You know, I imagined 2020 going a lot differently…

Despite COVID-19, the world moves on, as does The Happy PharmD! We continue to help pharmacists transition into work they love and help many find better employers.

I’m thrilled by what we accomplished, so let’s jump into our Quarter 1 review.

Q1 2020 Goal Review

Invest in a new pharmacy business: Some Progress

Wow-wee

As I’ve shared before, the pharmacy job crisis can be solved by creating new innovative businesses that hire pharmacists.

This quarter, four attractive business opportunities fell into my lap. Two endeavors were pharmacists who had an attractive business proposition but not started. The other two were business ventures from pharmacists created businesses that want to generate more pharmacist jobs.

Unfortunately, COVID-19 has made most businesses fall to a standstill. So very little progress has been made for these businesses.

I’ll continue pursuing each endeavor, but it’ll take more time. 🙁

Decrease my meetings to <40% of my Worktime – Some Improvement and Decline

This was a lofty goal, as meetings are the bulk of my work. Whether I’m coaching, selling, teaching, or learning, it’s mainly done through meetings.

I achieved 40% by February, but unfortunately, due to COVID-19, my Meetings grew to 58% of my time spent in March. This is primarily due to more inquiry calls and lacking my new sales associate. She was unable to take requests for me because of her main gig as an emergency preparedness pharmacist, so you can imagine how her life has changed.

Tracking your time reveals a lot about what you accomplished. Over Quarter 1, I worked 430 hours, averaging about 36 hours/week. This isn’t 100% accurate since I don’t always track my time efficiently, especially on weekends.

I averaged 50% of my time in meetings over Quarter 1!?

I’ll need to improve this.

My greatest strength is teaching and speaking, which only accounts for 8% of my time. The more time I spend teaching, which arguably is something I frequently do in meetings (coaching, consulting, etc.), the more revenue the company makes. I’ll need to shift more time spent on teaching on camera…

Unfortunately, I can’t get my hair cut during this pandemic (first world problems…), looks like I’ll need to focus on creating video content with slides only.

Implement EFFECTIVE social media strategy – Some Progress

Effective is relative (and a poorly worded goal).

I would evaluate my social media strategy as more effective (increased visibility, more inquiries), but we still lack consistent implementation.

I meant to hire a social media strategist and operations management. However, due to COVID-19, we froze all new positions until this pandemic clears out.

Additional Wins

• The Happy PharmD Summit launched March 23 and over 2,000 registered!

• Finished developing a pharmacy career path guide (now in post-production)

• Created multiple rotations for students – took our first P1s in April

• Launched Podcast (FINALLY!!!)

Lesson Learned:

I’m not worried… said the man running a non-essential business during the COVID-19 crisis.

I had my initial freakout in mid-March. I anxiously imagined my business crumbling into nothingness. I imagined my shame and broken ego as everyone would discover I didn’t have what it took to be successful.

We aren’t facing such a significant loss, In fact, The Happy PharmD remains profitable over the span of Quarter 1.

Over and over, I’ve proven to myself that when I work on the things that drive revenue, we consistently create results for our clients and our bottom line.

Q2 Goals

This is a softer quarter. My initial March planning thoughts were “JUST SURVIVE! DON’T DIE!”

But now, I realized that COVID-19 presents lots of opportunities for us.

Here are a few of our companies goals.

Launch Medical Writer Mastery

We’re very excited to release the first class of MWM, taught by Dr. Brittany Hoffmann-Eubanks. This class is all about helping pharmacists get started as medical writers, whether they want to become one for a career or they want to start a business on the side. I’m very excited to have partnered with an accomplished pharmacist like Brittany to help more pharmacists find success.

Develop More CE

I received multiple requests from organizations and conferences for CE opportunities. I love speaking, but I have a difficult time justifying the cost of time.

Over the past 6 months, I delivered Rise from the Ashes: Burnout Prevention, Interventions, and Minimizing Pharmacy Stressors five times on FreeCE.com, and over 5,000 attended!

Obviously, this is excellent exposure for my business and expertise. I need to be selective about the topics and venues to deliver on this topic. While I love speaking from the stage, I can’t say yes to every opportunity.

One of my first business ventures was becoming a professional speaker. However, after experiencing the stage life, it involved too much travel and time away from my family. Sometimes that happens in business. You think you’ll succeed in an endeavor, and you do, but you only find out the cons outweigh the pros after you start.

Over the next 3 months, I’m working on a workplace mental health and job satisfaction policy and intervention CE, as well as another burnout CE.

Pharmacy Career Paths

The principal problem pharmacists face when speaking with us is this, “I don’t know what I want to do next with my career, but it’s my current job!”

Another problem is pharmacists having too many career paths listed out. We’ve found that when pharmacists have precise parameters for their next career, it’s much easier to transition.

I spent the past 6 months working on a course that delivers the Standout (™) Strength Assessment to help you identify the roles you excel in, naturally.

A Standout Role (™) is like a strength. It’s is something you were born with. You didn’t need to go to pharmacy school to make yourself excel in your natural standout role.

Next, we define your Standout Role(™) and how it fits in pharmacy, share the multiple career paths you could quickly excel in, then discuss how pharmacists have and can transition into those new career paths.

We hope this course will encourage thousands of pharmacists to pursue career paths they previously thought they able to do.

That’s it! How was your first quarter of 2020? What do you hope to work on in Q2?