PICA Member Spotlights

Q&A with independent consultants who successfully “made the leap” and created the consulting career of their dreams

 

Q: Could you please introduce yourself and tell us your consulting specialty?

A: My name is Kimber Boothe, I'm a pharmacist and a health care leader. I call myself a connector and a pharmovator. I own the Kimber Booth Group and Pharmovation Consulting. I help hospital pharmacy departments to advance their pharmacy practice while enhancing their finances through strategic business plans, practice innovation, and also career coaching.

 

Q: That’s a very distinct niche. How did you get into that?

A: Well, being a pharmacist, this is definitely in line with the work I was doing before in pharmacy leadership. I always had an entrepreneurial interest and had looked at various business models. I came across this expert model 10 years ago, where you can monetize your knowledge through a variety of methods. Of course, consulting and career coaching rose to the top as areas of interest for me that would be the best methods to share my knowledge. In my pharmacy practice, I have been a health system pharmacy leader, most recently a chief pharmacy officer for a community health system, and a lot of what I consult on are things I was able to implement in my health systems through what I tend to call intrapreneurship. Basically, building an innovative practice within an organization. So, I had been practicing as an intrapreneur, doing practice advancement and business plans. In that role, I was often asked to speak about how I was able to do this, how I was able to expand the resources and provide more services to patients. I would do talks and I would speak, but as a full-time leader, my time was limited and I couldn't really have the impact and help people as much as I wanted. That’s why I decided to start my own business.

 

Q: How long have you been independent and what were some of the first steps you took?

A: I technically started the business 10 years ago. I started out doing this as a side hustle doing a variety of things. I have an online course, a group membership, one-on-one coaching, and then I started to do some small consulting projects that were just a few hours a month. Over those five years before making the transition to full time, I had built up clients through the group work, as well as some coaching clients. What really allowed me to make the leap was having those other clients with small consulting projects. I also had a consulting client who gave me a year-long engagement contract. It wasn't full-time, but it was enough hours that I was able to comfortably make the leap, leaving my full-time job to be able to focus on the business.

 

Q: What was the scariest part about finally leaving your full-time job?

A: My husband was more scared than me. I don't know that I was that scared, but I did have a mindset block about it. It was kind of an imposter syndrome. Here I was, a chief pharmacy officer, I got invited to all the key meetings, I was paid as an advisor to companies who wanted my advice, and now I was going to transition to be the outside consultant knocking on the door to ask for business. That did hold me up a little bit, but working with other entrepreneurs really helped me to see that I am providing a benefit and by sharing my knowledge, I was helping others. And even though I may not have the title and I wasn't a leader in the client’s organization, I was still making an impact. So, again, not that it was that scary, but it was a hard mindset shift to realize I was giving up my identity in some ways, so that shift was a little harder for me. But again, getting support from other entrepreneurs who were either doing consulting or other types of work really helped me to get through that and then definitely getting positive feedback from my clients continues to help me with that.

 

Q: You had your first client as a result of doing your side hustle, how did you get your next client? 

A: Most of my clients have definitely come through networking and going to pharmacy conferences, so I go to a lot of healthcare conferences, both national ones and ones in the state. Attending those has led to most of my clients, and in some cases, it's been referrals from one health system to another.  Specifically, my second client did come from attending a conference and networking with people.

 

Q: A lot of people struggle with networking in the real world, face-to-face. What are some of the steps that you do to go from it being a casual conversation at a conference to them being a client? 

A: Frankly, I'm still learning to be more effective and make the best use of my time at these conferences. But, one thing is just not being afraid to bring up what I do. With my second client, I was a little shocked because I actually went to this person to ask them a question about their practice and it turned into a conversation about what I can do. I mentioned it and it was like a light bulb went off in his head like, ‘Oh, well, we need that’. Within a couple of weeks, I had a call with all of their leadership and within a month, I had a contract. It was very quick and it was a great, exciting engagement and, again, I didn't even approach this person with that expectation. But now I think about the fact that almost everybody could be my client and I need to share what I do and be proud of it. Now, I try to be more strategic. I look at the attendance list in the conference app or the online system and I match that up against my target customers within my customer relationship management tool. There's not that many health systems in the country so my number of target clients is not that big. Every individual pharmacist can potentially partake of my other development programs like my group membership and other offerings, but in terms of the consulting work, it really is about making sure that I'm talking to the majority of the health systems. I haven't gotten through all of them yet, but that's why I’m studying the conference attendance lists in advance. I try to reach out well in advance of the conference, offering that we get together for a coffee chat when we’re there in person.

 

Q: What’s one thing that has surprised you about being self-employed?

A: I guess the most surprising thing is how much I love it. While I do miss my leadership role, I'm very happy with this type of work. I love being my own boss and the freedom that comes with it.

 

Q: What’s been your biggest challenge?

A: Figuring out how to balance adding customers. This was a challenge when it was just me and it still is now that I have subcontractors. It can be tough to find that balance between how much time we have, planning for adding more clients, the upfront time of getting the contract executed, and the engagement time. Now that I have a team of subcontractors, I feel more comfortable adding a contract with new clients, but it’s still a limited number of resources right now and there’s somewhat of a capacity limit there. 

Q: Tell us a little bit about how you expanded your service offerings beyond just consulting. 

A: I did start by creating some online courses first. I've created products and services to share this information where people can maybe implement some of the things that I do in my consulting themselves. So my book, my courses, and my group membership were all created to help people be able to learn and to implement the information themselves as part of their own professional journey. My membership allows people to come together in person twice a month and quarterly for what I call bootcamps. That is where I started and I created those courses before I took on my first consulting project and it's been great. It's always a little bit hard to balance between them in terms of my time and my focus, but I try to blend them together. As part of a value-added service when I take on a new consulting client, they're allowed to put a certain number of their team members into the membership of the CONNECTORx Leadership Circle. They can have some of their aspiring or current leaders join the membership, which has been a great way for me to get to know other members of a client’s leadership team. That's been very positive. And for individual pharmacists who aren’t in a position to have their department hire me as a consultant, I can coach them through these programs, either the group membership or through one-on-one coaching.

 

Q: What advice would you give to somebody who has had their side hustle going for a year or so and they’re just a little bit nervous about fully cutting the cord with their full-time job? 

A: It’s definitely worth taking the leap. When you're trying to do both, you can't be effective as a full-time solopreneur. You're definitely limited in the time and focus you have. It was very beneficial to make a leap so I could focus full-time on the business. Keep that in mind. Obviously, I wouldn't say I made a huge leap. There was definitely a good landing there to help me get through it. I think the other thing is to definitely be a part of PICA and surround yourself with other solopreneurs for that support during your transition. I just remember having other entrepreneurs encourage me that I could have more impact, I could make up for the loss of my 401k and things like that; it was really helpful to me making the transition.

 

Q: What’s next for you and your consulting business? 

A: My goal is to support my team. This past year was a year of growth where I added subcontractors to support and be involved with our clients. So, supporting them, helping them to be effective in balancing where I'm spending my time versus my team members. My goal is definitely to expand the number of health systems we serve and to have more impact.  

 

Q: How can people find out more about you and your business?

A: People can contact me at kimber@kimberboothe.com and everything is on my main website at www.kimberboothe.com. From the “work with me” page you can get to information about my online courses, the membership, as well as my consulting services.


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