Pharmacy Career, Resource & Training with Kavita Nadan

There’s No Middle Ground when Facing Challenges in Pharmacy

April 13, 2023

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In this episode of Pharmacy View Podcast’s Pharmacy Career, Resource & Training, host, Kavita Nadan, Pharmacist, and Founder at Locumate, is joined by Steven Kastrinakis, Founder & Director at The Platform Alliance Group. Steven was the CEO of Advantage Pharmacy which merged with Instigo to create the Pharmacy Platform. Then, Pharmacy Alliance and Pharmacy Platform merged to form The Platform Alliance Group. Listen in to learn not just about these mergers but also about the evolution in the Pharmacy industry and how Steven has gone from strength to strength in his Pharmacy career that spans over three decades.

Steven went from owning and running a Pharmacy to forming The Platform Alliance Group, which, with its combined experience and expertise, is positioned to build the strongest independent Pharmacy network in Australia. It now has 1200 Pharmacy members and a diverse suite of brands and offers to support independent Pharmacies. Reminiscing on the journey, Steven recounts the challenges as being the following:

The first challenge was owning a store and running it successfully.
The second challenge was overcoming the inhibition that people and suppliers had about two Pharmacy groups coming together.
The third challenge was being welcomed in the Pharmacy community after having been an outcast for joining a competitor such as Priceline that was just making a foray into the Pharmacy industry.

When faced with challenges, the end of the road is either failure or success. As much as successes have been a part of Steven’s journey, so have failures. They believe that one can’t always choose a safe middle ground, especially if one wants to be a pioneer in any given area. And Steven has made a mantra out of failures—if you don’t know why you failed, you’ll continue to fail; so, you need to go back and examine what you did wrong and ensure that you don’t repeat the same mistake. And all that is a part of being an entrepreneur. You’ve got to go out there and keep at it.

Pharmacy View Podcast · Ep 70 There's No Middle Ground when Facing Challenges in Pharmacy

When asked about the support network, Steven talks about the importance of working with partners. It is important to look for partners who have complementary skills to you rather than the same. Citing their own example, Steven talks about how their entrepreneurial and strategic skills are complemented by their two partners, one of whom focuses on automation and the use of technology while the other looks after all the stores. They emphasize that working together helps bring about a balance of ideas. However, they add that there needs to be a sense of alignment in terms of the vision in spite of the diversity.

When asked about the changes in the Pharmacy Industry, Steven was quick to point out the following:

How Pharmacies evolved to work under the Forward Pharmacy Concept as opposed to the earlier days when Pharmacists were not accessible as easily to the public.
How the Pandemic has changed the way Pharmacies are perceived, not just by the general public but also by the government.
How there is a shift in mindset towards the full scope of practice and engaging Pharmacists.
How the health care model is moving towards a user pays model.

Steven sees opportunities for the profession to flourish and also sees a positive future in terms of patient engagement. Steven also highlights the need for automation to free up Pharmacists so that they can spend as much time as possible with the patients, which will then improve health outcomes.

Steven then goes on to talk about the qualities that budding entrepreneurs need to have in the Pharmacy Industry. In addition to having perseverance, they need to

Have a clear vision
Work hard

Having had both of these things: vision and hard work are what Steven believes were elemental to the success. They do, however, emphasize the importance of gut feeling—if you think you are making losses, do not perpetuate the loss and cut your losses in time.

Steven talks about how loving the profession has made it easy for them and how they always look to improve the services the group provides.

Topics Covered

Steven’s background
Formation of the Advantage Group
Leveraging technology in Pharmacy
Eventual formation of the Platform Alliance Group
Challenges faced
Learning from failures
Key lessons for budding entrepreneurs

Key Quotes (Time Stamps)

“When I reflect back on, last year it was 30 years in Pharmacy and it’s gone very quickly.” (1:44 – 1:51)

“But I think, we realized at a point in time that it was about creating our own group. And once we were very clear in our vision that changed and then we decided to grow the Advantage Group. And I think by the time we did our first merger in October 2020, we had gotten to 280 members under that particular group, both under Advantage and Chemist Discount Centre as our discount brand. (2:44 – 3:13)

“There was a real turning point in our process as far as investing in our own brands, which is Advantage creating a discount model based on what the market, I believe, was needing at the time, and then really getting into automation by investing and creating Buy-It-Right, a purchasing EIP platform and also then getting into creating a data and loyalty platform as a KnowITAll. And those bits of tech and that automation has been a big part of our group and I think, it separated us from other groups.” (3:17 – 3:54)

“Once we created the Pharmacy Platform, we went from 280 stores in Advantage to 380 stores on the Pharmacy Platform. And then, more recently merging with Pharmacy Alliance Group to create the Platform Alliance Group, we’ve now close to 1100 Pharmacies. So, I think, it was some of the technology and the vision that we had which made us a good partner to merge with because of the points of difference that we had in our stable. Because we weren’t just a Pharmacy group, there were points of difference that made us appealing to other members of the profession as well. (4:01 – 4:40)

“The first challenge was actually owning one store and running it successfully.” (5:15 – 5:19)

“Well, I think it’s the failures that define you—either that make you right or they break you. And I think that you cannot say that you’re entrepreneurial unless you’ve had failures. I think you can’t always choose the safe middle ground, especially if you want to be a pioneer in certain areas.” (7:52 – 8:09)

“And that’s really been a bit of a mantra in terms of life. As you know, when you do have failures, you’ve got to go back and you’ve got to examine what you did, what you did wrong, and then how not to repeat that.” (9:18 – 9:28)

“So, as I said, you have those particular failures, but you learn. But it shouldn’t take away your entrepreneurial spirit. And if you’re truly entrepreneurial in that sense, you’ve got to basically just get up, you’ve got to dust yourself and you’ve just got to get out there and just keep on it, keep on doing it again, and you just keep on rolling with the punches.” (10:04 – 10:25)

“I think, a sort of criticism of some of the young Pharmacy students coming through now is they have the aversion to risk.” (10:39 – 10:46)

“And I think that you need to have that support because you’re not always going to have a good day and you need someone else to pick you up on those difficult times. I think also when you’re looking at partnerships or partners, try to find partners that have complementary skills to you rather than the same. This is a diversity game. You’ve got to try and be as diverse as you possibly can in your partnership.” (12:37 – 13:00)

“And like I said to you, it’s good to be different, but you must be aligned.” (14:35 – 14:37)

“There’s a total mindset sort of shift now where we’re looking at that full scope of practice and engaging Pharmacists. And I think that’ll be such a positive for the profession because I think it’ll actually bring in a whole lot of young new students that actually see the profession to be much broader than what it is today.” (16:57 – 17:17)

“What I’m sensing going forward is there will be a shift in the health care model. It’ll probably move more toward a user pays model where people are actually getting used to paying for services. The government can’t keep on funding it.” (17:26 – 17:43)

“So, I think it has a very positive future in that way in terms of patient engagement.” (18:54 – 18:59)

“But a part of our journey is to say, let’s use automation to the best that we can, to free up the Pharmacists to spend as much time as possible with the patient and the other things that are important.” (19:38 – 19:50)

“We’re using technology to actually free ourselves to spend more time with the patient. And I think the more we get in front of them, the more we can change the health outcome, which makes us more important.” (20:25 – 20:35)

“You may choose the wrong stores, the wrong locations. You may go a different path. But by and large, I think one of the things of entrepreneurship is you’ve got to have that perseverance and it’s good. It’s a lot about vision and flexibility, but you’ve got to have that perseverance and you just got to keep on following the path.” (22:22 – 22:44)

“For me, it’s you got to have a vision and I think you’ve just got to physically put in the hours. As they say after 10000 hours of something you become an expert, whether it be sport or any hobby. I think you’ve really got to put in the hours and also in there is—you’ve got to be flexible, adapt and you’ve got to connect with people as well and you can’t be a hermit.” (26:57 – 27:21)

“You have your vision and you have hard work. And if it doesn’t work, you’ve got to cut your losses. You don’t want to perpetuate the loss because in a partnership it can actually start to cause a whole lot of other issues.” (29:02 – 29:18)

“I love what I do. I sincerely love what I do and I feel very blessed that I have the choice to choose things now that I really want to do. And I think that makes it really easy. But I love my profession. I love the practice of Pharmacy.” (30:09 – 30:23)

“One of the big investments that we’re doing as the Platform Alliance Group is looking at automation and how do we make things easier for our franchisees, our and members. And it’s really that investment in technology and also creating a whole lot of programs and services for our members to help them maximize the income in their stores.” (33:25 – 33:47)

“It’s really important that the Pharmacists out there understand their customers better and that they use their database. We have a great source of information. I don’t think that as a profession we’re actually using the information at hand to connect to the customer more.” (34:49 – 35:04)

“I think our job in that franchise space is how do we provide our members with solutions to actually alleviate them of those mundane tasks so they spend more time with their patients, where they are valued the most. When you look at the research, consumers are saying, we love the time with the Pharmacists, we love the fact that we were cancelled and they have time to talk to us. Our job is how do we help take away the mundane, the repetitive orders, and all of those things, how do we create a data and loyalty company where you can identify your top 100 – 200 customers, where the income is coming from, and do more of the right things.” (36:23 – 37:02)