You have probably heard that time is the only thing you can give that you can never get back. Your time is essentially your life energy. We are only blessed with a finite amount of time and life energy. Focusing on how you spend this can make a tremendous difference in how successful you are and the quality of life you have.

The pharmacy owners we work with constantly tell us that owning a community pharmacy requires a significant amount of their time and life energy. 

Owners are willing to do this because they are able to reap a substantial financial reward and provide a great lifestyle for their families while saving for the future.

The financial rewards for pharmacy owners has been and still is healthy. Because of this, pharmacy owners are blessed to be on the higher end of the income earners in this country. This has allowed them to be able to do things most people will never be able to experience.

However, as things change in the pharmacy world, the demands on time and life energy are reaching a point where pharmacy owners are starting to question whether the financial rewards are worth the price they pay (i.e. spending time at the pharmacy instead of with their family).

One of the goals our clients always mention is to be able to spend more time away from the pharmacy. Owners are saying they want to be able to focus on some of the other things they have gone without over the years.

The way you do this is by focusing on how you spend your time and changing the way you view time (see our next blog). With the help of many pharmacy owners along the way, we have discovered that pharmacy owners spend their time and life energy in four basic activities:

1. Management - focusing on the day to day operations of the pharmacy
2. Stewardship - focusing on keeping more of what you make and improving the talent in your pharmacy
3. Growth - growing top line revenue through new ideas
4. Inspiration - spending time away from the pharmacy to recharge the batteries

An owner told us that the reason he decided to buy his pharmacy was to have more inspiration time for himself.  This is a common request from the owners with which we interact.  The way to do this is to better organize your time around these activities.

The better you are organized, the more successful you will be and the more inspiration time you will have. Most owners speak with tell us they focus primarily on the management and have very little inspiration time. One pharmacy owner even told us she spends 90% of her time in management activities and the other 10% crying in her office!

If you want more time working on other things (growth, stewardship, etc.) then you have to focus your time and energy in a way that allows for this.  It is possible to grow your pharmacy again while having more time to do the other things you want to do.  I know this because I have seen it with my own eyes, even in the current pharmacy environment.  It is always amazing to me that almost every solution goes back to how we spend our time and energy. 

For more information about these activities, please click the button below and download a copy of our new tool, the Pharmacist Time Optimizer Workbook.

Why do we do what we do?

Our vision and mission is to help independent community pharmacy owners achieve all their goals and dreams, inside, outside and after their life in pharmacy. In doing so, we are helping community pharmacies survive for many years to come.