Pharmpreneur of the week John Girgis: "As an entrepreneur, you have to think big and dream big – without limits."

Snapshot

Education:

BSc.Phm., R.Ph. CDE., Duquesne University

Role/Title:

Pharmacist/Owner/Designated Manager - Apple-Hills Medical Pharmacy

What excites you about being an entrepreneur?  

Being an entrepreneur has been and continues to be very exciting. Being an entrepreneur is essentially about turning a passion into a business. Firmly believing in a service offering and pouring your heart and soul into it. It is having a vision for success, identifying a target demographic and offering a niche service to bridge the missing gap. It is also about changing the paradigm of failure from fear to success. As an entrepreneur, you have to think big and dream big – without limits.  

How has your entrepreneurial career evolved since your graduation?

I realized that although I may have had the passion to become an entrepreneur at an early time after graduating from pharmacy school, there was a need to gain experience in all aspects of the pharmacy sector.

What was your key driving force to become an entrepreneur?

I started my pharmacist career after graduation with a big box chain in the US. Then switched to hospital pharmacy, clinical pharmacy and eventually became a director of a pharmacy department in a rural community hospital near Toledo, Ohio. After gaining approximately 10 years of pharmacy practice experience, I realized that my passion was still unfulfilled and unmet. I believed that I could offer a better service custom tailored to meet a specific demographic – diabetics. At the intersection of passion and experience, I knew I had to achieve further credentialing in order to serve this target market. I then sought to become further credentialed as a Certified Diabetic Educator. This significantly helped me meet my passion to serve this target demographic.  

How do you define success?

Success is measured by those who we have the privilege and distinct honour to serve through our businesses. My clients and staff are the backbone to what a successful entrepreneur is.

As a successful entrepreneur, what continues to drive you?

Passion is never exhausted.  Although it may slow down at times, the passion to serve my clients is still driving me to continue.

What are the biggest challenges to being an entrepreneur?

Being able to manage: administrative tasks, staffing shortages and demands, pandemics, inventory shortages, manufacturer backorders, etc., and at the same time, still continue to offer the same standard of care and service my clients have come to expect.

How do you manage work/life balance?

In a nutshell, it is through time-management. I would highly recommend anyone who may be thinking of becoming a business owner to attend a course on time management. 

What books/resources do you recommend for every entrepreneur to check-out?

I would highly recommend attending a course on Six-Sigma and time management for pharmacy business.

What advice would you give to colleagues who want to become entrepreneurs?

Tap into your passion to serve a specific healthcare need for a specific target audience. Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs get into business with a misaligned passion to just make money. In my humble opinion, these types of passions are temporary and usually fail. It's like the statement – "missing the forest for the trees." If you focus on the trees, you will miss the forest, but if you focus on the forest, you will get all of the trees thrown in. Financial reward comes by focusing on the "forest" – serving a specific target audience with a better product or service than what is currently being offered.  

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