It's that time again. It's time for the kids to go back to school and for your life to go back to normal for the next 9 months. Speaking of normal, what is normal for you? We did a marketing campaign a few years back where we asked pharmacy owners if they were normal. Some of the responses were humerous.

One owner said if "Running around all day like a chicken without a head is normal, then I'm normal." Another said, "I get up do my family duties and then head off to the pharmacy with the thought that I won't see my family again until the next morning. If that's normal, then I guess I'm normal." Finally, a young lady said to us that "If being able to spend time the way I want to is like chasing rainbows and unicorns, then I'm pretty much normal."

All of these examples are humerous, but they are sad as well. The questions that come to my mind when I think about this are: Why don't most pharmacy owners have the time for the things they feel are most important? Why can't pharmacy owners have their proverbial cake and eat it too? Is it too much to ask for pharmacy owners to have the life they want to live?

I think the answers to this require pharmacy owners to go back to school.

To understand what it means to go back to school, we have to first discover why school is important. Why do pharmacy owners have to get a certain amount of continuing education every year? The answer is because we learn the knowledge we need to continue to be successful by continuing our education. So, pharmacy owners have committed to education and going back to school already.  Unfortunately, there just aren't many places to go to get real world business knowledge. A lot of the education currently in the pharmacy world is clinical based. This is important but so is learning how to run a successful company while maintaining harmony in your family and personal life.

Because we study these things intentionally, we have uncovered some simple ideas to make sure you are not normal (see above scenarios). These can help you get most of the things you want for you life. Please note that I said most and not all. But, most is good enough for most people.

• Get a calendar - the most successful owners we know work with a calendar. They intentionally create their weeks to accomplish the things they want to accomplish. You can do this to by just getting a calendar. Another exercise is to create what we call an Ideal Week. This plans out how you want every week to work in your calendar. This has helped hundreds of pharmacy owners find extra time in their calendars. Also, setting and keeping appointments can lead to greater success.
• Block out your family/personal time first in your calendar - studying time management has shown us that your activities will stretch for the time you allocated for it. This means if you have 2 hours down to do payroll, then payroll will typically take two hours. Try blocking out 1 hour to see if you can get it completed. You might be surprised at the results. By putting your family time in the calendar first, you are limiting your pharmacy time. This means organization and fitting all the things your must do in the pharmacy in the time you have remaining is of utmost importance.
• Envision success - the wealthiest business owners that we work with all have one thing in common. They envision their success before they ever achieve it. Most of them are also great at doing things to remind them of the success for which they strive. If you are a golfer, you know that it makes the game easier to get up behind the ball and imagine the shot before you ever hit the ball. This process can easily be applied to our lives inside, outside and after pharmacy.

Our challenge to you is to start living the life you have always wanted. You may not see results overnight but that's a characteristic of all hard endeavors. If something comes easy. then it may not be worth doing or you may not value it. If you want to read an very inspirational story about achieving dreams. Find and read the story of Walt Disney and how he built Disney World in Florida. I think you will find out that you can actually accomplish your dreams for your family, personal and pharmacy life.