From Ambulatory Care to Coaching: A Pharmacist's Unconventional Career Path with Dr. Brooke Griffin, a professor at Midwestern University College of Pharmacy and the founder of the Bold Idea Group

[00:00:01] Welcome to the Chalk Talk Gym Podcast, where we explore insights into health care that help uncover new opportunities for growth and success. I'm your host, Jim Jordan. Welcome back to our podcast.

[00:00:22] Today, we discover the power of coaching to transform your career in pharmacy with our next guest, Dr. Brooke Griffin. Brooke is a professor at Midwestern University College of Pharmacy and a founder of the Bold Idea Group, where she coaches and consults for pharmacists and health care teams.

[00:00:39] In this episode, Brooke shares her journey of self-discovery that led her to create a coaching company that helps pharmacists find clarity and purpose in their career. She discusses strategies for self-reflection, navigating career transitions, and the importance of investing in yourself.

[00:00:56] Brooke also offers insights into the expanding roles of pharmacists and the opportunities to innovate in the changing health care landscape. If you're feeling stuck in your pharmacy career or even curious on how coaching can help you level up, this is the episode for you.

[00:01:10] Brooke's wisdom and passion are sure to inspire. So, Brooke, tell me in the audience a little bit more about yourself. Okay. Well, thanks so much for having me, James. My name is Brooke Griffin.

[00:01:19] I'm a full professor at Midwestern University, which is a college of pharmacy just outside of Chicago. I'm also vice chair for clinical services at the college where I serve as liaison between the college and our clinical faculty who provide clinical services at different health care systems around Chicagoland.

[00:01:37] And I help faculty, I mentor them, and I help them set up their new services or help them with their trainees at the sites, their students and their residents, a variety of different aspects of work-life balance. Things like that workload allocation.

[00:01:51] And then on the side, I founded Bold Idea Group, which is my coaching company. So through that company, I do coaching, consulting for pharmacists, for health care groups. And I'm sure we'll talk a little bit more about that. So what inspired you to create the Bold Idea Group?

[00:02:07] So a few years ago, I felt very stuck in my role. I loved my job, but at times felt like I didn't know what was next. And frankly, that was a little scary for me. I reached all of the accomplishments and accolades I could get as a professor.

[00:02:25] I'm a full professor. I'm tenured. Very proud of those accomplishments. But I got to the top of the ladder, so to speak, and I couldn't see the next rung. And that made me pretty nervous, frankly.

[00:02:35] Also realized that I wasn't sure if I wanted to ascend into other leadership positions within the university system. I really liked my role as this middle manager, so to speak, but very much realized that I like a challenge.

[00:02:49] And if you're familiar with Whitney Johnson's work and her S-curve of learning, I was at the top of the S-curve, ready to launch into something else, but not ready to leave my role. So I received coaching myself.

[00:03:00] I went out on a limb and hired a coach, and that was so transformational. Just being asked some really powerful questions about who I am, where I want to go, what success looks like for me.

[00:03:12] Finished that program, hired another coach to help me with a different aspect of figuring out what was next. And through that process of this deep dive, learning more about myself and the self-discovery journey, the path became more clear. And I realized this was so transformational.

[00:03:25] I have to get training myself because I want to do this for my colleagues. And I'm not sure what that's going to look like yet, but I know the next best step is to get training.

[00:03:33] So I became trained as a coach in 2021 and then launched Bold Idea Group as a coaching and consulting kind of platform. So where did you get your training? UC Davis. Okay, very good. Very good.

[00:03:45] And so you're targeting pharmacists and the path just for the audience would have been sort of a chair, department chair, assistant dean, dean, kind of like a team. Kind of thing, which is very administrative. So Lily, you were focused on how do you advance your specialty?

[00:03:59] So how do you see the role of pharmacists evolving within patient care teams and what impact are you trying to make? Yes. You know, pharmacy is it's never without challenges or chaos since the beginning of time. And nothing really new today in terms of it feeling overwhelming.

[00:04:15] However, I think what we're seeing now is pharmacists have the opportunity to expand a little bit more beyond the product and not being tied to that dispensing role as historically we've been tied to.

[00:04:26] And as we see reimbursements change with product, it's even pushing pharmacists to think about their role in new ways. So we're starting to see health care systems advance ambulatory care pharmacy, population health care pharmacy,

[00:04:39] and really just pharmacists having the ability to go into different health care sectors to use their clinical skills in different ways. So I think if we keep thinking about that aspect of pharmacy, then we'll always continue to grow

[00:04:51] and there'll never be a shortage of opportunities in that space. If we want to stay tied to product, I think that's where the scarcity mindset comes in and the opportunities feel more limited. All that being said, pharmacists work really hard to get to where they are.

[00:05:06] The pharmacy school is not an easy journey for most people. Sometimes it's a bachelor's degree and then going back to graduate school once they figure out they want to become a pharmacist.

[00:05:15] And there's a lot of pressure to do well and maintain this high level of service wherever they're at. So people get to a point seven, ten years into their career where they start to feel really stuck.

[00:05:27] What got them there may not get them to where they want to go. And they just need some guidance. They need a thought partner to help them through this stage of their career to help them figure out what's next.

[00:05:38] I've helped so many pharmacists over the past couple of years just really narrow down. Some pharmacists come to me and they feel multi-passionate. They have so many interests, I don't know which direction really to focus on or to double down on.

[00:05:50] So through the coaching process, it becomes much clearer what direction is the best fit for them. Some people come and they're just not sure whether they should stay or go.

[00:05:59] They're so frustrated with their current workload or their current environment, but there's aspects about their job that they really like. So is it tipping point for them? Yeah, you're an A.

[00:06:08] Through coaching, we've been able to work through some of these real life conundrums that happen in the professional space. Yet people feel so embarrassed. I don't know if that's the word, but there's some embarrassment. There's some shame in voicing this. And I know I felt the same way.

[00:06:22] I felt very alone because everyone around me seemed very pleased with where they were at. I felt like I was the only one who was talking about this feeling of being stuck, not wanting to leave, but not knowing where to go.

[00:06:31] My sense is from the students that I've talked to is that you go through this intense program and you either go into research, but most people have been expecting like traditionally you go work for CBS or Rite Aid.

[00:06:46] And I don't think they have been educated on the options that are out there. For example, we were talking prior to hitting the record button that I had worked for McKesson and McKesson and Marisolis, Bergen and Cardinal probably have more pharmacists than all of us.

[00:07:01] All the CBS's I don't know, but it's big. It's my point. So is part of what you're doing is educating people that have for several years basically been controlling scripts either in the hospital or in a retail space? Yeah, that's a great point.

[00:07:16] I don't necessarily help pharmacists with finding their next role, like nailing what their next role is going to be. I help them more with their mindset into what's troubling them now and what potential paths are there options, but not necessarily with.

[00:07:33] Did you think about pharmacists doing this or this or this?

[00:07:36] Interestingly enough, at the university, I'm in charge of the professional development program where we bring in guest speakers and alumni who work in all of these varied roles in pharmacy to try to educate students so that they don't get to their final year of pharmacy school and just think hospital community residency.

[00:07:52] Oh, there's so much more than that. So I've been really intentional about bringing back specific roles.

[00:07:57] For example, we have an alumnus who works at Amerisource Bergen, so we make sure to bring her back because she had this wonderful career at Walgreens and then specialty pharmacy that made her way into Amerisource Bergen. So it's this wonderful story arc that the students get to hear.

[00:08:10] And we like to bring in entrepreneurs and we like to bring in pharmacists who work in the emergency room because that's a different fast paced kind of environment.

[00:08:16] So all that being said, I don't think we can ever do enough to expose students to all of the different roles that are out there. And I feel like I've been in pharmacy over 20 years.

[00:08:27] I'm still learning about all the really cool, unique places pharmacists can work, which is so exciting. And I always share that with the students. Some pharmacists that come to me at their midpoint in their career, they have a better sense of everything that's out there.

[00:08:41] What they're looking for is almost permission, permission to kind of explore some of these things. Should I just stay here? I've worked so hard to get here. I've got all this tenure with the company.

[00:08:53] They sometimes don't even realize some of the negative thoughts they're facing every single day and how that might be inhibiting some of their growth to even explore some of these things. I'll give you an example.

[00:09:02] I had a pharmacist that I was working with who had been an internal medicine pharmacist, general medicine at a academic medical center. And this was their entire career.

[00:09:10] And they rounded with the team and the team really respected their opinion and asked for their interventions on a daily basis. Just a pharmacist who was really embedded into this interdisciplinary health care team practicing at the top of their license, however you want to define that.

[00:09:23] And then got to a point where that started to slowly lose interest. And at first they thought it was because the trainees I have haven't been as strong as they were in the past and it's taking me a lot more effort to work with my trainees.

[00:09:36] Maybe that's what's bringing me down. Nope, that wasn't it. Because even when they had super strong students and trainees and residents, that interest was slowly dissipating and that started to become really worrisome for them.

[00:09:47] Like I worked my entire career to get here, this pedestal, and now this is losing interest. And I have no idea what that means. And I have no idea what to go next.

[00:09:55] But because that thought was so invasive that this was my identity, this is who I am. It was almost prohibiting them from being open to exploring what could be next given all of this. Like it's all it's not for nothing.

[00:10:09] It could lead you to a really beautiful place. Let's explore what that is. So what are some of the common questions you ask people to help them break through? Great question.

[00:10:19] One of the ones that I like to use the best is what do you like to work on late into the night? What makes time just go by really fast? You don't even realize time is moving.

[00:10:28] What is something you would work on if you wouldn't get paid for it? And maybe not indefinitely, but at least in the beginning. What does success look like for you? Because I feel like that is so different with every pharmacist that I meet.

[00:10:41] For some people, it's flexibility and time with their family. And for some people, it is money. And for some people, it's the recognition and the awards. So being able to identify that and name that, and again, not judging ourselves for that's what really lights me up.

[00:10:55] That's another question I ask. What lights you up? And that was a process I went through, James. I mean, I did all of these exercises. I scrapped it together myself. And now I feel like I have this dedicated program to give to people.

[00:11:09] But one of the things that I did when I felt especially stuck was I just kept a little journal and I would write in it after work. Like what about today? Lit me up. And what about today?

[00:11:22] Like really brought me down just to really I couldn't even really name what made it a good day or a bad day. So I needed to figure out what was giving me energy and what was draining my energy.

[00:11:30] And just even after a few weeks, James, I just could really see the patterns that it was always this person. These meetings with this one particular person was really draining me.

[00:11:40] And it took me a while to recover from those conversations versus it was the days that I was mentoring others or working with a junior faculty member to solve a problem.

[00:11:48] Those are the days that left me energized and left me wanting more and wanting the day to continue.

[00:11:54] So I encourage everyone that I work with to kind of do something similar, especially when they can't really name what's most exciting about their day or what they'd even want to work on in the future.

[00:12:04] We didn't talk about this ahead of time, but I'm also a certified hypnotherapist. We all have our beliefs and values that move and morph with our careers as things go on.

[00:12:12] So I find it very interesting that you can want to climb that mountain that you're talking about and you start a family and you just want to have more availability to your family. Or now the kids are gone, now I want to take more risks.

[00:12:25] There's different aspects of your life that you can move through. And then I still have some of my students periodically will call me about their situation at work.

[00:12:34] And the story you just told was striking to me because if it's a bad manager and I like the company, you can move around that. And if it's the company you don't like, the culture you don't like, you need to make some decisions.

[00:12:45] So I think when we come out of school, we have these static goals and then family and relationships and just where you are in life start changing. Right. And other priorities pop up.

[00:12:56] But I don't think people know to a point that those things are gnawing at them underneath their skin and they need to sort of play it out. Yes. I think you explain that really well, James.

[00:13:05] What I like to talk to people about is their career in chapters, because a lot of times there is a lot of self-judgment around, you know, I worked so hard to get here and now all I want to do is go part time and maybe take a job at Starbucks and just relax a little bit and spend time with this relationship or this family.

[00:13:24] But if we think about our career in chapters, it gives us a little freedom to think I can always come back to this intensity. It doesn't mean it's going to be gone forever.

[00:13:33] I was working with one faculty member at a different university who felt like her position as a faculty member was this.

[00:13:43] She put this on a pedestal and she thought this was so tied to her identity that the idea of leaving, she would look less than in the eyes of her peers. She just regarded this with such high value in her life.

[00:13:58] But she had these three kids under seven and she knew that her work-life integration was not where she wanted it to be.

[00:14:05] So she had this opportunity to leave academia and join a health care system where it would be a more regular schedule, a lot less to do on evenings and weekends. And she needed help, like even just deciding whether to make this leap or not.

[00:14:20] And as a coach, we don't really provide a lot of advice.

[00:14:24] What we do is ask a lot of introspective questions and give you a chance to reflect on what's going on inside your own head and just serve as really that thought partner and that mirror to your thoughts to say,

[00:14:36] do you realize you said flexibility five times in the past 30 minutes? Let's talk about what that means and what that would look like. So eventually she ended up deciding to change and not looking back, but realizing that academia could, that door could be open in the future.

[00:14:52] It doesn't mean it's closed forever. And I think sometimes our brain will make us think in extremes in terms of finite resources or that this will never happen again or I'll never be in this position again or something will always be like this.

[00:15:07] We find ourself using those words and those phrases, but very rarely is that true. And what I found in my own experience. Well, it's fear based, right? It's a part of it. And the other aspect of it that sometimes it is true you can't go backwards.

[00:15:21] But the question becomes, in this person's case, you're looking to have a branded reputation. How do you do that?

[00:15:28] So as you think of your career and reflect on your coaching, when was there a representative experience for yourself that showed your ability to adapt and change your strategy and self-coaching? Oh, wow. That's a great question, James.

[00:15:41] I feel like this has happened a lot and probably the one that I can think of in the past couple of years, the one that I think will ring true with a lot of people now is in academic pharmacy.

[00:15:54] And I don't know if it's the same true at your university is enrollment across the country is down for a variety of reasons. And we have more pharmacy schools today than we did when I graduated almost double.

[00:16:04] So we have a lot of seats to fill and we're having trouble filling them. Again, this is a nationwide problem. But what that results in when you don't fill those seats are hard decisions that leadership has to make in terms of the current resources that we have.

[00:16:20] And it's resulted in some really hard decisions for leadership. So one exercise that has worked for me and that I've shared with others and that I still use is really just to remind myself what's within my control and what's not within my control.

[00:16:36] So it sounds really simple, but when you put pen to paper, it can be really profound.

[00:16:41] So things that are within my control are my thoughts, my reactions, my decisions, my actions, my ability to pause before I reply to that email, my reaction when decisions are made, how much I gossip in the office, who I'm texting about certain decisions.

[00:16:58] Like all of those things are within my control. Also, who I'm interacting with on a daily basis, like my circle of influence, even though I may not have a leadership title to university, I still have influence with small group of people around me.

[00:17:10] So I don't take that lightly. And how I react could influence how other people react to the situation. However, things that are outside of my control are some of these leadership decisions. And I don't have a seat at all of those tables. And I have to recognize that.

[00:17:26] And I could spend my day in negative energy and being frustrated with that. Or I could just focus on what's within my control. And that's my day to day. So that has helped me a lot. It's something I still use when we receive not so great news.

[00:17:38] I still have to remind myself that the table I have a seat at is my table. And I can decide on who I want to be in this moment.

[00:17:47] And that has helped me a lot, James, because I think people in pharmacy right now are struggling with... we're problem solvers. So we want to fix even the big VUCA problems of the world today. We want to have a say. We want to raise our hand.

[00:18:03] We want to share some of our ideas. But we're not always asked for those ideas. And sometimes there's some acceptance that has to come with that. And that's been a big lesson for me to learn.

[00:18:12] But there's still a lot of good I can do, even in my own little table of one. Is that a natural gift you had from the time you were young? Or is this something you've evolved over the years to get to that point of having that self-dialogue?

[00:18:24] No, definitely through coach training. Through being coached and then hearing the tools and the ideas and the thoughts and the questions through being trained as a coach. Culmination of all of that. What strategies do you use to keep up to date on the advancements in this segment?

[00:18:40] So I am a member of the International Coaching Foundation. So I'm a member there and I'm a member of a chapter where we have continuing education and guest speakers. There's also a program where you can reciprocate coaching with two other coaches. So you're kind of in a triad.

[00:18:59] And so I'm continuously being coached and I can practice my coaching skills on others. I do a lot of reading on non-traditional kind of pharmacy literature, so to speak. So, you know, I love Harvard Business Review and Forbes.

[00:19:12] I listen to a lot of podcasts that aren't pharmacy related and I love to bring those ideas into pharmacy and put a pharmacy spin on them.

[00:19:19] I feel like there's been a gravitation towards some of these concepts with personal branding and networking and leadership and the power of mindset and inner critic and listening skills.

[00:19:30] So now when I tend to do CE presentations, I tend to take one of those topics and turn it into a pharmacy CE so that pharmacists can get that content, also get CE credit for it. So it serves me because I love to learn about those topics.

[00:19:45] And then we know when we turn it into a presentation or a slide set, then you're even learning even more because now you have to teach it.

[00:19:51] It's just been a wonderful place for me to continue to grow as a pharmacist by applying these to a traditional pharmacy role.

[00:19:58] So when you look at the biggest lesson you've learned on your journey thus far, besides the self-reflection that we just talked about, what else would you share with the audience?

[00:20:07] When I first became a middle manager, I realized that I didn't really have any formal kind of leadership training, even though it wasn't a huge leadership title. It was a vice chair of the department. I knew that I needed something. So I joined a ton of leadership programs.

[00:20:23] If a pharmacy organization offered a leadership certificate, I joined it. So I've done several of them. And if I could sum it up into one statement of what I learned in all of those leadership programs is a quote by John Agnew, leadership development is self-development.

[00:20:40] The more I work on myself, James, the more I can help others. The better leader I am, the stronger leader I am, the more clear I am with my words, the clearer my path becomes. The more I understand myself, it helps me understand others more.

[00:20:54] So that really is kind of the essence to my entire journey and what I've learned about leadership. I feel like, you know, I think Simon Sinek said it, that we could go to a leadership intensive three day training, but that's the intensity of it.

[00:21:08] But if we don't have the consistency of applying these leadership skills every day and wanting to work on ourselves, then we'll never be the leader that we aspire to be. So I am always going to advocate for encouraging others.

[00:21:21] I'm always going to be encouraging others to go on this self-discovery journey because everything becomes more clear.

[00:21:28] I think what's striking is you spend so much time when you're taking that pathway, the science, the chemistry and being an expert that we probably don't have much time during that education process to think about leadership.

[00:21:42] Yes. Yeah. And the ACPE who accredits pharmacy colleges and curriculums, professional development is a required part of the curriculum, but it doesn't get a lot of airtime compared to all the chemistry courses that pharmacists have to take.

[00:21:57] So I'm glad that I am part of the program at Midwestern and I'm able to include some things that I feel are important, like these leadership concepts that we talked about. But it's probably very school dependent on how much students get exposed to.

[00:22:09] Some schools have leadership electives, some don't. Some bring in guest speakers, some don't. Some schools have a really involved alumni council and some don't. So all of those small things really add up to a well-rounded pharmacy graduate that can have a better sense of themselves.

[00:22:27] So I like to be able to bring these concepts back into the classroom and at least start to plant the seeds for these students moving forward that it really all does begin with mindset. So here are some things that you can start thinking about.

[00:22:41] One of the concepts that I like to introduce to students is I didn't come up with it.

[00:22:45] I read it somewhere and then turned it into a CE called a better but believable thought, because a lot of times we've talked about before with the extremes in our thinking, you know, students have to pass the NAPLEX board exam when they graduate.

[00:22:55] So they may be thinking, well, I'm never going to pass the NAPLEX. OK, well, we can probably tell ourselves that may not be true. What could be true? Well, I'm going to ace the NAPLEX. Well, that's not really believable. So our brain can't really get behind that.

[00:23:10] But a better but believable thought is that thought in between, which is something like I've taken hard tests before and I've been OK. So just encouraging students that there's usually a thought in between that we can get behind. We just have to get out of these extremes.

[00:23:21] And so you got that view from your readings personally or from your training? Both. So what are the objections your clients give you the most when you're trying to get people to consider coaching? Because it's not something that people talk about, really, even when they have a coach.

[00:23:38] And I love the word that you use thought partner. I do this annual training program for startups and we had a wonderful person who had taken a company public from scratch and she had just a wonderful journey.

[00:23:48] And she talked about the importance of finding a thought partner for the journey. And one of the things that she said is your spouse doesn't want to hear your issues, that you're running out of money.

[00:23:58] Your management board doesn't want to hear it and your team doesn't want to hear it. So it becomes important, she thought, to find someone that was supportive and independent. But you have to know that you have that need.

[00:24:09] How do you work with your clients or how did your clients come to you? Yeah, great question. And I love that story about that person that you shared.

[00:24:15] So the way I started talking about it when I first started marketing Bold Idea Group was this is the career support you've been looking for. Because I tried to think back into my own journey, like what was I looking for?

[00:24:28] I had wonderful mentors, James, and they really served me well my entire career. And one in particular, I would just go to her with everything. And you know as a mentor, you can go to them with your biggest triumphs and they don't think you have a huge ego.

[00:24:42] And you can go to them in tears and they don't think you're a complete mess because they just know you so well. And we go to our mentors and we ask them for advice and we soak it up like sponges.

[00:24:52] And they say things like, you should do this and why don't you try that and this worked for me. And I had all of that. And I got to a point where my visits with this one particular mentor just became more social, which was fine.

[00:25:04] But I still had this stuck feeling, like I wasn't really moving forward. And I just don't think I was asking the right questions and I don't think they knew how to help me at this point. Because I wasn't really trying to go where they were in their career.

[00:25:16] I was trying to go somewhere else and I didn't know where that was. So a coach and coaching is a different kind of career support that is someone who is relatively neutral. They don't necessarily have to be in your industry or have a position that you aspire to.

[00:25:31] And they really just hold space for you. And what that means is they allow you to talk for as long as you need to talk. They want you to empty out your brain and get all your thoughts out.

[00:25:42] Sometimes this is unlike that partner you spoke of at home, who goes into problem solving mode real quickly. Doesn't necessarily allow you to finish all of your thoughts. Doesn't really have the capacity to be that thought partner for you.

[00:25:55] And that's okay. They serve a different role in our lives. And we can't really go to our supervisor with these thoughts and say I'm feeling really stuck. I'm not sure if I want to stay or go.

[00:26:02] So we have this neutral party which holds space to be whoever we want. And it's non-judgmental kind of space to allow you to think and say whatever is on your mind.

[00:26:14] A lot of times when I'm sitting with a client, they say things like, I've never been listened to like this. I haven't said a word, James. They just have a chance to just really express themselves freely.

[00:26:25] And if you think about it, we don't really have a lot of people in our lives who offer this. And then listen so intently to look for those patterns of speech. And to look for and listen for the things that aren't being said.

[00:26:39] So I think as a coach, that was so powerful for me. I feel so privileged now to offer to my colleagues. I think it helps that I've got the pharmacy background for some of my potential clients

[00:26:49] because they want to have a sense or a feeling that I understand where they're coming from. And I've heard that a lot for, especially for the academic clients, the faculty members that I've had.

[00:26:57] They like the idea that I understand the faculty role and all of the politics that come with having a university position. I have had the privilege of having clients come from different presentations that I've given. They've heard me talk about coaching, so they'll approach me afterwards.

[00:27:13] A word of mouth has helped a lot. There's this one coaching program that I have, and it's a group coaching program. It's five modules. We meet for five weeks. And one thing I started doing is asking participants a Likert scale question before coaching and after coaching.

[00:27:30] One of the objections I think people have, even if they don't really voice it, is what am I going to get out of this? How am I going to feel afterwards?

[00:27:38] And unless they know someone who went through one of my programs, it can be hard to articulate the value of coaching to somebody. You're going to feel better. Your path is going to become more clear. Like, I understand how vague that sounds.

[00:27:47] So I started asking people on a scale of one to five, how excited, motivated are you for your career with five being the most? And how stressed are you in your professional life on a scale of zero to five, five being the most stressed?

[00:28:02] And just after five sessions, five modules, the numbers are going in the right direction. Your stress goes down, excitement, motivation goes up. So I think pharmacists, we love data. So I think that it has helped a little.

[00:28:14] But word of mouth, I think is the strongest because if you like anything, you know, if you read a review and it's someone that you know and trust who went through the similar program, you might be more likely to buy.

[00:28:25] What has been the most impactful lesson from your experiences, either clinically or in higher education that you share with your clients the most? The most impactful lesson? A couple come to mind and these have really solidified recently. Investing in me is always going to be a yes.

[00:28:43] And I don't think I always believed that or understood what that meant, because sometimes when we want to get from here to there or we want to figure out what's next.

[00:28:52] Yes, it could be an investment of money or resources depending on what kind of program you're looking for.

[00:28:56] But it really is an investment of time and energy to look inward, which isn't always easy to find patterns of what is currently going on that you like and dislike and really allowing yourself to explore what could your future hold if you dared yourself to even think about that.

[00:29:16] So investing in myself, I think is always going to be a yes. And for me, that could be time, energy, money, programs, coaches, hikes, meditation. It's just those little pieces all add up to the person that I want to be in the future.

[00:29:31] I think the second one that comes to mind is that being myself is probably the boldest thing that I could do. And in pharmacy, we fall into a lot of cookie cutter roles. And I've always been someone to think outside the box. I'm not your traditional pharmacist.

[00:29:48] I don't have a type A personality. I'm not a perfectionist. I pay attention to details when it matters, but it's not something I identify with like so many of my colleagues. But still, we fall into these kind of cookie cutter roles.

[00:29:59] And academia, it's very outlined in a linear fashion, like what you need to do to ascend to the next level, to get the next promotion, to get the next award. And all of those things are celebrated widely, which is great.

[00:30:12] And I'm so happy that I was able to participate in that and had the privilege to do so. But there were pieces of myself that weren't really honored along the way, like how different I am about thinking outside of the box or thinking creatively.

[00:30:26] My quirks, my idiosyncrasies, the things that make me me don't always have to be hidden and perhaps can serve me and the people around me better if I allow them to let them show.

[00:30:36] So I like to encourage my clients to think about what does it mean to be them? And is that something that they want to showcase more? Usually the answer is yes. The talk track here reminds me of a quote that I heard in some YouTube video.

[00:30:50] As you get older, you become either the best you or the worst you. And I think that comes with this balance of the external role fitting. We're an educator, we're a pharmacist, we're a parent, we're a daughter, we're whatever it is, the internal need to know yourself.

[00:31:08] And I think that's part of what coaching can bring. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I think we seek external validation early in our career to give us validation and encouragement to keep going and you're on the right path. So we need some of that external validation.

[00:31:24] I think what gets us into trouble, so to speak, is when we rely on that too much and we don't know what this internal validation feels like. What is this inner voice telling me?

[00:31:34] This whole idea of intuition or relying on our gut, just even getting to know that voice and that feeling so that it's a little stronger and that you know to recognize it when you see it. I think that's what this journey has been for me.

[00:31:47] And I think it's been helpful for others to watch me go through this process and realize that I'm on this self-discovery path alongside all of you. I'm still in the messy middle here.

[00:31:58] I'm maybe just a few steps ahead in really figuring out what this might look like for me. I certainly don't know the end outcome here or where I'll be in five years, but I know the next best step and that's what I'm working towards.

[00:32:11] As you look at health care and your specialty, what are the most significant opportunities and threats that you see? In terms of pharmacy services? Good question.

[00:32:20] I think we are at the beginning of pharmacists being embedded into health care systems in more of an ambulatory care, primary care outpatient space that's not tied to product.

[00:32:34] For example, there are companies, concierge kind of health care delivery services that are hiring population health pharmacists to not only meet with patients via telehealth or in person to talk about their medications, but also look at some of that global data to say how can we be bringing some of these metrics down for our patients.

[00:32:55] So bringing in that pharmacy knowledge, but also being able to have that conversation with individual patient. The pharmacist that can do both of those things will be very successful in the next one to five years because those opportunities are popping up.

[00:33:08] I think some of the threats to pharmacists and speaking from corporations are those that are placing too many limits and metrics that make pharmacists feel so inhibited that they can't think outside of the box or maybe do something a little nontraditional to help the patient in front of them because they feel so limited by the metric that they're tied to.

[00:33:29] I think that could hurt our profession. So pharmacists can't rely on some of our infrastructures to think about how can we best use this knowledge. We have to rely on what we know will help the patients in front of us.

[00:33:42] I don't know if this is applicable to this specialty, but I'll talk to nurse practitioners and MPAs and they'll comment that they're not working to the full capability of their training and that somehow industry has capped that. Are they not working at the full potential of their capability?

[00:34:00] Some are. I can tell you in my career, I've been in ambulatory care, so embedded in health systems all around Chicagoland. And I had one experience with one health system where I was practicing at the top of my license.

[00:34:15] And this was probably the peak of when I was using my full clinical capacity and motivational interviewing skills. And we were working with full risk, high risk patients and working together as a team. We saw the impact on it.

[00:34:31] It was the first time in my life, James, that I thought to myself, oh, my God, this works. We have all of these people. It was a medical home type model for high risk patients. We were all under one roof.

[00:34:40] You could just run down the hall and talk to the dietician or the nurse practitioner or the physician. We had a lab on site. We had PT on site. And it all gelled and it all worked.

[00:34:48] And patients who are high utilizers of the health care system, all of a sudden stopped going to the ER, stopped going to the hospital. And I really felt like magic.

[00:34:57] That was one health system out of probably the four or five that I've practiced in in my entire career. So it may have something to do with some practitioners feeling territorial about who can do what in the health care space.

[00:35:09] It takes a lot of trust building in the beginning to figure out what those roles and responsibilities are. If we continue to practice under the same models we've been practicing under, then I don't know if we'll see a lot of environments like I mentioned before.

[00:35:21] But I was with a group of people who were willing to blur the lines a little bit about what the scope is. But the patient benefited. I see a functional medicine doctor and over the past 10 years, I've had a lot of vitamins.

[00:35:32] I can go to a dietician and hire them independently to help me with that. But I haven't been able to find a pharmacist that could help me.

[00:35:38] I'm sure those models are going to start emerging because I believe in some states you can be a functional specialist with the pharmacy. Am I correct? Yeah, there are functional medicine pharmacists. It's not a field I'm too familiar with, but they do exist. Yeah, that's fantastic. That's great.

[00:35:56] Well, what else would you like to share with our audience? Well, I have some exciting news, James. I've started a podcast. It's called Today's Bold Idea, and it's really meant to serve as a daily boost of motivation. I don't think I'll post daily immediately.

[00:36:08] I'll get there, but we'll start with a couple of days a week. And it's really just meant to when you're sitting in your car and you've parked your car and you haven't walked into the door yet,

[00:36:17] and you just need a little inspiration before you get out of your car, or maybe you're not too excited about your next meeting and you just need a new thought or a different way of thinking about things before you walk into that meeting. That's what it's meant for.

[00:36:30] This is something that I've been looking for, and I think I want to bring the pharmacy spin to some of these mindset areas. I think there's a lot of different mindset tools that we could use just to get through the day-to-day.

[00:36:40] I have a private Facebook group called Bold Idea Group, and this is something I've been doing on year three now of posting something daily at 5 a.m. And the amount of joy, James, that I have gotten out of just posting these things,

[00:36:52] I don't even care who likes it or comments on it. Just I get a lot of joy out of posting this. So I'm going to replicate that with an audio format. Fantastic. I would love to encourage your audience to check it out.

[00:37:04] I will have it in the show notes for sure. I hear people that journal every day, start their day with perspective and joy. And so it seems to me if you put something out there into the world, it's positive every morning.

[00:37:15] It's a great way to start the day. Yeah, yeah, it sure has been for me. And I also think that's an example that maybe other people can glean from that you don't necessarily have to know the outcome or have certain comments

[00:37:27] or a number of likes for something to bring you joy. Just whatever is the next best step for you is probably a good sign. And a lot of people ask me about turning points or big moments. And for me, there hasn't really been one big light bulb moment,

[00:37:39] but it's been following a lot of twinkling lights along the way. And that has served me really well. Well, thank you very much. I look forward to publishing this. Hopefully they get a chance to connect with you and expand on their opportunity

[00:37:52] to learn what to do as a pharmacist. Thanks so much for having me, James. I really had a lot of fun. My pleasure. Thanks for tuning into the Chalk Talk Gym podcast. For resources, show notes and ways to get in touch, visit us at ChalkTalkGym.com.