April 16, 2020

Juggling Three Pharmacies | Pharmacist and Entrepreneur Ghada Abdallah

Juggling Three Pharmacies | Pharmacist and Entrepreneur Ghada Abdallah
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Pharmacist Ghada Abdallah, founded, operated, and sold three pharmacies. This is her entrepreneurial story. 

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Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically. Its accuracy may vary.

[00:00:15] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: Well, hello, Ghada. Hi. How are you, Mike? I'm doing well. 

[00:00:18] Mike Koelzer, Host: Thank you. How are 

[00:00:19] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: Are you doing? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on your show GATA for those that haven't 

[00:00:23] Mike Koelzer, Host: come across you online. Tell our listeners your name and tell us kind of why we're talking 

[00:00:30] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: today. Okay. So my name is GATA Abdalla. I'm a former pharmacy owner.

I owned three pharmacies in the greater Detroit area. I sold all my pharmacies. One of them is still operating as an in. and, um, I currently, uh, work in the arena of, uh, mental health and addiction. And that's my passion right now. My mission, 

[00:00:53] Mike Koelzer, Host: it would almost seem to me that somebody who owned three pharmacies is not only working in mental health, but you could actually be a patient in mental health from this stress and 

[00:01:02] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: anxiety.

You're a hundred percent right, Mike, and, you know, seriously, it is very stressful to own one pharmacy, let alone three, um, it's a lot of work. And what you often find is that we don't have a work life balance. And so that did happen to me. I did experience that and once I sold my pharmacy, I didn't really have any hobbies to turn back on.

Like, you know, I kind of was like, what should I do? We did some traveling, um, my family and I, and I have four kids. So it was easy to do that. Congratulations. Yes. Thank you. But then, um, yeah, definitely. I'm learning after I've sold my pharmacies to have more balance in my life. I, 

[00:01:39] Mike Koelzer, Host: myself. Over the years I have had anxiety, which then leads to depression because you wake up every day and you say, oh my gosh, I'm anxious again about this.

You know, it seems to not go away. Well, first of all, I think you don't really appreciate human beings until you realize that all of us are mentally ill, just at different degrees. You know, we're mentally ill, but we're able to cope. Secondly, it seems like humans are like a raft or a beach ball where if you get enough stress in someone enough anxiety, something's gonna go.

It's either gonna go with anxiety, depression, bipolar, and all that. It's like a lot of those. Are boiling under the surface sometimes. And they're just ready to break that seam. 

[00:02:20] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: Absolutely. I agree with you a hundred percent. And then, you know, it's 2020 right now. And I think at this point in history, it's harder to find people who are balanced in terms of having a healthy, mental, uh, health, uh, you know, like a landscape.

It's really difficult to find people who are really in tune with, um, themselves, their bodies, their mind, and all those things. And so I have been exploring that a lot more since I've, uh, sold my pharmacies and been in mental health. Field, I'm on the board of a mental health, uh, authority down here in Detroit.

Um, it's really opened my eyes to a lot of things, just attending conferences with all the social workers and the people who are addicted. And what I've learned is social workers are probably the nicest best people in the world right next to pharmacists. You know, of course, pharmacists, I think we're awesome.

But then when I started to make these social workers, I found how supportive they are and what we can do together. Like a pharmacist and a social worker put together and they could probably solve the problems of the world because we just, you know, not the world, but at least for patients, we can really help them out.

When you talk 

[00:03:26] Mike Koelzer, Host: about finding somebody who has it. Like all together. Would that be someone that you would say to them? Okay. I'll be your friend now, or is that someone who you say, all right, you're my guru, or I'll read your book or something. Cause I've been looking for someone to say for years and I haven't found one.

It seems like everybody's got an area that they've got some loose screws in it. What would be the goal of finding somebody that you think has everything balanced? 

[00:04:01] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: You know, it's funny that you say that because, um, for the longest time I, you know, my, my husband and I, we have a lot of family, friends and relatives, and, you know, it's hard when everybody that, you know, is a pharmacist, because everything that you do is pharmacy and every, you know, for the past 10 or 12 years, I've been going to that.

For example, this past weekend was the Michigan pharmacist association conference. Um, I missed it this year. This was only the second year that I've missed. But everybody that I know is a pharmacist and we're all extremely stressed out. We're all workaholics. Right, right. Um, everyone in my family is a professional, a lawyer or a doctor or pharmacist.

Right. So we don't have a lot of balance within. Friends and family. But the funny thing is once I sold my pharmacy and I allowed myself to be aware of my surroundings and the people around me, I did actually find a friend who was actually living just a few doors down and their kid goes to the same school as ours.

We've become like best friends and they're the most balanced people that I know. And so it's just nice to spend time with people who seem to have things in common with you, but they just have it all together. We're talking 

[00:05:08] Mike Koelzer, Host: relatively speaking here compared to a crazy pharmacist. We're looking for someone who's balanced, maybe not completely, but relatively speaking, they look like they're, uh, Gandhi 

[00:05:20] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: or someone, right?

Absolutely. They just, um, I found that my friends who are not in the pharmacy world or in one of the professions that I had mentioned seem to enjoy their lives more with their kids, do more activities, sports and stuff like that. Um, spend time at home with their children. You know, it's just, I just found that they had, um, Uh, they were kind of like the role models that I needed in my life at this time.

And it was only because I had started doing some self-care techniques that I learned from the social workers that I've been surrounded by, which is, you know, establishing a really good morning routine meditation, prayer, some type of affirmative, um, reading like an affirmation or something consistent exercise.

That is the key. If I don't exercise, I'm totally out of whack on a healthy diet. And then once I had all those things in place, it's like, um, my awareness just, uh, came to these people who have been there all along. You know, let me ask 

[00:06:17] Mike Koelzer, Host: you this. We haven't talked at all about your three pharmacies and why you left those.

If I could throw out the word mental health mm-hmm I have no idea right now. Why did you sell your pharmacies? If I could bring up the word mental health, what percent of it was you trying to improve your mental health? Any of it? Was it all financial? 

[00:06:39] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: It was money, money. It was a hundred percent money which of 

[00:06:43] Mike Koelzer, Host: course is no picnic when it comes to, if, if you're on the negative side, mental health.

Correct. But was it money, as far as you were making so much money, you didn't know what to do with it, and you were having trouble 

[00:06:53] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: counting all of it. Don't I wish so. Back in 2016 in Michigan, um, Medicaid had announced, um, Changes in the way that they were going to reimburse us pharmacists. Right. 

[00:07:06] Mike Koelzer, Host: Just for the listeners.

I'm in Michigan too, so right. God and I are commiserating 

[00:07:11] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: here. Yes. Yes, definitely. I don't know if you remember this, Mike, you have your own pharmacy too, so yeah. Yeah. So back then they said, well, we were gonna pay everyone cost plus 10. Yeah. And what did that do to my business? I had a, I had a good chunk of business coming from the psychiatrist across the street.

Right. We had also established a little niche, um, servicing patients with, um, like an opioid addiction. Oh. And some of them, you know, I'll get, maybe I'll get into this later during the podcast. But yeah. You know, we were doing Vivitrol injections and a lot of them came, you know, with other types of injections that we were actually doing in the store.

Um, and you know, those were good margin scripts. All of our mental health scripts were very good money, you know? And so when Medicaid went to cost plus 10. That you know, right there. I was like, I think I should analyze my data and see how this is going to affect us. Right. So, uh, you know, we don't have that much time during the day, obviously we're, you know, I, right.

Didn't staff like a hundred percent. I had staff pharmacists working and I would just fill in where needed. Gotcha. Yeah. Uh, when people needed a day off or something, but then I started finding like, um, that the money coming in wasn't covering everything and I had to take some shifts away from my staff, you know?

Yeah. And so then when Medicaid announced, uh, and that was due to the DIR fees and all these different things 

[00:08:33] Mike Koelzer, Host: with the damn DIRs, it's hard to put together if you're profitable or not, because you had something coming outta your coffers seven months later, it's August and, and you have stuff coming out from February.

And so it's hard to even, you don't know, put any of those financials 

[00:08:48] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: together. You're absolutely right. You could not predict what was going to happen with these DIR fees. And then they would send you a statement saying, okay, we're gonna take, you know, this much, this many thousands of dollars on such and such date.

And you really have no control. Yeah. Because not 

[00:09:02] Mike Koelzer, Host: only can you not predict the future, it's a weird terminology, but you can't even predict the 

[00:09:06] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: past. Exactly. Well, you know, we started to get around that. My husband actually joined the pharmacy in 2009. I had opened the pharmacies in 2006 and he joined operations around 2009.

And he's like a math student. He's great in chemistry and he's totally a math student. So he would be able to predict our net. Income after DIR fees, just based on some calculations, he would. That's great. Do that. Yeah. So he would say, well, no, we can't. He would just understand each prescription how much we were gonna get paid for.

And he's the one that really sounded the alarm bells, because when I first started the pharmacy, you know, I was wearing every single hat and I opened it from scratch. And so then finally, we got busy enough where I could take a half of a Wednesday off. And then finally I told my husband, listen, I can't do this.

I need you to come in and help me out with accounts payable, account receivable, everything. And then he started to do compounds and he was really handling the money side and I was doing a lot of the marketing anyway. So he started sounding the bells. And I had said, you know, I think my, I think my husband has a point, so let me go ahead and.

Uh, look at the data and we used, um, SRS, which was our pharmacy, um, yeah. Software. Yeah. So I asked them to send me like, uh, my claims for the, for three months time, you know, my Medicaid claims just so I could analyze what would happen. And then I put it into a spreadsheet and plugged in the new formula from Medicaid that we were going to be getting reimbursed on top of these crazy DIR fees.

Right. And what I found was we were gonna lose so much money based on this new reimbursement that I would have to let a technician go. Yeah. But the good thing was the tech, one of our techs was moving to Georgia. Hmm. She moved to Atlanta that same month, that, um, in April of 2017, I think it was. And so we didn't have to get rid of anyone, which was great.

Yes. But still it was, um, it was harder without that other person there. Yeah. Right. And I was there, you know, then I had to be at the pharmacy all the time, even with the staff pharmacist. So it became incredibly challenging. So, you know, I gotta say that I, when I sold the pharmacy, I say maybe I guess it wasn't a hundred percent money because it did become extremely stressful.

Um, when we were, um, when we had the pharmacy, we'd come home, my husband and I, and then we'd, I'd tell my husband, you gotta turn off. You can't talk about pharmacy after seven o'clock. Right, right. But he would still talk about it even when we were trying to go to sleep and I'd be like, William, you can't, I'm trying to sleep.

And I can't, I have to get up in the morning. We can't keep talking about this stuff. The numbers are gonna kill us, you know? Yeah, exactly. And so that's what finally, when I did reach out to the big three chain, the Walgreen CVS. And Rite aid never heard back from Rite aid. Walgreens was too far and CVS got right back with us cuz um, at that point when I sold my last one, I had sold my previous one a few years prior to that.

And. You know, we were able to close within 30 days, you know? And so, yeah. That's and so that's, I kind of, I didn't really my, when I sold my, uh, first pharmacy in 2014, we closed that one pretty quick, cuz I was eight months pregnant. I couldn't handle it anymore. That pharmacy was just too small. Yeah. It wasn't profitable.

It couldn't pay its bills. So it was paying its bills, but it was just breaking even. And so sure. We decided to let that one go. Um, but then my, my pharmacy and gross point, that was my money maker. Um, in terms of we had a contract with, um, some hospice agencies, actually we had several contracts with several hospice agencies that really made us profitable.

And um, because there's so much competition in the Detroit area and the Metro. Right. Metro Detroit in general just has a pharmacy on like every corner, multiple pharmacies. Right, right. And, um, you really have to stand out. And so I wasn't getting enough foot traffic. Grosse Pointe Park is a really smart, small community.

Kind of like what you'd find in Northern Michigan, smaller communities. Sure. Um, we'd get a lot of delivery business. So we started to advertise that we delivered and we would deliver to, um, areas of Detroit that were just, that had people who were in such poverty. They didn't have a car. They did not have a way to get to us.

Um, and that's when I decided we're delivering. And, um, I had a marketer at that time. Like I had hired a marketer for a few months and she got me one really good deal. And that's all I could yeah. Afford to have her for, you know, but anyway, so she found this guy who was also a marketer at a hospice agency and they started talking and they got me connected with the pharmacist that was, um, handling their prescriptions.

And then that's how I kind of got turned onto it. He was. An older Italian gentleman who kind of taught me everything. He knew about how to take care of hospice agencies, cuz he was leaving the business. And so from there we took on a big cancer center's hospice. Um, and we were delivering all over Metro Detroit.

It was like a Tri-County thing. And even past that like, uh, Wayne McComb and Oakland county, and even past that we were delivering all these people's prescriptions as soon as they went on hospice, which is like, um, yeah, if you're fam, if pharmacists are listening are familiar with hospice, you basically have to prepare a comfort pack, which includes morphine, the ultra concentrated one, the 20 milligram per ML, the fif 15 ML little bottle and then a couple pills of Avan and maybe some atropin, um, some other things that would take care of a co a patient when they're in their final days.

Mm-hmm and so not only were we doing that, but this was a direct contract with the hospice agency. so there was no middle man. I created a contract and I set the rates. I said, this is how much we're gonna get paid for each comfort pack. This is how much we're gonna get paid for each delivery. And each agency had it kind of, they negotiated it differently, whether they paid delivery by delivery or per how far we traveled and all these different things.

But yeah, it worked out very well for us. 

[00:15:09] Mike Koelzer, Host: Was any of that thought like an easy claim or was it all more like paper? You didn't set up the computer, like billing, like through a bin number and stuff. You just did it kind of 

[00:15:18] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: manually. So when I first started back in doing hospice in 2011, I did it all manually cuz we only had one hospice agency and they had 30 patients.

Right. Yeah. And so it was easy until I filed myself at the pharmacy till one or two o'clock in the morning preparing an invoice. That was an inch thick. Right. Yeah. Right. So I decided it's time to, um, , you know, make this somehow automated. Right. Um, I turned to our computer, uh, the people who did our computer system, they really couldn't help us in that regard.

So, um, I went to a local PBM right down the street and they were able to set us up with a PBM, I mean like a bin number, a group number, and we had control over it. Oh, neat. So I would be able to log into that system, add patients myself. And they were the ones who basically. Created the program, which, um, would control like how the, uh, uh, how they adjudicated, you know, whether or not it would go through or not that way, I wouldn't have to be at the pharmacy all day, making sure that we don't dispense something that's not covered to a hospice patient.

Did that 

[00:16:27] Mike Koelzer, Host: improve your marketing at all? As far as you looked cooler, because now you had like a card that you could give to nurses and patients and stuff. Did that improve that professional? Look on the other side at all or not because you're just dealing mainly with the nurses and things and the patients didn't see that stuff anyway.

[00:16:47] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: Correct. The patient never really did see those things. And so because, um, typically, uh, with a hospice patient, some you're gonna have them less than six months and it doesn't make sense to generate cards and send them out. Yeah. So, uh, and we had a way to. Automatically give them a number based on, you know, some different parameters.

So the nurses knew what their ID was and our technicians knew, and the patient didn't have to really worry about it unless they were going to, um, like a pharmacy close to their house if we couldn't deliver. But that gotcha. That rarely happened. We usually delivered all the time. Gotcha. Um, unless it was a nursing home, like our skilled nursing facility, in those cases, we did kind of farm those out mm-hmm to the pharmacies that were servicing those facilities.

Cuz we just didn't want any confusion with, um, different types of packaging coming in different labels, two different pharmacies, servicing a home doesn't make any sense. Yeah. Right, 

[00:17:41] Mike Koelzer, Host: right. Mm-hmm you had the hospice going, it was profitable. 

[00:17:48] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: Then what, going back to the hospice thing that you asked me, if it made it more, um, attractive.

When we got the, the PBM, it made it more attractive to when I was marketing it to the hospice administrator, like the nurse administrator, cuz I could go in there and demo to her the way that she could, um, control her information to maybe 

[00:18:10] Mike Koelzer, Host: someone who wasn't your customer yet. 

[00:18:11] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: Yes. Gotcha. I would be able to show her how she could generate reports from the pharmacy system that she had access to.

Right. So each nurse would have access to go in there, add a patient, look at what they had and then generate reports like there's quality reports that they have to generate. And just to 

[00:18:29] Mike Koelzer, Host: clarify, these were new people you were trying to sell business to, or you were trying to go into the current nurses just to keep them.

Happy and excited about your program both. Cause you gotta keep the nurses 

[00:18:41] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: happy. Definitely. Oh, the nurses were always, so the nurses on the field loved us, absolutely loved us because we were able to deliver so quickly to their patients. We had mm-hmm at one point we had two drivers on staff plus a backup, which was my husband.

Um, okay. And this is going from, you know, when I first opened the store, I was doing all the deliveries, you know, in the first year. Right. Yeah. Right. So anyway, it really just grew and the nurses on the field really just loved us, but then the nurse administrators wanted to see, um, some type of reporting that they could generate for their quality insurance departments.

Cuz they have requirements with Medicare. 

[00:19:17] Mike Koelzer, Host: Right. So I got it. This is. Going along, does it still grow or is there a point where something clicked and you had to then leave? 

[00:19:26] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: That's an excellent question because I wasn't able to scale for a long time. We had just this one agency and then we picked up another small agency in the Metro Detroit area, mostly in Wayne county and Oakland county.

And it wasn't until I, um, started talking about what I was doing with a potential partner who had multiple pharmacies across the state who would be able to help me scale this business model. Right. And, um, it actually came up because they had a hospice. Uh, they had a, somebody on their marketing and who was talking to a hospice agency or starting a hospice agency that they didn't know how to take care of their prescriptions without dealing with, um, And Clara or whoever it was, and they didn't wanna deal with and Clara, cuz you know, um, some of these larger mail order, hospice, uh, pharmacies, the pharmacy gets absolutely nothing out of it.

They would do the same thing that I was doing, but then they would pay the pharmacy cost of the drug or maybe even negative. And it would, we were not even making money. So this pharmacist out in the middle of Michigan, uh, was having a problem with it. But his partner was out here in Detroit. So he asked me, what do you know about this?

And I said, well I know a lot and I know how you guys can make money, but we're gonna have to partner up on this cuz this is kind of my thing. Right. And so we did partner up on it. We picked up a phar, uh, two pharmacies in Flint and one in grand rapids. And we were able to service hospice agencies for the whole area below that line and the lower part of Michigan.

Like if you just draw a line yeah. From grand rapids through Flint, through Detroit. And we were really taking care of, uh, a lot of patients at that time. What was your problem? Scaling? My problem was scaling. Getting to those nurses that make the decision as to who we are going to use for our pharmacy provider.

Most of them just go with the big name that they know, right. That big name, but the, and Clara or the hospice pharmacy or whoever it was. Yeah. So for them to trust a small pharmacy like us, that was kind of hard for them to do initially. But then when that relationship existed with these people in the middle of Michigan, they already had that relationship with this nurse.

So then it became like, okay, we're just gonna plug this model in for this pharmacy and see how it goes. And it worked out and we all made, you know, we all kind of profited from that because it was my model, but it was their business. So if I'm 

[00:21:45] Mike Koelzer, Host: up 

in the empire, Michigan or something, and I want to go to Joe's friendly Tavern, everybody there knows Joe's.

But if I'm down in the middle of Michigan and I have a choice between. McDonald's or Joe's, I'm probably gonna end up at McDonald's cuz I have no idea who Joe's is. And that's what you face to people. Just your local people. It was easier to get them because they have heard of you. But once you go away from your base, it's like, nobody knows you from Adam.

And they're just gonna go with someone they've heard of before, where if you can then partner with somebody who has that local name, then you've repeated what you can do. But with a name that they're familiar with, 

[00:22:28] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: That's absolutely. You got it. You nailed it. You absolutely got it. That's exactly what happened.

Um, the other challenge was a lot of the, um, consolidation that's happening in the healthcare industry was also happening in, in the hospice industry. So one of the accounts that I had, for example, that was based out of Livonia, Michigan was acquired by a huge national account. Mm. And so once they became part of this larger company gotcha.

We were not able to service them because they wanted to stick with the big name that they had. Yeah. Right. Because they had. Agencies across the country and I'm not in every single state mm-hmm , you know? And so that's kind of, that's kind of how you lose some of your business if you can't scale nationwide.

Right. Um, yeah. Then it becomes extremely difficult. 

[00:23:15] Mike Koelzer, Host: So at what point then did that become 

[00:23:18] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: enough? I did not stop that even until, even after we sold our pharmacy, we still had that business going. And, um, we were, I sold my last pharmacy in Detroit around two July of 2017. It was at the same time that my partners said, okay, we're gonna pick up the Detroit business and fill some of it from, uh, Flint.

And then they had some partner pharmacies in Detroit area and they filled from there. And we also, because it's, everything is just through the PBM. Yeah. And a lot of the patients were already in, uh, skilled nursing homes or assisted living homes. It was easy to take care of the existing clients. So you 

[00:23:57] Mike Koelzer, Host: closed your pharmacy, but you still had the 

[00:24:01] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: license.

No, I sold, I didn't need the pharmacy at that point, because if I wasn't filling scripts, I didn't need the license or anything. We were farming those scripts out and still controlling the PBM side. You were one of the nasty PBMs, almost , but we did work closely with the pharmacist that had a lot of volume.

So if there was a pharmacist, for example, out in Farmington, I think that's where he was located. And he called me up cuz I went to college with him and he said, got it. What are you doing with all this hospice stuff? How do I get into this? I told him, well, you know, what we can do is we could just give you a $5 dispensing fee.

And I think, I can't remember exactly what it was, what was something around that? Because all his patients were in long term care. So he had a set rate just for his pharmacy and they were able to program that in for him. And so, you know, we kind of just customized it to make it work for the pharmacies that we were using.

Yeah, so that was great. I mean, that continued on, and that didn't end until this hospice agency, the biggest account that we had ended up, um, expanding to like Virginia and maybe Louisiana. And I don't know what state, so they expanded to like three different states all within a six month time period. And they needed to have pharmacy solutions in each and every one of their markets and it had to be consistent.

So at Michigan, they were using us and Virginia, they were using hospice gotcha. Pharmacy. And then Louisiana, they were using a totally different company. And I told them, you guys, it doesn't make sense for you to use three different pharmacy companies, just pick one and go with that. And they obviously had to choose a big company cuz we couldn't service them in all of those, the newer company.

[00:25:32] Mike Koelzer, Host: They might have been crappy service compared to you, let's say, but at least it's consistent crappy service that all the nurses know how to deal with. And, and they're only dealing with one phone number to the crappy service and all that kind of stuff. Right. They had to, they had to 

[00:25:51] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: get it consistent.

I think that's what they were looking for. And also the reporting part of it was important, which 

[00:25:58] Mike Koelzer, Host: you could do it, but they didn't need three different reports. 

[00:26:01] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: Exactly. And so they did, they did approach us to start servicing them in Virginia, but. I had no time to fly out to Virginia and recruit a fire. I just really did not have time at that point because of how much we were being attacked by the DIR fees and the declining reimbursements.

I just couldn't afford to go out to Virginia and spend, you know, I don't know, several weekends there or something, recruiting a pharmacy to take care of our patients, these hospice patients, you know, that's what we planned on doing, but it just became a pipe dream. 

[00:26:36] Mike Koelzer, Host: Okay. Define time for me because it was, you didn't have time.

Why? Because you were spending time doing stuff. Back home or you didn't have time slash money, 

[00:26:51] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: both. So like, I couldn't, I couldn't leave the pharmacy for a week. You'd be leaving that and you'd have to staff. Yeah. You'd have to staff it. Um, and then I'd have to have a strategy while I'm out in another state trying to recruit business.

And I just couldn't wear that hat at that time. Yeah. You'd 

[00:27:09] Mike Koelzer, Host: have to spend months. You could have a whole team designing how you wanted to present that to somebody, but at the time you still had a pharmacy that you were staffing back 

[00:27:20] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: at home. Precisely. We had multiple, I think at that time we still had two pharmacies that we were taking care of.

And hospice is a 24 hour business. Yeah. Yeah. You could get called in the middle of the night. And, um, part of the, you know, what didn't appeal to pharmacists, especially independent pharmacists was they didn't wanna open the pharmacy at 12 o'clock at night. When a patient was dying right. Or being released from the hospital.

Now that doesn't happen very often. If you have a very good relationship with the hospice. Yeah. But it happens every once in a while, but you can charge for it, you know, a good hourly rate so that it makes it worth your time. Yeah. Or, or if you're out of town, you can have somebody cover you at midnights or whatever.

And then just in case they get called, you can pay 'em, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. So, you know, a lot of pharmacists did not want to do that. So that's kind of how I had trouble. Uh, recruiting pharmacies, not only in the Detroit area, but I knew that I would have the same problem in another state. 

[00:28:15] Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah.

Unlike the natural cycle of life of plants that die only in the fall, we humans seem to want to cross over at any time of the day or night. You can't predict it. So you had to have all the pharmacists that you go and say, Hey, would you like to do this or that? Oh, by the way, you, you have to be available at three 15 in the morning or whatever.

[00:28:40] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: Exactly. And that was part of our guarantee. So part of our guarantee is we're gonna be there for you 24 hours a day. Right. But we manage their patients so well. And the relationship with the nurses that we told them, anyone who's a new admit, or you expect a new admission, give us a call and we'll get that comfort pack ready for you by 7:00 PM.

And you can just pick it up instead of calling us in the middle of the night. Yeah. Then 

[00:29:01] Mike Koelzer, Host: You'd be dealing with, you know, a pharmacist in Virginia that you might know, but you don't know who he has hired that evening. And then, you know, and, and now you're just outta touch 

[00:29:12] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: with it. Exactly. And I can't guarantee what they do in Virginia.

Right. So it kind of, yeah, not that I'm a perfectionist. I am a little bit, every pharmacist is in a sense, a perfectionist, but I couldn't control the outcome error. The quality of. Services that other pharmacies would deliver as opposed to what I'm doing in my store. Now, what I took away from this hospice was that when you're treating hospice patients they're at the end of their life, these are end of life patients, they're terminally ill.

And you know, anyone in the, in the, in the geriatric world understands when someone has a terminal diagnosis. And that kind of naturally, um, allowed me to service patients with a substance use disorder, kind of like in the same way where you kind of wrap your arms around that patient and try to understand you put your.

Feet in their shoes, you know, cause prior to getting into the hospice business, I had lost my grandma and my uncle within a very short time period. And, um, our experience with the hospice nurses was not that great, you know, at the time in the back in when they passed away, like in, uh, I can't remember what year that was, but anyway, so I wanted to create a different experience for our agencies that we were servicing and our patients that we were going to their house and we actually became known and people would say, oh, park pharmacy is the pharmacy that you wanna use, you know?

And the nurses would tell each other. And that's kind of how we had some organic growth just by word of mouth, from nurse to nurse when they would move agencies and stuff. But when that, that kind of, um, didn't grow as much as I'd like, um, when you know this whole opioid. Epidemic started. I mean, pharmacists, we were at the front line and I challenged you to find a pharmacist who was working at a retail pharmacy who was not aware of what was going on, but just did not know what to do about it or how to handle this problem.

Yeah. Right. And, you know, I mean, just last week or a couple weeks ago, they had that documentary on Netflix that Dan Schneider pharmacist. Right. And, and you know, what we all were in his shoes. Some of us maybe were aware or not aware of what was going on, but, you know, um, what I would do. I would just go out there and talk to people, just talk to the patient and try to understand what's going on.

You know, why are you coming in for your early refill? Or, you know, just try to put yourself in their shoes and try to understand. And it wasn't until like my cousin passed away from an overdose that, uh, it really kinda shook me and woke me up and said, geez, you know, you're a pharmacist. Couldn't you have done anything to help your cousin.

That's your cousin, you know, and you lost him. And at first, like when he first passed away, I kind of was, and I hate to say this, I'm ashamed to say this, but I was like, well, now his mother can actually, uh, rest, um, easier at night because he was just driving her nuts, you know? Yeah. Um, but my mother was like, you don't ever say that because no mother wants to see her son, you know, die for any reason.

And, um, and it was just really difficult. 

[00:32:20] Mike Koelzer, Host: Like overdose. Was this like taking too many tablets or was it like doing something with the tablets, like, you know, crushing and injecting that kind of 

[00:32:29] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: stuff I could tell you. Exactly. So, um, you know, that's a typical story of somebody who got addicted to Vicodin and the nineties, and then, um, you know, it was being sold on the street to kids who would take it for a headache or whatever.

And so I, in high school, a lot of kids were addicted to this, to these pills. Well, they thought they were safe. And, um, anyway, uh, but I don't know how, like they would get them. I really don't know how my cousins would purchase these medications, who they would get them from. My parents kind of sheltered me and my sisters and my siblings from, uh, a lot of them.

So, but then I guess he went from pills to heroin at the time when it became, uh, too expensive to get the pills because the heroin's cheaper. Oh, yeah, definitely. Well, it became cheaper. It became cheaper. And you gotta think he was about my age. He was about, uh, 38 when he passed away. Um, so he had like, uh, maybe 25.

I'm sorry. Yeah, he had, he was addicted since he was a teenager. So when he was younger, it was probably easier for him to get pills, but then it just became harder for them to get pills on the street. And I mean, this is well documented and documentaries and in books, there's a book called dreamland that kind of goes through all this and it kind of, you know, it just really became easier for them to use heroin and then the heroin in the Detroit area, at least, and, and in many urban areas was just contaminated with, uh, F.

And it was, you know, the coroner's report that came back, you know, revealed that his body was full of fentanyl. Not really just maybe a small, tiny amount of heroin. 

[00:34:17] Mike Koelzer, Host: Why do the drug pushers do that? Is it cheaper to put that 

[00:34:21] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: in or as a pharmacist, we know that fentanyl is measured in the microgram and the hydrocodone, I mean, uh, heroin and hydrocodone, and those are milligrams, you know?

So like just a small spec of fentanyl would be enough to get somebody high if that's what they were using it for. If I was 

[00:34:37] Mike Koelzer, Host: a, a traveling salesman with that, I'd put in just like baking soda, but I guess they have to put something in it because they want repeat sales. Right. So they can't just give 'em nothing.

They have to put fentanyl or heroin in it because then the people won't be back to buy it. The next time it's gotta be something. I 

[00:34:56] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: I think the fentanyl was coming in from China and it was cheap. And it was just a small amount that you had to use as opposed to heroin, which was coming in from Mexico. Um, yeah.

And you had to use a little, you had to obviously use more of it. And so, you know, and, and in Detroit, you know, it's laced with everything, you know, the drugs that are sold on the street, they're just really contaminated with everything. So yeah. You never know anyway, that's how he passed away. I'm sorry to hear that.

And yeah, and you know, it took me, like I said, it took me a little while, but then there were enough people in my community passing away from, uh, a drug overdoses that one day I was talking to a girlfriend of mine and, and she was, you know, was telling her how sad I was that I wasn't able to help my cousin who had passed away from a drug overdose.

And she says, oh my gosh, my cousin also passed away from a drug overdose and I feel the same way. And then we kind of started this, uh, campaign in the area and I'm a Muslim. And so was she. And so we started going to our area mosques and talking to, um, Some of the imams so that they could speak about addiction and drug abuse in their congregation.

And let parents know, like this is not a moral failing. People become physically addicted to pills. And then when they can't get pills anymore, they turn to heroin and your, your, your son or your daughter or whoever it is that has a drug problem needs help and needs the help of a, like a professional. And it's the clergy sometimes who are faced with these problems, but they're not equipped in any way to handle somebody with a drug addiction.

It's 

[00:36:28] Mike Koelzer, Host: not a moral choice at that point. 

[00:36:29] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: It's an addiction. It's a physical addiction that has to be treated just like a medical, any type of medical disorder 

[00:36:35] Mike Koelzer, Host: I'm involved just because my first cousin's child did this. It's across the state, across the 

[00:36:42] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: country. It's everywhere. Definitely. And so we started to raise awareness.

Um, and then as I was, uh, attending all types of conferences and fairs across the state, there was a huge, um, addiction rally, like a United to face addiction, Michigan rally in Lansing. And I went, um, myself and several other pharmacists across the state. I don't know if you're aware that Nancy Lewis was there from Oakland county, um, a bunch of people, and we had our own table from Wayne county pharmacist association.

I'm very involved in a lot of different, um, organizations. Anyway, I met some wonderful people up there. and a woman who was, um, she had several recovery homes on the east, in the east side of Detroit, which is just my neighborhood. And she said, I'm looking for a pharmacist who can help me get Vivitrol for the people who are living in my house because I don't allow Suboxone in my house.

And she, she, wasn't a huge fan of Suboxone. Now I, myself, I kind of believe that there are multiple paths to recovery and whether you're using methadone, Suboxone, or Vivitrol or naltrexone, whatever it is, or, or just totally, um, abstinent from all substances. You know, you will find recovery. It just has to be your own way.

Right? Yeah. Right. So that was her way. She needed a pharmacist who could help her, uh, get Vivitrol to these patients cuz so many people had issues with coverage or whatever. And most of her patients were on Michigan Medicaid. Yeah. And that was uh, before Michigan Medicaid had changed their reimbursement rates.

So I got in with the company, uh, reps that were there and then we met at my pharmacy and then we started this program in which a patient with a diagnosed, uh, opioid use disorder was to see a physician get screened for everything like hepatitis and all these other things. And then he would start detoxing them with Suboxone over the course of.

However long they needed a week, a month, whatever. And then they would start on Vivitrol and we were the pharmacy injecting Vivitrol. The doctor didn't wanna have anything to do with the Vivitrol injection because it cost them too much to keep it in stock. And they didn't know if they were gonna get paid and all, you know, there were all these questions.

Yeah. And so we were actually administering that shop and I mean, we had a full vaccine clinic, too. We were doing flu shots and travel vaccines and everything prior to this. So it just came naturally for us to do this. Yeah. At the same time we had the psychiatrists, uh, sending us injections, like, uh, some of those long acting antipsychotics, we also started delivering to recovery homes and all the work that we did started to catch people's attention.

And we ended up being recognized by Crane's Detroit business magazine and we were the, uh, runner up and healthcare hero award. And so that was great. I mean, we were recognized, but I. When the reimbursement model changed, we couldn't even pay for Vivitrol with our reimbursement, let alone the pharmacist's time.

I mean, it takes 10 minutes to just reconstitute that vial. Sure. And also there's a lot of legwork that goes into, uh, taking care of a population that is kind of harder to service because of their socioeconomic circumstances at the time that you get them. So most often people who are affected with addiction have really used up all their lifelines.

Uh, their family sometimes doesn't wanna deal with them because they've been burned so many times with them. For sure. So they have limited resources in terms of income. Transportation is always an issue. Um, even getting a cell phone number that we could. Any number that we could reach them in was a challenge.

So it was challenging to keep them coming in every month for their shot. But, um, as long as they saw the doctor or the doctor would send us the script and then we were able, and they were able to come in for that injection. We were doing that before I sold my pharmacy. I even considered going to the recovery homes and giving the shot there because all the patients were already there and we wouldn't have to bring them into the pharmacy, um, that didn't quite work out, um, because it was just, um, it was hard to pay a pharmacist to go out.

And sometimes the patient would be there, sometimes they wouldn't. Yeah. And then when you, when you get there, they tell you, oh yeah, I just used heroin yesterday, but you're not supposed to have used heroin for like seven days before. 

[00:40:53] Mike Koelzer, Host: Was there any trouble finding enough pharmacists that would want to go out and get to those neighborhoods and give shots to people who were addicted?

[00:41:04] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: No, definitely not. There's a lot of stigma attached to treating patients with addiction. Right. A lot of pharmacists did not want those types of people. I put that in quotation marks, they didn't want them in their store. Right. Um, a lot of doctors did not want to deal with that either because, um, just, you know, they thought that these patients might relapse and wanna be like pill shoppers or doctor shoppers or whatever.

Yeah. So it was hard. And even within my own staff, like I had one person who kind of resisted doing it, one pharmacist. But then when I told him you have to do this, it's part of your job. He was okay with it. But I have to say that. Servicing the patients with, um, opioid use disorder was one of the most fulfilling things that we all did at my store.

It was, uh, my technicians, my pharmacists just absolutely had this feeling of, we are really servicing the community. We know that we're not making a ton of money on this, but we're so happy to take care of these people. Right. So it really turned into a huge amount of Goodwill for my employees. They loved working at Park Pharmacy because they knew that we were doing the right thing.

They would never leave us, you know? Yeah. Right. And in fact, when we sold the pharmacy, everybody was heartbroken. It was just, it was just really something that what we were doing, we were just providing this hope to people, you know, 

[00:42:29] Mike Koelzer, Host: from what. Can see, and from the history of your cousin and my first cousin, once removed and so on and all the stories, this really makes its way across all different socioeconomic backgrounds and races, religions, it's across the board period.

And so when people are helping, it almost feels maybe like they're not helping those people, but it's helping everybody, 

[00:42:54] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: everybody, because my experience with addiction was as a family member, you know, I was never, I'm not a recovered anything, but I am a family member of somebody who was, um, addicted, multiple family members.

And, um, soon, you know, soon after I sold my pharmacy, I learned that I was a co-dependent, which is very common on PE among families who have somebody who's addicted. And that's something that I never even had heard of until now. Like I started talking to social workers and stuff. my message to the community started to become.

If you're a family member of someone with addiction, you have to take care of your own needs as well. Right. You know, you have needs that must be addressed and boundaries. That must be set in order for you to have a fulfilling life and, you know, a decent mental health. Take me 

[00:43:40] Mike Koelzer, Host: You sold your pharmacy.

That was your last. Yeah. Why did you sell that one? That 

[00:43:47] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: was like two years ago. Yeah, that was only two years ago. So I opened three pharmacies. The first one was, uh, 2006 and that was the one that I had for 11 years straight in Grosse Pointe park. Okay. Park pharmacy. It's funny because I opened up a park pharmacy and I didn't know that there was a park pharmacy in Grosse Pointe park.

Uh, like, you know, 15 years before that. And then I ended up meeting, uh, Gary ke like he was the president of, uh, diplomat before he retired, before they went public just before they went public. Yeah. Or maybe after, yeah, he was there for a long time. Anyway, Gary's grandpa opened a park pharmacy back in the fifties, right.

Oh, wow. And then he sold it to some. Um, and then they had several pharmacies in the area and then they sold it to some people and then ultimately it closed. And then I come along 15 years later and open a pharmacy in grosse pointe park and call park pharmacy. We start to get phone calls from the neighborhood people like, oh, park pharmacy's back.

I'm so glad to see that you guys are back. And we automatically start getting people walking in the door. I was like, well, this is wonderful. Sure. There's loyalty. To the small independence out here, but it started to get really bad, you know, with, you know, just the growth of specialty and everyone was shifting everything to mail order, right.

And express scripts and all these different MES and, uh, CVS care marks. Yeah. And it just got so difficult. So that's when I had to establish a niche business, but I also, somewhere along the way, a light went on in my brain that said, Hey, if this is going to be sustainable or whatever, I need to open another location because I have so much inventory sitting on my shelf, you know?

Right. And some of it, a lot of it gets expired and you lose it. Right. Yeah. Right. So let me open up another store. So we opened up a store in St. Clair shores, which was about six miles. And it was in a clinic, but, you know, we were able to share inventory, share people, like share some of our resources, the staffing and all that stuff, the driver, the delivery driver.

So it just made more sense economically. To have multiple stores. And then, um, somewhere along the line, I opened up a third pharmacy, but this third pharmacy that I opened was with a partner. So I didn't own it a hundred percent, but the other two I did. And then ultimately that pharmacy, I sold back to the partner.

So I got out of that one and then my other two I'd sold, um, one to CVS. It just wasn't making sense. So I sold that one and then I kept my one store that was my original store until I sold it to CVS in 2017, because you know, they came with a really good offer. You know, when a chain comes with a good offer, regardless of who the chain is, they're not gonna come again with that same offer.

If you don't take that offer. And I've seen this happen to people, yeah. Where they don't take that offer and they wait to see if they can get something better. Inevitably, it goes down, 

[00:46:29] Mike Koelzer, Host: they know that you tried other options. They're the only option. And so they're not stupid. They'll say, well, exactly, I'm gonna cut another 10, 20% off of this or whatever.

And yes. And then I know you'll take it basically because you're outta options. Right. 

[00:46:44] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: You know, I didn't sit on it too long, but it did take me a while to finally decide to sell it to CVS because this was my baby. This pharmacy was like my original store. The day that we sold, I was just. Heartbroken. I was very sad.

Um, the next day I sat home crying and my husband's like, what's wrong with you? Just, I think you'll be fine if you open up the, uh, bank app on your phone and take a look at the balance in our checking account or the savings account or whatever it was that CVS had deposited the money into, he said, that'll make you feel better, but it only makes you feel better for a short period of time, like maybe 10 minutes or something.

And then you're like, yeah, but the relationships that I had with my patients that's irreplaceable and where am I ever gonna find a job like that? Like that was the ideal job, you know, but the economics didn't make sense anymore at that point when we sold. And so, you know, I felt like I really had no other choice and, you know, they don't come knocking twice.

Like I said, and I talked to some, I had, obviously I don't make these decisions lately. So I talked to a lot of my mentors about it. Um, A lot of my mentors said, you know, had gone through the same thing, some of my pharmacy mentors, and they had sold their family pharmacy. And they said, you know, it opened up other doors for them.

And my father is a businessman. And when I told him dad, you know, I'm thinking about selling the store. And he said, well, how much did they offer you? And when I told him, he said, well, what the heck are you waiting for? You know? And so I was like, okay, I guess dad is even telling me to do this. I might as well just go ahead.

And, and that's when I did it, um, it did open the door, you know, for me to just rediscover myself and what I actually enjoyed other than pharmacy, um, to get a balanced life. And when I, uh, that first year after selling, I went to, um, I wanted to get an MBA, but I didn't wanna get like a real MBA, uh, and spend time in, uh, in school again with books and all.

and I didn't have a job that would actually, you know, maybe reimburse the tuition or anything. I kind of, and I didn't have a position where I could say, okay, I've got an MBA. Now you guys can promote me. I was just a, you know, just a, kinda like a freelancer. And so. Um, I ended up going to Warren, a school of business.

They have an executive education program and it was just a one week course and it kind of helped me crystallize what I was doing, right. What I was doing wrong, what I could've done better, you know, in my business and take that to my next, uh, journey, whatever that would be. And I also went to every single conference you can think of.

Um, I went to AMM C P the managed care pharmacy. I went to the PBMI. I went to a lot of addiction conferences, the national heroin summit, um, CADCA, which is a drug coalition conference. I just went, I can't even remember. I went to like 18 different cities all in one year and kind of learned what was going on across the industry.

In the 

[00:49:40] Mike Koelzer, Host: meantime, is money an issue to you at all? Are you saying, oh boy, I'm panicky. Cuz I can't do this. Or were you like, I've got some time to do this now. 

[00:49:51] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: At that time. I had no worries in the world not worry in the world. Gotcha. No, I, I was financially independent at that point. Gotcha. You know, we took many trips, uh, which were very enjoyable.

Um, we invested a lot of the money into real estate because that's my original background. My dad's a real estate agent and I was his personal assistant from the time I was nine years old till I went to pharmacy school. So I know a lot about real estate. Um, so we did make some real estate investments and they are paying off, which is good.

So it gives me some freedom to do what I want and explore. 

[00:50:23] Mike Koelzer, Host: Sure. So you were exploring for a year, you went to all these 

[00:50:25] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: conferences, then yes. Then I came back and I said, okay, it's time for me to do something. Um, I said, what's the easiest thing I can do? Okay. I'll be a contingent pharmacist. Right. So I applied to Beaumont, which has, uh, Beaumont hospital has eight hospitals in the area.

I became a contingent pharmacist there in the outpatient setting on call. Basically they can fit you into the schedule. Maybe if somebody needs a day off. Sure. Or if somebody has a funeral, maybe you can pick up that shift or whatever. Mm-hmm . Um, so I've been doing that since about 2018. Why'd you do that to get back into the pharmacy?

I was bored. I just sit on my ass if I can. Well, Mike, see, the problem is I was a workaholic. Yeah. And I couldn't get out of that mode for the longest time. You know? Um, even after I sold my pharmacy that first year I was, I was still in work mode. So that's why I was going to all these conferences. And I just could not sit still.

I could not sit at home. 

[00:51:17] Mike Koelzer, Host: And those were not giving you enough satisfaction. You didn't feel like you were producing something. 

[00:51:25] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: Maybe I wasn't creating anything. I'm very much somebody who needs to use their hands. You were 

[00:51:31] Mike Koelzer, Host: kind of soaking stuff up. Yes. And you were busy, but you weren't. Being productive in your 

[00:51:37] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: mind.

Yes. And I wasn't able to get into that flow. Yeah. You know, when you're at work, so. And, um, I don't know if, if you're staffing anymore, but some retail pharmacists, not maybe retail, but some pharmacists out there that are listening might understand what I'm talking about. You get into the pharmacy, you set everything up and then you just get into the flow of what you're doing.

And as long as you're fully staffed, which many pharmacies are not, but Beaumont is, and my pharmacy was, um, you could really get into the zone and make sure that you're doing the right thing for the patients. And it's kind of like, I hate to say, like an assembly line, but that's kind of how it is at the pharmacy.

You know, one prescription then the next prescription and the next one. And you really just doing your thing, you know, a guy named David 

[00:52:25] Mike Koelzer, Host: Allen, he wrote a book called getting things done, and he's got a really cool Ted talk where he talks about one night, he was out in a Cove in a sailboat with his wife and the storm started coming up or the winds or something.

And he was out there trying to get his boat from crashing on the rocks and so on. And he looked up at the moon and he said he felt so much peace because he knew in that instant, that short instant, that's what he was. Supposed to be doing it at that time. And so I think that zone you talk about is not gonna give you a piece forever, but in that moment, you know, in that hour or two hours, you know, that is your spot in the universe, at least at that time.

And there's some peace that 

[00:53:12] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: goes along with that. That's exactly it. Accurate there's this momentary awareness, right? That you feel like this is exactly what I should be doing at this time. I have nowhere else to do nothing else to do. This is what I'm doing, you know? Right. And it feels good because you know, this is just for all those reasons.

And so I enjoyed that for a time. Uh, then I. Um, that I was working all the vacations for people. And I said, you know, I really would like to spend the 4th of July with my family and Christmas with my family. So then the following year, I kind of blocked those days off. So I could spend more time with my family and kind of relax and take care of my mental health.

Yeah. Now, meanwhile, during this time, because of all my activism, when I had the pharmacy, I was extremely active in terms of, uh, the media knew about me channel two Fox, two news down here. Uh, one of their reporters would always call me every time something would happen. Sure. And come interview me like when Narcan became available.

Yeah. Um, when a pharmacy was shut down because of too much dispensing of controlled substances and in the Detroit, um, area, I was the one getting called for those interviews. And that was because I had a pharmacy. He could pool his, you know, reporter van, you know, his TV van right up to my store, set up his camera, come inside.

Talk to me. It was easy. And, um, I had, you know, I was interviewed by somebody from the Detroit news at that time as well. All of that kind of went away after I sold my pharmacy. Why do you think that went away? I didn't have my store anymore. Is that the only reason? I don't know, being a pharmacy owner is, uh, kind of like being a rockstar.

Well, 

[00:54:48] Mike Koelzer, Host: I know that because I get a lot of my wife doesn't like it, but I get a lot of women lining up outside the pharmacy at night, wanting me to sign their body parts and stuff. So I understand the whole rockstar thing. And I think about that, cuz someday I may not be here. And when I get called by the news, I often say I'm the host of the business of pharmacy podcast, kind of, for that reason almost to make like a shift, what is the percent chance that your.

Doing something on your own versus getting a paycheck from somebody 

[00:55:23] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: I've considered that let's say a year from now. So I've considered going out on my own and starting a business. Um, I've thought about opening another pharmacy, but then I immediately say, no, I don't wanna do that again. but then you woke 

[00:55:36] Mike Koelzer, Host: up from your, from your nightmare.

[00:55:38] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: Exactly. I was like, no, no, I can't go back to that. Um, uh, you know, I've talked about maybe partnering up with other people and coming up with solutions or whether it's in the mental health field or some other thing, but right now I don't really have any, you know, any which way to go. I think I would rather at this point, find a job at a company like a paycheck type of thing, um, where I have, uh, you know, I know how many hours I'm gonna be working and it's a company that aligns with my philosophy of helping people.

Preferably, I want it to be in the mental health field and preferably in addiction related, um, type of something. And I've been looking at companies, um, which I'm gonna submit my resume to and all that, but it's like, um, that's kind of where I see me finding balance. Cuz if I were to open another business at this time, you know, that having your own business means working it, you know, 50, 60 hours a week sometimes or more.

Right. I mean, especially if you're gonna start something from scratch, then I'll lose my self-care time. I won't be able to exercise as much as I do now. I might lose quality time with my kids in the morning or at night, you know, because I'm gonna be up late at night working. I don't wanna do that. I wanna, I can't go back to that right now.

I can't go because I've, I've lived that already and I need, I need to keep my balance, you know, I, so I'm trying to, uh, kind of treat my me time and my family time is absolutely sacred. Yeah. But when the time comes along and the opportunity arises where it's something that I feel like I can really bring value to, then I might consider it.

But I was always, you know, recently I've been looking into some of these, uh, venture capitalist backed C. A lot of 'em are happening in Ann Arbor, a few in Detroit, um, a ton in California as, you know, Silicon valley type stuff. Um, but you know, other states as well have, uh, markets in which venture capitalist type firms are equity firms or whatever you wanna call them are backing business, you know, ID, business models and putting their money behind you.

If you have a good track record and the right people. So maybe one day I'll do that. Or I could just join a startup, you know, and just bring the value that I have to that company and ride that wave for a little time. And, or as long as, you know, I can, I, I just really don't know where I'm gonna end up and I, I would love to, uh, you know, I, I wish I could.

I wish I had a crystal ball, you know, to tell you where I'm gonna be, but I don't know. 

[00:58:12] Mike Koelzer, Host: Let's say a few years from now, how much of your day do you want to be. With the end product. And let's say the end product now is actually working with someone who is addicted. Let's just say that for sake of discussion versus the background of talking to your army of social workers and so on that are gonna go out into the field.

Do you have a need or desire to do one or the other more? 

[00:58:40] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: I really enjoy, um, every once in a while, being able to engage with the final end consumer of whatever it is I'm gonna be selling, whether it's the patient in the pharmacy or somebody in a mental health field, if I'm, uh, you know, engaging with that client.

But I understand how time consuming it can be to care for each and every individual, right. Patient or client. And so I felt like, um, being, you know, kind of, um, When I had my pharmacy, what I enjoyed more was being able to see my staff kind of as an extension of myself, servicing more people than I could ever do single handedly.

Okay. So I always see the value of partnering up with, you know, either other partners or, you know, getting more staff to do what it is that you love to do. And you love to see yourself doing, and I find it just as rewarding to see the end result. Um, as I kind of help each individual client, I kind of sometimes feel like I'm doing it.

The field work and, and standing at the counter with the pharmacy. I can't do too much of that because that takes me away from planning and doing things to expand this service, whatever it is that I have, you know, let's say 

[01:00:01] Mike Koelzer, Host: You think of something and before you know it, you find out that there's a hundred gods like you that are going to also do this.

And then there's 10 more Gatas that want to manage these hundred. And then finally you're at the end. Now you're like four or five levels removed. How far would you like to go back if you had these levels of GDAs that you could do? 

[01:00:28] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: That's a good question. And I, I. I, you know, just like you, you were removed from that.

I always did get the customer complaints. Because I didn't have that many levels. It was the staff pharmacist, the technician, the customer. And so complaints would go through from the customer to the tech, to the pharmacist then to me 

[01:00:46] Mike Koelzer, Host: the last three years. And now I've actually downsized because of the tough market.

So I'm back, I'm a month ago I'd be doing this and you'd be seeing my black lab coming through the room and stuff on my back wall. So I'm in the pharmacy now in my office at the pharmacy. So I'm backed, but I enjoyed having that level that you never had of one 

[01:01:07] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: more level. Yes. I never had that. And I think I like to be able to understand where the customers are, if they do complain, because then you can really identify your weak points.

You know, so if I can say, well, this person is complaining about this. There must be something that's missing or something that we're not doing that I can fix. You know? So every complaint is because there's something missing as a 

[01:01:32] Mike Koelzer, Host: single pharmacy. I was too far removed. I was probably a little burned out, but I was too far removed because I do better, I think our pharmacy potentially becomes better with me here.

More. Doing it. So I'm not saying my way was a good way, but it was just a refreshing little break. 

[01:01:49] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: Everyone loves to walk into the pharmacy and see the owner standing right there, whether or not you're wearing a lab coat or you're just in your sneakers and jeans and you can, um, talk to your customers or your patients.

And most of the time, they're your neighbors. Everybody just loves that level of engagement with their pharmacist. For those people who have the luxury of an independent pharmacist that they know, right. You know, that owns the store. So, and then, you know, sometimes you see them at a baseball game or a basketball game, and then they can tell you what's going on.

So when people know you, it's, I feel like it's a it's great 

[01:02:23] Mike Koelzer, Host: five years from now. What would you like to be doing? What a typical day looks like in five years, business wise. 

[01:02:29] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: It would start the night before I would go to bed like 9, 9 30, get up at like maybe five o'clock workout, have a nice breakfast, um, you know, be able to have some center centering time, right in the morning.

Mm-hmm , um, have quality time with my family and then go off to my job at a decent time, not opening a pharmacy at 7:00 AM. Uh, or, but maybe going into an office at like eight 30 or nine. How many people would 

[01:02:54] Mike Koelzer, Host: you like to see in that office? Like nobody because you're grumpy or like 10 people, because you wanna say hi or like hundreds 

[01:03:02] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: of people.

I'm a very social person. I'm like a social butterfly. So I would love to walk in the office and have it bustling with activity. And so I don't wanna be the first one in how many people I'm very comfortable with, like, uh, if I were the manager or owner, whatever it is. I'd like to see, uh, 20 or more people, you know?

Cause 

[01:03:23] Mike Koelzer, Host: if you get enough, that's almost better. Cause there's so many people that you can choose to interact, but you don't really have to, it's not like three 

[01:03:29] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: people there. Yes, definitely. Absolutely. So yeah, I'd love to be able to interact with people, um, and know that we're all doing. We're all on the same path.

We have this mission of helping people 

[01:03:42] Mike Koelzer, Host: sitting at your desk then or sitting in meetings or what 

[01:03:45] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: I hate sitting in long meetings. Uh, like two hours is definitely too long of a meeting for me, but I, I love to be active and, and going around. I mean, um, because I'm like such a social person. I love meeting new people.

It just kind of thrills me to meet somebody new and kind of, um, pick their brain and see how we can work together. I just totally enjoy that. 

[01:04:09] Mike Koelzer, Host: Would you do that, leaving your building or having people come in or a mixture of 

[01:04:13] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: both? Probably both. I was doing a lot of that. When I had my pharmacy, I was doing a lot of going out and meeting people at events and then soliciting business and maybe somebody would come to the pharmacy or I would go to their office or whatever.

So I really enjoy that part of the business, you know, going out and seeing new places and new offices, getting new ideas and just all these different things. And then ultimately, you know, in five years from now. I would just really like to be striving towards a better future for people and having something that had already materialized like, um, a model that we all know that works, that we're developing.

Yeah. And we're improving upon, you know, um, One of the things when I sold my store, uh, right. AF right before, uh, when I sold the store, I was working on a model that would allow pharmacists to, you know, provide the same type of, um, treatment to PA people who are addicted that I was doing in my store, but I couldn't recruit enough pharmacies.

You know, we tried working with a local chain, um, down here in Detroit, um, and it just, uh, didn't make financial sense at the time. Um, but I can definitely see, and my time opens up. Why couldn't I work with one of these, uh, local or national, uh, pharmacy groups, like the, uh, CS P E N something like that. I'm not saying exactly what they are, but they're great.

It was something like that where you're providing value. You're allowing the pharmacist to do something in their store that they were previously not doing. Um, and educating people on, Hey, you know, this is something that you could do, you know, whether, and I kind of always dreamed, like maybe I could start something where I help pharmacists learn how to help themselves.

You know, in their own store. Uh, you know, and if it's not that then, um, working in a, in a place that's centered around, um, getting either healthcare facilities, uh, to be able to treat addiction patients better or working directly with patients of addiction. But I don't know, like if you're say, you know, you're one company and you're, you're a brick and mortar place or, or a telehealth thing.

Yeah. Which is so popular now. And you're working directly with clients. I think the impact would be smaller than being like a consulting service where you can work with maybe a, uh, hospitals, like maybe 10 hospitals and then teach them how to do it. And then can you just imagine how many lives you're gonna be touching that way?

So that brings a lot of, uh, satisfaction. There's a sweet 

[01:06:36] Mike Koelzer, Host: point. And I probably different for every person from what they think that sweet point is. We were talking about direct connection versus being layers and layers up. And probably everybody has been given gifts and talents and desires, I guess, to be at, at certain levels.

Gotta right now, if you were. 18 a high school graduate in the year 20, 20 path. Would you go down? Would you go to college? And if you did, what degree would you see? 

[01:07:06] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: This is so funny, cuz my son is turning 18 and I'm trying not to push him in Eddie's which way cuz I want him to make his own decision, but being the person that I am, uh, and now finally understanding like the type of person that I am and what really brings me joy.

I think I would go into business, but I would wanna ground myself and my knowledge, if I was still 18 with that young brain that could soak everything up, I would really wanna ground myself with a very solid science, um, uh, degree, like maybe engineering or you know, pharmacy is pretty solid. Um, but some, something like that.

The thing 

[01:07:43] Mike Koelzer, Host: about pharmacy right now, it's so damn long because yeah, you know, it used to be, you could go to pharmacy back in my dad's day and even my day you could go five and then me too. Yeah, that's what I did. You know, be an accountant or something after that, you know, some masters or something like that.

But now it's quite a commitment, cuz I don't know exactly, but it's 6, 6, 7, 8 years now. And it's not really practical to say, you're gonna do this and then get that secondary degree. But would you say something like get a four year engineering degree and then get an MBA? 

[01:08:15] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: Something like that. So I just talk to my kids and this is what I do.

Kind of tell my kids, um, get a solid degree in something like engineering or, or physics or uh, computer science or something like that. Um, and then get some experience before you go for the MBA. Don't have any official business schooling yet. Um, I mean, I wouldn't mind if they took an introductory course like accounting class and some business classes.

But not 

[01:08:44] Mike Koelzer, Host: like a dual major or a dual, anything you'd wait. 

[01:08:46] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: Yeah, I wouldn't because I want them to cuz you know, as you grow older, I'm not that old yet, Mike, but I concepts are harder to grasp. Like I tried to learn the piano after I sold the pharmacy and oh boy, that was really rough . So I want them to really anchor themselves with something, uh, something very difficult because learning that, and as you're older is really hard and you know, who really that sunk in when I heard the lady who was the CEO of Coca-Cola, she said that and um, I was like, yeah, she's a hundred percent right with that, you know?

Cause I don't wanna take credit for that, that idea, but that's why I got that from her because I tried to learn things as an adult. Like if piano, for example, and it was just so hard. Yeah, that's what I would tell my kids right now. And that's what I do tell them. And, and my son does want to do business.

He did get into a top 10 business school, but I told him, you know, you have to get another degree. That's like a science, like either a computer science or some kind of science degree, so that you can use your business knowledge in a way that's kind of unique. There's gonna be a million, you know, business graduates and you gotta set yourself 

[01:10:00] Mike Koelzer, Host: apart.

I've always thought that years ago, I decided not to get a business degree. Cause it's like, I don't want to get out and sell X, whatever X might be. And no picture X is being something you don't think is very exciting and that don't, you don't really have any connection with, but I thought if you could do something like that, that you enjoy, whether it's engineering or biology or something, you could even go into, you know, business in that regard.

Well, 

[01:10:25] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: lemme tell you something that I learned, um, after I sold my pharmacy, uh, I talked to, um, I took that business class at Wharton. Yeah. And I wanna tell you, they talked, you know, there were all these different modules on, uh, negotiating, for example. Yeah. And an accounting module, all about finances and all that stuff.

But the module that we had on, uh, leadership was the most valuable one to me because it was taught by this guy who was a former army. Uh, I can't remember what he did in the army. Maybe he was in the Navy, but he was extremely disciplined. And, uh, when he came and started lecturing us, he told us about, uh, knowing thyself know thyself, you know, he said the biggest challenge that he faces when working with CEOs of big companies is that they don't know what they're good at and what they're not good at.

They just don't know themselves well enough. And so I took it upon myself to really learn about myself and I did some. Personality tests to understand where do I Excel? Yeah. You know? Right. And I worked with a coach for some time, uh, just for a very short time to understand, she told me work on your strengths.

Don't work. Don't worry about what you're not that good at. Yeah. But try to really build up your strengths. And the other thing I wanted to mention about getting a business degree, um, when I was at Michigan, the Michigan pharmacist association, the ACE convention, a couple years back, Gary came up to me and he said, Gary Cadillac, okay.

The guy whose grandpa was the original owner of the park. Pharmacy comes up to me and he says, so you are the lady with the park pharmacy in Grosse pointe. And you know, that was my grandpa's store. So he and I eventually got together. Um, and we met a couple times and he told me one of the most valuable things that he did was go get an MBA after he sold his pharmacy.

I was like, really, like, how did that help you? He said, you know, he went and got it, he didn't spend a whole ton of money. He went to Eastern Michigan or something and did it at a satellite campus in Rochester or Troy. And he said, it just kind of gave him a different, um, insight. Like we're in this pharmacy world.

And all we see is pharmacy. Then he learned some concepts that they use in the automotive world. Yeah. That could apply to business in the pharmacy world. And he said, there's so much more out there that we could try. And it really served him well, because he ended up, you know, he was in the hospice world and then he moved over and came back to Michigan and, uh, did some things with a diplomat before he retired.

Yeah. Um, yeah, but I really admired what he said, like learning from other industries. So I'm not gonna roll that out for myself. I would love to get an MBA or so. You know, to continue my knowledge, I'm a lifelong learner. And that's, that kind of explains why I went to like 18 different cities going to all these different conferences in 2018.

Right. Because I love learning new things. Yeah. And, your podcast is awesome. I'm learning so much from all these different really cool people. People that you're bringing on, I was watching 

[01:13:28] Mike Koelzer, Host: YouTube something or other, but it was talking about creativity. And it was saying that being creative has a lot to do with seeing things being used somewhere else.

And then using it for your benefit. I'm always thinking of it as a new song or a new poem or a brand new invention, but they were seeing creativity as so much about seeing that this is being done in this industry. And it could be being done in that industry. Exactly. God, a pleasure talking 

[01:13:56] Ghada Abdallah, Pharmacist: to you. Thanks Mike.

It was a pleasure talking with you and I really enjoy your show. Thank you. Absolutely. My pleasure. Have a great day. 

[01:14:02] Mike Koelzer, Host: Thank you. You too. Bye-bye mm-hmm .