Business building through teamwork

Here at ZRT I get the opportunity to interview doctors, pharmacists, business manages and the like for our monthly teleconference series “Let’sTalk”. This past month I interviewed Natalie and Adam Gustafson of Pacific Compounds . They talked about how they went about starting and building their practice. I learned something from them about the value of networking within and across professions. As a clinician, I’ve always understood the importance of creating and maintaining relationships with other clinicians. It was a great reminder however, to think about networking with people outside my profession. Pharmacists aren’t the only health care professionals, who might send patients our way, there are all sorts;massage therapists, chiropractors, acupuncturists, how about the folks that help us run our clinics- the insurance billers, receptionists and office workers. That’s to name just a few.

What really impacted me was hearing the Gustafson’s perspective on networking. As a pharmacy- their business builds when the doctors (who are their clients) businesses build. To foster that relationship they do things like host continuing education meetings for doctors in the area. This brings the docs in to hear about topics like hormone replacement therapy, and which in turn gets more of these docs prescribing HRT. As the Doctors become experts in the field, their business grows and in turn so does the pharmacy’s. It’s a symbiotic relationship. Most of practice building is like that. Remembering that we as individual clinicians or pharmacists or business owners are connected to a network of others is very important. We don’t live in a bubble! Our business thrive when other businesses thrive.