of care. we start now to upgrade our services in cooperation with other healthcare providers to provide also services like chronic care management. Okay. But all in all, at least, we just added point-of-care testing, also service for our patients. The pharmacy environment is changing and it's allowing us to provide more and more services now compared to the past. Oh, for sure. For sure. Lance, I want to move it to you. Tell us about your role with Medicine Shop International and what led you to become a franchise business consultant. Sure. Thank you, Jason. Well, my role with the Medicine Shop International is I'm a franchise business consultant. And as my title kind of portrays is I help on the business side with the stores. So if it comes from their profit and loss statements, I will do comparisons to make sure their stores are as profitable as they can be. Maybe they're advertising too little. Maybe they're advertising too much. Maybe they have too much staff, maybe not enough staff. Just trying to make them as profitable as possible. I help them look at their third-party reimbursements. And, you know, that's kind of a quick overview of what I do. is more on the back end of their stores to try to make sure that everything is running as smooth as possible. What really led me to this role is my best friend owned a medicine shop in my first territory with Cardinal Health. That's kind of where I learned the business. And I had 11 medicine shop pharmacies in my original territory. And those were the stores that I just became really close with. And the franchise business consultants that covered that territory at that time were really influential in really shaping my career and helping me learn the business. So that's really what led me to this role. Very cool. Tony, you're a member of the Medicine Shop International franchise now. Just kind of tell us about how long you've been a franchisee and what ultimately led you to become a franchise owner or choose this franchise in particular. You know what? Simply, it's destiny. you know it looks like it's okay but i've been with a medicine shop for now i think uh 11 years i think so and honestly like the first thing like when i said like i'm gonna choose medicine shop on or different franchise i met one of my friends that who has been um a medicine shop also franchise owner for like a couple years and he had a good experience he recommended them i had a meeting with a business consultant at that time. I was impressed with the knowledge and the support that he could and Medicine Shop provide to me. Honestly, I did my evaluation process. At that time I did meet another franchise representative but I found a big gap between the genuine support offered by Medicine Shop the depth of knowledge and the way of communication So I did choose you know what I'm going to stick with what I know and what looks good. And I believe after more than 10 years, I made the perfect decision. So where have you seen the most benefits to being a franchise owner? What's been some of those key metrics that you're seeing? I'm going to start the first one with the support. It's more than one actually key area, but I'm going to start with the support. The level of support that's been given to me is actually more than I expected. The pharmacy business is a highly regulated industry. It's in a constant evolution all the time. and every single day you either have a new regulation or you have a new service or you have a new limit or from many many many many players you need someone that can provide you with some sort of structured support and consistent whether on operational level whether on a a regulatory level or on a strategic support. As Lance was mentioning that he can also support, he supports us with the profit and loss. Profit and loss is actually, and how you make money is one small area that they can help you with. Like there's so many other areas. I believe it's more valuable to me than only, profit and loss is like one small thing. Okay. The brand itself, another thing, the brand itself, having a medicine shop. When I entered, I didn't know that it was a really recognized brand. We're getting, now, it helps because once you open a medicine shop in a community, okay, for some reason, okay, people recognize the name, okay? For some reason, like, it builds media trust with them, okay? And that helps me with, that gives me, like, the introduction to my population, okay, to my community, okay. We have something reliable that you guys can trust. Now it's on me to back up this name, okay. And I wouldn't be able even to back up this name without the support of the franchise people themselves. One more thing, actually, I believe I got so much benefit by being a medicine shop franchise owner is the availability to expand. Okay. Yeah, I did want to ask you about that, the expansion, you know, expanding, and how did that process go, and was it easy for you? Was it because you were getting so much benefit, you wanted to expand it? Right. No, like the expansion was something in my head, but I'm just saying, when you have like a well-known infrastructure, right? That, hey, you did test it and it's working. Now, it's easy to replicate that one. I don't have to start from scratch every time I open a pharmacy. I know what to do. Like, hey, I did start this model and it's working. I just need to copy and paste, copy and paste and move forward. And it's been working. It's been working. So they give you the infrastructure guideline. They give you the, hey, 20, like the opportunity evaluation. They give you actually some good opportunities that there are people they want to retire, that they own medicine shop. People, they move, you know what I mean? Things change in life. Things change in life. So now they come, hey, Tony, we have this opportunity for you. What do you think about it? We think it's good. We think you deserve it, like you've been with us. And again, they also have their own evaluation process to the franchise owner if he or she does worth the opportunity or not. Because at the same time, I wanted their backup, and also they want my backup. So we can't keep the name growing. Yeah, the sentiment that you're talking about is something I've heard for many years about the support that MSI gives to independent pharmacists, especially ones that are looking to expand, making it easy, doing all the back-end work to make sure it's going to be the right fit, right location and all the things in between. Yeah, I totally love that. I, you know, I do want to get into the co-branding model a little bit and Lance, I want to kind of throw this at you. I did mention co-branding, the co-branding model in the beginning of the podcast. So before we get much further, can you explain Medicine Shops International's co-branding model to listeners overall? Certainly. So with any type of franchise, there is a quote-unquote franchise fee, and that's what we have with Medicine Shop slash MediCap. And you can choose to be either one of those franchises. It's $5.99 a month for a co-brand. It's also $5.99 a month for a fully branded store. So with a co-branded store, really all we require for Medicine Shop or MediCap is to have a co-branded signage window sticker either on the door or on the window wherever there's traffic that says Bill's Pharmacy, a member of the Medicine Shop family. That way you don't have to do all the signage you have. That store that's been there for 40 years has that name recognition, can also come on and have the Medicine Shop name recognition along with it. With the co-branded store, you'll get a discount on solutions. You'll get a $300 credit towards any one of our qualified solutions. And you'll get a discount off of other solutions. 10% is usually what that discount is. So as a regular Cardinal store versus a co-branded medicine shop store, it's right around $58 that it costs you to be a medicine shop more a month. And then you get my services too. I need to make a t-shirt that says I'm worth $58. dollars, but I don't know if that's appropriate or not for work. Well, Lance, to that end, in your opinion, you know, why do you think joining a pharmacy franchise as a co-branded store beneficial? What, you know, from your experience that you've seen, what are the, what are the main benefits? I mean, obviously you have, you get to keep your name and put that on the, on the front door, which I think is obviously very important for someone who has spent the time to build up a business has made a name for themselves within the, within the community that they're in, but what are the benefits of not only joining the medicine shop franchise, but also as a co-branded entity as well? Yeah. Like you said, Jason, it is your own name recognition that you've had in the past, but it's also the name recognition of medicine shop. As Tony was saying earlier, it's a very well-respected name. And just when you see medicine shop, people think quality. and that i think that's something that that really lends as a good cohesive group when you when you tie those two together uh the other thing that is really nice even with the co-branding store is like when we go to the retail business conference we have our own little medicine shop it is so dynamic to have all these owners together collaborating hey this is what's working in my store. I have stores that call each other regularly. They're not in competition, but it's just a good way to build, you know, the independent business overall. And I think that's what we gain with the co-branding stores. So Tony, I'll throw it back at you. Why did you decide to co-brand your three pharmacies with Medicine Shop? Was it to some of the points that Lance had mentioned, or was there something more to it? Just curious. Absolutely. Like it's a combination of more than one thing. I just, I needed the branding thing. I need to maintain that strong franchise support. That's on one side. On the other side, I need to preserve local community identities. So many years with Medicine Shop, the level for support was meaningful to me. So that's something I needed to keep growing and stay in business. At the same time, some stores like I took over. So when I took over there was a name was there And the name was very strong in community It like has very strong ties with the community people So I had to preserve that name, okay, to help, again, to help preserve the trust with the existing patients. At the same time, I did the co-branding. And other sites, and like, for example, I have a pharmacy in a small town called Manchester. So I believe that name that reflects the town that people are in had a huge impact in people accepting a new business in the community. Okay, this is the business that represents them. It has the same name as their town. people were very very actually supportive for us so the co-branding actually allowed me to combine both advantages and back to what Lance was saying those $5.99 honestly worth nothing compared to the support that we get from Medicine Shop it's like I'm not gonna say them to increase we're good but um but actually it's it's it's worth a lot a lot the support that you get worth a lot more than this tell me about the the process once you decided to co-brand integrate the medicine shop marketing with your brand name store that you had built over the years what was that onboarding process like was it seamless what was it like to launch the new brand tell us a little bit about that experience? It's more of, let's put it this way, it's more of a process that has multiple steps. First, it starts with, as I recall, it starts with the regulatory approval, the signage, okay, having the signage approved by Medicine Shop, and then after that approved by the city that was I think the first process okay then after that you need some sort of marketing approach starting from maybe we did like some in-store materials we did flyers we did postcards definitely we are in the digital era so social media was campaign was a big thing that we used. For sure. At the same time, communication was critical. So engaging with patients, informing them with the same pharmacy, nothing changes. We are the same people. We just got an added support to help you guys. So word of mouth, help us a lot. Help us a lot. One last thing and I want to mention And that's actually very important that we did. We were very proactive to engage with all local health care providers, physicians, clinics, hospitals, okay, to make them aware of the transition, that it's only just to better support their patients. So we included direct outreach between visiting clinics, for example, or actually faxes, okay, to just make sure that they continue their referrals and the coordination of care that we established among the years with them. That's a great point. I think that's probably a detail that some people miss about, you know, what it looks like from the outside looking in with your pharmacy partners, your professional partnerships that you have within your community. I think that was a great point. Lance, we're hearing this word support a lot. Tony loves the support that you guys give. What exactly is the kind of support that FBCs like you provide for the pharmacy once they decide to co-brand in particular? Yeah, that's a good question. Most of us franchise business consultants, once we find a store that wants to convert and come over as a co-branded store, one of the things is to go into the store, just look at the store. What's the workflow look like? You know, are they maximizing their efficiencies as well as they can? Most of us have been around the block a little bit, so we can kind of go, okay, here's some things that we need to work on. Maybe there's too much staff. You can kind of notice that right away if there's too much staff. But as kind of like on an ongoing basis for support, it's we're there to answer questions. So whether it's, you know, this year with the Inflation Reduction Act, I spent hours and hours on the phone assisting my stores with getting through that paperwork process. Sometimes it went really fast. Sometimes it went really slow. But that's kind of the extra effort that we as franchise business consultants, we have the time to do that. And we have the focus for our stores to get all that new paperwork, new information out there and help them through that. Tony, how is being associated with the national pharmacy brand like Medicine Shop? How did it impact the business model from the onset? Was it, did you, I don't know, did you feel like you got some new patients, some new interests because now you had Medicine Shop attached to your pharmacy name? or again, just kind of opening up those different services and support really kind of help you? All you mentioned was correct. But like before that, I want to like highlight a point that precedes all of that. To be honest, when I went into this, being a pharmacy owner and started this journey, I totally underestimated how complex the pharmacy operation is. I thought like, it's just like, you know what? It's just like dispensing the medication, building the insurance, get the money and just be done with that, okay? And unfortunately, it's nothing like this, okay? And without having a medicine shop supporting me, I don't think I would survive it, okay? Or definitely I would lose so much money, okay? At least, okay? So beyond compliance and operation requirements and regulation requirements that Medicine Shop always keep us updated about, we wouldn't be able to survive. But that's on one side. And the other side, again, as I said, it's a model that is working. Now, when I move from one location to one location, I have the same training across the board between the locations, for example. Okay. I standardize the workflow across operations. Okay. The services that I do and the way we do the services, it's the same across the board. So being part of the franchise helps introducing all these like tiny things that might tender to provide the service here and there. Being part of the medicine shop helps. That's on one side. Another side, actually, one of the biggest things that I believe people miss all the time is being also part of a franchise can open certain doors for you for vendor relationships. and how you can be part of a larger network where you can access better pricing and get a stable supply chain. Okay. Manage your inventory in a better way. So this is a big, big, big point. I feel people, they miss all the time. Yeah, for sure. Lance, back to you. Once a pharmacy is co-branded, how are you guys engaging with their owner and staff? What's the check-in process like? Are you in constant communication? Are you talking to them every, checking in every week, every month? What does that look like? Yeah, it really, Jason, it really depends on the owner. So I have a lot of startups and a lot of the majority of my startups come in as a co-branded store. with them. I'm in touch with them continuously, probably for the first six months, just to try to get them onboarded, get them comfortable, get them understanding exactly what's happening with their business and going with the flow Then I have other owners where every quarter I meet with them and their accountant and we go through kind of their books We go through their financials We sit down and go through all that. Then I have other owners that are pretty much, if I need you, I'll call you. So it's really kind of whatever the owner's looking for, we can kind of tailor our expertise to their needs. No, yeah, I love that. Tony, you know, you keep, you know, again, getting back to that word support, you know, when talking to Lance, you know, what's been, you actually, if I even go back further, you mentioned that you put in, what is it called? The immunizations, right? In your pharmacy? Right. So was that identified by Lance and the team? Is it something you wanted to do? How has the support from Lance and just Medicine Shop in general allowed you to identify some, maybe some things that you can, you know, expanding your pharmacy operations? You know what? Like, I'm going to give you an example that goes back, I think, like three years. Okay. and that's when we had margin crush because of the way the reimbursement in the industry is going on. Lance and medicine shop people came with an idea that, hey, Tony, there's something big going on. It's called LTC at home, long-term care pharmacy at home. and we believe that you have so many patients that they can benefit from okay you know what guys please help me okay what's this about how can i do it is it legal what's the compliance needed what's the reimbursement difference is it worth it how can i um approach my staff about all of this is that something i'm only going to make money out of what I'm going to really help patients and close a healthcare gap that we need to do? And the answer was clear yes to everything. And from that point, actually, I think that's one side of what Medicine Shop and Lance can help you with, like bringing you ideas that you didn't think of and actually those ideas. It's really meaningful to your patients and your business. Yeah, absolutely. As far as, you know, some of the opportunities that you're excited about or were excited about at the time, what really kind of took off and got you thinking, you know, maybe I should do this in many of my stores or all of them. What were those couple of ideas that really got you excited? You know what? Another one was actually, as I mentioned, being part of Medicine Shop opened certain pricing structure and vendor support that I won't get. For example, being able to partner with Medicine Shop slash Cardinal to get better pricing for certain items that we do. I just don't want to mention any name. But actually, it helped a lot. It helped a lot. That's one side that it helped more than anyone can imagine on one side. The other one, adding certain services to our pharmacy to help our patients. Part of what we're doing now is something called community healthcare worker expansion. and that's something we were able to help our patients with. And at the same time, build for these services. Medicine Shop also helped us in recognizing such opportunities in my state that we can do. Those are a couple of examples that I would think of, actually, that comes to my mind. No, yeah, we actually, you know, you brought up billing and that's a, we actually recorded a podcast not that long ago about billing and some of the intricacies that are involved there. And it's great to hear that Medicine Shop is helping you guys out with that as well. Yeah. Tony, last question for you. Kind of to wrap this up, what would you tell a pharmacy owner interested in expansion or even about co-branding their pharmacy with the Medicine Shop? What advice would you give to them? Because I know probably, you know, it could be a little scary in the beginning. Do I want to do this? Do I not want to do this? What advice would you offer an independent pharmacist that could be maybe on the fence about it? You know what? I'm going to think it's worth more than you can imagine. I'm going to think that the fact that there are so many regulations in this industry and at any time something can hit you without you noticing or without you knowing, there are so many incidents. And I know so many people that they have to close their pharmacists simply because they didn't have the information needed to be compliant in one simple thing. That's a great point. They just didn't know about it. That's it, okay? Now, having someone like Lance, okay, with all his vast experience, okay, he would come and just tell you, Tony, are you doing this? No, I'm not doing it because I didn't know about it. You know what, Tony? The board of pharmacy came or the VA came to that store or whatever regulatory agency came to that store and they got fined only because they didn't click that box. That's it. It's as simple as that. Because simply they didn't document such thing. As simple as that. So that information, it's worth a lot because the violations, believe it or not, can be in tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's not worth it. It's not worth it. You can easily avoid so many things. And I did avoid so many things, luckily, because of the advice that I got from that. That's not to mention, that's not to mention the huge points of opportunities that they come to you, whether it was a service that you can add, whether it was a pricing structure that they can benefit you from, whether it was an opportunity that they can tell you about, whether that it's a new billing service that you can add to your pharmacy, whether a way to educate your people. It's as simple as that. Hey, Tony, I know a pharmacy. It's in the same town like you. And they did this marketing campaign and it worked very well, brought them so many patients. As simple as that, it helps all the time and not only brings you or keeps you in compliance with regulation, but also add a lot to your business. I appreciate that, Tony. That's a lot of really good insight. I think it's a lot of great helpful information for all the listeners. Tony, obviously, very passionate about it, and it's coming through, so I really love that. Lance, I'll let you kind of wrap it up here. If a pharmacy owner hears this episode and wants to learn more about co-branding, what should they be doing? well they can they can check out our cardinal medicine shop website but also they can contact me directly and just at my email at lance.mint at cardinalhealth.com happy to share any insights give them advice on what's going to happen if they're a startup we can do a demographic study and take a look at what kind of locations they're looking at happy to help in any way That's awesome. Thank you, guys. I want to say thanks to both Tony and Lance again for giving our listeners some great insights and, you know, a clear understanding of how co-branding with Medicine Shop works, the pros, the cons, how much support you do get. If you're interested in learning more, check the show notes for a link to the MSI co-brand landing page. Or as Lance mentioned, you can email him directly. So hopefully Lance gets a lot of emails. and with that said thanks for listening to today's episode of the cardinal health counter talk podcast and as a reminder this is your first time listening make sure you subscribe and download the cardinal health counter talk podcast wherever you get your podcast see you on the next one guys and take care you
