“We’re going to crush you.” That’s what two retail pharmacy executives told Amit Kakar about his new business 25 years ago. Fast forward to today, and Amit’s business, Avalon Pharmacy, is thriving. How did he do it? By using marketing automation to deliver the best customer experience possible.
Press play to learn exactly how automation helped Amit take his customer service to the next level and grow his revenue by 20%.
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Clate (00:39.093)
Welcome everybody to the Conquer the Chaos podcast. I am Clate Mask co-founder and CEO of Keap. I'm your host. And I am so excited to welcome Amit Kakar to the show today. Thank you, Amit, for being with us. I appreciate having you.
Amit Kakar (00:54.386)
Thank you so much, Clate. It's an honor and a pleasure to be here today and excited to get started.
Clate (00:59.301)
I am too. Well, you know, our audience doesn't know, probably isn't aware of the fact that at the beginning of this year, we started to bring in customers into our company meeting. And you were one that came in and joined us early on. And I just, I fell so in love with your story, and what you do as a pharmacist and the way you serve your community. So we're going to dig into that. But for the audience, I think that there's so many cool lessons in the way that you have applied automation in your business to serve your clients and make such a difference. And it's, it's been amazing to see what you've done just since then, even when you came to the company meeting and shared with us. So thank you for taking some time out of your day. I know our audience is going to get a lot from the time we have together. Do you want to take just a second and tell us about your business so that everybody's familiar with who you are and what you do?
Amit Kakar (01:53.23)
Absolutely. Thank you, Clate. And it was a pleasure to come visit you and the staff. So my name is Amit. I'm a pharmacist. I grew up in Southern, California. I went to the University of Southern, California, School of Pharmacy and I originally wanted to be a physician. I did not get accepted in medical school. So I chose pharmacy. To make a long story short, I started off as a drug rep for Eli Lilly, had an absolute blast, learned a lot. I lasted about three months and I jumped into independent pharmacy ownership. I was 24 at the time, very young and very naive. That started my journey and I make this never do it again list as we speak every day. I didn't realize it 25 years ago that I've been in the business. I was making my “never do it again” list in school and come to find out retail, excuse me, independent pharmacy was my training, was my path where I really wanted to go and that's where I am now.
Clate (02:30.874)
Wow. It's amazing. Good, good for you. I mean, I, I'm sure there was that disappointment in not achieving what you wanted to go into, you know, practicing medicine. But what you do as a pharmacist is probably practicing medicine, quote-unquote, more, more than what most doctors get to do every day. So good for you for finding your path and creating something amazing in your pharmacy career.
Amit Kakar (03:17.946)
Thank you so much. Yeah, it's always, it's easy when you kind of say, well, one door closes and then, well, that's all. That's all there is, but that's not all there is. When that one door closes, there's a ton of opportunities that open up. You have to find them. That's pretty much really the path that I really took without even realizing it, that I'm following a whole new path and being able to connect and impact on a different level.
Clate (03:38.573)
We're gonna get to that path. Because, again, like I said, I just found your story so amazing. But take us, you know, for people, you know, that early stage of entrepreneurship is so tough. And there, you know, when we talk about conquer the chaos, and the what goes on for people as they're trying to get through those early stages, it's a little different than the later stage chaos, because in the early stages, you're dealing so much with your mindset. And so I'd, you know, because the because mindset is our number one key to success for entrepreneurs as they conquer chaos, I'd love to hear how you know any thoughts you have about mindset, particularly as you as you didn't you know as you took the path away from medicine and then you went to Eli Lilly. Ultimately you end up in your own pharmacy but maybe share with us a little bit about what that path was getting to the pharmacy and how important was it for you to cultivate a mindset of success.
Amit Kakar (04:37.062)
Yeah, thank you. Absolutely. So I started off working in a CVS pharmacy as a student for six years. And I was a student and I was very limited on what I could do. A lot of times patients would come in. We were not able to interact with them as a student. It was very difficult to, I wanted to build processes, but that wasn't my role. And really a lot of things, the way they were done, it was very difficult. We were just part of a system. So in my mind, I was making these mental notes, like if I had control of this, I might be able to do this. If I was able to connect with patients, I would be able to do this. And that sort of over time came about where I thought when I started going through school and I graduated, I thought, what if I had the opportunity to build that system that I wanted so badly for myself? And thinking, well, if I put in the time now, during that time I was working in the pharmacy, I could look at it one of two ways. I could look at it as this is my job and what's my future, or I could look at it as what if I could learn from all of these instances? What if I just took a little nugget every day and I put it in the back of my mind and I could build the system out later on? So I could have, and there were rough days. Days are rough. I would work the two to 11 shift on a Sunday night, which I would not recommend to anyone because you have class the next day, nobody comes in happy to work at midnight. And just those nuggets of that hard work and think, this hard work will pay off. You have to believe it. I always believed things are always hard in the beginning, messy in the middle, but gorgeous in the end. And that was my hard period of just, of the struggle. You have to love that struggle.
Clate (06:10.797)
Yeah, and like you said, knowing that it's going to be gorgeous in the end, and it's okay that it's messy in the middle, it's hard at the beginning. And like what you said, I love what you said, believing that hard work is going to pay off, that it's going to be beautiful. There's something else I hear in your mindset of success, though, that I really appreciate, and it's that you were always looking for a better way. You know, what I'm hearing you say is you're an intern, and you weren't just punching the clock. You were sitting there, you know, observing and taking it in and thinking, how could this be better? What if I did this myself? How would I build it? It doesn't surprise me one bit to see the success you've achieved and also to know what you've done to create a solution for pharmacists, which is, you know, of course, near and dear to our heart as we look at process and systems and how to improve things for pharmacists. So thanks for taking us in a little bit of the mindset. I appreciate that. Now, at what point did you say, hey, I can't, you know, I got to start my own business. You know, most entrepreneurs, they're stir crazy inside of a business that they don't own. Sometimes they're stir crazy inside of a business they do own, by the way. But especially when they are in somebody else's business, they wanna run their own business. And I imagine there was some point where you were like, okay, especially as a system and process thinker, you're like, I gotta do this thing on my own. When was that in your career?
Amit Kakar (07:31.63)
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. So it was a moment I was working with Eli Lilly and as a pharmaceutical rep, I would call on pharmacies. So I went into one pharmacy, the one in Yucca Valley that I currently own now, and there was a pharmacist retiring there. And I walked into the pharmacy and he said, I am retiring, you need to be here. Do you wanna do this? And I said, no, absolutely not. I have no interest in it whatsoever. No, but this is the best lesson. And I tell my kids this all the time. Be very careful turning down opportunities. The word no should never come out of your mouth right away. If nothing, just say nothing. If not, just soak it in. That's my lesson of life, soak it in. If someone has something to tell you whether it's critical or it's good, just soak it in, respond versus react.
Clate (08:18.765)
That's good advice. It's funny because as you were telling the story, I thought for sure hard work meets opportunity. Yes, here we go. So you said no. You said no.What happened?
Amit Kakar (08:23.542)
And I would love to share these entrepreneurs on this program is, no, it can change so it took me three or four times even at this level that you get to a certain level and you still make mistakes, right? You still learn from them. It never stops. It took me three more times to go back in there and one day I went in there and I thought “I think I can do this.” All of that training that I had at the pharmacy, I asked for this and now I'm getting it handed to me and now I'm gonna say no to this? I said, no, you know what? I'm gonna try this and I don't know where it's gonna go. I have no idea, but I know I wanna try it, right? Like the pain of inaction is just not gonna happen here. So I'm gonna take action and let the repercussions be as they may. So basically my third time around, I said, you know what? I'm gonna take the position. I still was scared, I wasn't gonna do ownership, but I thought I'll work for this for a year. Without knowing what I was gonna get paid with, I'm gonna do it for a year. And I literally took it for a year. Within two months, my whole life changed. The trajectory completely changed.
Clate (09:28.829)
Oh, wow. Awesome. So what when you say that, you know, you did it for a year, then your trajectory changed? Is it that during that year, you realized you were meant to be an entrepreneur? What happened?
Amit Kakar (09:41.89)
100 percent. The first day I took the position. I came to work the next day and the pharmacy was robbed, broken into. The glass was broken, the ceiling was kicked in, everything. And that was the moment where I was either going to walk away or I thought, you know what, I can move past this, we can get around this, I can secure this in a better spot, we can change this. So that was a moment for a split second I go, this is not for me, I didn't know what I'm getting into, or I thought, let me do this anyways. Let me do it in spite of all this. And this goes to something I really believe in, it's you can't let your feelings dictate your habits. How I felt in that moment could have basically changed my whole trajectory if I would have walked away. But I didn't let my feelings get in the way. I really thought about that and I said, I can't look past this. This is just an event, right? The events don't mean anything. It's the definition we attach to them. I'm not attaching any meaning to this, what happened. But I'm gonna now move forward and this is not gonna happen again.
Clate (10:36.161)
Yeah, that's awesome. That's really great. So I can, like that's such a defining moment when you're you're, you know, next day on the job and you first you first start, next day on the job. It's you know, you're robbed and you're thinking, Oh, wow, do I really want to do this? So a year a year goes by and you're convinced yes, you want to do this? When did you become the business owner? And then maybe share with us, because I think it's been about what 25 years or 24 years that you've been, okay.
Amit Kakar (11:02.769)
Yes.
Clate (11:05.304)
So after one year, when did you become the owner?
Amit Kakar (11:08.674)
Yeah, so essentially I ended up purchasing the pharmacy over the process of the next three years. Clate, the best story is after the first year, I pull into the pharmacy and there's a brand new Walgreens being built right next door to me within the first year. Now I had friends and family loans, I had student loans, I had my mom who's worked in her hospital for 25 years. She basically emptied out her retirement savings to put this purchase plan together.
Clate (11:13.047)
Okay?
Clate (11:21.781)
Oh my gosh, oh my gosh.
Amit Kakar (11:37.27)
I see the structure of Walgreens go up and two executives walk into the pharmacy and they say to me, we want you to sell us your pharmacy. And they were offering nothing for it basically. And they said, sell us your pharmacy. This is what we're going to offer, which is, to me, nothing. And I suggest you take this offer because if you don't, we'll squash you and you'll be out of a job.
Clate (12:02.097)
Hmm.
Clate
Absolutely.
Amit Kakar (12:03.914)
and another defining moment right there. I was fearful of everything in my whole life just flashed in front of me. My first year, everything, all my dreams of owning that pharmacy and all the aspirations I had of what I'm gonna do, all just came to a stop. And, in that moment, they walked out of the store and I said, I think I'm gonna take my chances.
Clate (12:14.085)
Yeah.
Amit Kakar (12:31.118)
I think I'm gonna take my chances. If I'm gonna go down, I'm gonna go down swinging. And that's when the trajectory took off. After they left the pharmacy and I gathered myself a little bit, I remember calling my dad, I'm very close to my dad, and I told him what happened. And he's the voice of reason, he's the voice of, don't worry about it, you got this, you're fine. And when I told him that, he goes, oh, you're in trouble. I'm like, okay, thank you, dad.
Clate (12:31.376)
Hmm.
Clate (12:36.728)
I love it.
Amit Kakar (12:59.906)
I'm like, okay, Dad, I just, just the one voice of reason I wanted to hear. But you know what, Clate? I needed that tough love in that moment. I needed that, that was his way of saying, I can't help you any longer. Now you're, it's up to you now to grow up.
Clate (13:00.267)
Thanks. Not the pep talk I needed, Dad.
Well, we're going to get we're going to get to the next part, which is so fun when you know to hear that story knowing what's happened now and hear that story early on. I mean, I just, I think every one of our listeners that's, you know, running a business can imagine what that must feel like to have the scariest possible competitor come right out and say, well, we're going to crush you, so you know, good luck to you, you probably, you know, you probably need to move on. For you to, you know, for you to pick yourself up off the floor and say, no, let's go game on, you know, let's do this. Kudos to you. So let's fast forward a little bit. You know, to me, one of the things that's interesting is, well, why don't you, why don't you share? Because I know over the last few years, some of the things you've done with, and I want to get to that. But you built a very successful pharmacy and I think it'd be great for the audience, you know, for listeners to just hear, well, what happened after Walgreens executives walk away and you decide I'm going to compete, how did you do it? How did you compete and win in the face of that kind of pressure?
Amit Kakar (14:34.214)
So thank you. So basically it all comes down, it's a town of Yucca Valley, a population of about 20,000 people. I knew the only way that we're gonna compete and succeed is going to be with our customer service, period. That means we go above and beyond and starts with hiring the best of the best staff who are gonna connect with those patients because staff cannot compete with a chain staff. And in a sense, they cannot compete with us.
Clate (14:56.933)
Yeah.
Amit Kakar (14:59.61)
So we are going to have the premier staff. That's what it all comes down to, our staff. Cause I, no, I can only do so much, right? But if I can, I can lead that staff and I can teach them the mindset that we all need to have and be on the same page. So customer service was everything. That's how they're gonna come back to us. So we got away with that. I would say customer service for a good 20 years, which is pretty amazing, without any, without any real marketing, just, just mouth to mouth marketing. And yeah.
Clate:
Well, let me tell you this. I love your story about customer service. Early on, you know, there's a lot of differences between a software company and a pharmacy. But there's one thing that is very, very similar. And it's true in virtually every business, that customer service is the most pure form of marketing. And, and when, when we were raising capital early on, you know, we bootstrapped the business to about 7 million or so and then we started raising capital. And we talked to an investor and he said customer service is the best marketing. And I remember we actually put that on our walls in our customers in our customer service department because we wanted people to realize that this is, you know, that that's what customer service actually is, you know, just like Disney says, you know, clean bathrooms is marketing. That's really customer service, that you're creating an amazing experience for your customer. And so I think when you shared your story with our company several months back, it was that customer strategy that came through so clearly. And that's, just to remind the listeners, the fourth key to success to conquer the chaos is strategy and customers, it's two parts, customer strategy and company strategy. Your customer strategy was phenomenal. I could hear it in the story when you shared it with us and I hear now that it was actually at the foundation of your competitive advantage that you created. You said we're going to compete on our customer strategy, customer success, creating an amazing experience, which is what customer strategy is all about. It's about that customer lifecycle and creating an amazing experience for them. So kudos to you for zeroing in on where you could compete, how you could compete with, you know, this scary competitor, and then just beating them, because you did an amazing job. So let's go through, you do this for 20 years, now then what happens at the 20 year point?
Amit Kakar (17:24.622)
Yeah, great. And I always say this when we find our edge in the details, right, that was the key. That's the detail. So after 20 years, I realized, and this was actually maybe kind of looking ahead in right around the time of COVID had hit, that we needed to go to the next level of customer service because I can only fill so many prescriptions in a day, I only see so many faces. But what if I wanna see 10,000 faces, 20,000 faces? How can I reach an audience of such a grand magnitude on my own? I can't.
Amit Kakar (17:54.406)
But, and what are we giving the patient when they walk in the pharmacy besides a prescription? If anybody can give them a prescription, but what else am I giving them? And I thought, if we can start marketing and we can start campaigning, we can start giving them personalized service where they may not have to come into the pharmacy, this would be great. And this is the moment, aha moment, where we thought, we work with Keap and we work with automation and this is going to transform our business. I just didn't realize it was gonna happen so fast and such a huge magnitude. And it, looking back on it, it's been, so it put in perspective of the 20,000 patients in Yucca Valley, we now have over 9,000 patients and probably over 6,000 emails in the span of four years. And we are growing tremendously. And it really goes on to say that that's when it started.
Clate (18:34.16)
Wow.
Clate (18:44.141)
So I can see it so clearly, you had this personal relationship with your customers as they came in the store. You had 20 years of success, but you started to recognize there's more we can do in order to really keep our edge and build that relationship. It was about how do we build that relationship, which is, of course, at the heart of customer strategy, customer relationship management. And so you started, sounds like you started to, you decided, okay, well let's use automation to help us do that. And that's a very interesting, I would imagine that was probably pretty interesting for you because there was such a personal touch. And I think probably a lot of times when people hear automation, they know that automation is our fifth key to success. When they hear that though, sometimes people can be like, yeah, but how do you do it in a personal way? And so did you have that feeling of like, but can we do automation and keep this personal connection we have with our customers that we see everyday?
Amit Kakar (19:49.71)
100% and I realize that with automation, with the personal touch is putting your face on there. I think them knowing you, which is huge. And, you know, if we talk about with the 9,000 patients, there's probably, yeah.
Clate (19:55.47)
Oh.
Clate (20:01.077)
But I just have to say, this, I love that, it's putting your face on it. In all the conversations I've ever had with people about this topic of how do you make automation personal? I've never heard it stated quite that simply. It is, it's putting your face on it. And so how did you do that? How did you put your face on automation?
Amit Kakar (20:17.062)
This was actually with the help of Jason and they're so fantastic with automation. Jason and Therese, they've done such a fantastic job and they've told me from day one, it has to be you. I said, but Jason, it's not about me. They go, no, it's not about you, but you're the face and they have to see that face. So the patients that are not our patients, let's say we have 10,000 that are going elsewhere, even though they don't come to our pharmacy, they know who we are and that's important. So we can reach them also with our face.
Clate (20:38.103)
Hmm.
Clate (20:47.363)
Mm-hmm.
Amit Kakar (20:51.002)
So even like, such a great example, just two days ago, a lady came in the pharmacy, she was about in her mid 80s, and she looked at me and she said, thank you. I said, did you receive your prescriptions? Everything was to your satisfaction. She said, you know, I get a lot more from you than my prescriptions. You give so much value. I get your emails and I get everything that you do and you have no idea how much it means to me.
Clate (21:07.839)
Mm. Love that.
Clate (21:16.441)
That's awesome. Yeah. Yes.
Amit Kakar (21:17.483)
I didn't know what to say and I thought that's the face, right? Like I had never seen this individual but she sees our face and that's personal.
Clate (21:24.789)
Yeah. Well, you took the, you took the personal connection. You made it, you know, you made it digital. You put your face on it. You know, I can hear how you're getting that personal brand to come through and it's landing for your customers, which is, which is awesome. And I think, you know, for, for listeners who are thinking about their business that may, you know, maybe they're not there, they might be saying, yeah, but I don't want to put my face to it. I don’t want to be on camera. I don't, you know, what, what would you say to that?
Amit Kakar (21:54.618)
I would say I've been making videos for almost four years. I don't necessarily love the video, but I love them. But I love the message and they want the message. They don't necessarily wanna know if your hair is going sideways or what you look like, but they love the message and they trust the message. And that's what we gotta remember. It's not about what private images we present. It's about the message.
Clate (22:18.913)
I love it. Well, you know, like you said, it's not, it's not that you love doing the videos, it's that you're trying to communicate, you're trying to build the relationship with them and they want to receive that message. Any specific examples of things that you've done to help automation feel personal besides putting that face to it.
Amit Kakar (22:38.566)
Absolutely. So the personalized messages we do are our personalized emails, which Jason has designed. They're unbelievable. We've been doing the same emails probably for three or four years for birthday. We have individuals who that's their only modes of communication. So they don't get to leave the house, but they get the birthday emails. They love them to this day. Even messages on a personal level of mindset. What are things you're doing in the mornings? Are you going for your walks? They love these reminders. Things that we do that we take for granted, some patients don't have the ability. We talk about mindset, even diet, just eating in the morning, remind them, hey, did you have the oatmeal in the morning? Did you get the proper sleep? These are just messages that they can relate to, and they're personal, because they feel like you're talking to them. You're speaking to me.
Clate (23:24.213)
I'm sitting here also I'm sitting here all smiles because you're talking about the personal keys to conquer the chaos which are mindset, life vision, rhythm of execution, you know, you're basically taking some of a bunch of those concepts and sharing them with your with your patients to build that personal connection, which is just fantastic. This is why you and I are two peas in a pod because we love the personal stuff. So awesome. I love it. Is there any other you know, are there when we think about conquering chaos with automation. And I love your story so much because as a pharmacist, you're putting automation and customer strategy together in a personal way. Is there anything else that you've done with automation that has helped you conquer chaos and achieve success?
Amit Kakar (24:09.506)
Absolutely, and I think it's just a matter of freeing up my time also, right? Even with automation, now we can automate postcards, happy birthday postcards, we can welcome to Yucca Valley. The other thing we've done is one of the biggest sort of impediments for patients to transfer prescriptions is transferring one pharmacy to another. So we've set up an automation system now where they can scan a QR code. It goes right into our Keap application, emails me or the staff, and we can get their prescriptions done in the background for them. So you have these 80-year old patients, male or female, with their phones standing there scanning a QR code as they walk out of the pharmacy. And they're like, that's all they have to do.
Clate (24:43.469)
Well, you know I love that you're speaking my love language when you talk about process automation. So, it's such great stuff. I'm glad we get to be a part of that to help you automate your business. Has it had any, you know, when you look at so much of the keys to success or, you know, yes, it's conquering chaos, you know, you conquer the chaos in your business, but it also has the effect of coming back and benefiting your life. You know, take a step back. What do you see as the benefit to your life that's happened as you've put automation in place in your business.
Amit Kakar (25:15.618)
Absolutely, I'm a family person. I'm absolutely in love with my family and spending time with them. I've been married almost 20, I've been married 21 years. And I have a 16-year old son who plays tennis and a 14-year old daughter who plays golf and that requires traveling. And the only way I'd be able to even do this is because I have automation in place. There was a point in time I was handwriting postcards prior to automation, spending a couple hours extra in the pharmacy every day. This is all automated now, so I can do it from home. I can log on the Keap application from home and do all this while after my kids go to sleep, which is fantastic. So it has changed our family dynamics and it's been fun. I've realized prior to this conversation that I've probably spent an hour minimum a day on Keap for the past four and a half years, every day, every day. And I've done it because it's the first thing I do when I get to the pharmacy and it's the last thing I shut off when I'm done. And I absolutely love it. Just having fun with the patients. Whether it's copy emails or just interacting with them and it becomes fun because I can interact with them and I don't necessarily have to be, they have to,they don't have to be in the pharmacy. So this has just freed up my time.
Clate (26:23.701)
Yeah. That's awesome. I, you know, that's the key freedom, right? We talk about, I love hearing about your family and, you know, we're talking beforehand about golf and the fun that you get to have with your daughter playing golf and, you know, I and by the way, it's very he's very modest, you can always tell if someone when you know what your handicap is when they say, yeah, I'm kind of about in the same range. Amit’s way better than me, I can tell. And anyway, what I'll say is the balance, right? That's what it is. When you practice the keys to success, any of the keys, they help, when you're practicing on the personal side, they help in your business. When your mindset is right, you perform better in the business as well as in your personal life. When you get automation going, it benefits your personal life. It puts more hours in your day. And I love your, you know, at the very end there, you said, you know, it gives you free time, it's freedom, you know, ultimately, I think, you know, people hear me say this all the time, I think what entrepreneurs want more than anything else is freedom. And they see entrepreneurship as a vehicle to get there. And yet, so many times we get caught up in the chaos, we get caught up in the things that end up robbing us of that very freedom we're after. And so I can hear it in your voice, I hear the story of, of achieving that freedom. And, you know, as our listeners know, we define success as balanced growth in your business and personal life that produces freedom in terms of money, time, control and impact. And I hear that. I hear the impact you're having on your customers' lives. I hear the control that you have over your life where you're able to make the choices you want, run the business the way you want, run your life, your life the way you want. I certainly recognize that 24 years of Walgreens being next door, you've shown them a thing or two in terms of your money and the time that you've been able to generate in your business and recognize what automation has done to provide that time. So just a great example of our definition of success, and that I really appreciate it. Before we get to any final words, I think you got to tell us what's going on with Walgreens, what happened after 24 years.
Amit Kakar (28:34.658)
Yeah, thank you for asking. There's been a few other pharmacies that have come in. So it's actually a very competitive space. But to be honest with you, Clate, we've laid down, when you lay down the foundation, of course it's competitive, but that foundation is laid and we don't stray from that. And that's the foundation that has been built and we don't let feelings dictate our habits. And we practice the same in and out, you know, every day. We practice. And it's been great. And we haven't had to change our strategy, but I would love to say that automation now has helped us tremendously and given us that edge. As I will say, what's your edge in the details? I think automation is our edge in the details. I really do.
Clate (29:12.269)
I love it. Well, I appreciate you sharing that and you know that you're being pretty humble when you share that you have nine thousand of the twenty thousand patients in the market. That's a pretty incredible market share knowing that you've got big box competitors in pharmacists and in pharmacies as well as other independents. What would you say to. Let's do it this way. I always like to hear any words of wisdom that our entrepreneurs have for the audience. And so what would you say generally to entrepreneurs as they look at how to conquer the chaos? And then I'd love to hear if you have any words of advice specifically for pharmacists. There may be some independent pharmacists out there who are listening to your words and wondering how they could benefit from your wisdom. So the general entrepreneurial advice first and then the pharmacists.
Amit Kakar (30:07.594)
Thank you, Clate. I would say for a general entrepreneur, I would say a few things that I've learned through trial and error. Most importantly is find what you're good at and hone in on that. What are you good at? You're good at something, and if you don't know what you're good at, ask someone. They'll tell you. Find what you're good at, find those edges and those details, and secondly is love what you do. You have to love, if you're gonna grind in what you do as an entrepreneur, period. It's not easy, but you fall in love with it. And when you're good at something, you will fall in love with it. So I would say fall in love with the process. That's the last thing. Process driven versus results driven. Find the process. If you put the due diligence work in for the process, the results will come. It's very easy to say, look at person X who's way above me. Well, put the blinders on and get to work and just find what you're good at and be specific in details, be very detail-oriented. I would say for the entrepreneur.
Clate (31:08.937)
I love it and go to and go to work on the process. Great stuff. Now let's say I'm you know we've got we've got some listeners that are pharmacists and they're like man how is Amit doing that? Any words of advice for them?
Amit Kakar (31:23.278)
I would say you don't have to do this, you get to do this. So find, so realize that first of all, to be grateful that you have a platform and it's not something where what am I gonna do? This is a struggle, of course they all weigh in. But you have to tune that stuff out and really find, even as a pharmacy, find your niche in something and go after it and bet on it and double down on it and believe in it. You have to believe in yourself because if you don't believe in yourself, who's gonna believe in you? That's the key, right? And we all, sorry, yeah.
Clate (31:50.945)
Yeah, well, I love your point about finding your niche. You've found the way to do it in your community with that personal connection and now using automation. But you're honing right in on the key point of company strategy. We've talked key to success, number four is strategy. And we focus mostly on the customer strategy aspect. But on the company strategy, it is about finding your niche, finding how you're different, how you can provide something better, and that competitive advantage and then just narrowing in on it and making sure that you say no to the things that are not your strength and your niche, so that you can say yes to your niche and get better and better. There's the niches and riches phrase that I say all the time. That's probably the heart of effective company strategy. And I can see the way that you've done that and appreciate the words of wisdom you shared with everybody. Amit, this has been so fantastic. I've loved having on the show here with Conquer the Chaos podcast. Where can people learn more about Avalon pharmacy?
Amit Kakar (32:57.466)
Yeah, thank you. We can go to Avalon Pharmacy, we're on Instagram, we're on Facebook, Avalon Pharmacy Yucca Valley, a website, avalondrugstore.com, and I'm actually launching my new brand, which is Amit Kachar PharmD, and I'll be coming out with a digital course along the lines of diet, exercise, and mindset, and how to limit your medications, and conquer the chaos.
Clate (33:17.957)
Fantastic. I absolutely love it. Well, thank you, everybody. It's been a fantastic episode. Amit, I can't thank you enough for joining us and sharing your entrepreneurial passion, your wisdom. I think the things that really stand out to me are your process thinking, your desire to drive customer service, and do that, you know, really scale it through automation, just a fantastic example of how to conquer the chaos. Thanks so much for sharing your wisdom. To all of you out there who are looking at the challenges of entrepreneurship, see them positively, recognize the opportunity you have, and then apply the six keys to success to conquer the chaos.
Amit Kakar (33:58.578)
Thank you so much.
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