Becoming a Digital Nomad | Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA, Medical Writer

Transcript Disclaimer: This transcript is generated using speech-to-text technology and may contain errors or inaccuracies.

Mike Koelzer, Host: [00:00:00] Well, good morning, Alex. 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: Hey, good morning. How are you? Good. Are 

Mike Koelzer, Host: you doing, I keep getting you between sips of coffee.

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: I should been more ready, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Alex. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you for those who haven't come across you online, uh, introduce yourself to our listeners and give them a glimpse of what we're going to be talking about. 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: Yeah. Well, my name's Alex Evans and I've been a pharmacist for about 10 years from North Carolina originally.

So I went to UNC and, uh, after I graduated and spent about a year saving up some money, I moved to Hawaii. So I lived there for five years, uh, three on the big island and two for Maui. And, uh, then moved back to the mainland. So I live in Jacksonville, Florida now. One kind of talk about one is my medical writing course.

I got into medical writing in 2016. Uh, really just as a hobby and grew it into a business. That's allowed me to go. Part-time practicing as a pharmacist and still love being a pharmacist. But if I had to, I could get to the point of medical writing. Full-time in this current role that I'm in, I started a project, um, more recently, uh, to help community pharmacists understand compliance and operations.

Better. Um, so started farm compliance.com created some forums for download to help pharmacies just be able to quickly get paper forms they need, they might otherwise have to spend time that they don't have making themselves. I like 

Mike Koelzer, Host: right off the bat that you say, you know, I'm writing and I could do this full time out of your week.

What percent are you in pharmacy versus figuratively, at least sitting at your desk typing away. 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: Even then, my current pharmacy job isn't exactly dispensing necessarily. Um, but within that role, I'd say I still probably do that. Maybe three fourths of the time, two thirds. I'm not sure the majority of the time.

And then, uh, uh, then I also pick up the writing with the remainder. Um, and I, I love the job and I've said it before on other podcasts, but I love being a community pharmacist too. Um, but it's no secret where the industry is. Heading with mail order and DIR fees and all of the pressures that we all know about.

So it feels good either way to know that no matter what happens to that job or any job you can, you can, your own business could, could sustain you. Or you could, you haven't this other job skill that could land you on another. Type of job that is in high demand with salaries that are often similar, uh, maybe sometimes a little bit lower to begin with, but similar to what you're currently making.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Did I read that you're a project manager? I loved projects when I was a kid, I always looked at the clock and the pharmacy and I always thought, well, if I could do a project, that's fun. Is that anything closer? Or am I way off base? 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: It kind of is. Yeah. So, but I think my official job title is still farming.

One or two or three, I don't really know it's something like that, but, but, uh, it doesn't really accurately describe what I do just because Ascension health, of course, being in a large national organization has to keep the job standardized job titles. So he put me in a job title, that's fitting pharmacists.

Um, but essentially I came on board in 2016 with Ascension and started out managing their outpatient pharmacy, but always had these fun little projects going on the side, um, in our staffing at the time was, was good. I understandably had an advantage. There the staffing model is different than it is at most community pharmacies, but decided to take advantage of that time and just start going after all sorts of quality improvement, performance improvement, finance projects.

So for example, we did an initiative to, uh, improve opioid safety. And it was actually part of the health systems initiatives that actually caught the attention of the Institute for healthcare improvement. Uh, but we tapped into that on the outpatient side by pushing to reduce the code dispensing of benzodiazepines and opioids.

Um, and we cut it down and I think, uh, 40 or 50% in seven or eight months, and that was talking directly with surgeons who were writing it as a benzodiazepine, as a muscle relaxant or, uh, talking with patients who had maybe. They are, their prescriber had gone straight to benzodiazepines for anxiety before trying to accessorize or even abuse BARR and kind of having these individual conversations we all got together.

We had, we sent one message just like you do with early fills of our own controls. We sent one message to patients, one set of policies and started getting these patients off and then measuring that. Um, and so that's an example. So we, I kinda always had these going on the [00:05:00] side outside of the dispensing stuff in the pharmacy.

Were those. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Directed. Did you start those when you had a regular job, you know, like a, in quotes, like a regular job, you were thinking of these and so you sort of created that position. 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: Yeah. I essentially created the position that I'm in now. Um, and it wasn't my intent necessarily when I started it, I've always been just internally driven to make the place better.

I think I kind of have that quality improvement mindset, you know, I'll walk around looking at stuff that could be done better. Um, so I guess I have that going for me and being able to visualize it, um, and, you know, have worked with a lot of great folks inside the health system that have put their talents to use and made those improvements a reality.

Mike Koelzer, Host: I 

I think that is a huge skill in today's market. A lot of people are never going to be cut out for the founding CEO of a huge company. A lot of times just the chips don't fall in that direction. And there's so much that. Individuals can do anything in their career by being that problem solver, having that skill of wanting to improve stuff, because everybody says, well, I'm not this person, or I'm not that person, but you can do that wherever you are.

And become that cock that is needed, that people can do that when they wake up today, driving into work, you think I I'm, I'm only in this position. There's really no such thing to make yourself indispensable like that. Right. There's 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: not, it's really a completely independent of job title and, and, you know, like the, the position that I'm in now, I say project manager, cause it kind of approximates it the best, but I'm basically getting paid to unleash mile and fury, I guess.

Does anybody 

Mike Koelzer, Host: give you that title or is that just a title that you self-professed then on your 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: own style? I am kind of a self professor, but I think a lot of people in the company struggled. To say what my job title is to other people. I love that sometimes we've been talking before and we've struggled to know who my boss is.

And I've had this before with directors and it's like, why do your time card? And I've told them, well, heck it doesn't, it really doesn't matter who my boss is. I said, my goal is for you to never have to deal with my bosses. And that's the kind of, that's the kind of, uh, employee, every, every company they don't, the boss never has to know who the boss is.

If you need to know who your boss is, you're doing something exactly. Yeah. Focused on just fixing, fixing things around, whether. Um, most of it was within the pharmacy. Most of it was without patient pharmacy, but not a hundred percent of the time just kind of doing it one, one after the other. So when I went part time, I asked to go part-time in 2019 because the medical writing business had kind of taken off.

I got in, uh, landed a gig with Walter's. Clewer writing, being a part of a team to write a Netflix review course. And so that was giving a lot of steady work. Uh, I rented a coworking space. I still remember that feeling of like, uh, spinning a Workday in the coworking space and how just how good it failed, you know, to have a day 

Mike Koelzer, Host: that.

The coworking space. That's like the Uber bear-ish of that's like a shared office kind of thing, or what is 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: that? It is, yeah. Yeah. And you can rent individual private offices, or you can just subscribe to most coworking spaces. You can kind of pay them a monthly subscription to have access to their common areas, which is just like couches tables.

Like wherever you want to use wifi, there's plenty of plugs, you know, electric plugs and stuff. So you just like it. Set up, uh, over there and get to 

Mike Koelzer, Host: work. But I mean, you could do that anywhere, but that's like a huge thing to say that you were able to fund it slash be serious enough to get your own space to do this.

And I bet when you walked in there, I bet creativity went off the charts. 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: Oh yeah. Yeah. And I just like those coworking spaces, because they're especially competing with other spaces that, I mean, they just make it so beautiful inside. Like yeah. Just when you walk in, in the morning, it just lifts your mood basically.

So how far was that from home? It was about 20, 25 minutes. So I did it for the co-working space I did for quite a while. And then I stopped. So I stopped going to it. Maybe a, I don't remember four or five months before COVID hit, primarily because of the commute and that time you lose. Cause you think about that as a freelancer, like you're spending 45-50 minutes.

Commuting total in a day, you could kind of like, do you do [00:10:00] that every day? You could write extra pieces. So for me, that ultimately ended up being the reason why I left that particular coworking space, but it doesn't change the fact that I love to go into the coworking space. I loved working in that space.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Arguably, I bet you could almost make a case for saying that 45 minutes was well-spent because you got on fire when you were there, you know, writing and stuff. 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: Yeah. Yeah, you could, you definitely 

Mike Koelzer, Host: can. How do you compare writing there versus, you know, at home it 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: kind of depends on the day, but I love the atmosphere of the coworking space.

Yeah. I mean, it's only natural. You're going to feel that way. And the high ceilings, like, I, I enjoy going to Starbucks too, but like the high ceilings of the coworking space, I think they just design the acoustics too, to be a little less noisy on average then compared to your Starbucks or whatever other coffee shop you might go to.

Um, but the beautiful thing is you really can work anywhere. Like I've seen. And even at Ascension now, like a lot of what I do is work from home. Um, so whether I'm writing or for Ascension, a lot of times I've set up my computer, the picnic table in my backyard. So just working in the backyard for a while and okay, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: We've got to cover a few things before we get deeper into the writing.

First of all, you're in Florida. Now one of my sons, when he was about four or five, said, dad, when you die, can you go anywhere you want? I'm like anywhere land sets the freedom of death, you know, you're not in your body anymore. And you go anywhere you want to. And this and that. And he says anywhere, I said, yeah.

And I thought he was going to get into like, you know, he wanted to go through the rings of Saturn and this and that, you know, and, and he thinks he's. I'm going to go to Florida.

All right. So here's my point. You've already conquered that dream of my son. So then, then you've also spent time in Hawaii and other people would say, that's the pinnacle, but here's my pinnacle of what I want to talk to you about. My listeners may know that one of my dreams throughout my life was learning to sight read very well at the piano.

And I've, I've worked in that for 30 some years, but along with that dream, I've kind of had the direction to go. I could either sight read very well or really get into jazz, all the scales and all that stuff. And so my thing, so my son wants to go to Florida when he dies. When I die, I hope that I open my eyes up and I'm sitting at a piano.

And I'm fluently playing all the jazz scales, not reading. Cause I took that path of sight reading versus jazz. And you've done that. Right. Europeanist I do play 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: piano. Yeah. In 

Mike Koelzer, Host: a jazz band. You played in college. I did. 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And a pharmacy school got into Cuban dance music. So, uh, talk about it.

Mike Koelzer, Host: What your pharmacy school, you mean you had a Cuban dance, uh, date a day or 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: something and see chapel Hills, big university. They have a huge music program too. I would say an outstanding music program for any listeners who are maybe, maybe going they're considering going there and like music. I had a great experience there.

Um, and one of the, one of the school ensembles was a Cuban dance band. The professor David Garcia spent his time in his doctoral studies, uh, kind of looking into the origins. Uh, Cuban Cuban music and what eventually became New York style salsa, um, and started in an ensemble there. So we played everything from what it's called dance in the early days, like Cuban music.

It's from the early 19 hundreds all the way up to, yeah. Big bands. Salsa. So, wow. Wow. That's kind of a big passion now. I do play jazz too. And it's, it's of course easier to, to play jazz in small groups and get to play, play out and stuff. So I play it a lot and really enjoy it too. You played 

Mike Koelzer, Host: jazz.

One of the key components of jazz is improvisation. So you're fluent at the scales. I 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: think like any musician would say, I don't know what point you would call it. Fluent, you know, certainly. Yeah. You've got New York's New York city, jazz musicians. It can, you know, look at something and see and play it in F sharp and see, yeah, I can't do that at all, but, uh, yeah, I'd say I could play well enough to, to fit in, in a jam session and 

Mike Koelzer, Host: partially because I can't really do it, but you gotta be really, really smart to do that.

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: I think just a lot of work. It was really hard. Yeah. It was a really hard, [00:15:00] yeah, I 

Mike Koelzer, Host: guess so, because when some people think that you're improvising, you're improvising, but you're also doing licks that you have, you have some favorite licks that you do during your improvisation, right? Oh 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: yeah. That's a big component of the musicians' individual style.

You can hear that. And any instrument yeah. From, uh, from jazz musicians. Yeah. That's 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Part of the reason why I like sight reading is because I used to play blues and just kind of the key of C. That's the only scale I knew it in, but I would start to do some things repetitively. And I thought I want to break out from this a little bit, but, um, I envy the jazz players.

Okay, so speaking of smart. All right, so I'm going to go through your whole, this is your life, Alex. All right. So you first go to college and you end up at the top of your class, basically in biology. Although 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: I did start the first semester as a piano performance major and I switched here. Yeah. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: So that was serious.

We got down to the guts of this now I nailed it. So you started this piano 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: performance? I did. Yeah. And, uh, it was getting to the point where it was. I was doing it to the point where I didn't really enjoy the piano anymore. And that was after one semester happened for a variety of reasons, I'm sure there are listeners here who are pharmacists, who were music majors.

Cause I had even one or two in my class that probably understood the realities of ear training and juries and music theory and everything else that comes along with music, major city sitting in the music practice closets for hours a day, but took the love out of it, right. For me it did. Yeah. In which, which, which let me know it wasn't right.

For me, some people, some people, it would drive their passion even more to practice like that. But in my case, it just 

Mike Koelzer, Host: didn't. Did you know right away or did that take a lot of soul searching to switch or did you like the first days you were in there, you felt like you were in a post. I think it took 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: a little time for me, but I, yeah, I knew over time, but I knew, I, I especially know I'd made the right decision at jurors and juries.

Um, for those of you who are not music majors, that's where you walk in, you've been working on, let's say four pieces the entire semester you've been working your tail off on them. And they typically assign a Baroque piece. So I had a Bach invention. They assigned for example, a romantic area, uh, era. So I had Mozart and then they might assign one or two other little pieces.

Uh, I think I had a Chopin piece. So at the end of the semester at juries, they have all the piano professors. They're all six or seven. All of them you walk in, they've got a clipboard there, they're sitting back so they can grade you. And you're like, okay, let's go in chronological order. We'll start with.

Go ahead. And you've been working and you play it until they're tired of hearing you until it, until they know what grade you get. So you might've practiced the entire thing, but you play like a third of it. Okay. You can stop there. All right. Moving on to the Mozart and you start that 

Mike Koelzer, Host: and I'm sure they're not clapping afterwards.

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: Oh, no, no, not at all. No, they are writing. They're writing the notes, critiquing everything that is Mozart. Okay. Now let's show. So 

Mike Koelzer, Host: do you have the music or do you have. 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: No, you do have to memorize it. That's part of the music major. Yeah. You develop to the point of even, even in undergrad, the bachelor of music has given a recital of, you know, an hour of music or something.

And 

Mike Koelzer, Host: gosh, if you were in charge of that curriculum with that same degree name, would you do it any differently for the students? Like if you were in charge, would you change any, I mean, I know you didn't like it, but do you think it's still a good setup? I just, 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: I, the, my biggest criticism of the majority of music schools in the country is that it doesn't, it doesn't provide musicians.

Who can meet the market demand for music? So what I mean by that is, you know, the sole focus is on what we typically call classical music. You know, basically starting from the Baroque era, um, all the way up to maybe, you know, the Dave you see in the more modern, uh, still would be considered classical music.

And they drill that and drill that and drill that dish, this phrasing could be better you're peddling or this staccato and whatnot, but they graduate and they don't. That's all that many of those musicians know how to play. So you either go into music education and you teach music and the K through 12 schools, or you go to get a master's and then a doctoral degree in music.

And then you might teach at a university. Now that is to say, of course, there are numerous jazz programs out there. And those musicians, I feel like are going to have a lot more jobs. Um, cruise ships, for example, are a big employer and hotels and just gigging on their own. Um, but [00:20:00] that, that classical path, I just don't see where they're going to make a living.

And one of my first jazz piano instructors in high school graduated with a classical piano degree and basically taught himself to play jazz later. Anyway, he had the fundamentals down already, but taught himself to play jazz later because I think he enjoyed it, but basically because he had to, so I kind of subscribe more to the Berkeley college of music.

Model, which is we're going to teach you to play everything. Like they have reggae bands and gospel, Cuban dance bands. Of course you play some classical blues. And so they graduate really well-rounded and they can fit in with any job so they could walk in, um, already well-versed they walk into a reggae band, you got a reggae gig, whether or not you like reggae.

And most, most people who are musicians are open to a wide variety of music. I rarely hear musicians say, what kind of music do you listen to? Because it just comes across as a narrow focus to anybody who is a musician, but whether or not you like reggae, for example, they're paying $300 for a night.

You're going to play reggae, you know? And that's just, it's like what we do, we do as a pharmacist, maybe some things we do, we don't like doing, but we do them because it's part of our job and it's the, it should be the same in music that, you know, you play anything, whether you like it or not, because. It puts food on the table.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. And I've tried to do my reading too, as I'll go through and I'll pick pretty much any style. The easiest stuff for me to play is like, you know, old Frank Sinatra stuff, you know, like the forties music has just got a nice beat. I love the core progression. It's not too fast for me and so on. But the last couple nights I've been playing from, uh, I pulled up a book.

I subscribed to this program called scribed and it. Audio books and, and real books, but one of the things in there is piano music. So I just pull up these books I haven't seen before and I play, so I've been playing eighties music. And so those are hard to play, you know, to be playing the beats of some things.

It just never sounds like it really flows together too well, but my wife listens. And then after about three minutes, she says, oh, I recognize it. Like, I'm trying to get that down to about 10 seconds for her to recognize it. Yeah. All right, Alex, these conversations are always what I would truly ask somebody if we were hanging out for a driver sitting in a coffee shop or something.

And so I want to skip pharmacy school, but I want to skip to four years after you get your MBA. So what was the decision after four or five years to say I'm going to get my MBA now? 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: Uh, you know, I think it was a, it was for a few reasons. I, at the time I came on as pharmacy manager, really thought I wanted to.

Basically get an MBA to be able to, to go after other opportunities higher and management and leadership within, I mean, certainly within Ascension, it's owning so many hospitals and inpatient and outpatient pharmacies. There are tons of niche jobs within that health system. And there are with many companies, um, including the big chains.

And so getting an, an all and often even with big chains and they want an MBA in order to consider you for those types of jobs. Um, so I thought I wanted to get higher into people. Management was probably one big reason. And then the second big reason, unfortunately, is the job market. You know, it's like I figured with a pharm D and an MBA, it's a diverse enough skill set that I could switch over to insurance, healthcare consulting.

I don't know a wide variety of jobs, or I could, if I had to, I could get. Healthcare for a while and, you know, do something strictly business if I needed to. So, unfortunately, yeah, it was partially the job market. Um, I still don't have any regrets. I learned a lot in business school. Yeah, it was, it was a great experience.

I highly recommend the program I went to, I highly recommend West Texas A and M university, they were really affordable, so you'd recommend I would. Yeah. I learned a time in west Texas, and M is where I personally went to school, but it has the AACSB accreditation, which is a kind of a gold standard for business schools, extremely affordable, fully online format.

And I especially thought about the accounting and finance Corps. I took a class called quantitative analysis in business, which was really, really helpful. And I thought, um, And in approaching business problems and understanding how business decisions are made using the data that's presented. Um, and actually shortly after even taking the first semester of accounting, uh, when we were really digging into our income statements at the hospital, [00:25:00] um, yeah, I realized the revenue was just despite prescription gross growth.

The revenue was stagnant and just kept digging and digging. Cause I kind of had more of an understanding of how to read an income statement. Eventually discovered a billing error, really, uh, with our insulin pens and, uh, back the claims actually, uh, worked with our national rep for our insurance. You know, our insurer to be able to go back 12 months and back build every single one of those claims is like telling the other manager at our other location to come on over for the day, and bring some calls.

Bring put in a float pharmacist for your location for the day. And we're just going to knock these, uh, these claims out and we knocked out, you know, all of them over the course of that day. Plus I did a few others over the course of the next few days, a ton of work, but we, we actually recovered $250,000 in revenue, um, from, uh, and it, it was really like, it was more of a software cork, I would say as much as anything else.

Um, it's the kind of mistake, any, I think any, any pharmacy could make, um, assuming the software allowed that type of error to be made. Um, so it's not like it was, you know, It was an irresponsible thing or anything like that. It was an oversight, but the end result was that over the course of a year, it could have cost us a quarter of a million dollars if, if it wasn't discovered.

So I think that was one of the first points when I realized just how valuable. My education, my business education was 

Mike Koelzer, Host: kind of like somebody who says, oh, I don't listen to rap. It's all the same. Or I don't listen to symphonies all the same. It's like, no, if you look at them enough times, you start to see some differences.

And I'm sure that before the business, you know, that business even just allowed you to see that and not have your eyes gloss over right then to look into those things even. 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I agree completely. And just being able to speak the vocabulary, like I ultimately decided I, at this time, I don't want to continue in people management, but just taking responsibility as a business owner in thinking as a business owner and digging and digging until you find what's the best thing for the organization.

That's going. I think that's going to get you noticed anywhere you go. Um, and I felt like the MBA gave me a lot of the tools to do that. Uh, so a good example of that is, uh, when we were looking at starting a new initiative and kind of figuring out where to put this particular service line that we were going to add, um, And getting the raw data on prescription volumes from all the various clinics, the business education gave me the ability.

I was actually taking finance at the time to calculate what's called the net present value, which is essentially how you can measure up which location or which business decision will produce the most income in today's dollars for the business. And that's something you learn in MBA school is how you calculate a net present value.

Here's what that kind of vocabulary means. If you want to be taken seriously by anybody in the upper leadership of any company, you have to speak that vocabulary. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. Cause a lot of times I was just listening to Freakonomics this morning, their podcast, and they were talking to these guys about advertising and this guy pulled out an advertising term.

Basically he was trying to pull one over on him because he didn't think the other guy knew the know, knew the lingo and he did. 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: Oh yeah. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. My history with the MBA is I'd worked at my family's pharmacy for a year or two. And I said, I'm going to get my MBA for the same reasons that you were talking about.

And so one class I needed to do before MBA school was accounting. And so I took a three week accounting class and the first, Monday night, was four hours. That's a whole week of accounting. And then Tuesday, I had to do homework for the whole week because Wednesday had a four hour class too. So we had basically two weeks within three days.

So I hated the class and I thought, well, I'm going to, I'd made it through. And then, and then, uh, and then there was a 4th of July that happened to fall on a Monday and. And then the second semester of accounting was going to start up next week. And so I get there on that Monday for the next three week class and I'm sitting there and I find out that the class had started the Wednesday before there was a 4th of July on the Monday, and then they started a three week class on Wednesday night.

And I'm thinking who the hell starts a class on a Wednesday night? You know? So I go in there on Monday and I'm still hoping for, you know, hi everybody, I'm Mike. I'm looking for the introduction 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: for the sticker on the shirt, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: around the shirt and play some, play, some name, game, or something. And this guy has [00:30:00] already, he's already into a second week writing on the board at about one minute after six o'clock.

And so I packed it in and that was, that was my decision to not get my MBA. The average naysayer of the MBA will say, oh, Too many numbers and too much this and that, but it sounds to me like it was a really good mix for you. 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: Well, I guess the one rebuttal I would have to that is, you know, I hate to break it to everybody here, but when you work for a business, your job is not.

And that's not to be impersonal. They can, they can manage in an, in a personal way, but at the end of the day, businesses have to stay afloat and you have to bring more to the business than you take in salary and benefits. And anybody's have conversations with upper leadership knows those calculations because they're responsible for them.

Does it make sense? How much revenue are we going to bring in? Let's look at the FTAs multiply, add 25% for C for benefits. You know, they put it on, it's called a pro forma. For example, it's basically a proposed income statement of what your salary is going to cost and whether or not it will bring in money.

So. You it's better if you understand that and understand those numbers. And I wouldn't say that the MBA is the only way to attain that knowledge. Of course. Um, there were plenty of people that maybe don't have any formal degrees in business who have attained much more knowledge than I'll ever have. But for me, it was a great path because I'd never had any business education.

Hadn't taken one business class, wouldn't have even known where to start looking to learn about business. So I felt like I needed that structure and you know, that formal program to really learn what experience. Yeah, business educators felt like they were important aspects to learn. And that's the MBA.

And you're 

Mike Koelzer, Host: saying that I know it's a lot of numbers, but here's two things to learn from it. One thing is to realize that you're just a number. And so, and so if you think business is a number, you're a number and your number might be up. If second lesson you don't bring extra value to your job and up your game competitively, maybe against your team members, did I capture 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: that?

Right? I wouldn't even have to say it needs to be competitive. If you bring a lot of extra value to the business, you know, what your employee, what your coworkers do is kind of just understand that it's a business decision. And that goes for nonprofits too. And one of my former bosses said, uh, about the nonprofit that says, if you don't have any money, you can't help anybody.

And that has always stuck with me because it's so true. So nonprofits, it doesn't eliminate the money factor with nonprofits. And it's not because nonprofits are bad. They do a lot of amazing work, but money is what allows them to do it. Otherwise they wouldn't need fundraising. They wouldn't need donations and they wouldn't need revenue streams.

I would be shocked if you could find a nonprofit with zero revenue, that's making any kind of an impact on anybody, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: someone in your same position. Hated numbers, but they might've been really good at jeez. It might've even been like hospitality. Maybe they've got a really good thought process on that. And they're going to bring ideas to the company of how to make customers feel more solid clinker.

And someone else might have a really good grasp on speaking or marketing, and they might not get into the numbers, but they're going to be able to put input in, have some kind of a conference or something like that. So in this day and age, you've really got to bring more to your job. No, 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: absolutely. Yeah. And companies are looking for that diversity and they're hiring or they should be.

Um, and one thing I do remember from business school was there actually have been studies demonstrating that diversity on the board, diversity and leadership within companies leads to higher performance than homogenous companies. So that the same would go with frontline employees. You, you definitely need that, that different thought process, but, but everybody needs to be thinking about more beyond I clock in and I get paid and it's my job, because at some point that's, that's, that's just much more easily replaceable.

And that's the thing is you kind of want your, you want to make yourself difficult. Everybody should have a succession plan too, so that, you know, if you, if you, it, it does come your time. You don't want all your work to collapse. And this company that's been feeding you and your family for years to collapse, but at the same time, you do want to bring so much value that they think, well, I don't know what I'd do without this [00:35:00] person who wouldn't want to be in that position.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Sometimes that's going to be without competition. A company might truly look and say what they need and other cases they might have. You know, 100 employees and they got rid of, got to get rid of 20 of them. And that's where you'd rather be bringing something extra than, than not probably absolutely one thing I love about.

Um, oh, speaking of bringing things to the company, do you speak Japanese? 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: Uh, to some extent. Yeah. That's another thing you do learn in school. I was not mostly self taught. But my, uh, my wife is from Japan. Um, I actually met her in Hawaii. Um, and when I, when we first started dating, uh, you know, kind of asked her like, do your parents speak English?

Or does his family speak English at all? And of course now I know the answer is obviously no, the majority of people in Japan speak one language, it's just, which is Japanese. Yeah. Yeah. It's not like a Nordic country where I'll speak Swedish, but everybody in the country speaks English to, you know, fluently like their native speaker.

Japan is very different. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: It's a big enough economy, right? In a big enough country where they don't feel like they have to speak English too. Make it in the world sort of thing. Would that be fair or 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: not? And I think the education system, just like our education system in the U S, is not very conducive to actually learning languages.

Um, and so in Japan, there's a big emphasis on writing and grammar and things where it's, uh, You know, like testing, for example, we take multiple choice tests. I remember I took German in college. I don't speak German, but I took German in college and I remember getting tested on things like, which one of these is the date of the forum.

I think of this verb. And it's like, yeah, if you learn German like that, you're not going to learn German or any other language. So it's the same in Japan. I think the education system, but bottom line, you just got a screw up and screw up and screw up. You just gotta keep talking and you got to get laughed at and you know, and it's hard and those Germans, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: they've got some cool, long words, don't they, you know, they've got like, you know, like in the U S I wish I had a good example for the listeners, but the only 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: the thing that comes to mind for me is the, what did they have some far from puking shirts or something for awhile?

Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. That's not German, but now yeah. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: And they got a lot of words for things like, like where we might say. I'm just going to throw this out. You know, we might say somebody is grumpy, you know, their word might be something like in German, like. Old man, with a scowl on his face, you know, something like that.

They just have these long words. They put them all together and there's no space. I think anybody can just make up a word. You just chain together a sentence and take up the spaces. And you're like, that's a new German word. 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: Throw a couple of those own louts in there. Oops. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: My last name's Kelser. So in English, it's K O E but it's really a instead of that.

Yeah. Do you think people from China are more focused on English and then people from 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: Japan in Japan, there's certainly a big focus on English. It's just not really working very well to teach English. It doesn't seem like there are tons of jobs, even for native speakers, teaching English. That's one of the most common ways Americans live in Japan is to teach English at a high school or middle school or even kindergarten.

So they have those. Resources there, but it's just, yeah, I think the instruction, the way they're teaching it and all, and I guess I'm not sure with China it seems like that, you know, that might be a struggle in China too. I have actually one client I just signed on with. It's a Chinese company that, um, I know that I don't speak Chinese, but they put in their ad.

They would prefer it if the writer also spoke some Chinese. So I think there, you know, they were looking, looking for that, to some extent, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: if you want to pick a fight with them, you can tell them that all the instructions that come from the Chinese products, don't always nail down the English. Exactly. You know, I'm always thinking about these Chinese products that come over and, you know, the instructions are like, could you have had at least one.

The person with native English read through this, you know, you would have known this wasn't right there or something, you know, or, and it doesn't take much to throw it off. It's just like one word out of hundreds. And you can tell it's like, they didn't, they should have had someone look at this, but why do I speak languages?

I just know an English looks 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: funny, you know? Yeah. The little bit I've heard of from translation, I didn't work editing English translation. So basically doing that, but to go in a peer reviewed journal. And the one thing I have learned from it is there's like different levels of translation. So there's [00:40:00] people with lower proficiency.

That would be like me that might not, might get paid the bottom of the wrong at best. And they might be responsible for like, you know, you translate exactly what or post or something like that. And then there's people like, and you don't let you only translate into your own native language, but, but then there are other people maybe they've lived in Japan 20 years and the, you know, very comfortable and they focus on like medical translation and they might translate package, whatever presentation, something like that.

Yeah. So I bet those instructions, they probably come from the lower wrong it's like, and it sounds like from native Chinese speakers, rather than from native English speakers who speak some Chinese, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I think so. Even if writing never made it to the light of day, You know, even if you wrote, you had to throw all your writing away.

I think it's so valuable to capture your thoughts and put them in order. There's just something really, really strong there, you know, about writing something out, where did your writing start from? Was your writing the chicken or the egg? I mean, w w have you always felt like you had the thoughts coming out and you finally put them down, or did you write in order to order your thoughts and so on, where is your organization, thoughts and writing?

Are you writing to organize or have you organized and writing just puts it into the, I've 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: always just enjoyed a kind of writing to at least organize goals. What would I want to accomplish this year, for example, and I like to put those down and write. I feel like there really is a lot of value in doing that.

Like I want to do. You know, XX and X over the course of this year, these three items. And I write that down maybe at the beginning of the year, for example, or just like collecting thoughts around a business or collecting thoughts about it. Yeah, I do it. I do it at work too with Ascension, like having lists and kind of writing down, like, this is where we really need to go.

Mike Koelzer, Host: It's almost like you could throw that stuff away. You know, the fact of writing it and having to say, I put this in three points. Some people are like, well, they like the feeling of the paper and the pencil in their hand. I know all that stuff, but I mean, just being able to, here's an example. Sometimes when I have something on my mind, you know, a project in my mind or a story in my head or something that happened, I can think about it.

And I've been talking to a list, like keeping track of a list in my head. I'm talking like, what just happened with that? You can think about it over and over in your head. You can write it down and I don't mean write it down. Like now you have your do list. I mean, just to write it down, there's a huge divide and a huge power there of going from your head into your hand onto paper or onto a computer of organization.

I think it's 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: underrated. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's been a great way for me to collect my thoughts and with the medical writing course it's different, but with, with my own kind of goals and thoughts and directions about things, yeah. I found it to be very valuable to, to really just be able to put it down.

And this is what I focus on. You know, these are, these are the, what we call maybe the valuable few for those that are familiar with, for example, a parade analysis, which is that there's like 20% of the 20% of the problems. Cause 80% of the issues like, like there's a few things that lead to a. Impact. And it's not just with problems, but there might be a lot of demands on your time, you know, all sorts of people are going to want your time.

So where are they aware? What is your 20, what is your 20%? Like, what is, what are your 20% of items that should be taking 80% of your time? And where are those priorities? 

Mike Koelzer, Host: But you walk into a bookstore, you know, and there's just thousands of thousands of books, you know, there's, there's hundreds of different categories.

And then you go to your category and there's 10 shelves. And finally you're down to one book and then one chapter in one page, you know, and it's like, the whole bookstore could have been in that book, but someone had thought enough to narrow it down. And so it's maybe not so much the story. On your paper, as you just said, maybe it's the stuff that's not on your paper that everybody's brain wants to still bring into it.

The billions of points that are not on your paper may be the important part to say, no, this is not what we're focusing on. 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: Yeah. And I've struggled with that in the [00:45:00] past. And, you know, last year I did, I purposely did it and said, I'm going to try for one year really, really hard to make several businesses work.

And I probably took on too much. And there was a lot of demand on my time and you know, all of these different ideas kind of pulled in different directions. And that was kind of the point, probably the highest point I've had with just multiple demands on my time. Um, and like I said, I said at the beginning of that year that I'm going to cut it off at the end of this year, if it does, you know, if it's not working out.

And, and that's what I ultimately did, but, but I know during that time I had a whole lot of too, too many things going on at once and yeah, something that. That. Yeah, I certainly have struggled with in the past too, is, what are your two things or three things? What, what is it that you can really focus on that you know, where you can, you can accomplish those things and.

Keep your sanity in the process, Alex, how 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Do you define medical writing? Is that subjective? 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: To me, it's subjective. I know the, uh, American medical writers association probably has a different definition of it and they probably define it narrowly, but this is something I've put I put in my medical writing course that I added in articles too, that I've written about the topic is that I think one thing that will hold you back with medical writing is worrying too much about what medical writing is.

So, like the way I see it, If I'm getting paid a salary that I am happy with right. Life is good. Who cares if you call it medical writing, if you won't call it general writing, you know, it makes no difference to me what you want to call it. And so a good example, uh, I wrote for a while for this company called, uh, Barton staffing, they do healthcare staffing for like locum tenens.

And usually I think focus on nursing and physicians, but some pharmacists, uh, kind of temp jobs. Um, so as a locum tenens company, of course they want it. They were open to pitching some articles on travel and look, this is what you can do in this state or that state. So I got paid to write a few articles on Hawaii.

So I wrote an article about the top five dive sites on Maui. I sent them the link to my YouTube video. They put their logo on it and they put it on their site. And I made a list of, you know, these are my favorite places that I know of. O'Malley when I was there and they paid me for it. So they're a healthcare staffing firm, but it's about dive sites.

Is it medical writing? I guess? I don't know, but, um, I was happy to write it. Part of 

Mike Koelzer, Host: That was like the show, like my only rule on this show is that we don't get to talk about any medicine. Because I don't enjoy it. I mean, I can find that somewhere. I enjoy the business side and more things. So that really is like, what are you talking about on your show?

It's like anything except medicine. I 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: might've violated that rule earlier with the pencil opioid stuff, but I just meant it as an example, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: It's got a Latin name to it. One show I actually got into a little bit, uh, you know, I got into a little bit more medical stuff. Yeah. If it's got a Latin name, it's not for this show, it's everything kind of around that.

So the medical writing in your mind is just, you know, probably your audience is maybe that profession and it's not so much. Maybe what's actually in the article. It's not like it has to have a drug name in it or something like that. It's really the audience that you're after. It seems that's, 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: that's the way it is in my mind.

Yeah. And I wouldn't be against travel writing, you know, if, uh, if one of those travel magazines. Had an opening or contacted me and the pay was good enough. I wouldn't expect it to be as high as, you know, writing, editing peer review journals or something. But if I get to talk about Hawaii and put it in a travel magazine, I'd be open to that too.

I say medical writer, but I'm open to other, other types of writing too. Yeah. So yeah, most of the stuff I've done has been like consumer health. I write for a good RX blog. They do some consumer health stuff and some pharmacy operations stuff, and I've written continuing education and some trade journals.

And I mentioned the Napa flex review course. So I guess really just whatever comes up that I feel like I'm capable of taking on, you know, I haven't done, for example, regulatory writing. I wouldn't be comfortable doing it without being supervised by a regulatory writer, but if I feel like I'm capable of doing it and they're going to pay me and I'm happy to do it.

Who cares, what you call it. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: All right, Alex, correct me if I'm wrong then. So at times, if you need more business for your writing, you look up the person to contact at these companies. You send them a little example of this and you say, can I write for you? And will you pay me? W where am I wrong? 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: I have done that.

Yeah. And especially when I first started it got started writing and that's another thing I go over in the course is, uh, I've talked about [00:50:00] where to find these companies, how to search for jobs on you, you know, your Indeeds and glass doors of the world, how to search the company's pages and how to pitch to the editor of those places.

What's the contact for the course? It's on a, you, to me, you, to me, a.com. Yeah. Medical writing for healthcare professionals. And, uh, yeah. I'll send a link to add to the notes. Is it 

Mike Koelzer, Host: video people watch you, or they read it or what do they 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: do? Actually, a little bit of both. So we, I do some video of myself, do some video with PowerPoints, do a lot of screenshots.

And the focus of my course is not necessarily. How to write. This is assuming that you are a healthcare professional that you're comfortable with writing, but you don't know how to get started, getting paid to write. So taking you from zero where you are now, for example, you work at a pharmacy and you want to even start writing on the side.

Even if you don't want to leave your pharmacy career, you just want to get paid a little extra, right. Have to ride on the side and have a good time. I feel like the course is still for you. So it's kind of broken down into finding the jobs, uh, pitching to the clients, building your portfolio of. Uh, efficiently writing the work and the focus isn't really on how to, you know, send it structure and things of that nature, but how to quickly lay everything out so that you get the work done in the most efficient way possible, because you typically get paid per product.

That kind of thing is not per hour is not as common I would say is per project or per word. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: And you said, you're not talking about how to lay out the article, like in the reverse pyramid and stuff they teach, we're talking really nothing about the article itself, more about getting the article done and so on.

So yeah, 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: exactly. So laying out an outline, for example, what types of styles look work best for the web? Um, so that's one of my preview videos on the chorus, but for example, the web loves. Top five places on Maui, top four. I did one for pharmacy times, top I think four or five confusing drug formulations.

So actually in that video, and this is what I do in the course with this section on writing the work. I actually have a screenshot video of my own computer and I'm writing out outlines from scratch. So I did, I think for the writing for the web, I think I did a, you know, a sample called top five places in Hawaii and we don't finish the pace cause that's not the point is to finish the pace, but get it in 10 to 15 minutes, laid out with your main points and an intro and how to, how to go back and then plug in those references.

You know, when is it the most efficient to look up those types of facts? If you're writing a, if you're writing a piece on blood pressure and you need to look up how many people are affected by blood pressure comp, uh, by high blood pressure and complications, and those kinds of things, you have to look those things up.

When is it the most efficient to look that up? When is it the most efficient to put the reference in there? How to most efficiently create the references, essentially get it, get it done as quickly as you can, and also get a piece that's well-formed so that you can submit high quality work 

Mike Koelzer, Host: right now. I say to you, Alex, go get something that's going to be a magazine or website.

Ready? You don't have an idea yet. You've got to come up with a five list article on something. How many? Ours. Are you putting into that? 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: Uh, well, I would say with the amount of practice I've gotten, it's gotten better than when I first started, because I've done so many of them, but the standard length for the web is kind of six to 800 words is what a lot of people talk about an article with a list.

I would say, you know, anywhere from 200 to 300, 350 is kind of the going rate for that. And I could probably do it in as little as I've knocked. One of those. 45 minutes to an hour on the very low end. And I've gone four to five hours on the high end, um, depending on how much research and the editor.

Um, for example, if you need primary sources for everything, and it's a real, in-depth kind of article, uh, so an example of one that's on the high end, in terms of time as good RX it's consumer health. And they, you know, it's like, I think I did want a tour of a stat versus Simba stat and which one is better and kind of digging into side effects and things that, of course, you're going to have to look more things up.

You have to make sure it's referenced well, and it takes more time than top five dives, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: primary being, well, the simple example would be. You don't want to say, I saw this on this article that referenced that article. You have to go to that original [00:55:00] article 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: basically. Yeah. Pull in the original trial data or guidelines, something that's really reliable in the end.

Even if you know it off the top of your head, you still have to reference it, um, because they need to maintain their reputation as well. And you know, that everything they put on their website is referenced from reliable sources. It seems 

Mike Koelzer, Host: to me that a lot of times in an article, especially with the list articles that you're not reinventing the wheel, you're not saying here's how to build the next levitating car or something.

You're, you're really conglomerating things that are out there. It seems to me that the whole key to an article is thinking of the topic and then actually finding items for the list. That's more like, all right now it's coming together. Is that right? Is the topic the most difficult thing to come up 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: with and communicating the material effectively?

But yeah, you're absolutely right. I don't think anything I've written well, I know nothing I've written has been groundbreaking stuff. I haven't conducted trials, myself. Everything that worked up is already out there, you know? So it's, but there's a, there's a reason that they call it that the places where medical writers work are called medical communications agencies and the reasons, the reason they're called medical communicators too, is, is, uh, laying that out and communicating that information in a, in an effective way, um, to increase retention, to increase the time that the person spends on that website.

So that's another thing, that's another thing because anybody who's into websites knows that. They like page views and the amount of time on each page that all affects how much a website is going to get paid in ad revenue, which is where your salary comes from. So this is where I'm going back to, you need to bring more to the company then you're taking, so you get paid 200 for an article or 300 or something.

But, you know, I had one editor, occasionally we hit a home run and it's hard to tell what's going to be a home run, but we hit one, one time. And they got 16,000 page views in like three or four days. And, you know, she was ecstatic about it. And of course that's because her boss was happy and her boss is happy because more page views equals more ad revenue, which is where my money comes from.

That's 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Interesting about the length, because some people will go on and see something's too long and not even start it. And, if it's too short, they're going to read it and get off of it. So there must be a sweet spot in. There 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: most people say around six to 800 words, and sometimes you'll see like authority websites we'll do much longer ones.

But another thing they'll do is, is kind of a bottom line or summary either at the top or the bottom of the page. And you see that good RX, we, they S the typical one with good RX is the bottom line. And you'll see that if you go to their blog, most of the articles would have a bottom line. I think Healthline does a similar thing.

They highlight in a box with bullet points at the top or something, but that's a very common thing, not just in healthcare, but other sites. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: That's the, uh, the little trailer sort of right. That's to catch the attention. And then the hope. 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: Yeah, exactly. Do I want to read this article or not? And, and you see a few bullet points and you scroll more.

I think I've even seen news websites doing it about, you know, the recent happenings of whatever they're reporting on. They say 

Mike Koelzer, Host: The first thing that people read in the letter is the PS. 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: Oh yeah. I've never heard that. That's a good, that's a, that's a good point though. Yeah. It's kind of like the, the PS, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: do they put the bottom line at the bottom line or do they put it up on top?

A good 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: RX does actually put it at the bottom. It doesn't 

Mike Koelzer, Host: use much finger energy. I think a lot of people scroll down. They look at the bottom line actually, because wisdom would say, no, don't put it down there because then they got to scroll down and up again in that. But you know, probably at the bottom is okay.

Because then people will go back up. I always read articles from bottom to top. You know, you go in and you say, oh, that's an interesting conclusion, you start reading. And finally I got to the top. The top paragraph, 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: it must be working because good RX, I can't remember 20 million users a month or something. It's a lot, they have an enormous amount of an enormous audience.

So whatever their, you know, their formula is definitely working 

Mike Koelzer, Host: with. I mean, just users of the discount. You mean reading the articles, there's a lot of people. And now that 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: is, that is the site. So I don't know how much it is like searching the drugs versus, you know, versus reading the articles. But I imagine with that many people visiting the site, there's a lot of people reading and, and that of course means for anybody in that internet kind of world that they're going to, they're going to be at the top of the Google pecking order when, when somebody searches, uh, you know, what's this rash under my armpit probably could gut our X is going to come to the top of the page if they have a blog article about it, because of, because of traffic and things like that.

How long has [01:00:00] your course. Uh, I think it's a little under three hours, but you, to me, does give you lifetime access. And my intent was for it to be a place you go back and forth almost as much as like you go through it all at once and then you don't ever touch it again. My course is not designed 

Mike Koelzer, Host: for that because it is a step wise process on this stuff.

Yeah, exactly. Back on your MBA, would you still get your MBA if you couldn't put MBA on your name? Um, 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: I still think it was a really, really valuable educational process. That's I think that's a, that will be hard for me to answer because I gained so much from the MBA, but also it just seems to be like a checklist item for so many jobs that if you can't walk away, at least saying you have that body of knowledge and prove it to your employers.

It was a big commitment to not, to not be able to demonstrate to employers that you have, that 

Mike Koelzer, Host: if someone said you can't use the MBA on the end of your name, you might say, I still want to learn this stuff, but maybe I'll learn it in half the time or not get as deep or something like that. It's a value of both.

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: Yeah, it is. And at least if I could put it on my resume, I don't care what they put on the end of my name. But, uh, but if I couldn't at least put it on my resume to demonstrate to employers yeah. Whether or not I'm introduced as you know, farm to MBA is kind of irrelevant to me. But, but I do want to be able to show employers that, that I can talk that talk, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: but it's good on your little bio, on your writings though.

Why don't you think that's probably 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: good. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. And actually within writing. Uh, often the medical communications agencies, you start out as a writer. The next natural step is a publications manager. Gotcha. So you're managing multiple writers and stuff. And so I imagine they probably value an MBA too.

Just like any other company, would you do that? Um, possibly. Yeah, again, like right now I've taken a break from people management, but 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I would take a break with people 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: until you die. Kind of realized I want to be the guy behind the people manager, like the, I like the consultant type stuff. Yes, exactly. The MBA is very valuable for that 

too.

Mike Koelzer, Host: But boy, that's a, I M 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: it's tough stuff. I have a lot of respect for people that do it well. Yeah. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. My world's a lot smaller now, our business, we scaled back a lot of things that weren't producing income and it's just a tighter thing now. And I never want to go back to the big craziness of before.

Yeah. My listeners know a lot of it because I came in as a third generation pharmacist. So a lot of it was even till now, even though my dad's been dead for 15 years, there was still like team members holding on that were hired by him and things like that. Maybe if I started fresh and I was like the CEO of some great idea, I had.

Kind of looked upon with reverence and awe by my part. Just kidding. Yeah. 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: Although I don't know how many CEOs are looked at with all and 

Mike Koelzer, Host: then all that happening, but, so I don't think, I don't 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: think it's almost like leaders are looked at with all in reverence after everybody talks about Roosevelt and Churchill.

Now who knows how many talked about them at the time? Probably they were 

Mike Koelzer, Host: controversial. You look at someone like Bezos and gates and stuff. And I think they stepped down in their late fifties from two important decisions so that their legacy has a chance to soften a bit. So they're not firing thousands of people like a day before they die.

I'll have 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: to wait into the political arena, whether they like it or not. And no matter what they do, half the US population will hate them for it. It's tough, it's a tough place to be. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: It's hard to be a leader, I guess. Yeah. Even as president, no one has a hundred percent. Alix devil's advocate. Your program is a business.

Could I argue that don't bring more competition for yourself or writers into this, or is this like a huge field? And that's like saying don't make more pharmacists in the nation or something. I mean, is there any concern that you are bringing in another hundred writers a year or whatever that they say? Hey, that guy might take my article chance away with this next place.

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: I don't know what the 

F the future market will hold, but right now it feels like I'm getting more work than I can take. Anyway, it's just a huge field and it's in a really high demand. And so it's a, and there's a lot of folks that want to get into it and just don't know how so it's kind of connecting, connecting the dots and I have.

I guess for me, I feel like I have five years of experience at this point and, and kind of getting into more, like more recently getting a job, helping even with the drug industry and kind of wading into the more traditional medical [01:05:00] writing stuff. So I feel pretty confident that I should be able to continue down that path, even if I help some others along the way.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Well, it never 

hurts. It always helps to be known as the leader and certainly being able to teach in that area. It gives that to you too. It seems obvious. Being a pharmacist and having an MBA, maybe narrows the search for people that want an article written by that. If two people showed your information with these degrees and someone else just said, well, I just know this, I just write this way.

And I'm a good writer and those are equal. Do you have the leg up by having those degrees and so on 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: by having the farm day? Yes, but not by having the MBA pharmD and MD are probably some of the most in demand and then PhD and like a life science immunology or cell biology or something too, but for the clinical topics, yeah.

Pharm D and MD are probably the two most in demand degrees. And then after that point, the number one thing that companies are after is a portfolio. So in the beginning, you're going to have to send a lot of. Emails and applications and stuff. And then you land a few clients and then, you know, you 'll slowly build from there and you'll get your, you'll get more of a portfolio and can start kind of extending your reach.

You 

Mike Koelzer, Host: mentioned like those five businesses that were driving you crazy last year, touch on those. So one's going to be your writing. One's going to be your writing course. And so on. What other ones are out there? I 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: think those were the kind of the ones that were actually cause the writing course I did over the course I did over the period of maybe a week when I took a week off and not even a full week kind of like in a relaxed way, but yeah, the other one would definitely be my website, the farm compliance.com.

Um, I have more or less dropped it. It's still up. You can go there and hopefully you will like what I've already written since I've already done it. But I think I misread the demand for. From independent pharmacies to be able to just quickly download and in an inexpensive way, download tons of different forms and tea and aids and stuffs to save themselves a headache.

Like you could probably buy every formal site for a little over a hundred dollars. I don't know how many there are. Maybe, maybe a little more, but it would save a big headache. But I think I just didn't quite understand that maybe the, maybe the demand is there. I'm not quite sure where it went wrong in terms of the revenue, but it's been a year and it was a year and a half at the end of last year.

And it still wasn't producing much revenue. And 

Mike Koelzer, Host: That's your one that had courses on fraud and compliance and those kinds of things. Right? Yeah. 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: And that was one of them. Cause I was still writing regularly trying to get that up and running. Uh, I got offered a jaw, uh, kind of a. Not a job, but like a consultant arrangement where I was going to get a finder's fee, which is where you get a percentage for finding a deal on a patented temperature indicator.

Um, I felt the device was unique. I thought it would be an easy sell because it's actually a liquid. So you can match the thermal mass of the vaccine. For example, you can fill it with 10 milliliters of this patented liquid, and then it changes colors if it goes out of range. So it's like it accounts for the fact that one vial might be 10 mils and one vial might be one mil.

And if they're at the same temperature, the 10 mil is going to be stable a little bit longer. Um, that one, that one I eventually dropped. Cause I, I called everybody. I knew it felt like we had conversations with even the drug industry. And you were 

Mike Koelzer, Host: trying to find someone that would buy. 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: Yeah, buy the patent out and then produce it.

Um, and it wasn't an enormous time commitment, but it's just that it was additive 

Mike Koelzer, Host: And it wasn't down to your focus really, you know? Yeah. That's true. It would have been a moneymaker, but maybe not down your focus. Yeah. 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: Yeah. Um, and then the last one was, uh, more of WIS actually another one that I didn't have any intention to get into either at the beginning of the year, but I met, uh, two Japanese pharmacists who were starting courses to help Japanese pharmacists learn to speak English.

Oh, interesting. Yeah. So that seemed to be something that I might be able to help with the H. Thousands of people following them on Twitters. It seemed like they had enough of an audience to bring in some revenue. And, and, um, so we started with some live sessions and then I pushed the team to produce an online course.

But, um, you have talked about this and the, and other. And other areas, but, uh, one, one bit the biggest issue with that is the primary pharmacist that kind of founded it. I just don't think he was interested in making money off of it. And it didn't matter. It kind of felt like he was taking, he felt like he was taking their money, even if he was giving them so much in return.

I don't feel like he had that, that business mindset to really turn it into a business, even talked about, turning it [01:10:00] into a nonprofit at once and kind of probably under the, the misleading, the misleading aspect that may be a nonprofit doesn't need revenue or something, you know, but, but it just wasn't working out.

It just, the business partnership was not working out and then it was, yeah. So it kind of, those are the things that I ended up kind of cutting all cutting off. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: What would be a cool week for you, like 10 years from now? You know, you wanted to bring in, come in, what would be the coolest way for you to do that?

What would that week look like? Basically as far as would it be all writing or, or this or that, or what? I 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: think I'm a, this or that kind of guy, but

yeah, but that's one of the reasons I like working, working at the hospital, but yeah, the medical medical writing, I could see being a big part of that. I love getting involved in a lot of areas of medical writing. Like I mentioned, the Chinese company I'm hoping eventually gets the chance to see more of the Chinese regulatory system, Chinese culture and within health care and things like I've enjoyed with Japan, seeing.

How far, how it pharmacy works in Japan, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: You'd spend all week thinking of the articles, writing the articles, researching the articles. You, you could do that. Full-time and that'd be a good, happy thing for you. 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: I think at least most of them, most of the way here. Yeah. That's cool. So who knows, maybe I'll be one of those high class translators one day taking trips.

Mike Koelzer, Host: This is an avenue for pharmacists that maybe like to write a little bit, pick up a little extra cash and they might really enjoy this as a side thing. 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: Yeah. Oh yeah. Definitely. I enjoyed it for a long time, just as a side thing with no intent. To make it a career for a while, until I realized it just kept working.

And I tried everything I could last year to do something different. Medical writing is a lot of work. So not because I dislike it. I just, just try and try and other things out and medical writing has worked. And even then, my medical writing courses have been by far the most successful of all those kinds of business ideas I started last year.

So I'm just going to roll with it. How does 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Someone take the first step in at least seeing your stuff? Where are they gonna go to see your course? Where are they going to go? I can go 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: to go to you to may through the link in the, in the notes are going to you to me and, and find my course there.

How's that spelled 

Mike Koelzer, Host: out you to me or 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: it's a U D E M Y o.com. Yeah. Where they have the old line courses of what is it? U D U D E M 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Y. Is it a play on you to me? Or is that the name of it? I 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: guess I'm not really sure. I always thought it was Odom until I heard from somebody who worked for the company. It's someone, you know, probably some video on how to make your course or whatnot.

I heard them pronounce it. Right. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: That's why I can never do drugs on this course because I can't even pronounce half of them anymore. So 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: you have to have killed the new law. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Some on here, I was talking to Kim. I don't understand all those lines and stuff like that. I just asked someone else how it's done. And then I, you know, do it all those own 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: louts.

Yeah. There's lots now there you go. There you go. You've been saying it wrong all this time. All right, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Alex, it's been a pleasure. We'll be watching and I'm sure a lot of people are going to get on that course because all the cool things we talked about that come from just writing itself, even if you're not quick to put money in your pocket with it, just the practice of writing is, is cool.

So that's great stuff. 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: Definitely stopped. It's kind of like the digital nomad has become a trend and I'm certainly one of the ones that's really attracted to that lifestyle, whether I'll ever be able to live, live it fully or not. So there's that whole group. And I'm sure there are listeners who are into that.

That's one of the few ways medical writing is one of the few ways you can use your pharmacy degree and be a digital nomad. So think about that. I mean, how many, how many jobs out there could you, you sit here and knit digital nomads working out of Bali or whatever, and you're still using your pharmacy degree and you get to just kind of wander around assuming we're not in the era of COVID of course, but, but in terms of job.

Yeah. So it's, I mean, what an opportunity. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I saw an ad. It was something like, um, I forget if it was before COVID or right afterwards, but it was something like, it was one of the Midwest Plains states or something like Oklahoma it's like Oklahoma and their tagline was something like we have fast internet too, or something 

Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA: like that.

They're trying to attract those remote workers. Yeah. Um, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: there will always be a room for the New York cities of the world and stuff like that, but some people just don't want to, they're not going to do that anymore. There's no reason to be in the city unless you love it. Yeah. Definitely at some point, but yeah, digital nomad.

I like that. All right. Well, thanks Alex. We'll be following closely. All right. Sounds good. All right. It's been a pleasure. You too. Bye.