Embracing AI in Pharmacy | Andrea Ioiro, Speaker & Author

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

Mike Koelzer, Host: [00:00:00] Andrea, for those that haven't come across you online, introduce yourself and let our listeners know what we're talking about today.

Andrea Iorio: By my accent. I think most people can guess without even seeing me. And by my name as well, Andrea Iorio, I'm not from the US, I'm Italian. I grew up in Italy and I've also spent 10 years in Brazil where I started my professional career.

I've been working with some tech companies such as Groupon and Tinder. I was the head of Tinder, the dating app, in Brazil for

five years. I also had experience, after that, at L'Oreal, I was the Chief Digital Officer at L'Oreal.

Totally different business. That's when I also started interacting more with pharmacies and the health sector. , from then until 2019, I left the company and I started doing fully, keynote speaking.

And interestingly enough, one of the biggest customers is definitely pharma companies. They invest a lot in keynote speakers such as me that speak about digital transformation, which is my main topic nowadays. I have three books published in Portuguese, but I also have, my latest, launched in English.

My first book in English, it's called Meta Leadership. the New Skill Set for Leaders in the Word of AI and Web three. And today, Mike, I'm sure we're gonna cover some of the key topics in the book, and we're gonna definitely tie them to the reality of our listeners to make things applicable to our day-to-day jobs whenever we manage our pharmacies or our businesses.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Alright. First of all, let's get some things out of the way here. Tinder, the closest I'm ever going to be associated with Tinder is right now talking to somebody that works there. They don't have an old fart section, right?

Andrea Iorio: No, they don't. And as well as definitely if you were already in a relationship, I'm sure, Mike, that you haven't had the chance for that.

Mike Koelzer, Host: I should have started with, I'm married, so that's the main reason. But then I'm looking at being an old fart, so you're the closest I'm gonna get. Now, Andrea, the listeners know I pick on this, but every year pharmacies that deal with certain wholesalers, they're forced to go to these, three day conventions.

And they force you to go because they give you discounts off of your purchases for the rest of the year. And, I am not up there doing it myself, but they have got some horrendous speakers from these wholesalers. So these are the people that might be the VP of retail sales or something like this.

And I don't blame the people so much. I blame the company that says, we're gonna get you up on stage and you're gonna pretend like you're Steve Jobs and you're gonna go up there and it's just, awful. And it, again, I'm not saying I would do any better, but it seems like these corporations need to either give more training or just admit that these people aren't always the best and bring in someone like you or hire someone like you full-time who's like the communications guy or something because it's really bad.

And so, I had to get that off my chest when we started talking about keynote stuff.

Andrea Iorio: Oh my, that's so true. The truth is that, the first thing that I've learned from the keynote speaking market and as a keynote speaker myself, is that having knowledge does not mean you're gonna be a good speaker. And oftentimes, companies that put on their VPs and C levels on stage think that, and that's a very big mistake because, well, because these, it's true, these C levels do have a lot of experience and knowledge, but this does not necessarily translate into a good keynote speech.

And so because of the fact companies think that they don't train them and therefore they put them on stage and expect good results, and people in the audience. Get extremely bored and just sit, on their, with their phone open the whole time. And, that's definitely not the idea of any keynote speaker.

And interestingly enough, to be honest, I do some of, the exact job that you described myself, being kind of like a, not a spokesperson, but kind of like an internal communicator, meaning I participate to a number of, These meetings and try to send messages that companies feel none of their C levels would be able to.

And I've done that for a number of companies, especially outside of the health sector. But I do that for example, Nvidia, the AI giant. I'm their official podcast host in Brazil. And I do this kind of like translating AI into something that is understandable, which is something that most of the c levels within the company itself cannot do.

And so you're perfectly spot on, Mike, when you say that these conferences are extremely boring, just exactly because of the fact that we tend to associate a good keynote speech. We just have a lot of dense information and that's it. Exactly not the purpose. You have to inspire people, make them think, and, wow, Mike, and you run a podcast, and you know [00:05:00] how it is because it's the exact same logic, right?

People will never pay attention if you're not engaging across one full hour, right? And so imagine being on stage and you're stuck there. You cannot even just go for a run as you do with podcasts, right?

Mike Koelzer, Host: I'm sure Andrea, it's across the board. I see it mainly in pharmacies. But then here's the problem, I think, is they try to get these people up there and they wanna put the hoodie on them, like, Zuckerberg, and they want 'em to wear the tennis shoes and relate to the crowd.

But then the problem is, besides that looking manufactured, the problem is with cancel culture now, You've gotta be careful if you are up on stage and if they let you go off the script at all, you might say something derogatory to a certain group without even knowing it or say a word that is, not PC enough these days.

refer to someone in an older term, this and that. And so I think that it's challenging to mix all those together.

Andrea Iorio: It is very challenging, Mike, and the truth is that whenever we look at that, it is not only sensitive topics to wider audiences. It might even be within that specific company mentioning a competitor or mentioning something very specific up to the point that any keynote speaker that is well trained and Goes through a professional process.

Usually you have very in depth briefings wherever you go through the do's and don'ts. And, they might tell you, don't touch up on this topic because it's very sensitive. And again, these c levels are so busy that they don't even put too much thinking in it. And so I think that's a really important topic.

At the same point, nobody is born a keynote speaker. When we look at evolution, human beings evolved in tribes of up to 100 people. So we're not inborn, with the ability to speak in front of hundreds or thousands of people. We can develop this skill. And so it really is a skill as well.

And I think it is more and more important because of the fact that C levels and executives have to engage with a different kind of audience, which is Gen Z'ers and these new kinds of people . They expect a new type of communication as well, shorter, more concise, more digital. And we're already touching upon digitalization.

But, a sea level nowadays,can even be good, let's say, at giving a 40 minute speech on stage. But if also he or she's not good at doing a one minute TikTok, they might not be appealing to, or in the company they represent, might not be appealing to Gen Zers that are recently graduating and that represent a talent pool out there.

So there's, many facets to it and I think it all revolves around these new types of communication,

Mike Koelzer, Host: the keynote now is basically just the, main course, unlike in the old days where you just showed up for that, you've got, or your team, you've got to, plant the seed a little bit a couple weeks before they need a picture of you, talking to so-and-so.

And then an hour before you go on stage or has to be a TikTok of you doing this or that, then you have to follow up with some shoutouts on Twitter and things like that. And so, it's not a one and done kind of thing. Every keynote's, like a whole story wrapped around you.

Andrea Iorio: Yeah, to the point 

Gary v, the famous sort of, we can call him like, social media entrepreneur. He says like, put out like, I don't know, like around 50 pieces of content that day, or at least that's what he does. 

And I'm not saying that we're all able to do that. He has a big team behind him.

But the point here is, we have to construct a communication journey. Let's think about a podcast episode as well, Mike, like, podcast has there's like some interval in between one episode and the other. And there's many ways we can engage our audience in between and make them be eager for the new episode and, be an expectation, maybe, get some bits of it.

And so I think that's extremely important and,as a podcast host, you definitely know how to do that, but there's also a lot of podcasts. Out there, they're just sitting down for like one hour, two hours, three hours now. And even to the point that long format is now reducing, you don't see so many of those like three hour long podcasts, being more violent, Joe Rogan and the big ones are shortening, their interviews cuz people are not paying attention to the end anymore.

Mike Koelzer, Host: know what, Andrea, I didn't even think about that because when I set My show length. I always think of it as like, you and I are in a car together and we're 

just driving, to the beach or something an hour away, just chit-chatting. And it seems like after an hour, it would be a time that you'd stop or you'd get there.

Just an hour. Seems about right. For some people it's 20 minutes and some people it's five minutes. But with Rogan, what gave me permission to do an hour was his three or four hours. And then you'd see 

Tim Ferris and you'd see,who's my guy,who's the Russian, 

Andrea Iorio: Lex Friedman. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: yeah, Lex, you know, [00:10:00] and they're going a long time but

 I haven't delved into their stuff recently.

I'll listen to it like on my walk in the morning, and that's 45 minutes or so. And so I'm never caring how long there is, but I didn't know that they're starting to shorten those.

Andrea Iorio: Yes. And you know what, Mike, you made me think, I think that at the beginning they were recording for that long because based on, let's say a three hours conversation, you could extract, maybe you had more chances 

and you still have to extract, let's say a one minute viral conversation. And that's the strength of like YouTube shorts and things like this.

up to the point that, yeah, maybe there's also. The good side of it, let's say you increase the chances of extracting something very meaningful. So I don't know, Mike, you make me rethink on that side, but 

definitely. Yeah. The full conversation is hard to follow.

Mike Koelzer, Host: So if you look at like Rogan's 

timing, can you tell that some of them are getting shorter now?

Andrea Iorio: Yeah, and I've also seen articles also describing the average length, yes, that's one side of it. There's another side of it, which is not really related to their episodes themselves, which is related to the number of new podcasts being launched. And that has reduced dramatically. Right? During the pandemics, everybody rushed to launch their own podcast.

I launched mine of course in Portuguese because Brazil is still my biggest market. But I launched it during the pandemics because I had a lot of time available after the pandemics. Two things happened. First of all, producers had less time available, or at least, they had to get back traveling and stuff, but at the same time, listeners started having less time available, or at least, reduced the time that you could listen to something without interruption.

And so I think there's a direct correlation there. And, it might be interesting to see through Spotify and all the platforms, they share some interesting analytics. I would be intrigued to see, you can check yours, Mike. I will check mine. And we can definitely see whether people are paying.

I wouldn't say less attention, but their time span, like their attention span has been reduced, I would guess yes, but I'm not sure. I will check into the numbers. That's definitely an interesting conversation for other producers out there. 

but even if people have a chance to share with us here through social media, after they listen to this, I would be eager to know what, what's their, consuming pattern.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Well, TikTok now, let's say the average TikTok is, I don't know, 30 seconds or something like that. the old days, they had the credits run for five minutes on the show, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or something, they'd list everybody and finally the movie would start five minutes in.

And then with advertising and stuff, well, you gotta catch someone's attention in the first 10 seconds. Now it's like if you don't catch their attention in 0.3 seconds, instead of 0.5 seconds, you've lost them. Now I might be exaggerating a little bit, but boy, that time span is like down to nothing now.

Andrea Iorio: Yeah. And you know what's also interesting, Mike, that. I had this kind of preset belief that,on TikTok it would be very hard to share, for example, business content, right? So I would, you know, associate it with the, you know, quick dances and kind of like funny videos. 

And I don't know about you Mike, but I've started diving deeper into TikTok.

And what's interesting is that there is like very interesting content and that idea that you cannot really share deep or meaningful content into very short,timeframes. At least to me, I've lost that preconceived notion. So, there's a lot of like traveling tips or like whenever I wanna look for a new restaurant in a new city that I'm visiting, cuz TikTok, interestingly enough, is very easy to search within TikTok.

and so I've started producing some, like, Shorter bits when it comes. Not really like digital transformation, but maybe to leadership, future of work. Also keynote speaking tips. And, the engagement is much higher than Instagram and any other platform. I also use LinkedIn a lot, but that's also because TikTok wants to share your content with a lot of people so that you feel that dopamine rush.

But, it's an interesting platform and especially when it comes to privacy issues. It's a very delicate one to share very, like deep and sensitive contact, or at least to rely too much upon it. But, I've seen more and more very good business content on there.

Mike Koelzer, Host: better cottage.

I bought a TV and I was looking for a way to put the wall mount on the back and I had to go into some brick and so on.

Andrea Iorio: Right.

Mike Koelzer, Host: I could have gone to YouTube. But the problem with YouTube is you're gonna get a 20 minute show. And I do like how on YouTube now you can see where the other viewers are in the graph and see where other viewers have come in.

But the thing about TikTok, you can put in there, TV mount and you get hundreds [00:15:00] of videos and you know, they're gonna be 30 seconds. So you know, they're gonna be sharpened to the point. And then TikTok has some algorithm where they're not showing you repeats. On YouTube, you might come across the same video and you put anything in there. I looked up beavers the week before because I thought I saw Beaver out in the yard.

It's amazing the depth of TikTok. It's really deep.

Andrea Iorio: It definitely is. And to be honest, even for pharmacy owners, like there's so many things you can do. some of the things that I've seen, and Brazil is a country that uses a lot of social media, and TikTok is very big here, but I've seen that in the US as well. So what I notice is that, for example, product reviews are very easily done on TikTok.

 Let's say a new launch of a brand that you work with on, a brand that is doing a launch and they're, giving you this incentive, either commercial or not to talk about that product, 

right? Either you're an end consumer, but let's talk about, pharmacy owners now, If you do very interesting, or maybe out of the box reviews on TikTok, you will drive so much business to your pharmacy,

Mike Koelzer, Host: talking about generational stuff, Andrea, it's like, if right now you're thinking of Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, you're almost a little bit too late on that stuff. I mean, 

you think it's like, how can I be too late? I just heard of it. It's like, well, 

try telling your eighth grader that your mom is using Facebook. Guess what they don't want to use anymore. And then tell them that your freshman in college is using Instagram. the eighth grader doesn't wanna do that. It's like every three years they want their own new world and TikTok is gonna be gone pretty soon.

And this stuff reinvents itself every three years or so, or two years.

Andrea Iorio: That's totally correct. And the interesting thing is that this not only happens in social media, but it happens across the board even. Let's think about the business of pharmacies, whether it hasn't changed, and I'm sure our audience might agree whether it hasn't changed more over the last five years than in the previous 20 years.

And I'm sure it will change more over the next two, three years, than it has ever changed. 

And this. Gets back to the law itself of computing because it's all related to Moore's Law that says the capacity of semiconductors doubles every two years. It's an exponential law. And so it, it brought about the element of exponentially in businesses, which was something that no other innovation or no other technological breakthrough had ever brought about.

Right. Mechanical innovations would change businesses only linearly. And whenever something changes linearly, well, it's easier to adapt. We had to reinvent ourselves like maybe couple of times across whole careers or decades 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Exactly. 

Andrea Iorio: now. Six months ago, chat, g p t launched and our whole notion of content creation has changed.

And so whenever we look at that, I think this expon reality, as you said, Things are going to change faster and faster. And, as the ologist Gert Leonard used to say, the problem is that humans evolve linearly. And so there's a conflict there. There's a conflict in that. How can we adapt so quickly?

And so I think that's the big challenge for any business owner nowadays is how do I keep myself updated, not only in social media, but in anything that happens there. Social selling now is a big thing, right? And how we can engage with influencers to resell our products as much as,back in the days we had as Ray Crock, the founder and first CEO of McDonald's would knock on doors of people trying to sell them like milkshake machines.

Well, now people do that on social media and again. And so what's the opportunity there for us? I think that's a very important question. Maybe an even better question is, is our pharmacy changing at the rate that the patient's changing out there, that our customer, that our distributor, that our competitor is changing?

Because if we do not change at the same rate, it means that inevitably there will be a bigger gap that someone else will come in and get. And it does not mean it's someone in our region. Someone in our area could be like, well, Amazon tried to launch a pharmacy not so successfully, but could be anyone else in the future platforms, e-commerce or social selling, any influencer.

And so, There's a lot of changes happening there, Mike. I

think, we 

I have to always think about it. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: AI seemed to take people by surprise. We always thought that the world was gonna change from blue collar up. 

people talked about robots and the pharmacy and burger flippers at McDonald's and things like that.

 But it seemed to take people by surprise and maybe part of it was the realization that it was changing the world from the top down, from lawyers and PhDs and I think [00:20:00] everybody, froze in their tracks. They didn't know what to do. 

Andrea Iorio: Wow. That's perfect, Mike. I think nobody saw that coming, and interestingly enough, I think even Sam Altman, the CEO of, OpenAI, 

mentioned that in some of his interviews is that they. Might also have underestimated the breakthrough technology that they were, putting them up to the point that some now are advocating for regulation.

So that makes us think, nobody was expecting this. I mean, I think the main factor there is, like. AI algorithms were sophisticated also, one month before Open AI launched chat, G p T. The thing though is that they created such an easy to use interface that people flocked to using it. And so whenever we look at the adoption of any new technology, the biggest obstacle is the friction, in onboarding this new technology.

Right? Let's make an analogy with NFTs, for example, or like with crypto or stuff. Let's use NFTs as an example, right? 

NFTs, to be honest, also can have enormous applications, let's say within pharma. NFTs can protect your health data because you can transform data into NFTs. And so you're the owner of your data.

And so there's a plethora of applications. What's the problem? Minting an N F T or just sharing an N F T through a wallet. Or even setting up a wallet via meta mask, which are all of these necessary steps for you 

to own an nft. It's not easy. 

It is not at all. And so that was the big problem with that.

It limited them. number of people who were willing to actually do and take all the steps now with Chad, g b d, like you can access AI algorithm, free first of all. So one, one big friction step is usually the price. They granted it for free. Also usability. It's just a simple interface. And so getting back to the blue collar, to white collar part is that although it came as you said from the white collar, I don't even think that white collar people were seeing that coming.

not even the developers. And the 

an interesting part, that I also touch upon in my meta leadership book, is that now white collar workers are under pressure and feel threatened because AI sometimes is better than them at doing cognitive work. Cuz if we think we're better leaders or C levels or pharmacy owners, just because we have more experience, we're smarter, we work harder, we have more knowledge, well, bad news.

Is that AI is much better than us at all of that? Right? And so the problem is, what's our role now? Like, how we should look at skill sets, development and what's ours, what's AI's? And so I, it's a very deep, almost philosophical question, but I think some of the business owners out there are going through all of this.

Mike Koelzer, Host: read a pretty good example of why AI has taken off so well and they said, like, for human flight for years they were trying to mimic a bird. I'm talking maybe the late 18 hundreds or something like that.

How can we get better wings? How can we get better feathers? How can we flap at our right rate and how can we do all this stuff? And somebody came and said, you don't need to fly like a bird. You need to fly like an airplane. And it's fixed wing and all something that people haven't seen before.

So now you take AI and all these years people were thinking AI might come up from the human neural network, this or that. And they say, well, here it is. Computer learning, and it's not all that difficult, and guess what? Your brain fits inside of your head, but now this brain is as big as New York City now. Now compete with that.

Andrea Iorio: That's the point. Mike, as you said, I mean people, they do not understand that, the ability of processing data, which is the basis of any decision, smart decision especially, is un uncomparable. Now, whenever we compare the human brain with that of a machine, Although it might seem a very radical question or maybe, like, maybe a very hard one to think about, well then does it mean that.

Humans should be the ones making rational decisions, or they should compliment technology's rational decisions with their guts, with their feelings, with their emotions, and so on. So, I'm not advocating, of course, for us living like robots and just performing tasks that we're just sad about. Okay? It's like this.

Take it as it is. On the contrary, I'm saying, let's use our critical thinking. Let's use things that technology cannot do, which is basically going off the script, right? AI's doing nothing more than just replicating patterns that they've been trained with, [00:25:00] right? Up to the point that Elon Musk already said that AI is just the reflection of the limbic system of the people who created it, right?

So in a way, there's the human hand on it. , because if you train chat G B T,as it is over billions of parameters. Though they come from the internet and the internet has been sort of like the content on the internet has been created by humans. 

It is sort of a reflection of the way that humans think, and that's why it actually works so well.

But this means that, well, is the rational side of it all still going to be, human prerogative or shall we outsource it to technology and focus on what's un substitute so far, again, our set of soft skills, our critical thinking, our ability to collaborate and feel empathy and so on. Right. So I think it's more of the LA latter option, which is to outsource technology.

All of those tasks, even cognitive ones that used to require a lot of time. Like the other day I was like having to draft, A simple contract. It was like a very easy contract, but still, I couldn't find any reference to it. I just asked Chad, gbp to draft time. It was like better than any lawyer and definitely much cheaper 

up to the point that I've said, okay, look at how much time and money I saved.

Well, how can I better use that time and money to, let's say maybe introduce new clauses with the contractor or maybe , close a different deal and so on. So it makes you more creative, it gives you back time, which I think is also our biggest resource, as human beings. So it's a super interesting discussion, Mike, and I think, I don't know, like how often do you use chat g pt, but wow it can be so helpful in our day-today, and I think for pharmacy owners as well.

Mike Koelzer, Host: I got some company trying to collect from me. I don't own the money, but they say I do, but they were hounding me and my attorney wasn't available, so I just wrote up a letter on chat, G p t basically, bug off for a few days and if you need to contact someone, contact my attorney.

So I copied it to a member of my team after I sent it. And he's like, that was really good. And I'm like, well, yeah, but I didn't write it. Chat G p t did. And he said, I know it was still pretty good though, that you. Told chat g p t what you wanted and where to go. And I'm like, well, thank you.

So now the only accolades I get is if I push the right button, on my keyboard or something like that. But I'll take what I can get.

Andrea Iorio: At times, Mike, this makes a thing whether we are that smart or at least as smart as we thought we were, or we were. But to be honest, I think that's part of the game. I think, over history, many technologies substituted what humans thought they would do best. there's this great, American legend that I don't know if you know about, do you know the legend of John Henry?

 John Henry's story was that he was considered in the 1800s, like back in the golden age of railway construction. I think in the Midwest, he was considered the strongest man alive, right? And so John Henry, I think there's some movies, or at least one movie about John Henry.

So anyways, he was considered the strongest man alive. And one day, a well-dressed, Came to the construction site, and he showed the master, the chief there, a new technology, a revolutionary technology. It was like a drill, a new drill, like a steam powered drill right drilling machine.

And John Henry saw that and he said, well, you're praising this technology. You're saying it's better than humans, it's more efficient, and so on. Well, so I'll challenge you and the technology to see tomorrow, for 24 hours, who is going to drill the farthest, right? Who is going to drill more? And then the dispute began.

And to be honest, the drilling machine was faster. And so it was like by far winning the dispute, but almost reaching the end. Well, the drilling machine broke down and John Henry, one, using his chisel, one rock after the other manually, won the dispute. Yeah. 

But according to the legend, when he raised his hands, claiming victory, he was so tired that he died, right?

He died. He was so tired. And the truth is that this legend made me think the first time that I, I've heard about it, is, like, first of all about this relationship that human beings have with technology that is like, no, I'm better than you. But it made me think about something.

What would've happened if John Henry would've survived the dispute? Well, well, I started thinking after a couple of months that salesmen would've come back with a version of 2.0 of the training machine, much more efficient and so on. And John Henry would've refused again to be substituted and would've [00:30:00] challenged the machine and so on.

But it might have even won the second time. But what about the fourth, the fifth, the 10th time? There's no way John Henry could have won. And the truth is that this is our relationship with technology. We oftentimes try to fight it off and claim to be uns substitutable, but the problem is that this is never going to work.

And so it is much better to embrace it and to use it to our favor rather than being the John Henry of the situation and just fighting it off, trying to claim we're un-substitutable. And, I don't know. It really reminded me about the situation we live in now with AI and with Chad G P T and so on.

There's, some people who, like John Henry, tried to say, well, this is dangerous. This is not for me. I'm not using it, but well, There's also the other side of it. There's people who claim it is good for education. Well, everybody says it is very bad for education. Sal Khan, the founder of the Khan Academy, one of the biggest education experts in the world, says it is going to be good.

Why? Because every student will have a private tutor and every professor will have an assistant, which is something that they cannot afford now. So there, there's a lot of reflections that can arise from this whole situation. 

Mike? I heard someone say that, you know, AI is like the final product that humans had to build. cuz start from the beginning of, harnessing fire and all through the ages, those have all been helpful, but, now it's like we've built something that can out build us now.

Mike Koelzer, Host: So it's gonna be fascinating. It really is.

Andrea Iorio: it is. and again, what I think at least for that, that's the implication for some, business owners and pharmacy owners that are listening to us here, again, try to embrace it as an opportunity. And, some of the things that I think should change in our day-to-day jobs and people management and so on are, first of all, Again, let's try to outsource a lot of our decisions to AI, but definitely think critically about the output that AI brings us.

and this is a skill that I like to call data sense making, right? It's not about just being good at numbers. I'm not saying that let's just have AI perform and technology perform smart decisions that bring about interesting insights. 

I'll explain better. Let me make an example. When I was managing Tinder, the dating app, right?

So, tin Tinder would generate a lot of data, right? There's the number of matches and swipes per day, number of downloads and so on. And so as I started managing the app, I was looking at all of these numbers, but then I rapidly understood that they were not really helping me make better decisions.

Let's say if I know the number of downloads today, like it's up 10% respect to yesterday, well, Usually we think it's good, but I don't know, maybe the market's growing faster, and so I started to understand that in businesses, we often look at data and use data to manage our businesses the same way as if we were driving a car and instead of looking through the glass in front of us, we were looking through the rear mirror, right?

We're comparing data from the past. And so I started to try to understand which KPIs could be more predictive of user satisfaction and how good the business was. And I started to understand, and Mike, you mentioned you hadn't had the opportunity to use Tinder. Now that you are speaking to me, you might have an excuse at least for a day.

You can say, look, I was talking with entre. that's usually the excuse, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Check out his work.

Andrea Iorio: right. You can say for professional purposes, but that's just for a day. 

but anyways, so what happened is that, I started understanding that there was a kpi, a metric that was very predictive of user satisfaction, which was the rate of matches they would have for each swipe they would give.

So let me explain Tinder 1 0 1 for who does know too much about it. You have to swipe. I right means you like a person or swipe left, you don't like that person. And if that person swipes right on your back, it's a match and you can start chatting with that person, right? So when I notice that people, with a high rate of matches per swipe, right?

Let's say that you swipe right on 10 people and you get five matches. Well, half of the people liked you back and you're like, I'm good looking. I feel great. I'm meeting a lot of people, and I'm having a lot of conversations. So. I as a manager was understanding that if cities or regions or demographics would have a high rate of that, they had a bigger chance of staying within the app and being satisfied.

If you have a low rate of matches per swipe, let's say you swipe 20 times and you have one match, you feel bad about yourself, you feel like, people do not like you, you don't talk to people. And so I started understanding that it's [00:35:00] the manager's duty to set the right KPIs. And it's not too much like making the calculations, but if I was always looking at the same report with the same KPIs, it's like I'm trying to use a fighter jet and to do something very interesting, like, to improve the way that I drive it.

But if I look at the same numbers in the same cockpit as before, I have a very limited range of new things I can do. 

So if we change the cockpit and try to, predict the way the engine can work and thaw well, maybe, and that's the same thing with 

businesses and, I think AI can be a tremendous ally with that.

There's other things that AI can help business owners do, and can help manage people. like outsourcing some of the more transactional,day-to-day, information sharing, part of it, taking notes in meetings and stuff. So it saves a lot of time. but yeah, there's the plethora.

I do use chat goT a lot. I also use other AI tools. there's also an image generation tool that is mid journey that is simply amazing, right? I've seen the image of like, let's say someone generated the image of like a, a campaign for a lipstick, and it was much better than any agency would do.

Mike Koelzer, Host: What's the name of that? discord.

Andrea Iorio: Yeah. Yeah. it's all through discord 

Mike Koelzer, Host: and, there's really no reason, I guess they were using Discord to improve the product and it just kept being through Discord. It's kind of clunky though, to realize you have to go to Discord and then do it and so on.

Andrea Iorio: Besides being on Discord, which already is not very intuitive, there's something else to it, because you type in the request for the image and there's like thousands of other people typing in the request. So your image always gets put up, cuz it's like a timeline, so it always gets put up.

And so you have to scroll up a lot. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: With the whole AI thing, it's like alright, I can see some businesses that are maybe not too happy, just like the cliche, the buggy whip and things like that.

Andrea Iorio: Yeah. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: alright, if tomorrow. the life expectancy of all Americans rose to a hundred years. And if the infant mortality went down to this and if there was no more lung cancer, AI found a way to get people to stop smoking. And if we could take afternoon trips, we could hop in the space and you and I could be talking face to face in the same coffee shop or something.

It's like, alright, well now it's done something. 

My point is that we sometimes get stuck in the mundane 

but let the calculator of AI come in and do it stuff for us, and let's set some high goals.

Andrea Iorio: Yeah, you're perfectly right. And I think it goes back also to something that, it's deeper into human beings, which is our sense of purpose as well. I think, brings about this philosophical dilemma up to the point that, interestingly enough, I've heard Yuval Harari, the author of Sapiens and Homos and a number of other books saying that, 

basically.

More and more philosophy will be important in the age of AI because AI will bring about a lot of new ethical questions. Let's say for example, you're an engineer and you have to design the software of a self-driving car. You have a big ethical dilemma, which is how do you program it to respond whenever your car is driving and there's two kids on the road playing soccer and there's no time for you to pull the brake, right?

Do you save the driver who is alone and an adult, or unfortunately hit the kids? So that's just an example. But, overall AI is putting a lot of pressure on our sense of purpose and, At the same time, it can make us much more creative, can give us time back, to go towards or more fulfilling endeavors.

And, I think you, you touched upon something really interesting, which is longevity. also something very strongly related to it because, if we think about the jobs that are projected to be growing more and more, especially because they're also un-substitutable by technology so far, is caring of elderly people.

Nursing, like for example, a doctor, can be much more easily substitutable than a nurse, right? And so there's a lot to it. And when you mentioned longevity as well, it reminded me of,I don't know whether you follow the story of Brian Johnson. Brian Johnson, he was the founder of Braintree, which was a company that acquired Venmo, the cash splitting up.

and Brian Johnson, he's a multi-millionaire, and he launched a project where he slowing down, he's aging and he's all over social media 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Oh, I saw the guy. 

 He says he's so young, but it almost looks like he has purple hair. Right? 

He's doing all this stuff. 

Andrea Iorio: That's the point I was making, Mike, which is, yeah, we can aim for longevity, but to be honest, like, is that really worth it all? Because to be honest, I don't think he takes like 60 pills. That's his breakfast. He is eating very weird [00:40:00] stuff when I watch him on video. And so I think, well, why don't we let the course of life and let's just not, push it too much to the limit 

Mike Koelzer, Host: He doesn't look good. He looks like the guy. I don't follow the Marvel stuff that my kids do, but he looks like, I want to say it's like Loki or something, 

his hair back. He just looks terrible and he says he's getting younger.

Andrea Iorio: That's the point. And so, and I'm laughing with a sort of cringing in between, which is why do people now feel like technology is okay? I understand outsourcing to technology, a lot of it, but let's not also force something that I think goes too much beyond, I don't think,this is really healthy or helpful.

Peter Thiel, also one of the big VC investors in Silicon Valley, is also investing a lot in longevity startups. But, longevity aside, what I think is that there should be an equilibrium, as in all things, right? technology also should definitely help us, but we cannot really push it to the limits, up to the point that, again, if we empower it too much, that could be really harmful and dangerous.

 A lot of people have signed thisplea to stop the development, at least for the next six months of aid and some al monies. I agree. He testified in the Senate and he said he agrees with that. So there's this other side to it.

let's not misuse, doesn't mean let's not use too much. But again, as business owners, we should identify what's in for us, starting from the pain points that we have. Also, if we do not feel the need, there's no need for us to push ourselves and just roll out new technologies. We might over complexify.

something that

there's no need in there. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: You can make 

it is too complicated and sometimes it's just not the time for that. 

yeah, that letter from the AI group, was gonna maybe follow suit and tell all of my competitors to not fill prescriptions for six months until I get some stuff figured out. I don't think that letter's gonna do a lot, cuz who's gonna, who's gonna, 

wanna give that up?

I mean, they might do a lot, kind of like the arms race,and countries might say, well, we're not making nukes when they probably are, kind of thing. So 

maybe they're gonna be doing it in private, but I 

don't see people stopping that.

Andrea Iorio: that's the same with the environmental goals, to be honest. Unfortunately, countries plead to environmental goals, but then you've got, polluters like China and India, not able to stop emissions. So what's the point of like a small European country, like let's say Switzerland reducing their CO2 emissions.

So it's a conundrum there, but it will be very similar to ai. So, there's a number of factors in there, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Andrea, we talked about AI giving us more information, maybe things we haven't thought of before and I. I know one of the focuses of your book, one of the six main themes is Repper Percept.

And you think about that and you think about all of us old fart pharmacists that are going down the same path. And we say, well, of course I'm doing it that way. My customers need it that way. And it's like, well,

Andrea Iorio: 

Mike Koelzer, Host: the ones you've tallied, but the ones you haven't tallied are no longer your customers, so you can't speak to them.

are we stuck in our ways and are there ways that, oh, just AI and just looking at, the world can maybe see different directions.

Andrea Iorio: Wow, definitely Mike. And the truth is that it gets back to that topic exponentially, right? If the rate of changes of technologies, of customer behaviors, of market, competitive forces and so on is changing faster and faster, 

That means that as leaders and pharmacy owners, we should also question our beliefs and past successes, more and more often, right to the point that I'm sure that many of our listeners have seen some of them.

Past beliefs being broken down during the pandemics, for example? Oh no, my customers really want to buy in physical stores and they would not purchase like low priced items online cuz it doesn't really make sense. Also, that people do not want to, let's say, I dunno, subscription models in pharmacies will not work, right?

We've seen that they have started working. There's this ro it was called Roman, but 

Roro startup that is now a unicorn and they just sell it,D two C by subscription gets through your home. So we've seen more and more of these beliefs and the problem is that the more successes we've had in the past, the harder it is to give up.

on those beliefs. And so there's this great book, by Adam Grant, the Warton professor, and a great keynote speaker, it's called Think Again. And he says that oddly enough, the better we are at making decisions, the worse we are at rethinking those decisions because of our ego and our combination of past successes and these beliefs, they actually work.

But, will they work in a world that is changing? And so my provocation here is to, for our listeners to think always,[00:45:00] Are the set of beliefs, knowledge, experiences that I've had in the pharmacy sector, still relevant in a world where the customer is changing their expectations every day.

Because if we think about our customer,at the same time that they purchase products at the pharmacy, they also use GrubHub,and delivery, Uber Eats and so on for instant gratification. They have hyper-personalization through their favorite e-commerce. They have low friction experiences through, let's say, super apps or immersive experiences in like retail stores.

They start shaping their expectations about pharmacies,based on those best experiences and not based on what we've always done or based on what another pharmacy does. And so I think that's the point we always have to, Update our beliefs, our knowledge, our expectations based on what's happening out there and not based on what has already happened inside of our business.

And that's extremely challenging. It ties a little bit in with the conversation we've had about data, but it ties in with this topic. As you mentioned in the book I called Repper, percept, our ability not just to make good decisions and stick to them, but it's about rethinking our decisions and, updating our vision of the world and of business and of the customer in 

face of new evidence 

Mike Koelzer, Host: we've had delivery service at our pharmacy for years and many 

pharmacies do. But a few months ago, I'm looking at software online. I'm like, we can do this better. 

And then I came across this program and I gotta give myself some credit. I didn't make the damn thing, but I at least looked for it, 

but it mimics Amazon basically. So it 

tells the people that we're gonna be there during this time 

 It takes a picture of it and sends that to them. And we left it here kind of thing, the whole Amazon thing. But we ask. Small business owners, we can get these weird ideas like, well , people don't want that.

They just wanna call on the phone 

and talk to us and we'll say, sure. See you later, Mrs. Smith. We'll be around this afternoon. It's like, alright. You can keep thinking that Amazon has taken over the world and all these different things, so it's like you gotta be open to that stuff.

Andrea Iorio: Definitely. And you know what's the hardest part of it all is that oftentimes, Mike, whenever we ask our customer, they also reinforce that belief because they don't know what they need.

There's this great story by Steve Jobs. a year before launching the iPhone in 2006, he was doing focus groups and he would ask people, which kind of smartphone they would dream of, right?

What was their dream smartphone? And everyone would ask for, basically, a bigger smartphone with a bigger screen and a bigger keyboard. A plastic keyboard. Nobody ever asked for a touchscreen phone because they were asking for just a bigger blackberry. Right. And so the innovator's duty is not just to respond to what our customer asks for, but to anticipate what they need without them even being able to ask for that.

I think before the pandemics, we would ask any of us, like parents or grandparents, we would ask them, would you ever consider buying something online from a pharmacy? And they would tell you, no, I love going to the pharmacy. Then they started buying that online because they were forced to during the pandemics and they loved that.

And now sometimes they go to the store, but sometimes they purchase online. And so, It was also based on our customers experimenting these things and not only asking them what they think about some innovation, because sometimes they will tell they don't want to, but when they use it, they love it.

Mike Koelzer, Host: About five years ago, I hired in, basically another management level at our pharmacy, and it's very hard to manage that correctly when it's your funds that are going to be funding the ideas, because out of, let's say five things, It is true that the old business owner says, ah, we tried that before.

We're not doing that. three outta the five times, he's probably right.

Andrea Iorio: Yeah. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Two outta the times he might not be right. The problem is you don't know which ones are which, and you can't really afford to do all five, and so it's a tough thing to manage.

Andrea Iorio: Yes. And especially because some of these initiatives in the short run, they will not necessarily provide any clear return by the country. It might, like, fail first of all. If it doesn't fail, it does not necessarily bring in revenues in the short run, so it's hard to balance. It was, I think, called by Professor Clayton Christensen from Harvard, the innovator's dilemma, which is, okay, I want to reinvent my business and I know that maybe I should do this, and that.

But when it's time to execute,[00:50:00] these stay ideas and they do not translate into execution. Why? Because, doing all of this can be inefficient. 

And there's also the ego part, Adam Grant in his book. think again, always says that like ego is the worst enemy of leadership because,especially when we lead or we own businesses, there's like all of this ego debate,

From our colleagues, from our teams and so on. And, the most inflated ego, the hard is to rethink and to admit that sometimes we might be wrong. So there's a whole lot of things involved there, but definitely it's an interesting psychology of business management.

Mike Koelzer, Host: I think one of the dangers of change is, You look at the leaders like Amazon and TikTok and Instagram and all these things that have floated to the top. And when we were younger, when I was younger, you'd say, the Internet's such a great thing because anybody can do this and you can make your own this or that.

The problem with that is how many Amazons are there in market share and how many Genders are there. There's some, but there's a crap load. More failures that happen. you can look at the pile of apps that you've never heard on before for task management and dating and all that kind of

stuff. 

Andrea Iorio: Definitely no , it's really not easy. There's another phenomenon, which is path dependence, which explains how we make decisions about the future based on our past successes. There's like an information bottleneck, which is, we usually resort to a limited set of data available because it's easier to find whenever we make decisions, right?

We always look at what we feel most comfortable with and data sets or like, the range of information that we have available to make informed decisions. We neglect all the other information. So there's a group thing, which is, like we sit down and confront ideas with the like-minded people, 

which is nice, but at the same time, it has its own risks, which is, does not bring that critical thinking.

So it's a mix of features, but I think that also ties a little bit into diversity, and inclusion. I definitely think it is also very important beyond all things, also to prepare our businesses to think differently. And so I think confrontation of ideas with people, from people with different backgrounds and, with different upbringings, different education is extremely important.

And sometimes having people who resort into the examples that I gave before about the beginner's mindset, having people who do not necessarily have the same experience as us, can be even beneficial. rather than detrimental, compared with just surrounding ourselves with people who have a lot of the same experience and are very much like-minded with us.

And so, that's even why I think chat, G B T and AI can be a good tool because they tend to think,at least differently and you can provoke them. And there is always the, think as if you were, prompt

That works amazingly. You can make him or think as a marketer, as a finance person and so on.

So there's some tools that definitely can help us along the way.

Mike Koelzer, Host: and I think the value, Andrea, of let's say, If they bring you in as a keynote speaker or let's say as a consulting of some sort, is there's so many politics that go on in business 

That, and even a small business, the nepotism of someone's niece, the bus doesn't wanna do that because their sister might get upset.

 all this stuff. There's so much of that drama from small to big that it's hard to be open to ideas in your company because there's the c e o, pride. But there's also a good idea that sometimes comes with drama. Like 

if I open myself up to Sally and I tell her that was a good idea.

I might not wanna use the idea, but then she's gonna come bitching to me three months later about how I never listen to her and I don't do what she says and all that stuff. So that's where I think some of that, like you say, the 

chat, g p t is pretending you're somebody or bringing in consultants is good because that, expectations not there.

Andrea Iorio: Yeah, you said it right? I mean, to be honest, whenever we ask for an opinion and we do not necessarily follow, that creates a bad, as you say, precedent. And so in a sense that people start not trusting that leader anymore. Too

much so, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: And the leader stopped asking.

Andrea Iorio: Exactly, because then it goes both ways. And so [00:55:00] you just don't get the input. And so that's, well, I think Simon Sonic calls it the circle of trust, right? The circle of trust breaks down, which is this kind of psychological safety space where you have reciprocation, the reciprocation mechanism built in, and where you have people collaborate based on the trust that you create among, it's exactly the opposite.

So I think that, well, that's really important by the way, for us to establish, as business owners and pharmacy owners, this kind of trusting environment where people feel that they can put forward suggestions, bring about ideas, ask hard questions, and they're being heard. Because otherwise, we will scare off people, even by judging people based on their mistakes and not asking them what they've learned from it, or whether they learned, to avoid repeating that mistake in the future.

So, if we create this environment, we'll have people who are much more engaged, in the innovation process and business reinvention process, than if we were to scare them off and just, giving orders as leaders and just trust me and so on. Micromanagement is inversely related to, the level of trust and engagement with 

people.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Andrea, you mentioned when we first started speaking about how speaking to a group over a hundred doesn't go back to our evolutionary roots of tribes and things like that.

Andrea Iorio: Yeah.

Mike Koelzer, Host: What other. Instincts. Do we humans have that a leader maybe has to push through that natural tendency to, to lead or be successful?

 Which human traits kind of pull us back down?

Andrea Iorio: Well, I would say definitely there is the kind of like, you might call it the survival instinct mode, which is definitely something that makes us feel okay. We live in a world of finite resources and within a business of finite resources is just our wage. Sometimes it's a bonus, it's a promotion, and as human beings sometimes, although as a species overall, we're pretty collaborative, at least much more collaborative than just any other animal species.

Let's say you put 100. People within a room and you put 100 monkeys in a room, well 100 monkeys will bring chaos and fight off over resources. And you put 100 people. Well, if there's good leaders in there, you might come out with a new religion or with a business So we are pretty collaborative.

But whenever we live in an environment of scarce resources and oftentimes companies, are that 

We should definitely try as leaders to fight off that individualism and that kind of competitive behavior that exists that is very much related also. And at least it trickles down in behavior such as lack of collaboration such as, talking behind the back, such as trying to undermine others' career, which oftentimes,happens.

That leads to very big business problems. Cuz when there's lack of collaboration, there will be a lack of, Innovation, I would say eventually. And so lack of business results, if there's no collaboration, people will make repeated mistakes. There will be no communication across areas. There will be a lot of work, repeated people, and decisions will be centralized.

And so people will have to wait a lot for people, for their superiors to make their decisions. So there are a lot of problems. So I think one of the human instincts is that, fighting for survival has to be also fought off by very good leaders. And it's not easy to push for collaboration. One of the solutions might be to make these resources more available. Oftentimes it's not possible. So what's the best way? It is definitely as leaders to create this feeling that if people collaborate, these resources will grow faster than if people do not collaborate.

So I think that's very much about setting a vision of companies, tying in collaboration with better business results and with better business results, the bigger the pie. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Andrea, a pharmacist is listening to this and they may be a store owner or middle management or something like that.

What information would you share with somebody in that position?

Andrea Iorio: Well, what I think is that, it is much more about asking the right questions rather than just, thinking that our job is to just be full of answers and just of knowledge. What I mean by that is that let's be open to change and understand that whoever dictates what's next within our pharmacy and our business is the end customer.

And so if we do not pay attention through the tools, available data, observation of behaviors,and putting ourselves out there, we will not be able to react to this. So I think whenever we look at these very short, time spent for communicating anything, it is [01:00:00] definitely off.

Looking at what the customer's doing and basically reacting based on that. So I think it's very much related to this. and that's my, my, my advice. Let's not be fixated upon our past successes, but definitely let's be open to this change, which is going to be faster and faster, but there's no other way than to adapt.

That's the only way of thriving and growing. Otherwise there's no space for our businesses anymore. Because one day someone will come in and fill that gap taken away from us, that market share taken away from us, that customer. And so 

I think as a message, I think that's a message that I would like to leave to the pharmacist and business owners and middle managers.

it's definitely that one, reinvent yourself for, unfortunately, you will be a spectator and an observer of the changes that will happen within your business.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Tell us the name of your book again, Andrea.

Andrea Iorio: Yeah, so my book is available on Amazon in all libraries in the US It is called Meta Leadership, the New Leader Skill Set, in the word of AI and Web three. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Good stuff, Andrea. Nice talking to you. Sometimes I don't like getting an author or a speaker on because they sort of, oh, it's like getting, uh, Rodney Dangerfield on the Tonight Show. 

 they just come out, they're not conversing, they're just doing their show, but they're sitting down instead of standing up.

 and you were quite the opposite of that. That 

was a fascinating conversation , and thank you very much. And I encourage pharmacists to get a hold of your book and contemplate these things for the good of their businesses.

Andrea Iorio: Thank you so much. I definitely know what you're talking about. people coming and it's a good way for them to feed their ego. That's definitely not the case. I just had a great conversation, Mike, and I really appreciate the time that you gave me here on the podcast.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Thanks Andrea. I look forward to keeping in touch.

Andrea Iorio: Same here. Thank you, Mike.