In this Elevate 360 Summit episode, Melissa sits down with Dr. Thea Blystone, a visionary consulting pharmacist who is redefining what pharmacy can look like beyond the traditional W-2 model.

After 20 years in pharmacy and eight different roles that kept her “inside the box,” Thea hit a personal and professional breaking point that forced her to reevaluate everything — her career, her beliefs, and what she was willing to accept moving forward. From rebuilding her life at rock bottom to launching multiple businesses, Thea shares how she transitioned from dispensing prescriptions to delivering true clinical care, patient advocacy, and mentorship for pharmacists ready to evolve with the future of healthcare.

This conversation dives deep into the modernized approach to pharmacy services, the realities of automation and mail-order prescriptions, and why pharmacists are uniquely positioned to fill the growing care gap in healthcare. It’s a powerful reminder that believing you can is often the missing piece between staying stuck and building something meaningful.

Takeaways

• Burnout can be the catalyst for clarity and transformation.
• Traditional pharmacy models limit both care and fulfillment.
• Pharmacists are trained to manage diagnoses — not just dispense medication.
• Automation and mail-order prescriptions increase the need for human advocacy.
• Care management creates space for deeper patient support.
• Keeping a W-2 can provide stability while building something new.
• Mentorship collapses years of trial and error.
• Entrepreneurship requires choosing a “different hard.”
• Inner belief directly impacts outer results.
• The future of pharmacy depends on evolution, not preservation.

Topics discussed in this episode:

• pivoting from traditional pharmacy after burnout
• rebuilding life and career from rock bottom
• being a go-to parent in a demanding healthcare system
• limitations of the traditional W-2 pharmacy model
• dispensing vs true clinical care and patient advocacy
• care management as a modern pharmacy service
• imposter syndrome and taking the first entrepreneurial leap
• starting a business while keeping a W-2 for stability
• the future of pharmacy as retail locations close
• mail-order prescriptions and loss of patient access
• why pharmacists are essential for medication safety
• physician time constraints and growing care gaps
• mentoring pharmacists into consulting models
• collapsing time through mentorship
• choosing a “different hard” in entrepreneurship
• belief, mindset, and inner work as growth catalysts
• embodying the Elevate 360 approach to life and business

BUSINESS RESOURCES:

▶ Ready to upgrade your leadership and surround yourself with high-performing entrepreneurs? Get a $1 preview inside Melissa’s private community, The Hive: https://burnouttoallout.thrivecart.com/hive-preview/

▶ FREE Daily Lead Gen Checklist: http://www.burnouttoallout.co/linkedin-checklist

▶ For more resources and information on Melissa’s current offerings: www.burnouttoallout.co

Connect with Melissa:

〉LinkedIn™: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissa-henault/

〉Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melissa_henault/

Connect with Dr. Thea:

▶ Access Dr. Thea’s resource here: www.tmrx.care/oath

▶ Connect with Dr. Thea on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thea-pierce-blystone/

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Burnout to All Out. Fam, I am so excited for you all to get a chance to hear from the cream of the crop. These are our Burnout to All Out Elevate 360 mastermind clients who've been in my master, my high level mastermind all year this year. And we do a summit once a year with our mastermind clients to debut their zone of genius.

What is incredible is that these clients all embody a 360 degree approach to business. They all contribute in one way, or fashion as subject matter experts that contribute to the pillars of Elevate 360, which is truly that we believe that bodies build businesses and that we have to have business strategy and legacy strategy as well. And so what is really cool about these clients is that

through a series of a couple of days of a summit, they were able to highlight and bring value and educate in their fields, whether it was around self leadership, leadership in business, business strategies, energetics and mindset and or legacy and how we take what we're doing and make our money work harder than we did for it to create impact and legacy over time. And so they,

really embody all that represents the 360 degree approach to business and the burnout to all out through line of our mastermind. So over the next couple of episodes, you are gonna hear from all of these experts. You're gonna get the details to their work in the notes section. And hopefully you're inspired as well as to what is possible.

for you as an entrepreneur and scaling your businesses the way these incredible human beings have. So hope you enjoy the series. Okay, so with that, with that, we are gonna kick off Dr. Thea Blystone. I am so excited to kick off with you. Let me just start, Thea and I go back probably a number of years on LinkedIn, just back and forth.

with...

supporting each other from afar as fellow entrepreneurs who've kind of broken out of the, you know, traditional role with the farm D at the end of our names, right? And it's been such a pleasure to work with her more intimately in the mastermind this year. So let me just kick off by saying that, you know, Dr. Thea is a visionary consulting pharmacist dedicated to transforming the landscape of pharmacy and healthcare with a strong belief in leading a lasting legacy.

She mentors aspiring pharmacists and spearheads initiatives with providers that shift the focus from dispensing to exceptional clinical care. She empowers healthcare providers to achieve exceptional patient outcomes for all patients and embrace the future of healthcare, which is something I think we'll talk a little bit about today. With a passion for advancing the practice of pharmacy, she's a catalyst for change.

shaping a new era of clinical excellence. And I know that Dr. Thea today is really gonna talk to us a bit about the modernized approach to pharmacy services. So first of all, Thea, just welcome to the summit today.

Yes, thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to bring this approach out and share it with more folks than just maybe pharmacists that have seen me on LinkedIn and really share that there's so much about pharmacy most people don't even see. They just see us behind the counter doing our thing, but there's so much more to it. So I am so happy to be here.

Yes. Well, so why don't we, you know, why don't we start? I want to start with a big picture. You know, my podcast, which this recording will be a part of the podcast is burnout to all out, like this pivot from burnout to all out. And so there's always an inspirational story behind the story, right? Like what motivated you to make the pivot from traditional pharmacy and your traditional role?

to where you are today. Like what was the motivation? Talk to us a little bit about your pivot and your pivot story.

Well, that goes back a long time. So this year, I've been a pharmacist for 20 years this year. And the first couple years out of school, I'm like, I got this. I can do great things. I'm doing well. Like pharmacy is great. Everything's good. Until I got through eight different jobs in pharmacy and realized that it wasn't good, but I couldn't figure out what was good. And it took me some

life experiences during that time where, you know, I had to pivot away from a marriage that was no longer beneficial and quite frankly, very toxic to myself and my children. And that left me in a place where I didn't have choices. I had zeros in my bank account. I didn't have a roof over our head. And we took a truck with three bags of clothes, a kid in each hand, and we left a situation that was very, very harmful for us. And in that moment,

I realized that at that point I had been a pharmacist for 10 years and I'm like, my gosh, like I should have more than I have right now leaving this situation where I am right now and standing back up and doing the thing has taught me a lot about how to pivot, how to change, how to keep moving forward. But it wasn't that until that moment happened that I started even thinking about things differently because I'm like, what am I gonna accept in my life?

What am I gonna do like for the rest of this? And it had nothing to do with pharmacy specifically. It didn't have everything to do with the family that I now was the sole parent of. And so I'm like, I can't do pharmacy like I have done pharmacy for the last 10 years because that was 12 hour days, two days on, two days off, three day weekends. Who's gonna be healthcare for, who's gonna help me care for my children while I'm doing healthcare for 12 hours a day?

Like I had to figure out a way to be able to be a go-to parent. And with that, I was like, okay, I need a job. Let's start there. I need a job. Cause I didn't even have a job when we left. And so I'm like, I gotta go to find a job. I've gotta go, you know, make sure that this job is gonna work for me. And I found a job that was able, gonna give me some better hours and some better things inside a pharmacy. And I started to pick myself back up. And it was in those moments that I started seeing the flaws.

in all of the aspects of pharmacy that I've always done. And it was like, but I mean, yes, I wanted to be a go-to parent and who doesn't, right? Like who doesn't want to be the cookie mom or the bus driver mom is what I like to call them. Like we all want to be those people for our children. We don't want someone else raising our kids, but in healthcare, don't really have a lot of say in what your schedule is or what your hours have to be or where you have to be when. And the energy in which I had to show up was always on.

Like I didn't have choices in any realm of my life because I was dedicated to being a great pharmacist. And so for me, it was in the moments of change that had to happen that happened to me. I like to call that situation a piece of my, I was collateral damage to other people's choices. And in those moments, I didn't have a choice, but to change. so when I got a W-2 job,

that experience. I started seeing holes in it though because I was still trying to be that go-to parent and be able to be involved but still love on people like I as a pharmacist know how to do. And so for me it was like okay every year that passed on after I got this new job and started to pick myself up got a home for my children they enrolled in school we were doing the thing

but the job was still leaving holes. And I'm like, gosh, like this isn't what I went to pharmacy school for. This is not the piece. Like I got the job and I worked my way up to second and charge and then it was babysitting other people. wasn't even doing pharmacy. So it was like babysitting more pharmacists, more pharmacy technicians holding their lives in my hands because I got the luxury of doing the schedule. And I'm like, wait a second, this isn't what I went to school for either. And so it was in the moment of

I can't stand for not doing what I went to school to do. And I'm like, so I took a step back and said, what is it that I want to do? And that's where I found the bigger holes. And that's where I chose to pivot in all of pharmacy.

And this is so powerful. gives me goosebumps. Two things. Number one is that is there a through line that you guys are hearing so many of our speakers? There's a professional journey that has brought them to where they are today. And it is like, is recognizing and having gratitude for the experiences and the journey that have brought you to where you are, right? Like that gave you the vision to see the gaps.

To then, and this is the second piece I wanna piggyback on, many of us have to hit rock bottom. And in order to become so disoriented that we reorient in a different way, right? And when you're in the midst of it, like you were with a marriage that was ending, a home you no longer had, like shifting in careers.

In those moments in those on your knees, I call them snotty girl crying on the bathroom floor moments is actually where a lot of breakthrough happens, right? Where you're able to when you've lost it all or perceivably lost it all, you can get to a place of like, well, like what's the worst that can happen now, right? Why not be crazy and try something new, right? So I just, I love this. And this is also just some

you know, for anyone who needs to hear this right now, who maybe is listening, watching the replay and you are just in the thick of it, you are in the depth of the dark, you feel like everything is falling apart, know that you're actually falling together and that you just can't see the other end yet, right? So I love this so much, Thea. So, well, so let's dive in then, like what gave you like,

Let's talk about how you jumped in and started your own consulting. Like you started your own business. Talk to us a little bit about what I want folks to understand is that you're not a one trick pony. You're actually like multifaceted. You're now running multiple companies. Like there's a lot behind you. So let's talk a little bit about your journey to how you launched your business and how you launched your consultancy.

What it looks like now is a multifaceted entrepreneur who is, crushing it. And making a lot of impact, right?

Yeah, and that was my hope, right, is to make impact as a pharmacist. I wanted to make sure that I was taking care of my community. That's why I went to pharmacy school. And so when I had the eight different jobs inside of my field that said play in the box, here are the W-2s in the box of pharmacy, here they are, you get to play inside this box. But what I found was that that wasn't what I went to pharmacy school for. went to

pharmacy school, well, two reasons. I went to pharmacy school one so I could take a vacation every year, which 10 years into my career I still hadn't done anyways. And I also wanted to take care of people without touching them because I inherently, I'm a cactus. Everyone in the 360 group knows that I don't like to touch people or hug people or show much emotion. And so with that, like I wanted to be the background person to care for people and support them, educate them and hold them accountable is what I thought I was going to school to do.

And so when I come out and all eight jobs inside the box of pharmacy of all W2 jobs that were available to me, they all had the same aspects of dispense, spend a little time with patients and bill insurance. That was it. That's all we did. And so it was like, but that's not really what I wanted to do. I wanted to care more. And so when I started looking about all the pieces of the jobs that I had done, the eight different kinds of pharmacy that I had done, I was like, there's moments.

like 1 % of my day that I actually got to do the thing that I like to do and that was talk to patients. And I was like, well, why is that? Why can't I get paid instead of dispensing someone something to someone, but actually being able to hold that true to the patient that I know that you need support beyond me giving a prescription to you.

And that support is really what I want to be able to do for the rest of my life. And that's really what I went to pharmacy school to do. And so for me, was like seeing the gaps of the eight jobs that I had done in pharmacy that kept me in the box of pharmacy as an employee. It then allowed me to realize that the 90 % or 99 % of the stuff that I was doing was all labor.

it was all labor. And I was like, but that's not the care that I wanted to deliver. And so when I saw these gaps in every job I did, I was like, wait, there's, there's room for me to be able to show up in a manner that the patients I know love because they come and see me and love me for it. When I have the time to talk to them in at the pharmacy counter or maybe in a, in a room before discharge or whatever that looked like. And so I was like,

there's gotta be a way that I can do this. And it was in those moments of change that I started to feel like there's more to this. I know there's stuff here. And so I went looking for a better model. And that's really where I found care management. And I had mentors that were able to share with me what it was, but I didn't have anyone ahead of me doing it. And that for me was so hard because...

I spent 24 months swirling, like trying to figure it out. Will this work for me? Imposter syndrome. I've never done something like this. I've never set up a business. I don't know. Like, am I sure this is gonna work? I just don't know. And I sat in that mindset of, am I good enough? Am I doing the right thing?

No one else is doing this. Am I sure I'm not batshit crazy? Like I don't even know like where I sit in all of this. And it just kept this vicious cycle of rolling over for 24 months until I finally said, okay, I'm done with the theory. Everyone says there's lots of theory here that it can be done, but no one doing it. And I'm going to go have a conversation. I'm going to go put my big girl pants on and just go have a conversation with someone I knew like a connection that knew me from the different eight jobs. And I was like, you know what?

I'm just going to have a conversation, see what happens. And I was like, okay. So they were like, my gosh, you could do amazing things, but don't do it like this. Don't do it like the peers that you may be doing it like this because that's not working. What you could deliver works because we know as a pharmacist, you can deliver on these things. Disease state management is something we know how to do, but we don't get to do it when we're in a dispensing job. And so it was really interesting to me to see how

the pieces of my W-2 job, all of the skills that I had learned, the critical thinking, the motivational interviewing, the fix the refrigerator because there's no one coming to fix the refrigerator that day or the printer or an insurance problem. Whatever those things were, were actually pieces that I could then use in a consulting space that then said,

Well, I know how to critically think. So if a patient asks me a question, I may not know the answer, but I know how to critically think about it and have a conversation about it and support them through it. And that changed how I was able to look at being a pharmacist. And so when I saw the opportunity and this, the three people that I talked to after my 24 months of spinning my wheels and not knowing which way to go, I was like, I'm just going to go for it.

What do I have to lose? Because at this point, I know what rock bottom is. I had zeros in my bank account in February of 15. Like I know that I can't go back there. So I kept my W-2 job and I started this on the side and said, okay, what do I have to lose? I have nothing to lose. Assets are secure because of this W-2 job. I don't love it. And I want to pivot and I want to go do real estate or a travel agent. I don't know what I want to do, but it wasn't pharmacy because it wasn't filling my cup up. But when I saw this, I was like,

There's so much here, this little voice inside of me kept saying, please, please, please, please look at me. Please look at the 1 % that you were built to do. We know you were built to do it because it doesn't matter if I'm standing in the middle of the church or if I'm in the middle of Walmart's over the counter Tylenol section, I'm helping people because I can't not, that's who I am. And so with those moments, I was like, my gosh, I can do this. And so that's really what started it is.

An opportunity that started as a seed inside of me kept saying, 1%, you're only doing 1 % of what you know you can do. You can do this. You can do hard things. When have you failed you? When left to your own devices, when have I ever failed myself? We said before it wasn't because of me that I've landed where I was. It was the collateral damage that happened around me and the choices I had to make in the moment that landed me there. Not because I wanted that.

And so when I set my mind on wanting something different and the 1 % and seeing what that 1 % could actually be inside a pharmacy and actually give us all the opportunity to show up how we were educated to show up and not just play inside the box. I lifted the lid off the box of pharmacy and said, there's more out there. The blue ocean is so wide for all healthcare. And especially now, right? Like I'm gonna pull this into the moment right now of saying,

AI and robots and all the stuff that is coming now. Like if we don't open the box of any industry, it doesn't even matter. It's pharmacy, healthcare, whatever. Like it could be tech, could be finances. All of it's changing in the moment right now that allows us to think like, where are we going to be in five years from today? Where are we going to be? And so this evolution of change was so important to me to think about the future of pharmacy could look like.

in these moments of me being unsettled. I was unsettled in the eight jobs. That's what made me pivot and go into care management that allowed me to be able to show up authentically for the patients that I knew I could care for. And so in that moment, I was like, okay, I'm just gonna do it. And that's where it came out. Pharmacy Consulting came out. I started working with physicians in order to work with patients. But then as I got going with patients, the patients loved it, the physicians loved it.

And pharmacists saw what I was doing because I kept sharing about it because I was so excited about pharmacy again. And they're like, what are you so excited about? And I'm like, listen, this is it. This is it. And in the middle of COVID, who was excited in healthcare? No one, no one, but me. I was excited for healthcare because it allowed me to be in the moment of doing what I knew to do of the.

traditionally only 1 % was my 90 % of each day that I got to spend with patients. And it was in those moments that people started coming to me, which then fostered what TM Pharmacy Consulting is today, which is the education piece for other pharmacists to be able to do what I do. And Tenco Health is me allowed to help patients directly with my team, with my physician contracts, doing the work for patients locally to me.

continuing to foster the care that I have for patients each and every day. And so it's in those moments of unsettlement that I just kept leading into and the change happened because I'm not gonna settle this time because being at rock bottom, saw what settling did because that was the second marriage that had failed because I settled twice. I learned from that and said, more settling, not in career, not for my children, not for me. Let's roll.

So.

So powerful. And you know, there's many people kind of like lighting up the chat here, but it's so true. It's like, it's the self discovery of your, your purpose and your mission and like the journey that brought you here. But do you have the ball forward with the calling, right? Like, do you truly have what it takes to move forward with just enough information, but not enough, right? We talked about this a little bit yesterday, especially with healthcare providers.

to move.

we tend to be very risk adverse, right? Because when you make this mistake, people die. But in this sense, like you had to go with just enough information that was not enough to guarantee anything, but you intuitively were called and you also from your journey of your past knew like, how could it be any worse? I'm going to move forward with this, right? Like, yeah, love this so much. So

So let's get into the modernized approach to pharmacy services. I know that's something that you really wanted to talk about today. I'd love for us to just talk about the future of pharmacy, right? What does it look like based on your, because as every business owner in your niche industry, just like Thea, we have to be the visionaries of the company. We have to see,

months, years had to stay relevant, right? So like, what is the future of pharmacy? And what does that, I mean, what does that look like? How do we modernize pharmacy services? And what does the future look like?

Yeah, and I think a lot of folks, whether you're in the pharmacy world or healthcare world or not, are seeing it in their communities because the pharmacies are closing. Pharmacies are going away because of the way the industry is right now, because we haven't evolved in all things and how we dispense and how we show up in the healthcare sector. And so I think it's not, it's all, you know, it doesn't matter what industry you're in, if you're on this call, you need to be feeling this because...

This is the piece that's gonna affect you directly, how pharmacists are available to you. I don't know about anyone else on the call, but I know that people come in to me to ask me random questions because they know I'm there. They know that they can get a healthcare perspective from the pharmacist in any community across the country. And so when we have that access, we're one of the most trusted professionals in healthcare today and have been for years.

but it's because we're standing in front of you and you have access to me that you think that. And so when we look at the future of pharmacy, how are we going to do that if we don't pivot? Because the pharmacies are going away, you're gonna get your mail each day and then there's gonna be your prescriptions. Like Amazon is delivering same day to most houses across America today. And so like you can get home service of prescription drugs, but what you're losing is...

Who do you ask your questions to? Because the statistics show that you're not asking your doctor. Because most people in America only spend one appointment every 18 months. And in that appointment, you spend seven minutes with your doctor. Seven minutes for someone to have five chronic conditions, 17 medications. What are you talking about in that seven minutes? I know I've sat in on some of these appointments and it's talking about my dog.

talking about my crazy husband or my crazy kids. And then we might talk a minute or two about how I'm doing in a healthcare standpoint with my 10 chronic conditions. And so with that, it's the moment of can pharmacists still be there for you? Yes, but it's gonna look different. And that's the pharmacy I see for the future is you're gonna get your prescriptions from someone, they're gonna mail them to you, they're gonna deliver them to your door, but you're not gonna have access to a pharmacist.

But the need for us to be there to keep people safe is so, important because what most people see in a pharmacy is us counting by five, checking the prescriptions, billing the insurance and running a register, right? That's what you see. But what you don't see is the clinical acumen that's needed to make sure that medication is safe for you. So if some robot somewhere is doing the analysis of whether or not this medication is safe for you, do they know that your life is evolving?

Do they know that your metabolism is changing as we age? Do they know that you have 10 new things come up from a stress level and you're like, can't handle anymore and need someone to talk to? None of that is addressed, but those are all the conversations that I have at the pharmacy counter each and every day. So who's going to have those if we don't start evolving? And that's where I think pharmacy is going is I think there's so much room here for every community to have a pharmacist doing outreach.

to their community that allows access to all patients to have someone as a resource in healthcare because we know it can't be the doctors. They're stretched thin, they don't have time, they can't bill for these services, they can but they don't know how or don't want to because it's more, they can't do more. But pharmacists, if we don't have a pharmacy, can.

So I like case in point, Jake and I experienced this phenomenon just over the past couple of weeks. You'll appreciate this for all the listeners. Maybe some of you guys can relate. So my husband, a couple of months ago, Thea had like a cyst on his back and they put him on doxycycline and it like went away. And then this past month it came back and the physician wrote him another prescription for doxycycline. And I was like, well, like.

It's back. So do you think it should be doxycycline? So he's on it for like two weeks. It's still there. The doctor prescribes a whole nother round. I'm like, okay. So we're just going to continue to take the antibiotic that's not working that you were originally prescribed when the cyst first showed up. Right. And then this is where I think it gets really messy is like, then all of sudden he was like, my throat is on

Like there's razor blades in my throat. He couldn't eat, he couldn't swallow. Okay, I'm 10 years removed from practicing pharmacy, but I'm like, okay, doxycycline, gut, microflora. My husband has a huge history of like reflux and like ulcers. I'm like, I bet this doxycycline is like done something to the H. pylori, whatever, like, you know, in his throat. So I'm like the pharmacist who hasn't practiced for a decade researching this.

And I'm like, you need, so then they put them on a PPI, like medicine on top of medicine to treat the symptoms from the other, like playing whack-a-mole. If there was like a pharmacist truly involved, and sorry, I'm not, I have not been doing this for 10 years, you can't depend on me. This is why we need pharmacists more involved. Like the quality of life for my husband during this journey, just because there was no true,

It's like.

Yeah.

advocacy from a pharmacological perspective. The doctor was just, you know, just like throwing spaghetti against the wall and not thinking critically, not looking at his medical history and not to throw doctors under the bus, but it's just like, they're going 90 miles an hour like the rest of us. Like who's the advocate for your medication? You know, like.

Why? And pharmacists come at it from a different viewpoint, right? Physicians were trained to diagnose and treat. We were on the other end of that saying we need to manage the diagnosis. So our view is polar opposite from where a physician is trained to where a pharmacist is trained. And that's why a lot of times we have a different view to be able to make a recommendation to that multidisciplinary team that isn't

the standard of what they think because we're trained in polar opposite ways. And so I think that's exactly the point is being able to advocate for patients who's doing that today. Who's even calling their, think about the Medicare population, right? Like who's calling their grandparents more than once a month, maybe once a quarter, maybe in today's fast paced world. Like who calls the elderly people to check in on them to make sure that they're good?

Average American over the age of 65 is on 17 medications, Melissa, 17 average. Like who's making sure that we're there when the patient needs us? Who's there for the patient? And that's where I think community pharmacy has the opportunity to be that person still, but still evolve with how pharmacy is evolving in all of the automated pieces that can happen today with technology and AI.

but also the care because if pharmacists don't care and physicians are busy and nurses are busy, who's caring? Who? I'm not sure there's a care in healthcare.

Right.

So yes, okay. So we could go, I mean, we could talk about this all day long to pharmacists, right? And I know Emily is salivating. She just wants to jump in, And where I want to go next though, because I think this is really powerful is you're impacting patients, you're impacting healthcare, you're impacting physicians, right?

You're also impacting and empowering other pharmacists. What I love that you're doing, and this is in parallel to what Sarah, some of you guys remember Sarah Davenport the other day, the TV news anchor, right? She's learned how to take her experience and actually mentor other TV news anchors into pivoting out of their traditional nine to five and find translatable skill sets to have a thriving life and business.

and you're doing the same thing with pharmacists, right? So can you talk a little bit about, you know, what you're doing in helping pharmacists really experience more career fulfillment through some of the work that you do?

Yeah, absolutely. And it wasn't through initiative from me that I even thought to do this. It was through the experience that I had of the 24 months of spinning my wheels that I said, this isn't really that hard once I got moving. Once I got my first doctor, once I saw how the insurance started to roll,

how the payments started to happen, all of these things on the back end were happening. And so as I was building my patients, pharmacists kept coming to me and saying, how are you doing this? What are you doing? How are you doing this? How are you getting paid for your time? Because you're not dispensing anything. How are you doing this? And I was like, okay, okay, I'm coming. I'm like, I kept sharing, but then I was like, it wasn't enough. They wanted me to show them what I was doing so that they then could do it too. And then I took my blinders off and said, well, shoot, if people are coming to me,

This could actually transform pharmacy. Like literally, like transform everything I want to do as a pharmacist to help the next generation of pharmacists, which we'll get into the oath of the pharmacist here in a minute, but that's one of the last sentences on the oath of the pharmacist for me to practice was so that I could help foster the next generation of pharmacists leaving pharmacy better than I found it. And I was like, shoot.

Now I'm obligated. Darn it. Like, come on. Like, I just want to build a business, keep my head down and be the go-to parent, right? Like, that's what I wanted. And people kept coming to me I was like, my goodness. Okay. But I can't do it the way other people did it. The theory only, I can't do that shit to people. Like, I know I've been at zero and if someone's giving me money, I want to make sure they're never at zero because that's my obligation as a person to give someone else a firm foundation to be able to do something with this. And so that's why it took me a long time.

to accept that people kept coming to me. And I was like, my gosh, all right, all right, fine, fine, fine. So that's really where I came out and said, okay, I'll do a bootcamp, see how it goes. I'll do a 12 week thing, we'll see how it goes. It's only a quarter, I can get through a quarter. And then people kept coming and coming. And that's really where I made the transition into what TM Pharmacy Consulting is today, which is the education piece for other pharmacists to learn the model so that they too can have them, people behind them

to not have to start from scratch and be able to stand this up too, because every community across this country needs this. Every single one that has a pharmacy needs this, because this is what the future of pharmacy really looks like. And it's scary and it's not easy. And I spent 24 months figuring it out and people were like, well, you can't guarantee anything. I'm like, no, because I spent 24 months doing it. Are you gonna show up and do it? Because that's the piece I can't explain for.

Like I can't make you show up. You've got to want this and your why has to be pretty darn deep because it gets freaking hard. Like it's hard. But so was pharmacy school, right? So was everything else that I conquered in my life. Hard, but doable. with the right mentor. So my program is a hundred percent pushing like the didactic stuff of what is it and how do I do it is super easy.

Yes.

It's the mentorship of keeping them going to do the thing that is my bread and butter and where I'll always stay because I love to make sure that no one has to spend 24 months in the hell I rotated through trying to figure it out.

You know what I love about this, Thea, this is like such a critical principle of mentorship, right? You know, we talk about this a lot, like fee for services, fee for consulting with you, fee for services in my coaching. You know, I think about when, for instance, the Legion Academy, which I know you're very well familiar with, it's a program we used to teach, a group coaching program. We're still in the midst of it, teaching lead generation and it's $6,500 to come in, right? And it's funny.

the occasional person who would say $5,500 to learn LinkedIn for six months. I'm like, oh no, no, no, no, no. You're paying $5,500 for two decades between Jackie and I and our experience of learning, creating the method and fine tuning the method so that you can just show up based off of all of that experience and

you can collapse time and move forward and it's a life long asset that you take with you. So like when people like give me, don't know about the rest of you, but they give you cost objections for your services, A, they're the wrong person, B, they don't understand the value of the journey you went on to be the expert, right? Like it's kind of like.

I saw this on Instagram a while ago. was like this huge ship that like stopped working and they had to call in the engineer. Have you seen that one? And it's like the engineer comes in, a mechanic, he pulls out one tool, he like fixes it in 12 seconds. And he's like, that'll be $20,000. And they're like, $20,000. It was one tool. And he's like, and the 30 years of experience that allowed me to know when I showed up what the problem was, what tool to pick up and how to fix it.

$20,000,

Yes, yes, and that's I get that objection a lot because you know we think that going through pharmacy school and spending the bazillion dollars in pharmacy school okay 250,000 to go to pharmacy school today that you don't ever have to

keep investing in the future of pharmacy. And that is because we spent so much, that was the assumption of pharmacists is, I'll have everything. I'll just do my continuing education and I won't have to spend any more for the future of my life and my degree. Now that was the, in the place of my parents and grandparents, that might've been true. But in today's changing world, you have to keep growing. And unfortunately that does come with a cost.

But when I can tell you that you can make more than a pharmacist does with less hours worked by doing what I do, it's something to listen into, right? Like I don't work near as hard as I did when I was working 12 hour days and I still get to bake cookies for my daughter's thing. And I get to be the softball mom, the hockey mom and the football mom today. Like I am able to do the things and still make better money than a pharmacist makes because I chose a different hard. Yes.

Yes, I love that. Okay, mic drop. Choose a different hard, right? Okay, final question for you before we keep this soapbox going and move over to Dr. Emily. How have you embodied this 360 degree approach to life and business since being an E 360 and just how are you showing up?

gosh. So I would say that with change comes different pieces of life showing up. When change happens, we think, I'll just do it differently. My to-do list will change. But then I was like, well, I did all the things on my to-do list and I still feel like I'm in the same spot I was. Might be a little better, might look a little better.

but I felt like I was still in the same place because I was. Because with the start of our conversation and all of the stuff that I had to go through, now you heard about the one piece that I went through about being the collateral damage to have to restart my life as a pharmacist 10 years into my career with two children, no money, no house, nothing. That was one piece of it, but there was trauma all along before that that I've endured and became gritty.

quote unquote, gritty around, you know, how life happens to us and what our mindset is when those things happen. Now I'm a blue collared Pennsylvania girl, like steel mills, all the things are around me, right? So I come up from a blue collared world. So think about money in a blue collared world. Money is a commodity, usually scarce in a community like mine. And so when you get money, what do you do with it?

good things or bad things. Well, it depends on me. But no one in my life prior to that had ever taught me that that was a choice to do good things or bad things with my money, because it was such a scarcity that it was like they didn't even know to talk about it. And so it was in the learning of, I'm coming to full circle. No, you're fine. assure you. So like in the learning of all the things that had been programmed into my life that got me to where I was, it was in the learning of that, that then was like,

everything I do from here on out is still impacted by those same beliefs, those same things that I was thinking about and had programmed in me from the time I was seven. Like who tells me how to handle that? No one in business tells me how to handle that. And I didn't even know to look for that because in pharmacy school, they didn't tell me to look for what happened to me and who I am and how do I react to things? Well, most people know that I'm cool, cool, cool. And then ADHD, theia blows up.

And then it's like, like, but someone no one told me that I could manage what that looks like. And it's in that 360 that I say in this experience that I showed up and was like, I don't know what's wrong. I'm doing the things my to do list is checked. My type a personality is going, going, going. I'm working, working, working on both sides of my business and I can't move. Why am I not moving? Do you believe you can like what?

What do you mean, do you believe you can? Of course I wouldn't do any of this if I didn't believe I could. No, no, no. But do you really? Are you kidding me? That was the question I got asked when I first met Melissa. Like out of all the questions in the world, you believe? Like, I don't know if I do. And it was in that moment that I knew I was here for the right reason, because the question in all the mentorship that I've spent

believe you can.

$100,000 outside of pharmacy school to get me to where I was this year hadn't changed that. Do I believe I can? Because everything up until this point was do, do, do. Task, to-do list, get it done, do the next thing, do the next thing. But it wasn't until that moment that said, am I sure that I'm doing the right thing? Is this really what I want? Is this the belief that I have that I can do it?

And that is the moment of 360 that started evolving my world because it was in that moment that I realized no one else had asked me that question. Not my mom, not my grandparents, not my faculty members, not my teachers along the way, not the previous mentors that I had. No one asked me that question. And that's the question that kept pushing me forward. When I don't believe I can, I don't. When I believe I can, I do.

And so you asking me that question brings it full circle back to the moments of, I don't know, but I know someone else who does. And that mentorship and that opportunity to work on me from the inside out, not all the outside stuff I can do, but how I'm showing up in front of you. Someone now asked me how I do that. You did. And so it was in that moment that I said, I know exactly where I need to be in this moment.

doing things a little bit differently than the normal. No one wants to talk about, I believe I can believe in myself? Like no one's talking about that. That's woo in our world of healthcare. That is outside of science. I don't like outside of science. So when you ask me that, I'm like, come on girl, I gotta have a better question than that. But then you showed me all of the pieces that impacted if I do that, if I believe in myself and believe I can do it with the right energy.

with the right work and the right to do list. It's all accomplishable. And I said, all right, let's go. And it hasn't been anything but 360 evolving. Keep going. Every quarter is another evolve of Thea because of Melissa, because of the thing. But in that, I get to say that I get to evolve pharmacy with me because now I have bigger opportunities because I believe I can sit in those, because I believe that pharmacy is worth saving, because I believe health care and patients.

across this country need us. And that's what I have to share is the oath of the pharmacist is evolving. This year they're coming out with a new oath and all the things, but it has in their equity and diversity for the first time. And think about how long we've been on those conversations in healthcare and politics and all the things. And that's where pharmacy still is. I want to be ahead of that curve too. I want the oath of the pharmacist to stand for something that I get to care for patients. I get to do it equitably and

I get to leave the future generation of pharmacy in good hands, and I am so excited for it.

Love this so much. Everybody, are just loving your energy. Love your story. I love how you just put it how it is. I often call myself the Trojan horse. You come in for the business strategy and before you know it, like you're doing the deep dark inner work and you're wondering what you got yourself into.

Because this is what I kept asking myself.

Well, Dr. Thea, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for just sharing your journey, inspiring others, you know, taking the pivot, whether you move from rock bottom or just move with confidence, but also like the calculated moves that you did. You didn't just burn the ship, you kept the W-2, you made calculated moves, you got the mentorship, you navigated, saw the opportunity and you leaned into it.

And you've been doing the inner work too, which we're going to continue to talk about today. And it's just, it's phenomenal to see your growth in all, all areas, not just business. So thank you so much for showing up today. How can people connect with you? Is there anything that you want to offer or share with the group to download or anything like that?

Yeah, I do have a download for the pharmacist in the room who wants to see the updated version of the oath of the pharmacist and how you too can get to that. You can go to TM TM Rx dot care backslash oath to be able to get that and I'll put that in the chat and then anyone if you know a pharmacist who's unsettled or know a pharmacy that's closing.

Please share with them my contact information over on LinkedIn. I also put my LinkedIn profile in the chat as well so that people can connect with me and really lean into the future of healthcare as a pharmacist approach to making everyone better.

Awesome, awesome. Thank you so much, Thea. I hope you found this episode as inspirational and kick-ass as I enjoyed interviewing with it. If you love this and you resonated with it, please reach out, reach out to the speakers. Their information is in the notes. Feel free to reach out to us. And as always, if you're curious about mentorship and support and business coaching,

under the Burnout to All Out umbrella, go to burnouttoallout.co and check out what we have going on in the business mentorship world today, including business coaching and retreats that are live and experiential and take a 360 degree approach to business. We can't wait to see you on the other side, wherever we collide.