Mixing Medicine and Media for a New Movement | Phil Cowley, "Phil's My Pharmacist"

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

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

Phil Cowley: my name's Philip Cowley and in 2001 I started a pharmacy up here in Logan, Utah, Cache Valley Pharmacy. I have four boys. I work way too many hours inside the pharmacy. I've struggled. I've given up a whole ton of stuff, and so in 2021 we were on the down slope. it was on its way out, and I was doing everything right.

We'd never done more prescriptions. I had never been more successful from every precursor before, but 2001. I decided it was time to do something different or else I'd have to close the door. So I started on

Instagram And TikTok I now have 1.5 million on TikTok. I have 400,000 on Instagram, 12,000

 On YouTube, and it just kind of

exploded. And the whole goal was to just keep my store afloat.

And then it created its own

monster. 

I was doing 12,000

prescriptions a month and because of reimbursements, you would lose money on more of 'em than you'd gain.

And so I decided I had to do something that was different. and so I started on Instagram. I had had zero social media presence in 20 zero, And then 20, 21, I just went on.

 I'm just me.

I just say what I want and it's okay.

I'm from the nineties. So in the nineties you would fight with your friend and you're like, Ford's better than Chevy. And then you'd be best friends when you walked away. Something happened between then and now. Now you

can't disagree or like if you have one thing you disagree on with your enemies.

But I came from a time where you say what You mean and it's okay when somebody says

something different back to you and then you talk and you're better. So, all I do is go

on and realistically do and say, what I would do and say

for my customers. 

It's 

actually been one of the best things that happened in my life because I'm able to help so many people.

Mike: Well, Phil, we hold a

a couple things in common. I'm a pharmacy owner too.

In couple

years ago, I was gonna

go under and I said, I've gotta do something. My change 

Mike Koelzer, Host: was, I got 

Mike: rid of all the brand name prescriptions. was either that or

closed the doors, and I've been doing social media a long time. So we have that in common.

The other

The thing we have in common is I've been figuratively kissing the ass of the PBMs and their contracts for all these years. And so when I started this show, it's like, I'm gonna say what's on my mind. I'd steer away from some things, but basically in the world of pharmacy business, I'm gonna say what's on my mind, but why else wouldn't I after you've been pushed down all those years,

Phil Cowley: So I have an onsite audit tomorrow from one of the

PBMs, so I might. Not just figuratively, but like literally kiss somebody's

ass tomorrow to keep going. and then I'm gonna look at it there. They'll audit me

on insulin and they'll audit me on lifesaving drugs. They

won't look at, they won't look at one thing that they should look at.

They'll

there are no C2 s on there. There'll be

no oxycodone. They don't

care. They'll come in, they'll

dig through it. My last audit,

I, cuz I ha I, since I've started this

and I don't I'm not trying to be paranoid. Since I've started this, I have been audited by the big three, onsite by

two of them. Every

single one of 'em audited me and the 

state's been in, so I'm not trying to be paranoid,

but it's not, it's been a real craptastic

year.

So anyway, that they're here tomorrow

and I hit a point where there was no way to make

money through the PBMs. 

Like It's not sustainable. 

Mike: Phil, I want the listeners to appreciate your

numbers. The average pharmacy either doesn't do

social media or

has 300 followers because of customers. Your biggest number, TikTok 1.5

million. I mean, that is like way out 

there 

Phil Cowley: yeah. So,

yeah. Well, and in the

Instagram's even harder to grow on, so the 400,000

Mike: because it's more saturated already.

Phil Cowley: It's just people grow slower. So on TikTok, if somebody follows you, it

doesn't mean you'll see their stuff. So people follow really rapidly

on TikTok, on Instagram, it goes to your feed.

In order to grow on Instagram, you have to have a higher level of engagement. Engagement is the number, so you can have 300 people and have the engagement

to win. It doesn't take this many, but most pharmacies engage really poorly. With the way

that they do things and engagement is how you win.

 Engagement is people saying, I'm gonna watch your stuff.

And so yeah, the closest

I have, look, there's a guy out there that has 700,000 on TikTok, another pharmacist, and there's a couple of Instagram ones that are a hundred thousand, 150,000. There's a few that are a little bit bigger, but we kind of took off out of nowhere. In a year and a half.

Mike: A friend of my daughter's, Hannah Malo. She's an influencer. She had about a million followers on Instagram a few years ago. I looked at her on TikTok. She's right about where you are. 1.4. This came from somebody who had a million followers on Instagram, goes over to TikTok, has 1.5, and you're at 1.5 from zero.

Phil Cowley: And the engaged accounts. So [00:05:00] right now I average about 3 million accounts engaging me

on Instagram. So having followers versus engagement in a different animal. And we've been really lucky that we have that level of engagement.

And so it's

actually really big. It's super weird when I

go places because people will like to peek around the corner at you and you know what they're doing, but.

When I

shoot stuff, I'm alone. So it's not

Mike: You are,

you're alone.

Phil Cowley: And so what they see and they're like, oh, what's it like to be famous? You're like, well, I don't know really what you're talking about, cuz everything I

When it's quiet, nobody else is in the pharmacy. you don't have a

crowd. and so it's really, it's a

weird, it's a weird, we went to, to, Montana last year and we were at

A theme park. and this guy comes walking across with one of my shirts right in front of

my kids, and they 

were so beside themselves.

he stops and

he's like, are you really? I'm like, I'm a pharmacist. I'm

used to

hiding no behind the bench and being nothing and nobody

Mike: See, Phil, I'm the opposite. See, I do the podcast and

podcasts. There's really no way to find out

how many listeners other podcasts

have, virtually no

way and so I get to pretend around my house, like I'm famous and I might have a couple listeners.

So we're opposite. Phil, you do this alone at night. I noticed one artistic change you are doing is a lot of more jump cuts, right? Versus earlier. And are you actually going up and touching your finger on these or are you editing some other way?

Phil Cowley: Cap cut the 

app. 

It makes It 

It's really easy. So I do all my own editing, but I use all cap cuts. I do a lot of jump cuts and speedups. 

Mike: But you're filming just as one and then you cut all that stuff later.

Phil Cowley: Right. So this week's Prime week, so during Prime Week for Amazon Prime, you put a ton of content out. And so yesterday I started cutting at seven o'clock in the morning,

and then I took a break for an hour and went for a run, went to church for an hour and a

half, and then I came back and I cut till nine o'clock at night.

Mike: Wow.

Besides your

time where you're just thinking about this and So on, if you got paid, you know I'm saying figuratively, you got paid by the hour, how much time

would you be spending on this portion of your life

now? 

Phil Cowley: I'm over 40 hours a week now.

Mike: 40 for this, plus your time in the

pharmacy.

Phil Cowley: Okay, so you're a pharmacy owner, so this isn't gonna sound like a sob story. This is gonna sound like

reality. So you wake up in the morning, you come in,

and of course you've got your people lined out the door no matter what time you come in for the first, and then you run through the day.

It's hectic. You're trying to deal with the insurance. And then at six o'clock,

because I've had all day to,

to receive questions from my

patients to think about it. Like people come in and say, Hey, this is going on, what would you do?

And then that night I'll shoot and I

shoot. I used to shoot like

scripted and have it all ready to

1. Now I just go grab crap and I'm like, okay, just be you. And then I'll shoot

like a seven to 15 minute video and probably two or three. And then I'll go home, eat dinner, cut the videos,

and then I do have somebody that helps me with the

management of answering and finding that, like I have somebody does that part, but the actual videos are on me.

And then Allie does all the monetization stuff.

and so I'll be up till now. Oh, I don't know, nine,

10 o'clock, and then I'll get up in the morning and do it again. And then if I have days off, I spend six, eight hours working on it. So I betcha between 30 and 40 hours now,

Mike: Wow.

Phil Cowley: But I did hire another pharmacist, so I'm hoping to cut back at the pharmacy, but it hasn't, you know how that goes.

He hoped. 

Mike: If you had to, if this wasn't a labor of love, what's the least

amount of time You could do 

Phil Cowley: Two hours. Well, and the other thing is, 

I have a bigger goal in mind. I think that pharmacies in general are on an

island and we all think we have to

hide from each other because we're like crabs in a pot. Like if you find something that makes money, you're worried the guy down the street's gonna

 I'm a big fan of the game. Theory of Economics. And I think that if you are able to get all the pharmacists behind

one person, whoever it is, the PBMs

don't need to have this power. We do it to ourselves because we pick And pick. If I didn't

have that goal, see if this has legs. And that's really the way I

keep saying it because I'm old enough to know that there was a time when white

snake was super cool and now

they're 

Mike: Yeah. 

Phil Cowley: Because things fade in and out so fast.

 There's a fill out there, there's a mic out there that

is 28 years old whose kids are really little, who's never at home,

who fills alone. We shouldn't be

alone anymore. We should fight. And so if I didn't have the goal to get us all

together and push, I could probably do it in two hours and put out

two posts a week and I would do fine.

But I put out seven days a week I put out, and

sometimes I

put out more because I'm trying to see if the momentum will keep going. But you 

could do it in two

hours. 

Mike: Alright. Devil's advocate, Phil.

Most of your audience is non

pharmacists, consumers. 

Phil Cowley: It's the TikTok

mob. 

Mike: and then how does that transfer [00:10:00] over

to the , other pharmacists 

let's say. 

Phil Cowley: I don't need to necessarily win over the Senator. I

need the senator's wife and daughter

to tell him to do something.

So the truth of the matter is that women from the age of 25 to 55 controls almost all the healthcare decision making.

There's so many people already who are very skilled in the pharmacy world, who are trying to

make legislation change, who are trying to

make combinations.

They're already doing that. For me to jump into that game at this point, that's

silly, but can get 200,000 moms behind me

and

That power is a new avenue.

It's, it brings attention in a

different way 

most people don't understand when we go to

legislators and say, we're not getting paid enough, they don't even, they're like, what do you even do?

But if they know,

that it creates a

positive image for pharmacy in general. And now I have a mob behind me

that doesn't wanna see pharmacy go away cuz they can see the value

of us.

Mike: Have you dipped into that at all? Anything as far

as the, what we're talking about here, or are you just

gearing up to maybe drop a few things

coming up? 

Phil Cowley: So I like to poke,

but not make it an

agenda. Because the thing about people are is if you create a

brand and that

The audience builds behind the brand, so you can influence people from a brand standpoint, but if you become your platform, people quit following you because now your brand is that platform. So you have to have, you have to have a nice even pill on what you do. People come to me because they want to come in and say, well, what's the difference between Tylenol, ibuprofen? What? What can I do for my allergies? But if I say, Hey, did you know that the PBMs made almost 5 billion worth of

profit last year? Now all of a sudden I say, wait, who did? And they're like,

yeah, the people who you pay for your insurance. And then I have to give 'em money back in a D I R fee. And they're like, what's a D I R

fee? You're educating people. So the legislators pay attention and it's a slow push because the mob doesn't move forward

very 

 But if we are already trying the other avenues

And Honestly, people, how hard people work

for legislative change and how little it really relates down to the pharmacy level has

It was disappointing. They work so hard

and then the PBMs just say, I don't care. They're, I'm gonna do what I want.

Like, you'll have

changes. So they can't come on, audits the way they do, and they do it anyway, and then they take it back and then they throw the real lawyers at you. 

So, 

I want the mob, I want the person who makes the HR decisions for the small companies to be listening 

to me. Then that HR person has real power,

way more power than us having one

senator who we've spent a ton of money on who may listen to

1. The, all the HR directors, all the small business owners, they all

have more power.

So I don't wanna come out and say, we should be doing this, or accepting that. Politically. Politically, I would love it if people never knew my political standings whatsoever, because that's not my brand.

But for me to say that it is wrong for a company to take federal

funds, choose their own

company And pay their own selves a higher amount. That's not a political statement, that is just a business fact. So for me to come out and say, this is my political

take on abortion. 

I don't have any desire because I'm not

skilled in that.

But if you wanna ask me about

pharmacy and the business of pharmacy, for me to be able to come out and say, okay, Phil, what do you think about this? That's

my range and I'm really happy with the lane I travel in. I don't need

to be in your lane or somebody

else's lane. 

Mike: As soon as you pick a platform, you're kind of requiring your listeners to say yes or no. 

Phil Cowley: It shortens your brand. Your brand is now just the people who agree with you or the people who hate you. 

Mike: years ago, like in Hollywood, I think part of the reason why stars became so famous and so on. Part of it's just because they were attractive to everybody, to all different sides. They kind of didn't say too much. And I'm really surprised how, myopicsome of these stars are because maybe they think the whole world is a certain persuasion, but it's like they drop off half of their viewers, it seems, and I guess it's worth it for 'em.

Phil Cowley: Some of 'em build their whole brand around controversy too, and I have no desire for that either. I, if I had my brand, if

people ask, what is my

brand? I'd like the whole world to be 1% kinder doesn't need to be a

a lot, just 1% kinder. If you had a PBM auditor and a pharmacist and we were both

1% kinder, everything would

be better if you had somebody who was wearing red with somebody who was wearing blue and they were 1% kinder.

I actually believe

we need to shove back towards the middle. 

Mike: Phil, pre-Instagram, Pretty TikTok And post Instagram TikTok or during this what emotions have changed for you? For me, I'll tell you, if I was in your position, I might

say, Hey, I'm kind of anxious about this pharmacy. It's volatile. It used to be [00:15:00] 20 years of volatility. Then it was two years, and it was

two weeks.

You didn't know where it was going. And I would

say, Hey, maybe some of my anxiety went

down because I'm expanding my business and different revenue streams and

Things Like, that. I don't know, maybe I'd be depressed

because, too many people noticing my

t-shirt, when I'm out in public. What emotional differences have you had now versus before,

if

any? 

Phil Cowley: So to be honest, cause I'm actually really upfront with this. Before 2021, you sacrifice as a

father and as an individual, as a pharmacy owner, you sacrifice and you

actually pace all of your self-worth because that's what you do.

You can't be much else than what your pharmacy is.

You're in there. 55. I've been on call from my

nursing homes for 21 years. So you know, you put it all in there And

you sacrifice time with your children on the

idea that you're creating a solid future form 'em, because that's what we were told

with 

pharmacy. We said it was solid and so I wouldn't go to their games.

We didn't go on a lot of

vacations. I was taking phone calls and

instead of them, and I told myself for

years that it would be worth

it because I grew up

poor. I remember being mad

because somebody else got the toy out of the brand name cereal because it wasn't gonna happen again for months. I remember duct tape on the

shoes.

It's okay. I mean, we all grew up, we had our

places and I didn't

want that for my kids and so I gave, I

have four boys

and I gave too much time to the pharmacy on the idea that I was creating something stable for him. And so when I watched my store, I put back into my store 200,000 plus because it was losing money so fast and I wasn't doing anything different, 

 My value was tied up in something.

I couldn't fix it was really hard. And I think that if you talk to a lot of people who've put in that much time, they always say men of a certain age. But I

actually just think it's people at that age where you've given up so much and you're like, okay, my values now

what?

The PBMs take everything from me. I get

audited, the states in my store four times as much as they are at the store down the street. You

I can't compete. And they take that from you and you think, okay, I wasted.

Thousands of hours I could have spent with my

children over this. And Now what is, who am I?

And your kids are growing up and they don't

need you as much. And so what this has done

more than anything else cuz you still struggle

with thoughts of self-worth.

Everybody struggles with them. Like if you're really honest, there's nothing weak about

struggling with thoughts of self-worth. And you try to do it

honestly and do it right, and you

try to show this morality of doing things and

being able to stare people in the eyes and

you watch everybody around you just doing it in ways to

make money.

And so it was bad

for a while. And I

actually started the social media

probably about the very

worst time of my life

because I realized that either I kept doing the same thing and I wouldn't be around for too many more years. Or I do something different. It wasn't like this, it was this groundbreaking, I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna show all this stuff.

It was, if I do the same the same thing will happen. And so I thought to myself,

 Let's do something different. I got invited

to a shoot by my neighbor because they needed, in his words, he needed somebody to fit my demographic for a workout video. And I said, so an old guy can still work out.

And he said,

yeah, that's it. And so I went there and I was there with some social media people and they're like, you totally should do this. Like you're easy with the camera. So, I paid them and we started and it was slow. We got to a thousand in August, so we started in July and by August we

were a thousand and we were seeing a little bit

Then it blew up.

and what I think now is that if I can

help, There's another guy then out there who needs to hear that there's hope, and that if I can spread hope and kindness, tell other pharmacy

and not just pharmacy, but anybody that the world's good.

 And then all of a sudden I was getting these messages from all over the world of people who said, when you talk about your insomnia, it made me feel better when you were honest and. About struggling with depression. Even though you work in a pharmacy, like there's no pill, it helps me.

When you said you hate taking your Lexapro, which I hate taking, it resonated and it allowed me to be something I'm not. And my kids, I embarrassed the trot out of 'em, but I think they're more proud of me now because they understand who I am better than before. 

I wanna make

people see that people are way more valuable than the things that they have currently on their plate. And I don't always feel that way, but I get to talk to people who do and I hate. I really hate what pharmacies become. There's no stability. And the only reason why we went this direction was for stability, because everything else about this

job is hard and horrible most Everybody yells at you

cuz they either can't poop or they need to

poop or they wanna poop. Like it's all day long and it's your fault that

the copay went up $5 and nobody has to

answer for it. and you give up everything. you give

up everything to try to

create security for your family and they pull it away from you and then you think, what good am I.

Mike: The problem with

pharmacy [00:20:00] is with those

damn d i r fees, it'd be one thing if you were

like running a shoe store or something like that, let's say you're running a shoe store and you're working

60 hours a week, and now your

shoe sales are going down, and maybe you're not needed. Maybe you're

I only needed 20 hours a week. Well, at least

you can feel that maybe you have more time to spend with your boys, or you say, ah, screw it. I'm gonna

take this weekend off instead of busting my ass here. The problem with the d i r stuff is pharmacists felt more and more like they were needed. it's busier, and

at the whole time it's being sucked out from under you. So talk about a wall tumbling down. It is terrible.

Phil Cowley: I a hundred percent agree with what you're saying. Don't you think the problem is systemically,

substantially larger than that? So we get rid of d

i r fees. Do you foresee five years from now the

PBMs, the pattern, not just the PBMs, but the whole

system?

Can you foresee we take A D I R fee out, we mandate something else. The system

is so broken.

Mike: one step to that, one of my

employees said, I'm so excited about all the laws coming through in Michigan in

2024. Everything against the di and that. and I said to him,

Don't hold your

breath. I think the value in what's happening in some

of these political fronts is that it's getting maybe simpler.

So maybe instead of people stealing from the pharmacy in

eight different ways with smoke and mirror, maybe it's down to three.

if that

happens, maybe the legislator that

lives in your area or something might

understand this over, lunch

versus. Weeks

and they're gonna roll their eyes

back and it's not

gonna make a dent in their understanding of it.

So,

no, I don't think this

Is going anywhere except maybe it's not so

obfuscated where people can see a little bit more clearly through it,

but they're just gonna see how they're getting

screwed instead of having the lights off. 

Phil Cowley: I think you and I are

on the same page there, because I

believe sometimes what'll happen is they're giving us the argument to be had.

If I was the PBMs, I would fight back and forth on the d i fee,

because who cares? I'm still making so much money.

on the fact that I get to set up my own contracts with my own people, however I want to

do it, and there's no accountability.

At some point, there will be a brave senator, a brave Congress member

who will say, this is it. And we are gonna fix this system. And when they do that, they will be able to start pointing at the fact of how many people get so much

money from manufacturers and PBMs, and the whole thing will come down crashing the way that the opiate did.

At some point, they'll start seeing

it, but I think that.

I don't know. I always get, I don't get super excited about one or two

little changes because it feels like they're throwing me a bone,

so I'll quit complaining. Where really if pharmacists were to come together, your retail, your chain, everybody would come together and say, we're done with

this.

There's plenty of money in this. I

i think that.

Real change will have to come before the mess is over. I think that

these, the rest of it's,

Sounds good. And I appreciate,

and people work So hard, like I don't ever want to take away from what

people have done for me cuz they work so hard for me.

But a d i r fee, they'll just find another way to take it from me. 

Mike: Yeah, 

they'll find another way.

Phil Cowley: they just match

charge you, and they, has anybody ever won a maca

appeal nobody's ever won

one once, so you appeal all you want. They

I don't care. And we can't sue 'em

together because it's in our contract that we can't even sue the

PBMs together. So even if we all came together and said, this is illegal.

We're already contracted. We can't even sue him as one group.

Mike: Phil, you're a better man than I am. If I had this kind of notoriety with Insta and TikTok, I would just take it and run. I must be selfish. Maybe I'm too pessimistic. I would just take it and run. and that's probably why you are where you are, because you have a deeper meaning to all

this. I guess I'm just superficial.

I would just walk around and hope people recognized me. I don't know

if I have the depth that you do.

Phil Cowley: My best

The day is when I'm all by myself in the desert.

We go to southern Utah. I go in the desert, I'll go on

a hike and there's nothing but sunshine and a little bit of

wind. It's quiet, it's

peaceful, and I know that

Everything's gonna be okay. When I got a big check, when this pharmacy's done well, I didn't feel better at that point.

It was, there was just more animosity. And when people like see you and they want stuff

from you, you don't feel better. It feels like there's more pressure on you, and then you have more check marks and more boxes to check, and you've gotta get 'em all on it. And then the intrusive thoughts

Rolls and rolls.

And then you think what's next and what's next? 

And I really look at it as the most peaceful place would be for all of us to be successful, which I know it

doesn't really work, but why wouldn't we at least

Try it? Like, it's funny, we're so sure it won't work, that we haven't even tried it.

And so I'm with you.

I understand that like, you sit

on the back porch and the wind blows, and the rain's

just barely rolling in and you're sitting there and you're truly happy in that moment

Mike: Yeah, 

Phil Cowley: because you're right there. 

Mike: It doesn't take much. 

Phil Cowley: [00:25:00] so screaming crowds and having people come in and take pictures and I mean, I appreciate 'em.

Like, I gotta be honest, I have full gratitude for anybody that follows me, especially those that don't completely agree with me. Because the people who will talk to you will see you as a person. Then you get to see them. But I mean, my end goal was to create security for my family.

And the only way I can do that is by allowing people to be them and me be me and all of us find our own way.

If I create a fight that just creates more intrusive thoughts, more work, more problems, and

so I don't know if it's necessarily that I've got depth, maybe I've just been beat up in the washing machine of life for so long . At 30, I would've been different. Almost 50. I'm thinking, okay, I have no desire to own 16 stores.

I don't wanna make 45 million a

year. I don't. But I would love to go on local TV and talk to 'em about the

importance of going to your local pharmacy and actually talk, even if it's a

chain store, talking to your pharmacist and finding out what they're worth. I would love

to do that,

because maybe I

helped younger Phil, wherever he's at,

Phil, seen and heard.

the end's gonna come for all of

1. And when it comes, I don't

think the amount of money you have will

count nearly as much as the good you put out in the world.

Mike: Or people recognizing you with your

t-shirt on? 

Phil Cowley: Doesn't matter at all,

Does it? But if somebody recognized you and

they said, I saw when he talked about making

sure would you take your antidepressants to talk to people cuz it's normal to fill this influx. And I talked to my brother and he talked and you're like, okay wait. I started a conversation that could help somebody.

You don't get to do that very often. Most of the good we do in this life is pretty short scene,

Mike: I had Alex Barker on the

show a

a couple times. He's with Happy Pharm d and two times he mentioned this, so I know

it's important to him, but he talked about pharmacists needing a hero and he, mentioned like a

comic book hero, whatever,

but it's something that other professions or industries maybe have it, but pharmacy, you don't really know where to look for that

leadership.

You were kind of alluding to that earlier. 

Phil Cowley: Yeah, I mean, we need it, so we need a voice. And we need a voice now because if we wait

too long, look at the French system. Look at most of the other systems in the world and the way our pharmacy

business is going, we're following other patterns to where we will not be seen, heard, or necessary.

You're dispensing, you can go to other countries, you can go up to a machine and put your prescription in and it pops it out for you without a person there. And I believe that if we

don't get a voice, if we don't have somebody who, when they, when there's something going on, you're like, well, you need to call this person and have 'em speak.

But you have to, we have to have

somebody who's not

associated. and that's the

trick. Like somebody who isn't getting paid by

a P H A or whoever. Cause we always

fight with ourselves so much. you

need somebody who just. Going out there to

do it, and to have a good

voice for pharmacy. and if we have it I would step behind someone like that in

a second and push this down the road without a problem. But we need that

Or I think that our industry's in huge trouble in the next seven

years. 

Mike: Can you think of another industry that

Has someone like that to compare that up to? 

Phil Cowley: Well, you look at doctors as the best. Look at how many doctors are

on tv, and each one of those doctors has a loud voice. So Dr. Oz, he's fine. I don't know him. I've never seen anything that I disagree with. Really. I understand that he's got some bonus points I don't have, but when Dr.

Oz goes on the Today Show and talks about something, people attach themselves to Dr. Oz and they think, okay, I like him. He's saying what I like, I want this to happen for that industry. We've never, I mean, the only person that's famous is a mass murderer, the only person that's been famous is a pharmacist.

The very first killer, and I can't think of his name right now, but everybody else is gonna remember it, but J Holmes HH Holmes is like the only famous pharmacist.

Mike: don't know about

him.

Phil Cowley: HH Holmes was a pharmacist in Chicago during the the world

fair. And they, he killed like 118 people He was the first serial killer of the United States.

He would burn 'em in his own crematorium.

He poisoned him, stabbed him. He did everything he didn't like. He just,

they would just, they'd come in and he'd,

and so, you had, you know him, we can come up with Pemberton, we can come up with a few others

that 

made like Coca-Cola. And then there's the pharmacists from Poland that saved all the Jewish people.

And that's about it, right? It's like you Wikipedia and there's, we have this huge history and we don't have anybody who's. There's a few congressmen. There's a few, I mean, there's some, but we've never had somebody who takes on the face of pharmacy because I think we just fight against each other too much. 

Mike: Let's say there was someone charismatic and they were from a bigger group.

Is it a necessary path that they're going to fight? Is that the nature of somebody who's representing an association? 

Phil Cowley: I don't think so. It depends on what you need. So like I started. What I'm doing because I felt like my [00:30:00] life, like what I did, my whole life was taken from me. And the first thing I thought of was that a thousand other people like me were doing the same thing as I was doing on that day. And I was sick to myself that somebody else was going through it alone, what I was going through.

And so when somebody asked me why I do it, I have 20 years of suffering. In the desert, that drives me forward. And so you could have somebody from an association who's charismatic and you could have, but you need to ask what put you in the position where you were willing to do what you started because your store was going under, right?

And

You saw your life, what you did being taken from you.

Mike: yes. More of the personal struggle that's how they ended up in that position then. 

Phil Cowley: Yeah. And I think that struggle is what makes it to where you push things forward in a way that's not easily bought, and you're not looking for very specific things. See, we have a lot of compounders who really love compounding. I've compounded for years, right?

But when they talk to people, it's just compounding. The idea that you make 32 cents on an amoxicillin doesn't really, that's not their problem. My thing is that the little mom who was getting the amoxicillin has no one to talk to anymore because we've changed pharmacies. She needs the amoxicillin.

Mom needs more help

Than our hormone ladies that are spending $300, $400 in hormones. They get plenty of attention. What we need is the little Medicaid mom. Or dad who's coming in with the eyedrops, who's scared and we don't have time for, they've ruined why I came into this.

Mike: So Phil, what you are doing in essence is instead of telling people, look to the pharmacist and pharmacists can do this and this

You are their pharmacist online in the sense that you are giving them the. The reason you're not telling them the reason, you're giving them the reason of the art of pharmacy that then gives them buy into you.

And when they're bought into you, they buy into not just the products they're looking at or the fixes, but they become a believer in a local pharmacist. You're doing that on a bigger scale. 

Phil Cowley: That's the plan. I mean, that's what I want out of it. And it didn't start out that way, but it started out wanting to save my little store and my little store's. Okay. And if I wanted to at this moment, if I wanted to, I would say, Hey, I need everybody to start sending their prescriptions to me. I would kill it.

I never said it because I don't want that. I want 'em to go to your store. I want 'em to go to the store around the corner. I want 'em to go to all the little stores and I want 'em to talk to their pharmacist. We're huge dorks. We are huge dorks, and sometimes we're a little awkward. But the truth is that if you talk to your pharmacist, every person's life would be better, and as soon as they realize that the idea that you're shipping off to.

Who knows where to save a little bit of money and have to come through the mail and never talk to anybody. That's a failure in my world. My world is that you want to see your pharmacist. You want to talk to your pharmacist. And so if I can show 'em what a pharmacist does, and then they walk into their pharmacy and they talk to their pharmacist, and next thing you know, instead of talking to me, they're talking to Jill.

And Jill now recognizes 'em when they come in. That's bigger success than it is for me to steal those prescriptions from Jill. I don't need to take her stuff. I don't need to take his stuff. I don't wanna do that at all because my goal was just to make my store to where I'm not losing money. My jar was never to get this so big, that retirement sounds terrible.

Being selfish and having money to buy a yacht, that sounds awful. I just like walking in the desert with a good pair of shoes in a backpack. I don't need that other stuff. So if I can make your store successful, When I have people call me from, cause I have pharmacists who call me and they call up and say, Hey, thank you for doing this, or How can I help you?

That means a ton to me because that pharmacist understands the value of the community. And our community's always been so fractured it just needs to stop. Like, I don't know how we decided that chains hate retail. Hates I, I never understood why we did that, because we all were in school together on the idea of helping people.

And then you walk out the door and now all of a sudden you're fighting with each other and it just doesn't, it's never made sense. Doctors don't really do that. We just do it. We're crabs in a pot and we're always ripping each other down.

It's gonna take us coming together and actually deciding that we all have value as pharmacists and that's more important than what is in the bank account. Cuz as soon as we decide we have value in pharmacists, then as pharmacists will say, you can't do that to me because I'm a pharmacist.

We are together. You're not doing that to any of us. The way that am looks at the way they protect even their worst members. What do we have? We have nothing. Like, they're just like, well, here, give us some money and we'll go get this thing done. And then there's another group that's doing this thing, and we don't reach out and take care of each other at all.

You and I, if we would've known each other [00:35:00] in 2015, you and I would've got along famously and we could have helped each other, but there's nothing that connects us. And I'm with you. I think that the future of pharmacy has two paths right now. If we choose the right one because we have value.

We'll be fine. And if we allow things to go the way we're going just naturally, which is fighting over percentages of percentages on d i r fees that they get to do whatever they want, we'll lose. Cause that's not the battle. The battle has to be. You're gonna fix all of this or else we're all gonna come after you.

Mike: Phil painted the picture to me of five years down the road and for some beautiful reason this did come together, a leader rose up and we were in the right direction. If you could write that story, I. What would that look like? Who rose up? How did the industries come together? How did somebody finally, instead of talking about unifying actually un unified, and basically, who was that? 

Phil Cowley: So most of your loudest voices in any industry are those that make the most money or have the best chance to make the most money. Most of your regular Joe's who work 50 hours a week don't do that. So the person that rises up would have to. Emulate the person that goes to work every day instead of right now, if you're compounding semaglutide, you're making so much money that you're gonna have tons of money to throw at the process and you're gonna fight over the fact that you get to do it cuz the shortage and your, and I have no problem with those guys.

Good for you. But I think the person that rises up will have to come in and make it so you don't have to play the stupid games to make money. 

Mike: When you say one person, is it symbolic of a group or is it one person? 

Phil Cowley: Well, I don't think what person can do it alone. I think you have to have somebody who's really good at the PBM side, there are people who spend their whole lives figuring that out. I couldn't do that part. You need somebody who's really good at working with the manufacturers and deciding how they're paying you and the idea that we clean up how we get paid.

Like the idea that you have an m AAC and then oh yeah, you have a W P, but then WP really isn't MA, because you have to have the idea that we have this system that nobody understands is crazy to me. So I think it would have to be a group, but it would need to be a group that doesn't feel like it will pay me your membership fees and then we'll get this all done for you.

It's gonna need to be more of a movement than necessarily a person

Mike: and I guess you already kind of answered that,

like the doctors, you've got Dr. Oz, you've got some other doctor shows, you have a surgeon. It might be something the person has to have some exposure to, but it might be a handful of movements. 

Phil Cowley: And you need to be able to get all of you to get together and when you disagree on something, rather than saying, well, You're wrong. You call up and say he's a pharmacist. He's not always right, but I'm behind him. She's a pharmacist and although I disagree with this part of him, I am never gonna tell you not to do it.

And once you get that movement of everybody moving together, like, oh, I don't work mail order, that's fantastic. What could, what, how do we get along? How do we push this down the road? I think that it's a movement in nature, it's just so.

Ingenious how the people who have the most power and money in pharmacy have plotted us against each other consistently. Like you take a pbm, they're like, okay, I'm gonna give the chain stores a little bit more money than I'm gonna give independent. And then they'll hate each other. And they won't hate me.

Mike: That's exactly right. 

Phil Cowley: They're so brilliant on how they do it. They're gonna take, they're like, okay, so we're gonna, we're gonna pick on this one and then we'll leave this one alone. Or the manufacturers will say, well, we'll give really great prices to the grocery stores and not to the others. So then they'll hate each other.

We haven't ever stopped for a second and said, you know what? Screw all of you, we're not doing this anymore. But I think that there's a movement. I do think you're gonna need a face or a couple of faces who are good. With being in front of the limelight.

And that's the problem. Most pharmacists, you know this, most pharmacists are fantastic people and horrible to have to watch, do anything cuz they're just so boring or they're just, they have to explain like seven. Like you can't just say there's, they're like a witch allergy medication and they'll be out there for like 45 minutes trying to give you the synopsis of the diff.

People don't want that. You need somebody who will come in and say, are you snotty? You have blood pressure issues. Do you take it in the morning or at night? Great. Take this one. Like you need somebody who could put it out there in a fun way. That's that, that you can say, he could go on in front of Congress and I would love to watch him talk cuz he's fun to, or she's fun to watch, talk and then have that person being fed by an army of pharmacists saying, we need to do this.

Here's all the stuff you need to do this. Then it would work because you need a face or two. Because people will never. Get behind the idea of a pharmacist, but they will get behind a person. Martin [00:40:00] Luther King was so brilliant as a speaker and such a fantastic man, and every way was perfect for what they needed, but there was probably somebody next to or around Martin Luther King who really did all the legwork.

He just was. Was willing to do and say what he needed to do and hit that was his role. And somebody else did the fact finding and the bus training support and then, and did the, and he was not in their war room saying, okay, we need a, he had a lot of people and that's gonna be what it takes. You're gonna need to, I'm full on jumping behind somebody else.

If somebody wants to do it, I'm there. But, 

Mike: jumping behind you. 

Phil Cowley: Well, I don't really want to, like, I don't, yeah, I've never really liked the limelight. That's why I hid in the pharmacy for 21 years without doing anything. If I hadn't, if I hadn't lost my store, I'd still, you know, as well as I do, the worst thing you can do is be known as a pharmacist because then you have audits and you have state, and you have everybody else.

Your best thing to do is to write under the radar. Like It's too late now. I had 1.5 million. It's too late.

Mike: Here's the only thing. If you're in something with some kind of a broadcast, either the podcast or your thing, one of the benefits of that is because people are hearing you. And this might be in my mind, but because people are hearing you, those that want to attack you might hold back a bit because they know what you're gonna be talking about the next time that you're on your show or your next spot you're putting out. 

Phil Cowley: I do think that there's, there is that component of, like I said, okay, so most of my followers, they're, I call 'em my mama Bears because almost all of them are moms with kids and there is nobody scarier than a mama bear. 

Mike: Oh yeah, 

of course. 

Phil Cowley: I have, I've actually gone on multiple times with people cuz I have people who disagree with me and they're, and they have full right to what they disagree with.

And I have a right to what I have. And I've had 'em attack those people. And I, every single time tell 'em, don't do this. Just leave 'em alone. Don't do this, don't do this because, but if I were to let 'em loose, I don't have to say a thing. You'll have 40,000 messages on your way in a heartbeat. 

Mike: Yeah, that's like Loretta Boing. I've had her on, she's with the safe medicines And so,

1. She has a challenging, disabled child. And boy she gets people marching forward because it's the same mama bear crowd. 

Phil Cowley: It doesn't take much. 

Mike: It doesn't take much. 

Phil Cowley: No, and it's because they care. Because at some point you said or did something and they have now attached themselves to you and it's super awkward when you meet 'em because they know you, you don't know them like they really know you. And so they'll.

They'll come up and they're like, they're totally attached to you. And you're like, It's actually really nice cuz that's why I believe more in people now than I did two years ago. I used to think people were mostly bad and I don't think that anymore. I thought they were bad.

And then the more that I got out there, I realized most people are just worried. And defensive. And anxious and everything else. And so once you, once they feel like they know you, their people are so much nicer than they were before. 

Phil Cowley: I do think that there needs to be a movement, and I do think that as pharmacists we need to start looking to. Someone to push it forward. If there's a legislator that's pushing it forward, if there's a, it doesn't matter and that person needs to have the idea. How do I help all pharmacists behind 'em and no more having the national chain store one and then the national independent one, and then no more about at all.

The idea is no one should ever check a prescription and not get at least $5. That's stupid where somebody's gonna get hurt. You should pay more for your prescription than you do for your coffee. Sorry. 

Mike: One of the problems I have with these marches and national movements for whatever the reason is, I don't think some of these groups, if you ask them, define success, I don't think some of them want to define success because then things stop, the marches stop and all that kind of stuff. 

Phil Cowley: We should have prescribing rights at the same level as, As NPS and PAs, with the exception that we don't do the original diagnosing period after it's been originally diagnosed, that you have blood pressure issues, pharmacists should be prescribing. It would actually fix the whole system because if you have high cholesterol, the idea that you have to go see someone and you're not gonna take it until you do see 'em, and then when they do it, if you have high cholesterol, you should get your cholesterol medications continually if you have insulin.

There is no reason that a diabetic ever has to go in except for when they need something fixed, something's wrong. They need to get their A1C too, to have a barrier to care that can be fixed by a pharmacist that we don't have is ridiculous to me. We can't diagnose, we don't get, we don't get paid for diagnosis.

We don't need to diagnose or prescribe. Those are two different animals. The idea that somebody's been on Lisinopril for five years and you and I have to decide, Whether or not we lend them some pills is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. So we should be prescribing after primary diagnosis. There should be no prescription that goes out of any place without at least a $5 dispensing fee on it.

And that should be, you cannot cut that outta the cost of goods. You should make $5 per prescription, [00:45:00] $5 per prescription. You and I, we could take care of our people forever with $5 per 

Mike: And it's gotta be called a professional fear. Something. We don't want the 

Phil Cowley: Right, 

Mike: it into the product because that takes away the value of it,

Phil Cowley: It needs to be flat out. You do the game you want to with the other one, you get $5 per prescription, and that would then pay for us to do all of the stuff they want us to do already. The idea that you're having to pay a secondary fee. So then I'll go through the MTM and then that's stupid. Pay me $5 per prescription.

I'll do it just so I can get it all lined up. Give me some time with my patients. It's not like we want to check prescriptions straight through without looking up off the screen for 15 hours a day. Nobody wanted that. You wanted to go talk to patients. So for me, those are the two goals. If you ask me the two goals, those two, and then clarity on all the money that's going into the, because you're receiving federal funds, anybody who wants to at any time should be able to look at Caremark and say, where did that money go?

Express Scripts, where did that money go? Because you're receiving federal funds. That should be. Complete clarity of where that money is. So I'd want clarity, dispensing fee, prescribing rights.

Mike: And those challenges you put forth about the clarity, would that be common in other industries? 

Phil Cowley: In other industries, It's becoming more and more clear of where and who's getting much money and how much because they would never give a hospital system. A blank check the way they did the PBMs, he would say, okay, here's your money. Medicare is never gonna say, here's all of your money.

Here you go. And I know that people are gonna say that there's the organiz, these accountable care organizations, and there's, I get that, but that's a different animal cuz they have to take care of the patient from beginning all the way to end. And, but I actually think that even in those cases, you can call up.

United Healthcare and say we want everything and they have to be able to produce where the money is and how can you find fraud, waste, and abuse if you don't have that clear to everybody. The way that people. Bring in garbage bags 

of medications and drop 'em on her counter.

This is the issue 

Mike: Phil, a little bit about monetization, who did you mention? Does your monetization I 

Phil Cowley: Allie, she just came into my store one day and asked for help for one of her kids, and I hadn't figured out how to monetize at all until December. Honestly, I had a couple of brand deals, which justified some of the hours I put into it, and so, I had one and they needed me to do this thing called whitelisting, which is giving them a code so then they can put it out on their own format.

And I couldn't do it. And she just came in asking me a question. I'm like, and I'd never asked anybody before. I said, do you know how to whitelist? And she said, yeah, here. And she took my phone and it was like four steps and boom, it was whitelisted. Turns out that before she had her second child, she was working doing this stuff.

And as a helper, For a group, she was working towards her graphic arts degree and everything else, and so she started helping me monetize and figuring out the ropes on monetization. And the money that's in social media is so much easier than it is in pharmacy. Like, I could quit today and I would be fine.

I, I, if I'm being honest, I could be way better than fine if I quit 

Mike: As far as your pharmacy, has the social done anything as far as your bottom line in the 

pharmacy? 

Phil Cowley: We're up 20%. 

Mike: Because of this, obviously. 

Phil Cowley: Yeah, because it's easy for me, like when people come in now, it's a, it's an easier sell because they're already attached to the brand. 

 Local people, they know I'm here. They know who I am. It reminded people to come back in. It also gave me some latitude in nature because people knew I was struggling.

For me to be able to say, I can't charge you the good RX price on this, I'm losing money. People are more accepting of that now. Now that they understand how close it was for me going under,

Mike: And that you've shared with them through your posts? 

Phil Cowley: I have, I've told them flat out that there's just, the good Rx. Mentality, which I'm not against. I actually really love the idea of being aware of what you should pay when you walk in. Cuz you and I both know this, like there's times where you're like, You paid how much at that store? I, that's crazy.

But then there's the other side to what you're losing money on the other. So I like the education part of that. So don't, I'm not against GoodRx, but it gives me latitude cuz I'm now feeling very, I just, I'm really honest with people saying, I'd love your business but I can't do it for less than this.

And it's easier, people take it easier now cuz they're attached to the brand. I believe '

Mike: in pharmacy, you can get 20% bigger and you can do 20% more and be further in a hole if you're not doing the 

Phil Cowley: right.

Mike: mix and so on. 

Phil Cowley: We also got some help on getting into a different buying group that has a little more power that's helped me. My P S A O is substantially better because this gave attention and other pharmacists reached out and said, okay, what PSAO are you using? And that helped a ton because I didn't understand that running a store and trying to just keep the prescriptions going is one thing.

And then to do all the business stuff is another. And to have one store and do it is really hard. So 20% for the [00:50:00] store itself, we're probably up 15 to 20% depending on the month. And a lot of it has to do with key people contacting me and me making changes within the business and me being able to be more honest with the people that come in saying, I can't do that for you anymore.

You have to pay a little bit more.

Mike: In general, a social media influencer, let's say if I may say that. 

Phil Cowley: Yeah, 

Unfortunately, that's where we're at. I 

I don't know if I like it or not, but that is where we're at. 

Mike: in, general, a social media influencer has a few ways you can do

affiliate marketing you can do, in the shoot advertising, like how you see Coke in a movie scene, something like that. So you can do ad placement verbally, but in ad placement, you can also have someone sponsor you . What's the breakdown right now, Phil?

As far as the revenue coming in for the show.

Phil Cowley: I don't take sponsored deals really very often anymore. I stick with the affiliate, but that has more to do with the type of brand that I've built.

Mike: Sure.

Phil Cowley: sponsored posts, you get the money no matter what. Yeah, I have an agent. The agent talks to 'em. They say it's this much per ad, you have to put it on there no matter what.

Mike: And how does that go in the ad? 

Phil Cowley: So most of the time I will present a product. I usually present why you have a product and I present the product as being an option. And then you have to have, you have to put that it is an ad at the back and someplace you have to hashtag it. I've been starting to put it in the corners of a lot of my ads too, just so people know that this is sponsored.

a lot of times we'll still announce it, but as an affiliate, what happens is, I'll say, So and so product is great, and if you use my code, you get extra money. And then when they click on it, they use your code, then you get a percent of sales. Or if you say, I actually found that I can talk about products and just say my link for Amazon's in here, and then Amazon pays you a percentage of everything that goes through, so, so there's, that's the affiliate.

I really like the affiliate because I really feel like if I don't earn it today, I don't want it. I don't want an ad that makes me feel bad as an individual. I've owned a business. If I do good, I should get good. If I do bad, then I shouldn't. It's fine. Like it's the way I see it, 

Mike: You're not over promising. You're not going to these companies and say, Hey, advertise on my show, and then all of a sudden they advertise and nothing happens, and now there's a different look on you and all that stuff.

Phil Cowley: right? And then you have to be arrogant. You have to be arrogant in your approach to the brands if you do that, and I'm arrogant about certain things, but this is not one of 'em. , 

You can also own your own store. So there for a while we were trying to push product from my store so I could ship it nationally, and I just decided that. Keeping those two things separate would be wise. And it wasn't really the goal, like the idea, I liked the people that came in so we didn't do it.

So you can also bring your own brand, your own product, out to market and you can launch it. And that's where people make huge amounts of money by launching their own product. I would much rather, there's a guy up in Montana that makes his own beard oil and I keep on trying to figure out how to get him to put that on Amazon so I can help that pharmacist sell his B beard oil.

 And then you could come up with whatever you're doing. The idea of coming all together and then making a co-op where we just shout out at each other all the time is really where I wanna be at. But I, I need to get out at like, you can't work 90 hours and think you're gonna run that And then you get paid for, , for creator's fees. So like, because I get enough views, there's a couple thousand dollars a month in creator fees, , but affiliate money, like that's where my money, my money comes from. Affiliate money. It's from people clicking on links.

Mike: When you say your own store, do you mean setting up some kind of a Shopify thing or something, or even more deluxe in that, like a real business?

Phil Cowley: So there's a, there's a gentleman and in California who does this thing called, um, drugstore to doorstep. And so and so he is, we haven't started it like I'm pushing down the road, but I just don't, I honestly don't have time. I know everybody. I really just don't have time. But the idea is, is that you have access through your wholesaler too.

Every product that they sell online. And so what would happen is they could click on yours and it would auto load it in there, and then you could click on it, put it in there, and then either we would deliver it locally or you can, it's O T C, so you can mail it like it's not controlled. So it would create this whole revenue pattern of creating that.

But I'm just trying to figure out how I can, I would like to do that for my patients, but I really don't wanna steal Mike's patients. I don't wanna steal your patients. So I'm trying to figure out how to do that without. I don't know. This is all new. Like I, my grand plan was just to get attention so people knew pharmacists were important and then it became this thing, and now I'm trying to like balance it out and, but I do like the affiliate and I'm telling right now the affiliate deal for pharmacists really should be something that most pharmacies do in one way or the other.

The vitamin you sell in your store is better than the one that they picked up on Amazon. So you should be able to sell those and make some money.

Mike: There's a guy, he runs a TikTok. I think it's like Alpha Male or something like that. I don't know why I read it. I'm about a hundred years older than all these guys they're talking about in there, but he, I think, bought into it. Company that was making this men's hair or something, he buys in, now [00:55:00] it's his company and he's promoting that brand.

Is that what you're talking about? About your own

stuff? Sort of 

Phil Cowley: that would be the way, like you'd start your own and then it would be your brand

because I'd rather have it be, and then you could come up with whatever you're doing. 

But that's not my plan. My plan is not to, my plan's been different for now, and who knows what brings next, 

Mike: Let's say the store's not there, and this becomes your full-time job, can kind of, dream about it, you have some ideas and the shower, that kind of thing. The store's no longer on your mind. And let's say you were tasked with getting as much revenue as you could.

Let's say that was your focus. What would you be doing if all that were true? What would your next steps be to make this as big as you could? 

Phil Cowley: So there's some pretty. Pretty large players out there that have contacted me that want me to, here's an easy one. An acetylcysteine just came out with a new study. It talked about hearing loss in combinations with prednisone in order to help with the sudden onset hearing loss. And they showed the n acetylcysteine works on the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor that's found inside, right at the base of the hair cells inside the cochlea.

The combination of the two is substantially better than alone. And so acetylcysteine is now getting a lot of attention currently for hearing loss. And then you look at the lipo flavonoid that we all tell everybody to take cuz we don't know what else for 'me to take for tinnitus.

And there's no acetylcysteine in there. So there are some large groups who, because I have this background information, want me to come and make my products with them. 

 If I wanted to make money, I could go that way. And I think I could be like, I don't have to do, like, it's weird because two years ago I'm ready to be folded up, unemployed, and now I'm looking at it and the world's right in front of me.

And I have to keep reminding myself, even if I did that, would I be happy in five years? And that's what I would do and it would make a ton of money. And right now with the momentum I have, I don't think it would be a problem. Like honestly, I think I could. Capitalized to no end. But when I sit on the back of my porch and the storm comes in and the rain's coming, I tell myself, will you be less busy?

Will you be happy? I would be happy if I could travel through. You know what I wanna do? I wanna go to pharmacists. I wanna go find every pharmacist that's struggling and I wanna have, I like a travel channel type show where I go to your store. I see you, you tell me your secret. We do little things together, right?

Then you take me to your local swimming hole and I jump off your rope swing. We go eat a burger at the place where you always buy lunch for your people. And then we put it out there and then each store has this spotlight. That's what I want the time to go visit every place and go visit pharmacies because the morgue pharmacist like you that I get in front of a camera, that 50,000 people in your area see?

Then you get to be that for the next person. I would love that. I just don't know if I'm brave enough to do it. 

Meaning that I'd have to walk out the door and be done with the store.

Mike: It's a little bit like the guy fii the. 

Phil Cowley: That's the idea. The Diners 

Mike: Diners drive in and he maybe doesn't go to their local park, but you could add that into it too, on the rope swing and stuff like that. 

Phil Cowley: That's what I would like to do cuz I could do that. And I think that if people can get a personal connection with somebody in their town, that becomes, The goal to make pharmacists important. That's what I want. I would love to do that. I just have to be brave enough to quit coming to my own store to do that.

I don't, that's the problem. I think it would be successful cuz you do it on a YouTube channel. I don't think it'd be, but I just don't know if I'm brave enough to say, do you really trust social media? Because, I'm a child in the nineties. I've been told not to trust anything and 

I, I believe that 

Mike: We all know how Facebook can go away and Twitter could be gone tomorrow and Snapchat and Insta and TikTok, there's gonna be something else coming out in a year where anybody who uses TikTok is gonna be an old fart. 

And all the freshmen in high school they're with this new thing. So with your brand, it's not really social media specific. You've already proved that with your Insta load and some others and 

TikTok. And so.

Boy, I'm saying if it wasn't for the friends and the longevity of the business and all.

I'm saying this has to happen in a year. 

Phil Cowley: I think you're probably right. Like I have to make a decision and it keeps growing and I can, I could sit on my haunches and I could make money off the affiliate deals and the store's doing fine and I would be fine, but. But what does that, when you're 80, what does that mean to you? You know what I mean?

 I would like to feel like when I'm done that I made a difference for all the other pharmacists because I think pharmacists could do more good, and I mean this more good than any other profession. We have more of an opportunity to have that. That girl who's coming in who's like 22 or 25 and she can't get pregnant and she's sad, we're the ones that have that chance.

To see all of them. We're the ones that get to see the old man that loses his wife, not just when [01:00:00] she loses his wife, but for years afterwards and be kind to him. And if I can make pharmacy be seen as what we should be and then I'm 80, that's better than money. So that's what I would like. I think that building a legacy for me would be to make the world 1% kinder.

Then if I look at it that way, the idea of taking that big deal from whoever doesn't make any sense. It's just more, it's just more tax. They just take it from you. You and I both know that every time you make more money, they just take it from you anyway. But friends don't go anywhere and they're there.

So that is my dream. If you could make that happen, I would travel to every little pharmacy I could. If I could be in a position and then I show up. We make you attach yourself to the person. And then we leave and we go to the next place, and now they get an extra 200 patients. If not, is it somebody else? I will. I'll be in their camp in a second if somebody else wants to do it. Cuz I don't think it'll be easy. I think it'll actually make you really tired and make you really sad a lot of days because I hear your story and I hear my story. I look at you and I see somebody walking around in the background and I know what you gave up for that person that was back walking around the background of your, I know that that's a person that you not only are giving up time now, but you gave up time before Andy, you came home.

Broken a lot of days and you did it for that person that's walking around in the background and you should go, whoever that is, you should go give 'em a hug because cuz you did it for them. And there's thousands of pharmacists that are sad and broken and we don't need to be, I think we're stronger than the doctors if we got together.

Well clouds doctor without a prescription. 

Mike: Phil. Typically, I. We will close the show with some thought, but your words are so powerful, and as you say, people know you without you knowing them. So I'm gonna tell my listeners, just go on TikTok Instagram Phil's my pharmacist and get to know Phil 

So thank you, Phil. Thank you for your time and I really appreciate you sharing yourself with the show today. 

Phil Cowley: No, I appreciate the opportunity that the audience we're talking to is the audience that I really hoped best for. So you're huge on the idea of people feeling better about being pharmacists. So I appreciate what you do. I

Mike: Well, it's a labor of love as you know, certain parts of it.

Phil Cowley: Yeah, well, and then you put in all the hours and you're like, I just wanna go to bed. So, you know.

Mike: All right, Phil, we'll be in touch.

Phil Cowley: Okay. Thank you, sir.

Mike: Thank you.