Dec. 28, 2020

Building a Business on Experience | Craig Douglas, Cofounder, Statim RX

Building a Business on Experience | Craig Douglas, Cofounder, Statim RX
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Craig Douglas is the cofounder of Statim Rx, an 'on demand' pharmacy. 

https://statimrx.com/

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Transcript

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

Host: [00:00:00] Craig for those who haven't come across you online yet. Tell our listeners your name and tell them why we're talking. 

Craig Douglas: Yeah. Thanks Mike. Uh, my name is Craig Douglas. I'm one of the founders of StimRx, really, uh, there's really two pieces to the business. One is a provider focused PBM. So driving solutions, uh, managed care solutions.

Um, to the outside entities, but doing it from a provider focused lens, so a pharmacy lens. Um, and then the other component is really healthcare logistics and, um, you know, being able to help pharmacies compete in a space that now everybody expects everything on demand. Right. And so we've created a solution to help.

Uh, pharmacies compete in that space 

Mike Koelzer, Host: on your website, you describe yourself as a pharmacy brat. What does that mean? I'm imagining you're a youngster, you're in the Pharmac of your parents. And so on, you know, it's 

Craig Douglas: interesting and you own independent pharmacies and know what it means. It's an all hands on board business, right.

Um, you know, it takes a family to run it or a family to mess it up one way or another. And, um, you know, when other kids would be done with soccer practice, they would go home. We would go to the pharmacy. Right. And there was always one more thing to do. And one more item to check off the list. And for me back in the old days, it was possible, I was putting the drug order away.

Right. Because nobody could get to it during the day. Because it was so busy. And so now you got this tote full of meds. You gotta get it put away and I'd have to try to, you know, remember my dad used to categorize things brand and then he'd put the generic next to it. So I'd have to know what the darn generic was.

Uh, it was just, I mean, it was so convoluted and difficult for a kid and all I really wanted to do was go home and maybe watch some cartoons and grab a bite to eat. But, um, that was the business we were in. Right. And so you'd spent a lot of hours there and you chipped in wherever you could. Um, whether that was doing deliveries and then sometimes you're just, you were just that kid in the way.

Right. And I learned to do Papa willies on wheelchairs and cause I just, just burn in time, you know? And, um, did you work through 

Mike Koelzer, Host: high school at your dad's? 

Craig Douglas: Yeah. Oh yeah. And, but it was always in fits and starts. Right. Depending on how much, um, You know how much, um, sports were going on and what my activities were, but for sure, during the summers, I mean, there was just no escaping it.

In most cases you were there. So even if you weren't technically working, you may be there just so they keep an eye on you. If you didn't have baseball or something else to be done. Right. My problem 

Mike Koelzer, Host: back then is, you know, my dad would do the schedule and. He always knew where I was basically. So you couldn't just put it on there, like, not like nowadays I'll tell my team.

I'm like, if we have enough people yeah. On the payroll, if we have, if I have enough employees, if I've done my job right. And if I know about how many hours a week you wanna work, I don't care if Monday morning is you're crying morning and you wanna stay home in bed and, and do that, or, yeah. You know, Wednesday, you like to watch TV at night or something.

And so I'm like just use this computer program we have, and we'll work it out. But back then, it's like, my dad always knew where I was. So you couldn't just say like, yeah, I want to. Friday night off. It's like, whoa, what are you doing? Is it, you know, there's gotta be a football game or something to do that.

So I don't know. I always kind of felt, and it was, it was job security, I guess, but it was, um, it was a pretty tight reign. Not that he needed that tight reign for my growth, but that. I think it was good for him to know where I was. If there was a pinch at the pharmacy, yeah. I didn't like it all the time, you know?

No, 

Craig Douglas: But it, but it's it, I mean, they're family run businesses, right? It's the same thing with your family. It's like the pharmacy was just a, it was just a, uh, you know, it was just an extension of the family, which is, it's kind of crazy. Um, when you think about it, but it worked, you know, it provided for us, it provided the opportunities, it opened up lots of doors.

And so. You know, I tell you my time in the pharmacy and growing up in that space, it really defined me as an individual and how I think about businesses and how I think about relationships going forward. So, you know, you know, I got a lot of, uh, probably, uh, bad memories as, as we were saying, but, uh, yeah, so many good positive ones 

Mike Koelzer, Host: as well.

Yeah. Did your mom work in the 

Craig Douglas: store? She did. She did until I think, you know, it got to the point where. Just didn't make sense anymore. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: because of their relationship or because financially, 

Craig Douglas: Nope. Nope. It's the first one. Um, and so it just made sense. She got into real estate and uh, you know, thank God to have some diversification in the family was, you know, good thing, you know?

Right, right. So it worked out great. But I, yeah, I remember the early days when it was like literally the whole family. Right. Including my mom and, and that's just, that's tough. And you 

Mike Koelzer, Host: probably talked about it all the time. Oh, 

Craig Douglas: yeah. I mean, going home and dinner and dad wants to talk about PBMs yeah, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: yeah, [00:05:00] yeah.

My dad too. It would be like, and even after I was married, you know, not still working at the pharmacy, you'd come over and you'd be sitting there on a Sunday or something and he'd just start, you know, talking about something and it's always pharmacy related in some it's always, it was always pharmacy 

Craig Douglas: to this day.

He's retired and still, those are the conversations we're having. It's just it's, it's just so in his DNA 

Mike Koelzer, Host: and it's comfortable, there's always a topic to talk about years 

Craig Douglas: and years and years, and that's all, you know, right. And, uh, you always get nuggets of information though. Always nuggets of knowledge, which is super 

Mike Koelzer, Host: powerful.

Did you guys 

Craig Douglas: have one store? Uh, I would say he expanded and, and contracted over the years. . um, which is the nature of the business, right? I think there were, you know, times where you could go, we were in the Willamette valley, which is kind of a wine country out in Oregon, and you'd see an opportunity and an adjacent city and you'd go after it.

And, you know, but the, the, the challenge I think you have in independent pharmacy and definitely had at the time is. You're trying to do both, right. You're trying to be a pharmacist trying to be on the counter, build those relationships, but you also gotta be running the business. And, um, it was always a tough balance.

And so, uh, you know, he would expand into markets and then sometimes he'd be like, oh gosh, maybe overextended himself. Right. Um, and, and that's, I think that's a tough part. That particular industry is, you know, they teach you how to be a pharmacist, right? They don't necessarily teach you how to be a businessman.

Um, and so we can catch up with you as you know, pharmacy is not one to, it's not a hobby. Um, it'll catch up with you really quick. Um, and so he had some opportunities, he expanded by the end, he contracted to his, uh, original pharmacy. Uh, and he just rebuilt it out and he built it like kind of his dream pharmacy, and that was kind of his retirement plan and it, and it worked out well.

Did you have siblings in the business? Yeah. I think most of us all were in, in some form or fashion over the years, but there were four SI, so three siblings of myself and, um, you know, again, you couldn't escape it, but we were all spaced, you know, three or four years apart. And so they always had somebody to, you know, do some, do some grunt work around the pharmacy.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Did any of your siblings end up in the profession at all? 

Craig Douglas: No, not on a, not from a professional standpoint. Uh, one of my sisters did spend some time. Um, working in the pharmacy, helping my dad from the business standpoint, uh, until he decided to close up his last shop. Um, but me and another sister of mine have both been in the pharmacy space.

For years actually, right outta college, basically, we've been in some sort of pharmacy space. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: We 

had 12 kids in our family and I think that the other ones didn't go into it. They all liked my dad, but it was easier to hang out with my dad at home than to be with him at the pharmacy. I, I don't think anybody could really.

Understand, because they always saw my dad as joking around and happy, but there's a pressure that you can just see in their eyes as saying, we want this right. And that pressure, I think, transferred over positive and negative to the kids. But I think that none of my siblings went into it because they knew that my dad wasn't probably close to retirement.

I went into it, knowing that when I graduated, it was probably gonna be. A few years or something before. Yeah. He would've been done. 

Craig Douglas: You know, it's 

interesting. I think from my standpoint, I can't speak to all the kids, but I think one thing we saw in our early days is he was a community pharmacist. Right.

And he was a part of the community and that was his passion. Not necessarily pharmacy, it was helping people. Right. That was what he loved. And, and you could see it. He loves, I mean, people came, Mike, how are you doing? How are things like, he just has great rapport with the C. , but by the end, as you, as you know, it, it, he started being tested on, you know, how fast can he operate?

How accurate can he be? What are his finances? And it just became less about chasing down, you know, payments and reimbursements and you know, all the other nuances. And it became less about being, uh, a community pharmacist and more about just business first. So you always, you always got this undercurrent from him.

Not being happy, loving the profession, loving pharmacy, but not being happy about the transition. From being a community to a, you know, a major business and precisely, so that scared a lot of 

us away. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: When were his last productive years of actually being in the pharmacy and working and things like that.

Yeah. I mean, early 

Craig Douglas: two thousand. Right? So he started seeing, you know, integrations of payers and the, you know, the model started changing quite a bit. Um, and, and a lot of people I'd say a lot of pharmacies got caught flatfooted. Right. Um, and rightfully so. He didn't need to have the energy to put into it at that point.

And he didn't have somebody to step in and really do it. And I think that probably the only regret is, you know, having somebody, a child of his or somebody who could step in and start to do those types of things, which probably would've been meaningful or [00:10:00] finding somebody he could. You know, he could be brought in as an associate, right?

And train them up and possibly sell it to them. I think that's probably the only piece that, uh, he probably wasn't super happy about right. At the end of the day. And I get it. Everybody wants to leave a legacy 

Mike Koelzer, Host: at one point. Did your dad know that you were not gonna be part of that legacy because that wasn't your 

Craig Douglas: direction?

Oh, I think it was pretty obvious by my, uh, grades coming in from high school that I wasn't gonna be part of it . 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Right. So, 

Craig Douglas: I mean, we all have to own it at some point. I mean, it is what it is. And, and, and as, you know, pharmacy got more and more and more competitive and you know, when you're not a straight A student and not very close to you not, you don't have much of a chance.

Um, And I, you know, and I would say I'm probably probably more built like my dad, I'm kind of the guy that is, you know, I want to be that community guy. I want to be engaged. I wanna build relationships. I want to do all those things. Right. Um, so it probably wasn't a good fit for me anyways. I think both me and one of my other sisters, I think there's a little bit of, um, she had a much better chance of being a pharmacist than me, but, um, there's a little bit regret cuz you kind of want to carry that on right.

Um, I saw it today. My wife's a dentist and it's a beautiful profession and you know, there's always talk about our two little ones. Would one of them be a dentist? I don't know. It sounds like a really good story. I think it's something you'd like to see, but I, I, I just don't know that that's, you know, I think it's rare nowadays.

I think it's hard to, to, to have that, um, You see it a lot more in dentistry, you see a lot of second, third generation, um, practices for sure. Um, a little bit tougher in pharmacy nowadays, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: if it wasn't for me, none of my siblings were even close to it and it would've just done, you know, it would've just been sold or whatever.

Yeah. So you get into college. Was pharmacy, the furthest thing from your mind, were you like I'm gonna go out and do this and you thought the pharmacy will just go its way you didn't expect to be. Profession. Yeah, 

Craig Douglas: no. Yeah, no, I had no thoughts about it, honestly. I, uh, except for just, you know, I think we all kind of felt like it'd be nice to leave a little legacy, uh, for our father, but, um, no, I mean, as most, you know, people, when they go to college, they go out there and, you know, I went to college and graduated and thought I was pretty smart and I knew a lot of people and I was well on my way.

and then I realized I wasn't that smart. Didn't know a lot of people and you end up knocking on your dad's door saying, Hey, do you know anybody can find me a job? and that, and that was the reality, right? That's kind of how it all started. You know, when you go into the professional pharmacy, you're gonna be a pharmacist.

Right. And there's lots of different avenues. You can go, but you know who you are, you know what you are. Right. I was a business degree major. I didn't know who I was. I didn't know which direction I was going, I could have gone to advertising. I could have gone, you know, who knows finance? I mean a million different directions.

And so, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: yeah, that's the thing with pharmacy is sometimes it's even a. I guess everybody would wish they could have this problem right now, but you know, golden handcuffs, but I mean, you're, you almost feel guilty doing something else, but with business, you don't really have that, you know, good and bad. You don't have that solid direction in the long run.

It might be good in the short run though. You don't, you don't know your next step necessarily it's 

Craig Douglas: eye opening and the short term, right? Hm, you're looking for some help. You gotta get started 

Mike Koelzer, Host: somewhere. What did you picture in early college? Did you have thoughts of what areas that you would take a business degree in?

Yeah, I 

Craig Douglas: I mean, I always kind of assumed I'd go the healthcare route and mostly just because of the connective tissue to, you know, pharmacy and relationships there, I figured that would probably be the path. Um, my oldest sister had gone that route and so I could kind of see. A bit of a roadmap in terms of my future.

Um, but you know, that's easier said than done. You gotta get some doors opened and, um, but I'd always kind of assumed I would head down that direction. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Did you think it would be anything? And I say this with all respect, you think it would be anything as small as attaching to your dad's pharmacy? Or was this gonna be bigger, like running, you know, one of the big drug manufacturers or something like that?

Craig Douglas: No, I never saw it as a, I never saw my career as being, um, something that was, um, You know, connected really to, you know, the pharmacy and the pharmacy background. I saw it as I would be doing something more, a little bit more nationally, more globally, and it always felt that way. Yeah. So you get 

Mike Koelzer, Host: outta school though.

Is it fair to say those jobs weren't there or do you think something was tugging you. Back to something let's say more personable or 

Craig Douglas: meaningful. Well, I think it's, it's tough to get into healthcare jobs with just a, you know, standard business degree and, um, you gotta get started somewhere. And that's really what took me to really, you know, frankly I got done with school was just focused on getting done with school and I didn't really.

Have a super good plan. Right? And I started asking my dad, if he knew had some connections and some [00:15:00] relationships, he introduced me to a company. The time was called Bergen Brunswick, which is obviously now called Amerisource Berg. And, uh, and that's where I got my start. Right. So I was lucky enough to at least get an introduction, get my resume out there and certainly had a ton of pharmacy experience cuz I'd literally grown up in pharmacy.

So that helped me tremendously to kind of bridge that gap to get started somewhere. And then I spent five years at AmerisourceBergen and it was, um, a really incredible experience, right. Because. Um, you've got, you got to learn firsthand that it's all about relationships in this pharmacy space. And somebody could be walking in another rep from a competing company, could be walking in right behind you and they could have 25 basis points, better deal.

But you're hoping they're gonna do business with me because I've been there. I've shown up every Friday and had conversations, you know, gave them updates, legislative updates, brought them materials, followed up on issues, questions. Um, and that's really where I kind of learned my way. Uh, it was an incredible experience.

Were you 

Mike Koelzer, Host: a, what they would, maybe this was derogatory. Were you a sales rep for them? Yep, 

Craig Douglas: exactly. A hundred percent. Is there a better word for 

Mike Koelzer, Host: That now? 

Craig Douglas: I, I mean, it is what we did, right. Everybody wants to change everything. Yeah. I don't think we need to change it. I think it is, you know, we were sales reps and I had accounts in rural Oregon that if I showed up wearing a suit, they would throw me out.

Don't you dare, ever show up. Cuz it looks like you're trying to sell me something. And then you had others where. The expectation that he had that professional attire, um, But yeah, no, I was in a, you know, early days. So I started in retail. I spent three years in retail doing independent pharmacy. Um, it was great.

It was great. It was fantastic. Um, we lost a lot of pharmacies though, so it started changing and evolving and, uh, their opportunity came up to do something on an alternate site. So an alternate site would've been long term care home infusion. Um, specialty, anything that was outside of acute and retail. And so I spent my next two years there and that's really what kind of started my career 

Mike Koelzer, Host: with Amerisource with Amerisource.

Yep. Was it all soft sell with Amerisource? Like, like our reps they'd kind of come in and shoot the breeze for a bit. Did you have to do anything like cold calling or hard sales or anything like that? Yeah. 

Craig Douglas: Contract negotiations, hard sales. Um, trying to save an account, trying to close an account. Yeah, absolutely.

Mike Koelzer, Host: I think we were too good of an account all those years. Well, nobody had to push too hard back before, uh, 1995. Nobody had to push too hard. No, there was money in the business and everybody was pretty chummy with each other. The competition didn't really need to be there, but as those years came around, certainly there were a lot more of them.

The buying groups and the different things happening, where, where I can see that it would not have been your father's wholesaler as they would say. 

Craig Douglas: No, you're absolutely right. The two thousands created a lot of. Pressure, uh, in terms of, you know, cost of goods and, and, you know, all those different relationships, all those different pieces really started becoming to, you know, forefront.

We also had, you know, the Pacific Northwest was kind of a nice little story up here. We also had more competition come into this space too. And competition created, you know, more aggressive pricing, more, um, you know, different stories, different programs. And so it just, it really did change when I started there.

I'm thankful for it. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: What competition 

Craig Douglas: came in, uh, at the time it was, um, when I started it was Bentley Western. Okay. Just another 

Mike Koelzer, Host: wholesaler. 

Craig Douglas: Yeah. I got acquired by Cardinal. Right. Everybody gets acquired. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: So you were in the retail spot, let's say for a few years. What was the impetus to say? I'm gonna go to the non-traditional areas.

Was that something that you approached them or they approached you or. 

Craig Douglas: Uh, yeah, I saw an opportunity. I applied for it. It was, I would say it's twofold. It's personal growth and professional growth, right. It was a space that I wasn't familiar with. I was very familiar with walking into, you know, a drug store.

Like I was very confident in that. Uh, we're talking about institutional closed door pharmacies that have a totally different view on things they use. Um, you know, many different solutions and, um, and like, for example, GPOs, right. And that was kind of my first introduction to group purchasing organizations and how I transitioned to my, the main part of my 

Mike Koelzer, Host: career.

Were you gonna make more money in your other one or was, or was your job on the rocks with retail or were you just like, I wanna change 

Craig Douglas: It's more responsibility and this kind of notion of change, right? You were sick of the other. Well, it was more I'd been around it. I mean, it's kind of going back to the story of why I didn't go into pharmacy.

Right. I'd been around independent retail pharmacy for years and years, and I loved it. Part of it too, is getting some separation. Everybody knew who my dad was. It was a small community, you know, it's like, I gotta kind of go prove things on my own and, you know, go about it a little bit differently.

That was [00:20:00] a big piece of it. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Right. I can see that. Was there anything memorable of you saying, you know, I need to do this on my own or was it just a feeling over time just to kind of separate yourself from being the son of your dad instead of being your own person. Was there anything that pushed that or was that just kind of a gradual 

Craig Douglas: feeling?

No. No. I mean, you always want to earn your way and earn your keep and have your own name. Right? I. Fundamentally it's what drives us, and your competitive spirit. So, no, that was, it was definitely something that, it, it, it was a new challenge, but also it. Getting out from kind of underneath, like, you know, you're, you're Mike Douglas' son.

Right, right. Um, and that's not, I'm super proud to be his son, but it's also, I wanna go prove myself. Right. You were there for 

Mike Koelzer, Host: three years. How long then do you end up on the other side of things at Amerisource? So I did 

Craig Douglas: alternate site for two years. Um, had. A lot of success. And I was working with a large post-acute GPO, and I worked very closely with those folks and we had a lot of mutual success.

So driving savings for pharmacies, helping these long-term care pharmacies, uh, be as successful as they possibly can. Um, Their CEO had got kind of wind of me and some of, uh, my reputation, some of my, um, experience out in the Pacific Northwest, he was actually, uh, doing a, kind of a turnaround of this company and, and he's building out his team and they approached me to be a national account manager.

Out on the west coast. So it was now a bigger territory. It covered Oregon, Washington, California, Idaho, Alaska, Montana. Um, and it was interesting cuz it was a really small company time. They had like 97 employees, Mike. Um, and then, you know, I'm going from a fortune. 25 companies to a kind of a turnaround, um, almost a startup of sorts, but their, their, the CEO had just such a great vision and where he was gonna take it.

I thought, you know what? I'm young. I might as well go. Shoot my shot right now. And, uh, I left and went to post-acute GPO and I had a lot of success there. So I came, I was a national account manager in the west region and became the director of sales, and became the vice president. Uh, eventually the company sold to a public company and I was the executive vice president or senior vice president for the long term care division for, um, like four years.

And I had responsibility for the GPO, uh, the payer network. So the PS a O. Uh, the revenue cycle management software and the clinical software. And so I just had a great experience. Um, I loved it. I loved most everybody I worked with, there was a really good thing. And what we did was we really just drove. You know, value back to the pharmacies.

And we tried to identify opportunities where we could drive value back to the pharmacy. So it was very rewarding, very fulfilling. You were 

Mike Koelzer, Host: two years in the alternative program at Amerisource. I don't like the term alternative program. It makes you sound like you were a delinquent, like they caught you smoking or something.

Well, a Pacific 

Craig Douglas: Northwest there's, you know, the home of alternative rock. So it 

Mike Koelzer, Host: fits you're right. Nirvana. 

Craig Douglas: Oh, Nirvana. Yeah, sure. Yep. They were just up north. Yep. Seattle let's say 

Mike Koelzer, Host: that. That GPO wasn't there. Let's say you didn't know these guys. How long do you think you would've stayed at Amerisource? Was that a good job those last two years?

Or, or would you be looking to do something else at that time? 

Craig Douglas: Oh, I loved it. There was nothing. I mean, you're always looking. I mean, there's always other opportunities, but I had nothing but, um, great respect for the people I worked with and still friends with, a number of 'em, um, enjoyed the company, enjoyed the culture.

And so, you know, you never know really, I wasn't chasing down any new jobs. Honestly, they kind of came to 

Mike Koelzer, Host: me. Right. All right. So Craig you're with this group purchasing for how many years, then? 13 years. 

Craig Douglas: So it was about four years ago that I left. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: What precipitated that then, 

Craig Douglas: um, you know, companies change and cultures change.

Um, it was still a great company, but. You know, people had moved on, people that you've kind of grown up with in the company have kind of moved on. And, um, that was one component. Like everything, everything has a shelf life. The other thing is it was a grind on me. Um, you know, traveling from Portland, Oregon to, uh, New Jersey is, uh, that's a, that's a six hour affair.

Right. Just if you're lucky, have you traveled at all during COVID? No, but I, but I have had partners that have traveled, um, I'm kind of a, you know, I'm in a weird part of the world, so, uh, it's not. Easy for me to get around, but, uh, we've and we've had instances where we had meetings set up and then it's just like, you know, you know, Atlanta gets shut down and they're down into, you know, level one again.

And so you can't really, you're gonna travel there and you can't really do anything. And we're level one, we can't do anything here. You know, it's, we've had to abandon some ideas of travel, um, just because it's just, it's not set up for it right now. But, um, and the other thing is we are in the healthcare space.[00:25:00] 

You know, they got a lot of stuff going on, right. Senior care space right now. They're trying to figure out how to roll out a vaccine and everything else. And so, you know, they don't necessarily need me wandering around the 

Mike Koelzer, Host: halls. So, yeah, that's right. Do you think travel is kind of like I'm proving to you?

My customer, that you're worth me hopping on the plane and coming all the way down here. Is that part of travel too? 

Craig Douglas: I, I think so. Um, I'm sure some people see it that way, but I don't see it that way. I see it more as there's a relationship there in most cases, uh, or there's a relationship you want to build in most cases, and it's a lot easier to do it in person and, um, to really have, you know, dynamic conversations that can go above and beyond just a simple topic.

Right. Um, and so I, I think maybe you're proving it a little bit to that client, but. I just think there's an expectation is it's how you build relationships, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: right. Yeah, that's the truth. And some people right now might say, well, we don't need it. This is going fine. It's like, yeah. But wait for five years, you ha you're not gonna build new relationships.

Yeah. These are gonna break down. The person that is visiting is gonna build a relationship, unbeknownst to you who are on the video camera, you know, thousands of miles away. I totally agree. I'm imagining that you say, all right, things have changed here at the GPO. And I think it's time for you then to say one.

I can move on to something that maybe fits me better. My vision of who I wanna be, what I'm doing, but also I imagine this goes off into an area of saying there's some problems out there that I can solve with my great background. Mm-hmm would that be fair to say that was a launching pad then of leaving the GPO or, 

Craig Douglas: Yeah, I mean, I think things change and you obviously know that you've got a big network of people that, you know, and, and if you can find the right solutions, you can build out some.

Good, uh, solutions in healthcare. And I think we, myself and my partners have always had a lot of confidence in that. Um, you know, there were early days where you're not so sure how it's all gonna play out, but, um, you know, you, um, you, you make it happen, right. You make it work. And so we've been able to stand up a couple companies and, you know, Pretty, you know, excited to kind of talk to you about with sta and just what we've been able to do at sta RX and, and how that's kind of helping the industry after 

Mike Koelzer, Host: you left the GPO.

How long was it before you formed Sta was that your first company you formed? 

Craig Douglas: No, it was our second. What was the first one? Well, it's a formulary management company. It's called Lithia RX. And so it's. It's a very, um, niche business, very focused on long term care pharmacy. So it's, it's landscape. It's nice, it's a really nice little company, but its landscape is really small.

Um, it has to have, you have to have, uh, a fair amount of, um, part patients and really just patients coming out of nursing homes into a short stay within a nursing home or out of a hospital, into a short stay within a nursing home. So it's not as broadly, um, known. Um, but that was the one. We stood up initially, then we brought in, um, you know, one of my buddies who I'd worked with in the past as well, was looking for a change.

Uh, his name's John DRI, he came out and, uh, we had this idea of sta Marx and what we were gonna do there. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: All right. Devil's advocate, Craig, ready for this one? Yeah, partner. Suck. don't ever get a partner. Why would you want a partner? Tell me why that statement. Wouldn't be fair to. To you and your partners?

Craig Douglas: Well, I would say partners are hard, right? Hard. Yeah. Um, but I mean, if you're realistic, we all have our strengths and weaknesses. And I have a number of partners that have strengths that I don't have and vice versa. Um, and it's also helped us scale, uh, across the country in a way that I couldn't have done on my own.

And so I think it's really important and look, you know, partners, it's, it's skin, it's about relationships. It's, you know, there's good days and bad days. Right. Um, but I had already worked with most of these partners. In a prior life. So we kind of knew we knew each other really well. Right. Um, and we felt pretty confident in that.

It doesn't mean there still aren't roller coasters. There absolutely is, but man, if it was easy, everybody would do it and it it's just, it's not, but I would rather be a part of a partnership with some, some folks that, you know, know how to go to war with you then, you know, own a hundred percent is something that's, you know, not that impactful in the marketplace.

Right. So I would trade that off all day long. You 

Mike Koelzer, Host: would? Yep. Back on the devil side, somebody says, well, Craig, I'm gonna give you million to set this up. And your answer to that is no, [00:30:00] I still want these guys or gals with me, but I'm saying, yeah, but Craig, the, the money's there and you're saying, no, Mike, I still want it this way.

Why, what can these guys do? fictitiously. If the money was there that you could not buy it's 

Craig Douglas: To your point, you know, partners suck. Right. I think what you said. um, owners, owners suck too. So, you know, working for, working for money, working for a, uh, financial institution, that's not, that's no, uh, walk in the park either.

And so it's just a balance. You mean 

Mike Koelzer, Host: people working for you. Might say it sucks and they're gone 

Craig Douglas: Then, and my livelihood, like, so I go take some money from a financial group. They own, they own me. Now they can fire me and move me out as just quickly as they would lie 

Mike Koelzer, Host: back on the devil side. Yep. Let's say it was your money.

You don't own anybody. The money it's your money. You don't have to pay it back. Nobody owns you. You can take that X million dollars and set up your management team. And so on with this. Take the money out of it. Let's say money's not an issue. You'd still rather say no, Mike, I don't care what money could buy for this.

I'd rather be in the relationship of partners with these five guys, instead of me being their boss. Is that true? 

Craig Douglas: Yeah, I think you get a lot more done when you have everybody who has skin in the game. Right. And even if I controlled everything, I wouldn't have the relationships that some of them have. And so it allows you to move a lot faster than you would otherwise.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Right? You wouldn't have the relationship that they have with you. People 

Craig Douglas: certain clients, right. And this is a relationship business. So, I mean, Adam's a great example of that. I mean, it's only two years old and I mean, people, they know who we are and there's a lot happening there, but it's, I'd say that's a byproduct of the people that are behind the business.

Right. And not so much if it was just me, I don't think it would be as compelling of a story 

Mike Koelzer, Host: and they have better relationships because they're. Sent on a mission from you, the owner, and they've got some people there trying to get money from, you probably could not find somebody with that kind of relationship who maybe is now doing their own thing already.

Craig Douglas: No, I mean, interesting. Our, our, the president of this of sta um, he had his first kid and he was in, she was in the, uh, NICU for a month and we were running this business. And I mean, I, I tell you that guy bar. Missed a beat and I'm, I'm not sure, you know, was that the best thing we all should have been doing?

I don't, I don't know, but he was emotionally and personally invested in seeing this business succeed. I don't know if it would've mattered. If I told him don't pick up your phone, don't do anything. I mean, he's stuck in the hospital waiting for an update on his daughter. He's working, you know, he's like, I got nothing else to do.

It takes my mind off it. And so I think it creates that unique quality in, in, in an individual who has ownership in a business. And yes, it does create unique challenges as well. But, um, I think this is way more impactful to have somebody who lives and breathes. It cares about it, right? 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. It sounds like you're able to take, let's say the five of you and you guys turn this.

10 of you with the positive of the relationship, versus if you had employees, you might be paying for five and get the work done of about three or at least the commitment. And so. 

Craig Douglas: Yeah. And it's so incestuous, it's like you're gonna train somebody for two years to have half a clue about the industry, the relationships with whom you connect.

It's just, it's just tough to break into a space unless they know you. Right. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. And these people already have that. 

Craig Douglas: Yeah. And so we're kind of scattered all over the country. So there's some, you know, geography components to it as well. You know, we have some people very strong in the Midwest and Southeast and Northwest and all those different caveats.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. And if you had employees doing that before, you know, it, they might either be doing their own thing or, or what they have would look vastly different from what you were what your mission was back at, you know, back at 

Craig Douglas: home. Yeah. And it's interesting. I mean, I, I came from a world where I had lots of employees and, um, it's got its set of challenges too, so yeah, yeah.

Yes. You know, so it's not, uh, it's just different challenges right. At the end of the day. Yeah. It's 

Mike Koelzer, Host: different. All right. So Craig, you and your partners find RX and what drew me to having you on the show? It seemed that you had four more major functions I guess, or services. And it seems to me that you're not in our, a young industry, that cares long-term.

It seems like a lot of the nursing homes have stuff set up with long-term care pharmacies already. And it seems. [00:35:00] There's some catchphrase that can buy some independent pharmacies because a lot of times these long term care pharmacies are not in the same town. So it seems to me that. These services, are they kind of bridging a gap?

Do these homes already have a care pharmacy? And you're filling in somehow? What, what is sta what does 

Craig Douglas: It does? The easiest sense is our relationships again, with the institutional long term care pharmacy. And they have a contract with the nursing home. May, you know, 150 miles away. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: These nursing homes already have a long term care pharmacy.

You're not partnering with the nursing home, trying to come in and gain that business. You are connecting with the long term care pharmacies. 

Craig Douglas: Everything we do is pharmacy centric. So absolutely. And so we just provide a channel for them to get a ticket from an existing platform somewhere. Right.

And get that med filled and delivered. To the client in the quickest way possible. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: How would these places, if they didn't have someone like you like sta mm-hmm , what would these long term care pharmacies be doing then? Would these things fall through the cracks or would they try to go to some other pharmacy in town?

Or what, what hole are you filling? 

Craig Douglas: Well, so in the old days, there were just a lot more of those pharmacies and they'd probably be just, you know, kind of like my dad was and they would just drive down and get the med filled and get it delivered themselves. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: The long term care would. And your dad would just treat them as a customer.

Craig Douglas: Exactly and well, they were a customer. Right. And so, um, there was there back in the day, there were a lot more of those long term care pharmacies that serviced the smaller geography. Right. And they would probably just handle it themselves. But also then, you know, what happens? You get the cost of having pharmacists on call, getting called in the middle of the night, all those types of things.

And then you got that patient. Pharmacists driving down to the pharmacy to fill it and all these other things, when you're talking about probably, you know, I don't know, a $10 drug. Right. But you gotta get that med to the patient because it's, it's, there's time reason behind 

it, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Craig, but why wouldn't boy, the devil's coming out a lot in this show, but why , why wouldn't your dad say screw it.

I'm not going to. Mrs. Smith at this house that the long-term care pharmacy's doing all of her business. Why should I come down after close and help out Mrs. Smith? If I haven't seen her for four months, because this long-term care pharmacy's 

Craig Douglas: doing it right. Well, for that example, he was a long-term care pharmacy.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. He was in the care pharmacy. He 

Craig Douglas: was everything like every, like mostly community pharmacies. You, you probably have a lot of different lines that you service. He serviced a lot of different lines and that was one of 'em. So, what we've been able to do is kind of take that was a problem there, take it out into a much global manner, give people the ability to get a med filled and get it taken care of and go from 

Mike Koelzer, Host: there.

Gotcha. Because we've got some long term care pharmacies and they would pay us for it, but they'd say, Hey, we're down in Ohio, you know, a couple hundred miles away. Can you fill a three day prescription for this and this, you know, company? And. We would do it if the money was high enough, but it wasn't worth breaking our back for, because this customer wasn't gonna be our long term customer.

Yeah. So have you guys then created a network of other pharmacies of independent pharmacies and so on that will that for a fee, you know, we will do this for, for the long term 

Craig Douglas: care. Yeah. It's a mix of independence, a mix of chains. It's, you know, every, everybody. Um, you know, if you've got, if you've got pharmacists standing around at 12 o'clock at night, you know, it probably makes sense to run some prescriptions out the door.

Um, so everybody's got their own desire whether or not it's for them or not, but, um, we've been able to, you know, work on that across the country. And so then the other component that came out of that was the logistics side and saying, you know, how do you get that med now from the pharmacy to the nursing home?

Right. Somebody's gotta do that. And. But more importantly, how do you track it through the whole process to make sure nothing happens? Right. And so we were sitting there scratching our head and we were, we couldn't believe all the answers we'd get from people. Oh, we use taxis, we do stuff like that. And we go, how do you track that?

How do you get a signature? Thank goodness gracious. How do you, what, what if you get audited or they said they didn't get in, how do you even know any of that stuff? And so we build a really, and this has been the evolution of the company is we built this whole, you know, uh, logistics portal to, to manage all that.

So you can see when a delivery's been entered to be picked up and you can see the drivers. You know, accept it. You can track 'em all the way to the retail pharmacy. They pick up the med and they take a picture of it. They drove it back to the nurse's home. They get a signature from nurse Smith and it all gets funneled back to our portal.

So they have a, um, tremendous amount of confidence and, um, the audit capabilities to go back and show you that that [00:40:00] prescription has been fulfilled and delivered and taken care of. So, you know, from that, Mike is we've all of a sudden. People started asking us, could we do more in terms of healthcare logistics, right?

They're like, look, you have this whole network of drivers all over the country on demand, ready to go? What else could we be doing with that? Um, so we started getting activity, obviously this whole COVID thing popped up and we have health systems knocking around on our door going, Hey, um, we actually don't.

People coming to the hospital to pick up their meds. Like, yeah, no, I get it. We can help you. And we can help do that fulfillment and we can do it in one or two manners. Right. We can do it on demand. So maybe you just weren't planning on it. And Mrs. Smith needs to get her med right away. And so you can just schedule up a driver and they'll come over and get it and deliver it.

Or we can create. Sweeps for you. We can create routed systems that, you know, you have these neighborhoods that you service every week and we can have it set up so that the driver comes in, gets the meds and goes and takes those 10 deliveries. And we've done that also in retail pharmacies as well. Cuz as you know there, you know, there's, there's a million tech startups now and they talk about being able to deliver meds next day and all this other stuff.

I mean, retail pharmacies already have the platform. They should be getting the med there, same day. And, and I, this notion, cause I grew up in the space is you gotta have the patient come into your pharmacy. Yeah, I get it. That would be ideal. It'd be ideal that you get some FaceTime with them, but that's not where we're at right now.

I mean, people, people aren't even going into restaurants, so there's not a lot of desire to. In a building right now. And so we've been, uh, moving out into the retail space to say, Hey, gosh, we can work with you. We can build out sweeps to help you retain these patients. We can build out on demand solutions so that when your driver's already out and you missed a med, which happens all the time or the refill came in late, you know, you can just dial one up.

And I know that, you know, there's obviously a cost to that, but you're also trying, you're competing in a marketplace. That's getting more and more competitive, right? Where, you know, There's whole pharmacy systems that are built on same day delivery. And, um, you know, there's, you know, thousands of retail pharmacies out there that are already there that can do exactly the same thing.

And so, you know, we've been slowly expanding outside of the LTC market to, you know, health systems in the retail space to say, look at these solutions. They're good for you as well. This is really the time to 

Mike Koelzer, Host: do it. The example you gave before the pharmacy delivery, what hospital sometimes has to get people medicine or, yeah, that was, 

Craig Douglas: That was really around, you know, a lot of hospitals have outpatients, uh, programs, right?

Oh, gotcha. Right now they don't want patients coming on the campus. They got enough, they got enough workload on campus. And so it was, it was this notion of being able to. Uh, take care of that patient, right? Keep the outpatient pharmacy, uh, running smoothly and, and not compromising it, but also keeping some, um, continuity in that program around servicing that patient, instead of just closing the door and telling them to go somewhere else, they could still service that patient and get them the meds in a safe manner.

Right. Um, so that's part of what's come out of all. So we do tens of thousands of deliveries a month now, and we do they're all hip certified drivers. Um, we have just a really slick portal that allows, uh, providers to dial up what they wanna do. They can do it. Multi-stop single stops on demand sweeps.

Um, And it's somewhere really exciting. Cause there's just, you know, there's nobody that really does it quite like we do and has the software technology behind it that we do and has the network of drivers that we do. And so, you know, I always think back to my, my, my old days and thinking about retail pharmacies, and I used to be the guy that got the box of drugs at the end of the day, and then I'd go out and I'd get lost half the time.

And I did . I'd make the deliveries and inevitably I'd come back and there'd be three more drugs that we missed. Right. And so, um, there was a cost to that. It wasn't much of a cost cuz it was me. I was the son, but there's a lot of pharmacies that employ somebody full time and that's, that's a better service.

It looks better. They know the driver. That's all great. But, you know, it could be a Saturday, that person could be sick. There's all these different things that could happen from being able to just tap into a portal of drivers to go get a med, you know, they're HIPAA compliant, they're gonna get it and they're gonna get it delivered.

You know, they may not, you know, know the patient's name, but they're still getting the med to 'em, which is the most important piece. Um, and so that's really where we're seeing the expansion of this business, right. Being able to be really we're there's lots of companies that do stuff like this, but most of 'em are also delivering.

Groceries and they're delivering, you know, restaurants and, and we're, we're focused on healthcare. That's where we are, that's our bread and butter. And it's something we're pretty proud of. Just like 

Mike Koelzer, Host: a pharmacist. Mm-hmm on the first service you do of filling some of these prescriptions, just like they fill hundreds of other ones, not for, not related to you.

Are these drivers doing other driving things? I mean, they're not. Status people, right? 

Craig Douglas: No, they're not. They'll [00:45:00] take on other jobs, right? Like, um, they'll take on other, um, opportunities as well. It could be 

Mike Koelzer, Host: like an Uber driver, but who's, you know, certified through you and so on. 

Craig Douglas: Exactly. Exactly. It could be.

Absolutely. Um, And then there's, there is a subsection, a pretty good subsection that just mostly focuses on healthcare, not much else. So it's a mixed bag. It depends on what you're looking for at the end of the day, if it's on, if it's on demand and you're just, you know, deciding here in the next hour that you're gonna schedule something up, it's probably gonna be, you know, a, um, Johnny of all Jack of all trade drivers that would, would grab that med and get that.

But that's, that's just a one off, right. That's just taking care of the patient, doing the right, doing the right. Um, we have other drivers that all they do is healthcare all day. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. If you're able to say, if a company wants you for a certain route or something, well now you know that you can do all right.

Three hours for this company, three for here and three for here. Now, all of a sudden you've got a full-time driver that can basically be only healthcare then. 

Craig Douglas: Yep, exactly. That's exactly it. And so we're nationwide. We're in 47 states. Um, The only three we're really not in is just, we just haven't pushed it too hard, but, uh, we can pretty much go into most, any market.

Um, rural markets take a little bit longer, but I mean, for example, Oregon's pretty rural and there's nowhere that we don't deliver here. And that's just not a byproduct of that. I live here. It's just, that's what we're capable of. Um, whether it's Oregon or Alabama or, you know, Georgia, whatever it is, we can go into markets and, uh, and cover 'em quite well.

If the 

Mike Koelzer, Host: price is. I'm imagining you can find a driver almost any time. You might have to pay a higher rate or find someone or do this, but especially with. Uber and, uh, Lyft and all those companies out there. Now, people know this. And if you, if you communicate and get the price high enough, if needed, you're gonna find someone to take your medicine.

Craig Douglas: Absolutely. And you're right. It's if it's, you know, 4:00 AM in the morning, it's a different price point, right? Uh, if it's a scheduled delivery that you do every single week and it's usually done during the week, it's, it's less than the 4:00 AM on demand, you know, last second delivery. The reality of it is though in all these situations, in the environment we're in today, you're protecting the patient, you're protecting the healthcare workers.

And, and honestly, we're, we're providing jobs. People are looking to make some extra money. And so it works out. There's a lot of really good people that, um, you know, Don't have, uh, you know, careers right now. They don't have jobs. And so they're trying to make ends meet. And so it's been a, it's been a nice kind of, uh, circle of, um, um, of value that's being added to the, uh, to the, uh, pharmaceutical supply chain in terms of, you know, getting the patients, the right man at the right time.

Well, I know that 

Mike Koelzer, Host: our. Delivery is probably at least double during 

Craig Douglas: COVID. Yeah. It's been a huge spike and you know, we've been really good about, you know, we're flexible, we're nimble. Um, we know the space, we've got great, uh, logistics, uh, managers that know the ins and outs, uh, make all this work and have relationships all over the country.

And so. We can step in, in moments notice, and we've done it in multiple cases, uh, you know, big hospital systems where we've been able to step in in a week and solve their problem and make sure that those meds are being taken care of. So, um, it's been, it's been pretty fulfilling from that standpoint, frankly, the demand 

Mike Koelzer, Host: is there.

Because of COVID, but the supply of drivers is there because people are not working as much. And, and thankfully they're getting some work out of, out of you guys. 

Craig Douglas: They're making some side money for sure. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: This is just a story that I think adds value to what you're saying is that people will come in just, you know, yesterday.

They said, I remember your dad, Mike he'd, you know, so there's a positive and negative GE story. Right? So the positive is I remember your dad, Mike. He came out at, you know, 1130 at night and brought me some Benadryl because my child had this or that. Oh, that's a positive, a negative. Well, my dad had to go out at 11: 30 at night.

you know, I'd rather have someone else do it and say, well, maybe Mike wasn't there shivering at my doorstep, but somebody was there and, and got me the medicine that I needed certainly 

Craig Douglas: helps with the quality of life. Right. And, employee retention too, you know? If it's not you, it's somebody else that's going and doing it in the middle of the night.

There's a lot of, you know, willing, enabled people out there looking to make a few bucks as well. I 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Imagine you are always thinking of other markets you could do. What else would you put under sta versus not putting under sta because you might confuse the customer? The only other 

Craig Douglas: one that we've really put under there is, um, the provider focused PBM solution.

And this was a byproduct of our pharmacies going. You guys have the expertise and the capabilities of doing this. Could you do it outside of that? I, I, I, I have to be careful with this one is that I keep telling my partners we're not gonna do anymore. And I keep telling my wife, I'm not starting [00:50:00] anymore companies, so we'll have to see how this all plays out.

that's my, that's my message. And I'm sticking to it for now. So we'll see, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Let's say the prescription delivery part becomes 90% of your business in sta. Would you ever make that just stay and then take everything else out and call it something else? Just to give a real clear vision of your top mover, or would you bring 30 things under stay that are all in the same pathway, but not.

Exact delivery. You've seen people do it with like, they've got this broad thing, but all of a sudden they call this something different because it's such a successful part of their 

Craig Douglas: business right now. They're all synergistic. Right. And so they all work really well together. So, but I would never say if, if they evolve and we're 90% logistics, maybe it looks different.

That's for sure. Today just kind of by nature is, um, we started really on the, on the pharmacy side, we got into logistics cause we didn't see a very good solution there. And, now we're evolving into more, we are working with a number of our clients on this, the whole vaccine distribution and helping them.

Right. Which is very complicated and, uh, very timely in terms of the rollout in the senior care market, which is something we never would've guessed we were doing, but we're built for it. And we have the skills and, uh, the relationships that go make it work. And. , you know, that's probably not a long term part of our business.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but it's the right thing to do by the industry right now. And we do it right. You just get it done. So, you know, but it's still within our core business. So it makes a lot of 

Mike Koelzer, Host: sense. If they get vaccines from you, they might use the other things from you too. Right. The reason I ask is like, our pharmacy is I've got my pharmacy name and then the tagline or the, the description is pharmacy and home medical equipment.

And I've always wondered if I would be stronger in my market instead of calling it. X pharmacy and then call it Y home medical equipment because people can say, oh yeah, but there's a synergy. It's like, yeah, there is. But if I didn't have that synergy, if I just called it Y home medical equipment, would that be even a stronger focus?

And would people know that we're. Damn serious about it instead of like combining the two things. So I, I just always wonder that, you know how far I'd go. 

Craig Douglas: I think it's a great point. I would say our logistics business is a byproduct of our current business today. Right. And so, but to your point now that we have that standing up, is it better as it's on its own?

I don't, I don't think we're there. But I'm always open to it, but I agree with your point. I mean, I know that, uh, you know, the medical equipment side and the pharmacy side, and there's lots of companies that have been in pharmacy and medical equipment. Right. And you do wonder cuz then you see you compete.

You're competing against, it's a big box chain for pharmacy and you're also competing against those that do nothing but medical equipment and they're bigger and they're out there. I think it really comes down to just kind of like, you know, are they synergistic? Probably not. Do you have somebody who's responsible for that line and they live and breathe it all day long.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Is this your final landing 

Craig Douglas: spot? You know, I want to continue to build these businesses and, and have 'em, you know, be a, you know, a lasting legacy for sure. And, and have a special story to tell about it. You know, I don't see myself ever, no matter what happens down the road, I don't see myself. Kind of leaving the marketplace per se, the healthcare marketplace.

I mean, it's, I'm here to stay and I may look at other ventures or other opportunities, but right now there's just a lot of work to do day in and day out on this thing right now. And we've got a long, a 

Mike Koelzer, Host: A lot of work, a lot of excitement. 

Craig Douglas: Yeah. And a long runway. I mean, we're just tapping, we're just, just tapping the marketplace.

So we've got a lot of stuff to still do and execute on and, um, Yeah. It's exciting. So we'll worry about, I'll worry about those problems down the road. worry about 

Mike Koelzer, Host: growing too much later on. Yeah. Yeah. That'd be a great problem to have, well, Craig pleasure meeting you. Hey, real 

Craig Douglas: pleasure. I appreciate it, I love the, uh, just the back and forth.

I think this was really good. Really good dialogue. And it's good. Uh, I, I love connecting with people in space and your background and your history. And you, you, you probably hear some of the things I say, and it just makes you chuckle about, you know, growing up in an independent pharmacy. Now you live it and breathe it all the, all the time.

Right? 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. I live it. And people ask me if my kids will be, and I'm like, no, they won't. I was just gonna ask you. No, no, you don't think so. One of my sons, he has a business degree and he's come back and it's a good thing for him because he's my first born and. He's young enough just to really get in the dirt of this.

And then at any time he could just say, I'm gonna do something else. He'll still be young enough, you know, and so on. But none of the other ones have any interest and that's just fine with me because if any of them happen to stumble. Onto pharmacy and love the science and love the love, everything about it.

And did it knowing that there's a highly likely chance I won't be there, then that's fine. You know, cuz in the old days you could look out two years down the road about the future of your [00:55:00] business. Now you can look out about two minutes down the road, so yeah. Yeah. That's true. So I'm pretty thankful that none of them.

Are in it. We're a third generation. It's been a good ride. And I bring up partners too because my grandpa and my dad and I we've always basically ran the store as one benevolent dictator. , you know? Yeah. Heavy on the dictator and not so sure about the benevolent sea, but, um, that's what I call it, nonetheless, so, oh, that's awesome.

Well, thanks Craig. Take care. Bye-bye.