Glenn Angel - Navigating Change: My Journey from Pharmacy to Tech Innovation

Glenn Angel, pharmacist and founder of Pharmacy Halo, shares how questioning everyday processes led him from community pharmacy into tech entrepreneurship.

What sparked the shift?

Not a grand plan but a simple question: “Why are we still doing it this way?”

What started as frustration with missed orders and paper-based systems became a drive to create smarter, more efficient solutions now used by pharmacies across Australia.

In this episode:

• Turning frontline challenges into scalable solutions
• Innovation beyond traditional pharmacy career paths
• The role of technology in improving pharmacy operations
• Why questioning “the way it’s always been done” matters

From community pharmacy to building national tech solutions, this episode highlights how diverse and dynamic a pharmacy career can be.

You can find Glenn Angel on LinkedIn.

Do you have questions about your pharmacy career? Then contact us or meet our team.

Transcript

speaker-0 (00:01.026)
Welcome to Your Pharmacy Career Podcast, proudly produced by Raven's Recruitment, the experts in pharmacy career and locum services for over 30 years. Every episode is your gateway to new opportunities in the pharmacy profession, from expert advice to inspiring success stories. We're here to spark ideas, guide your career and help you achieve your goals. Stay tuned. The next step in your pharmacy journey starts here.

speaker-1 (00:26.318)
Welcome to another episode of Your Pharmacy Career podcast. You're here with myself, Krysti-Lee Patterson. And this season we are speaking to pharmacists turned entrepreneurs, especially in the tech space. So our next guest is Glenn Angel from Pharmacy Halo, pharmacist turned self-taught coder. And he is with us today. Thank you so much, Glenn, for dropping by.

speaker-2 (00:53.55)
Thank you very much for having me.

speaker-1 (00:55.296)
Now, Glenn, I always ask everyone the same question in the beginning and that's why did you become a pharmacist?

speaker-2 (01:01.308)
it's a, that's a tough one there. I had multiple career paths that I went down and wasn't really fulfilled in anything that I was doing. Went through a number of different client roles, patient roles, and ended up having to chat to my father-in-law who owned a pharmacy at the time. And he kind of suggested, you know, go along to his pharmacy, check it out, get a feel for it. And, yeah, I did, I did that and quite liked it. And I thought, well, yeah, maybe this is something I could do. I already had a degree in.

environmental chemistry and zoology. And I ended up doing a master of pharmacy and took two years and then yeah, that kind of introduced me to it. I liked the idea. I like, you know, helping people and almost being in a retail environment, but it wasn't just about retail. You were helping in a way as well.

speaker-1 (01:48.49)
Yeah. So in that case, you were, I guess you would say a mature age student.

speaker-2 (01:53.646)
It was a, it's an awful, it's an awful feeling cause I'd only just done, just done a degree, but I guess all the, all the master students were mature age students. However, we did do a couple of units with standard, know, straight out of school uni students. And that, felt quite funny being, you know, slightly older at the time. Cause I'd finished my degree and then I'd actually worked in, I think car sales at the time for about two years. And so yeah, going back to uni and yeah, mature age student. What a feeling.

speaker-0 (01:55.621)
It was awful.

speaker-1 (02:21.518)
Yeah, no, that's a weird. Yeah, that's a weird term. think which your age student. Well, yeah, you just said that you spent some time selling cars. That's interesting. I don't think there's many pharmacists out there that cars salesman and I was almost gonna say dodgy but I'm not sure if you were a dodgy car salesman.

speaker-2 (02:37.87)
The industry is an interesting industry. There's a lot of very nice people in there. lot of, you know, it's another job. It's someone who's employed to sell cars. think the, the, the gray area, the difficulty area is that they are making money off selling a car. So they need to sell cars to make their money. Their salary is very low. My salary was exceedingly low as a junior. I mean, I think if you put that into perspective of if we were specifically getting money as a pharmacist for selling.

speaker-0 (02:48.078)
EEEE

speaker-2 (03:07.466)
specific drugs to specific people like targeted sales and probably pushing people into medications they didn't need. You know, it would really be, you know, if we were being paid on a commission basis, then well, the whole, the whole healthcare thing wouldn't really work. So it released me, I guess it gave me an opportunity to see how a certain industry works and certainly gave me an idea that that was not an industry I liked. Cause I look at myself as a relatively honest person. And if you want to make a living, you've got to, you've got to be a little bit.

Okay. With, you know, no, can't get a discount on this. can't help you out with pricing because you know that you need to retain some of your commission. So anyway, yeah, that was, was, was a funny one. I sold TVs, sold cars and because I graduated from my zoology degree, just as the global financial crisis occurred and just couldn't really get a job in the career that I wanted. So just had to go into something else for a bit.

speaker-1 (04:01.25)
Yeah. Although I feel like maybe some of the things that you've learnt from doing ceiling TVs, cars and all the other jobs that you've had as well, I guess the common denominator in all of these jobs is people. Yeah, completely. So I'm sure that definitely would have helped moving into pharmacy, especially community pharmacy, having that people experience.

speaker-2 (04:14.594)
Yeah,

speaker-2 (04:22.638)
I think we've all dealt with a difficult pharmacy customer, I can, well, you know, everybody's got different levels of a difficult pharmacy customer, but I've got to admit dealing with a very angry person buying a car, like a customer there, or they're not getting what they want, or they've got the wrong car, they sign the wrong document. And we're talking things that are costing, you know, between 20 and $70,000, massive problems in these people's lives. That can be a certain customer that you need to deal with.

I I certainly, when I have had problems or issues in the pharmacy that aren't directly like health related to somebody's made a dispensing error or something, that's obviously a different kind of issue. But you know, somebody squabbling about something being a couple of dollars difference. you know, I don't, I don't think I got as kind of stressed about that is because I've dealt with far worse situations. So it did, it gave me an exposure, a different kind of customer.

speaker-1 (05:14.208)
No, that makes sense. So you worked in community pharmacy for a number of years. Have you worked in any other pharmacy roles?

speaker-2 (05:22.67)
You know, I did my practical for uni. I did that in hospital pharmacy setting and I can really see the kind of person that would enjoy that role, but it wasn't a role for me. I really enjoy being in front of people, talking to people and having that kind of ongoing relationship, especially with the patients that I was dealing with. You know, I've been invited to some elderly people's.

birthdays at their nursing home because we delivered Webster packs or sadly I've gone to a patient's funeral a couple of times because we got to know them that well. Whereas in hospital, I didn't feel I was getting that connection, but I enjoyed it just not for a career. But aside from that, yeah, it's community pharmacy that I've worked in and then obviously going on to like the software side that we, what I'm now based in.

speaker-1 (06:07.374)
So I guess I'm curious to understand how did you turn into a coder tech founder? Were there certain moments in the pharmacy, maybe in your career or things that you got frustrated with? Like before, I guess you started Tudor. That was the first product I think from memory. Yeah. Like how did that come about? That journey.

speaker-2 (06:30.126)
Yeah, but funny enough, Q2 wasn't the first. yeah. I actually wrote, so I've got an app called WebIt, which is to do with dose administration aids and Webster packs, that kind of thing. You know, that's a, a workflow tool. I actually wrote that originally when I was working for my father-in-law before I'd even completed my masters and I started writing it in Microsoft Excel and I learned the code behind Microsoft is called VBA. So.

I kind of learned a bunch of that. Obviously this is like 20 years before chat GPT. So it's still, it was just reading forums and a little bit of YouTube. So, and it was absolute garbage.

speaker-0 (07:04.83)
there.

speaker-1 (07:09.614)
When he said, Oh, Cunha

speaker-0 (07:17.646)
Yeah, I saw I wrote that I had that

speaker-2 (07:20.398)
a bit, WebIt went through about five different iterations before it became what it is now, which many pharmacies are using. But even after that, actually it all started when, and I'm going to try to condense this story because it's a huge story, but there's a system for claiming workers comp in WA. So pharmacies would boost off prescriptions to this company who would end up writing invoices, claiming from the insurer, getting paid for them. And then they would pass the money back to the pharmacy. There was a gentleman that had that company and everything was paper-based. And I

speaker-0 (07:33.123)
That there was.

speaker-2 (07:50.378)
started working with him using my small amount of knowledge of VBA to write an application for him that meant pharmacies wouldn't have to post prescriptions in anymore. It was kind of a, like a database system. I went on to start my own business doing that. And that's where I wrote Zephyr claims, which is an app that's still running now is better. Well, many pharmacies in WA use that it's mainly WA based. And so that was my first app. And then.

That was the first one that I actually sold for pharmacies to use. And then after that, starting in COVID, CUDA started and CUDA, like everything I've created, I guess there's multiple answers to the questions, but where the ideas came from, and I say this to people when we meet them, especially at places like APP in a few weeks, you know, people are like, how'd you come up with this? And I just said, all I'm trying to do is I'm trying to solve the problems that I hated when I was a full-time pharmacist. Like the things that I went to work and when I'm not helping people, I'm dealing with this rubbish.

And I don't want to deal with that anymore. They're the problems that kind of inspired me to think, maybe there's, maybe there's a solution to that. And that's where Q2 started my, my boss at the time I was working in pharmacy and I'd actually taken a break to run Zephyr claims and the owner of the pharmacy actually phoned me up that I used to work at. So I resigned from there and he phoned me he just said, look, I've got COVID, I can't work today. So it was the middle of COVID, you know, one pharmacist working, two staff members, three people in a store at a time or something like that. It was all these restraints.

And he couldn't open up the pharmacy. So for me, I drove, you know, 45 minutes. got there, I picked up his keys from his wife and I opened the store. I hadn't worked there in about two years and I couldn't remember how to open the place, but I got it finally all up and running and the first pace and I can't remember his name. I think it might've been Mrs. Panetta is like little Italian lady and she'd come in to get her, it was a cancer treatment for her husband. And these vials were like $4,000 for an infusion. You know, she came in to pick it up. It wasn't in the fridge. And so.

I was looking through the, you know, the supplier orders, trying to figure out if it was ordered or when it was ordered, but I couldn't find anything. The owner wasn't answering the phone and I just had to tell this Paul, said, look, it's probably going to come in at 11 AM with our delivery. Delivery came in, it wasn't there. So I was in essence screwed for a problem that I hadn't caused.

speaker-0 (10:01.024)
I was.

speaker-1 (10:06.07)
Just.

speaker-2 (10:07.598)
It's such a common thing. And I'm sitting there just going, I mean, at the time it was 2022, no 2021 I think, yeah, very early. And I just went, how is this a problem in this day and age? Like, and I phoned the boss and said, what's our solution here? What's the process? And he goes, well, we've got post-it notes. Is it on one of the post-it notes on the screen? And I actually thought he was pulling my leg, but he wasn't. so I went home that night and I said to my wife, I said, look, I think I've got another idea. I want to try.

speaker-0 (10:31.319)
I actually went

speaker-2 (10:36.492)
building something for this pharmacy. So I built it. They, it was cuter. I needed a name for it. I called it special order pad and I hated that name. And there needs to be something short. I ended up with cuter because I got two sons. got Quinn and Darcy. So Q-U-D-A. Called it cuter as a bit of a test name for this pharmacy. And they'd been using it about a month. I kind of made it and forgot about it. They were using it for a month. Then one of the staff phones came and said, so I'm using cuter. I've got this problem. This didn't work. And I'm like, what the hell's cuter? I think that you made, I'm like,

speaker-0 (10:44.726)
I thought I'd

speaker-0 (11:04.023)
it's just that.

speaker-2 (11:06.306)
Holy shit, I actually did make something so, excuse the language, but like, yeah. So I ended up getting a call from the owner. said, look, I want to put it in three more of my pharmacies. That happened. then, and that scaled up and you know, now we've got, well, many, many hundreds of pharmacies across Australia using the app, solving something that should have been solved in the early two thousands. And I'm very proud of it because I think that the thing that it solves a lot of hours are the pain points. It's that.

like a splinter in your foot and it's not big, know, your foot's not going to fall off. You can still walk, but it's this continuous annoyance, but it's actually a small problem. And I feel like the relationship we have with a lot of pharmacies that use our software now is that they've realized that this small problem was festering and causing a butterfly effective issues down the track. They were losing patients because they didn't get that cancer treatment. They were having unhappy patients and they thought it was the norm. yeah, that's the, that is the long story short on that.

speaker-1 (12:05.652)
I think that's just so right in a way that you had to something that was just so frustrating you just thought hang on there's got to be a better way. Like why are we doing this? And I think this is interesting and I don't know if it's in other industries I've only really been in the pharmacy industry but I feel like there's so many especially administrative tasks where we just kind of put up with it because it's just the way it is right.

speaker-0 (12:27.17)
Yeah.

speaker-2 (12:27.916)
Like that's a massive thing. And I find my personality doesn't, doesn't accept this is, this is the way it is because it is. I never have. that's one of the reasons I got out of the car industry as well, because I was like, why are we doing this? Why are we doing this on paper? Why are we doing this? You know, and here I am like a junior, junior car salesman trying to change the car industry. Maybe that would have actually been.

speaker-0 (12:35.086)
the

speaker-0 (12:51.15)
That would have a pretty crazy innovative idea.

speaker-2 (12:55.66)
didn't have the understanding or knowledge of that industry. Like with pharmacy, I'm finding these points. I say, I it's, it's not always me. It's either my team or it's pharmacies phoning us up and saying, look, I love this app, but have you thought about the fact that this thing here does my head in? Have you thought of that? And I've got to admit about eight out of 10 times now.

speaker-0 (12:57.954)
whereas I feel like

speaker-2 (13:17.834)
We're able to go, actually, we're already writing something to solve that problem. In fact, we got, we got an email yesterday, somebody saying, I won't tell you what it is because there's a new app being released at APP, but they said, look, we've got an issue with this. We love CUDA, but there's this tiny issue or there's this issue here. And I'm like, well, actually we've got a new module coming out to solve that. And we've told, told her all about that. And she's like, well, sign me up, you know, because, and that was exciting because we haven't released a product and we already know that we've, I think we've, we've really hit the nail on the head with this one as well. So.

Yeah. Yeah. We enjoy, think the biggest part is we enjoy it. You know, we enjoy solving the problems. And I also enjoy the fact that I know that people have the same pain points that I had. hopefully I'm hopefully we, my team is making their day a bit brighter because of it.

speaker-0 (13:59.938)
We are

speaker-0 (14:03.317)
That's

speaker-1 (14:05.868)
Yeah, no, that's great. So I guess with with CUDA was a little bit different because you actually had that pharmacy there, you built it for them and then it kind of grew from there. And it's so funny, I honestly thought CUDA was your first product because I didn't hear about Webette or Zephyr till after, but I always knew CUDA, so that's funny. But I think maybe it's because it wasn't relevant maybe to things that I was dealing with in the

speaker-2 (14:30.126)
100%. Yeah. No, Zephyr, know, every pharmacy deals with workers comp scripts. And if they do, they might deal with one or two, but also Zephyr is WA based and the insurers work in a different way. There's a good chance that in the next year or two, we look at kind of expanding that because I still don't think there is a good solution in pharmacy for it. But the way the insurance system works, it's almost like a pharmacist or a person can't come along and fix these problems until the insurance industry actually.

wants to make life easier for pharmacies. Like we can't send digital scripts to an insurer to claim because they need a paper copy. You know, we can't send an e-script because they want a copy of last screenshot of what that looked like on your computer. So you've got to save screenshots. It's a blocker to innovation when unfortunately two different industries combine and you've got like policies and, you know, privacy issues, is privacy issues is very important, but when you've got

speaker-1 (15:15.53)
my gosh, we're

speaker-0 (15:16.631)
is a

speaker-2 (15:27.724)
different industries with different levels and they can't communicate in that way, then it really adds blockers. So that's kind of why Zephyr isn't where CUDA is, whereas CUDA was a, you know, every pharmacy deals with it. Every single pharmacy, there's not one pharmacy in Australia that can say that they have every single item, every single day for every single patient, and they never have to order something in for someone. And if they do, they always remember to supply it because I would not believe that that's true.

speaker-1 (15:54.158)
100 % if they said that I'm like, you're lying.

speaker-2 (15:56.61)
Yeah, you're lying or you don't know your business. don't, you don't know what's happening because, because I bet you've lost a patient cause somebody forgot to, you know, if it's an owner, then I'd have to respectfully say, bet unfortunately, maybe a retail manager or a staff member has made an error at some stage. Patient hasn't got what they wanted and that's never got escalated to the owner. Whereas it's another thing with our apps that I really like is we added a level of auditability that

Anyone can see what's happened, who's done it, whether it's gone right or wrong. And it lets people have a nice transparency. And I don't think it's about blame for staff. It's not saying this person did something wrong, but it's about accountability. And I think that's something that, you know, if we're all doing the best we can at work and we're trying hard and we're doing our job, then there's nothing to hide. There is if you're, if you're being a bit lazy or you, you know, you're having a rough day and you've forgotten a bunch of things, then, you know, it's, it's something that I guess would.

tag and show that there's been some issues here. And that's something that, you know, the owners can visit and, the manager can visit and kind of go, look, this is something we need to work on.

speaker-1 (17:00.686)
Yep, exactly. So with, I guess, all of their products, you and I both know that pharmacy, are slow to adopt new technologies and new innovations and a lot of resistance. And I think it's because the decision makers are pharmacy owners, but they are pharmacists and they risk a burst by nature. That's probably why they're pharmacists. So yeah, I guess from my perspective, it'd be curious to know how

speaker-2 (17:22.51)
Yep, that's part of it.

speaker-1 (17:30.678)
you went about, I guess, like convincing those pharmacies, like sometimes that maybe it was a little bit easier because maybe you know some owners and were willing to give it a go for you. But those people, I guess, we didn't have any sort of connection and you just had to let the product speak for itself. Did you come up with any barriers or kind of?

speaker-2 (17:49.194)
I think there's always barriers. I think all pharmacists have kind of, they've learned from their predecessors what the systems are. And then as an owner, so the pharmacist, the intern became a pharmacist, they learned the processes and then many became owners. And then they continue on the processes they've been taught, which have been handed down since the seventies, you know? They've just come, keep on going, keep on going. You know, the dispensary systems have adapted, but...

Owners have an allegiance to a dispense company a lot of the time. And I think, I think all the dispense companies are amazing. They do great things. They all do things differently. And I think that variety is definitely what we need in the industry, but it is quite funny to have. It's almost like when you've got somebody who likes a, iPhone or an Android or something like that. It's like this commitment to a dispensing system and software and it's software is very sticky and pharmacy. It's a positive for us.

speaker-0 (18:41.678)
Thank

speaker-2 (18:46.018)
You know, we like to keep on working in our product, always make it the best that it can be. But in a sense of dealing with resistance, the best that we can do at any stage, at least at Pharmacy Halo is not always talk about the solution. You know, what have we created? This is what it does. This is why it does it and blah, blah, blah. It's getting to understand the pain point of the person. Now, if we're talking to someone, there is absolutely no point me having a big discussion.

speaker-0 (19:06.05)
E

speaker-0 (19:15.618)
with a

speaker-2 (19:17.024)
manager or an owner who has no problem with special orders. know, perhaps if that person that says, look, we always order stuff, we never get it wrong. Well, maybe they don't need a system. mean, my, my gut feeling is that I think any pharmacy could use our software. And we're talking specifically about CUDA as an example here, but I think any pharmacy could use it. We've got pharmacies that are doing that are absolutely throttling CUDA, absolutely throttling like

speaker-0 (19:22.944)
If they are,

speaker-2 (19:46.708)
Everything in the pharmacy dispensary OTC NDIS stockings, everything goes through CUDA and it's amazing what they're utilizing it for. And we've got pharmacies who are rural using it for, you know, twice a week, know, twice a week, but it helps them remember cause they only get a delivery once a week. you know, it's that it's so different volumes. So it's understanding the problem. that, if that pharmacy doesn't have a problem, I'm not going to force them to use our software. I'm not going to force them to find the problem that doesn't exist maybe for them. So.

Yeah. Resistance-wise tech can be scary. That's why we offer a free trial. This whole podcast is turning into a sales pitch. certainly didn't mean to. Yeah. Offer a free trial because I've just said to everybody that uses a trial, have a crack at it. If you prefer paper over my product, then I would be surprised. However, you know, that's once again, personal preference, but we try and help them by going, look, we've got an easy, user-friendly system.

speaker-1 (20:24.526)
Okay.

speaker-0 (20:26.209)
We

speaker-2 (20:44.984)
There are certain systems out there, not specifically in pharmacy. I've got to admit, think a lot of the providers within pharmacy, whether, know, whether they're like competing with our products or not. Like I think there's a lot of really good, innovative and user friendly stuff out there at the moment. But in general, in software, you might get a new app and it's got buttons everywhere and text everywhere and icons that you don't know what they do and all this stuff. I think the biggest resistance for us is, is can I use it?

speaker-0 (20:56.129)
innovation.

speaker-2 (21:12.49)
And we like to think that you could put our stuff in and start using it without training. Obviously we supply training, but like you could get in there and just do it. I think, think there is a significant level of resistance, but there's a lot of younger pharmacy owners coming in as well. And that's changing the landscape, which is really nice to see.

speaker-1 (21:27.404)
Yeah, definitely. I, was just thinking too, like in terms of like challenges and then when you were even talking about like being a car salesman as well, and then having to deal with like the cranky customers and things like that, the importance of having a good team around you. so when you're explaining that there's no way you could just do this by yourself, like, I know you work hard.

Do that all on your own. And I was just thinking you mentioned that Qdor is named after your two sons, which is really sweet because I actually thought it was cause it was a queuing system. I like, I love this even more.

speaker-2 (22:00.769)
That's it.

speaker-2 (22:08.3)
Yeah. It's a fun one, especially because I didn't really intend it to be what it is now, but yeah. I like that as well.

speaker-0 (22:08.61)
Yeah.

speaker-0 (22:13.581)
Yes.

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speaker-1 (22:31.502)
So if it's okay, I'd to chat to you now about like understanding like being a pharmacist, but then also building a business on the side because lot of people don't realize but trying to build tech businesses and well any sort of business on the side, you still also have to put food on the table, pay your mortgage and do all that as well. So you've got to try and earn that income and then squeeze everything else in late at night. So obviously your wife is also now part of the business as well.

How are you managing everything like, and I know you've been doing this for what?

speaker-2 (23:06.104)
Yeah, about nine years now. Yeah. Nine or 10. Yeah. It was hard. think it started off with Zephyr and I pretty much just, I did a bit of locuming while I was doing Zephyr and I just, you just got to keep on telling yourself it's going to work. You know, because I think, I think my first, you know, I'm really honest with this. think, I think my first salary for my first year from my business was something like $15,000.

speaker-0 (23:12.672)
is

speaker-0 (23:29.485)
So.

speaker-2 (23:34.274)
And I was supplementing that with doing locum-ing and a little bit of consulting and stuff like that. you know, that was first year and I was like, wow, that's

speaker-0 (23:44.545)
That's not gonna pay any wages. I say that was the

speaker-2 (23:46.83)
And that was a pretty rough first year, first financial year. And I started a number of months into it. So I guess, you know, it wasn't horrific. was, it wasn't good. You know, the next year really picked up and yeah, you just got to keep on cracking at it. And then, you know, as the business has grown with, you know, I've had someone, like the main, the main guy have working with us is Kieran. So Kieran is like an account manager and just an absolute gun with everything. So.

getting the right team on board. And then, yeah, when, when you're, when you're growing, it's risky as well. You know, you're, you're, then instead of once again, taking money for yourself, you're investing it by paying someone else to help you out. So you can grow faster and then, know, we need to develop faster because pharmacies want more apps or more updates or more changes or, you know, fixes or bugs. Okay. We need it. We need another developer on board now and we got more admin to do. you see, keep on.

You know, lot of pharmacies getting on board and which is just amazing. And we've had a massive uptake, but you've just got to keep on, keep on keeping on with everything. So yeah, it's, it's, it is hard leaving. It's hard leaving a stable stable pharmacy, you know, nine to five, or, know, the reason I left it was I didn't want to do either nine to five or every weekend or Thursday nights or, you know, every Monday, Wednesday, Friday nights and stuff like that. That's the bit that when I'm having a hard week.

I turn around and go, you know what? I'm working from home. I picked my kid up from school today. I took him to school. mean, for me right now, it's, it's quarter to four in the afternoon in WA. You know, my kids have come home. I'll play a board game with them before dinner. That's something that I could not do as a pharmacist full time without having to sacrifice, you know, I can be home at four o'clock, but I'm working all weekend.

speaker-1 (25:30.926)
Sorry.

speaker-2 (25:32.078)
You know, that was the big driving part for me and I owe everything, like absolutely everything to the pharmacies that did get on board to start with that first, you know, 50 to 70 pharmacies that when I have no idea who this guy is and I don't know if this is going to crash and burn next week and they just got on board and most of them are still, still using the system now. Three years later and I, you know, I've.

They got my personal number on their phones. They call me if there's a problem or they call me and say, look, we need something else. Can you build something else for me? And that's, you know, that's the kind of thing that I wanted to create in the first place.

speaker-1 (26:05.28)
Yeah, no, exactly, that's great. The other thing I was just thinking about was when you were mentioning the problems that you were trying to solve in pharmacy, and I think that's come from, you are a pharmacist, you're in it every day, right? And I think in some ways we are really lucky now.

in the pharmacy industry, because there are people that kind of think a bit differently and think, okay, we could be doing this better. And so a lot of it, if we're just using software as an example, there's a lot of software out there, but that was started by pharmacists that could be some people might say it's a good thing. Some people might say it's a bad thing. But I think at the end of the day, what's coming through is that if I think about your products, you're thinking at just about

the end user, all the frontline stuff, the people that that's actually going to make a difference for. And for our listeners that are even pharmacists and maybe they don't want to get into tech, but they just want to be a great pharmacist or great pharmacy owner. At the end of the day, if they think about the actual customer, well, the end user in that case, that's how I guess they're going to win. And I think that's how you've won. You've, you've always thought about that.

speaker-2 (27:14.752)
I agree. I think if you're a pharmacist and I think what I was going through when I was a pharmacist was seeing a customer, doing a prescription, providing a prescription. It became transactional, not in a currency perspective, know, dollar for dollar, that kind of thing. But you know, somebody's given me a script and now what I do is I get it dispensed and then I get the box to show if I label it, I check for problems. they've had it before. I say hi to the person, they pay for it, then they leave. It's this transaction and it becomes this component in our day.

speaker-0 (27:21.976)
Bye.

speaker-2 (27:44.366)
And then you take 300 of those transactions and then you go, okay, well, that's my nine to five. But I think in a, in a very kind of, I don't know if it's a corny way, action for you of which you've had 300 might be an elderly person's single transaction for the day. So has been a, a three minute or four minute procedure for you could have a bigger effect on somebody. And I talk about the elderly because that's a large portion of being a pharmacist.

speaker-0 (27:54.859)
each transaction.

speaker-0 (28:03.16)
What what?

speaker-0 (28:13.516)
that x.

speaker-2 (28:14.126)
extra 30 seconds, even where you've remembered their name or you've remembered that their husband's in hospital or they started a new medication, that kind of thing. You know, this person might leave their house with their nurse, they might come to the pharmacy, go to Coles and grab a couple of things, then go home. And that's it. And I think we treat any clients with Pharmacy Halo in a similar manner.

speaker-0 (28:40.45)
I

speaker-2 (28:40.76)
feel that sometimes it's not often you might be able to phone a tech provider. And I'm certainly not inferring other companies in the pharmacy space. think there's once again, some really great support there. But if we get, if I get a phone call from a pharmacist or an email on support or something like that, we try and respond to it straight away because for us, we might get a number of phone calls a day or a number of emails, but for them, they've got a pressing matter. There's a problem in the pharmacy and you take it seriously. So just the way that.

any, like we might deal with a pharmacist. If you're, if you're a pharmacist, you're dealing with an end user, having that extra thought and making it less transactional and that slight bit more personal, at least that's the way I used to work. I find that's the more that makes your job a little bit more fulfilling at the end of the day.

speaker-1 (29:26.894)
Absolutely, because otherwise you're just going through the motions, right?

speaker-2 (29:30.262)
And that's, and that's where you get lost. And that's where you start thinking, is this what I want to do? A lot of it might be the job you're in. might be the place you work. It might be the demographic of the area. However, there is a significant portion of it that is also, that's also related to your own mind frame, you know? And if you, if you want to turn it into some transactional thing where you're like, my God, I'm doing 300 scripts this day or, know, or the pharmacy does 300 and I've got to do this many and we're at one o'clock in the afternoon. How many scripts have we done? Okay. What am I doing now?

there's another person. Like that kind of mentality, you're not going to enjoy your life at all anyway. So you've got to kind of put a positive spin on it some way to, know, to have some kind of satisfaction in your job.

speaker-1 (30:09.994)
Yeah, absolutely. I guess that's a good segue. I thinking with you and your career, I some people could say that you've like made it, you're like the word success, right? What does it mean to be successful and happy in your life? And could be, you've been able to create a life where you said that you can see your kid after school and play ball games with him. But then you're always, I think you're also the type of person, and correct me if I'm wrong, but

of similar to me, but then you're always like chasing the next thing like, okay, well, it's, this is a thing. This is a thing. Yeah. Do you like to think that you, guess, are successful now or is there, do you feel that you're still growing or yeah, I guess from your perspective, how would you define

speaker-2 (30:57.678)
Yes, there's a difference between success for my career personally, and then success of pharmacy halo. think for my success, yeah, I've managed to leave a job that I enjoyed being a pharmacist. I did enjoy it, but there were certain parts that I didn't like. So I've managed to commit and find something that I wanted to do. And then I have, I have stuck with it and now it is successful. You know, it pays a salary. I'm very grateful.

speaker-0 (30:58.702)
Log out.

speaker-0 (31:07.17)
I guess.

speaker-0 (31:27.426)
for the I can pay.

speaker-2 (31:28.088)
pay a salary for my staff. And I feel like they love their job and they enjoy it. So I think in a sense of my satisfaction, yeah, I feel like I'm in the success range, but I think success is like an ongoing kind of, know, if I said today, do I feel successful? Sure. You know, I might wake up tomorrow and I'm like, wow, I'm not feeling great about this. I mean, it's an up and down, it's a roller coaster. And then, you know, with the business success, I mean,

You know, we're, we've got hundreds and hundreds, I won't say how many, but we got, we got a significant proportion of pharmacies that use our systems now. And we are very proud of that. However, there are companies out there with, you know, 50, 70, 80 % of pharmacies in Australia using their systems. And that's, know, that's our target. You know, we're just going to keep on pushing and, and, but that, that isn't related. And I guess it's just a trust thing on me saying that that isn't related to me going, I want to use these pharmacies.

I want these pharmacies to use our systems because we want to make pharmacy halo a lot of money. is almost like the lowest thing. It's the satisfaction of knowing that we're affecting the industry. like getting a, every now and then we'll get an email or a phone call from someone would think, it's a support call. Something's gone wrong or somebody needs help setting something up. And somebody's just found a feature that maybe they didn't do the training or maybe like something's happened. They found a feature and they just go on, Holy cow. I've just realized we can do this.

this is going to change the way we do things in the pharmacy. Thank you for doing that." You know, and I thought, that's nice. It's, hey, when I find a cool feature in Microsoft office, I don't go, I don't go phoning, hi Bill Gates. Can I just say that that was really cool that you did this? You know, you don't often, or you, know, you wouldn't even phone the support team. When Facebook does something cool and like, love that, you don't email Facebook support and say, thanks for putting that in. So we, we really get a kick out of that.

And in my brain, the more pharmacies that are using our systems and enjoying it, potentially the more of those emails that we get. And then that gives us more job satisfaction to go and make more things. So yeah, in a success way for the company, I'd love to see it in more pharmacies and we're growing massively every single year and we're enjoying all of it. So yeah.

speaker-1 (33:29.624)
Mmm.

speaker-1 (33:38.7)
That's good. And enjoying it. Yes. That's some really big part of it as well. Right. You've got to

speaker-2 (33:43.458)
That's the most important part of it. Yeah. No, if I wasn't enjoying it, I'd be packing it in and, you know, going back to pharmacy and, know, working there and probably have a different outlook on being a pharmacist. haven't been involved in pharmacy since just after like all the vaccines and stuff like that came in. So, you know, a lot of things have changed, you pharmacists prescribing things like that. And I really, I really think that's cool for the industry, but that's something that I'm.

I will be able to say, you know, not a positive way that, I haven't actually done that. I haven't been a prescribing pharmacist. I'm looking forward to learning off, off those pharmacists and finding more pain points, you know, now you're practicing, uh, you know, you're a prescribing pharmacist, you know, what does that mean for you? And, know, there's, there's software out there that covers certain parts of that. What do you feel you're not covered by, you know, what do you end up doing more paperwork? You know, sure. There's pharmacy reimbursements. You've done the training, you've done the degree.

speaker-0 (34:16.494)
That's where.

speaker-2 (34:39.554)
Patients are loving it, but now you've got this stack of paperwork or even a process that you can't fix. And that's where we're excited to think, well, there's hopefully something we can help there. And that'll be the next step, I think.

speaker-1 (34:52.502)
Yeah, I think it's just very exciting. Like our industry, there's just so much change. And like each year, like it's just actually pretty wild. Like I think to my first APP, I think was 12 years ago. And yet we weren't even doing vaccines and they were trying to advocate for us to do vaccines and only in 10 years, it's just, yeah, so much change, which can be very almost overwhelming at the end. And so then that can also potentially be where some of that.

resistance might come from, like, my gosh, another thing is changing. But it's also good as well, right?

speaker-0 (35:25.846)
I think, yeah, that's the.

speaker-2 (35:27.342)
pretty much, that's pretty much where it comes from. Like the resistance isn't always resistance to innovation. It's, it is resistance to change, but it's resistance of change because there's an overwhelming amount of change. know, we had e-scripts come in, which in my opinion did not come in with, you know, it was kind of pushed out through COVID. There was confusion there. The patient didn't understand.

speaker-0 (35:33.678)
and it's hard.

speaker-0 (35:45.932)
If

speaker-2 (35:51.07)
I was still working at that time in pharmacy and I was like, what the hell's happening here? And then, God, I wish the doctor would just do a basic script instead of this stuff. Cause sometimes it didn't work. you know, that there's an elderly patient who's getting an SMS and I can't find my scripts anyway, but it went through many iterations. That became such a kind of scary, difficult part. And then we've got the vaccines pharmacists prescribing. There's so many things that are changing. So we never get offended if people don't want to try something. However, you know,

I also do firmly believe that the things that we are helping pharmacies with, they're things that they're doing already. So when you say, look, you got vaccines. Okay. Well now you've got to figure out which pharmacist is doing the vaccine. When do you do vaccines? How do you get vaccines booking? How do you your money back from the vaccines? How do you order? You know, there's all these things. Whereas the things that we are solving is we already do all these things. The pharmacy already does them in a different manner, most likely a paper-based manner or a

speaker-0 (36:48.919)
I slow.

speaker-2 (36:49.336)
who are manner most likely. So we've gone, look, you're, you're doing is replacing a process you already do with a, what I would like to think is a better process, a faster process. So we're reducing your workload, making life better, increasing efficiency, increasing your, your, your patient outcomes and how happy they are with the pharmacy and they return to you, but we're not adding something new. And that's that, that is something that we certainly do drill into people because it's change, but it's not.

new, it's not a new process and that's the scary part.

speaker-1 (37:20.182)
And it's actually making your life easier, right? Yes. absolutely. I can definitely vouch for that. And yeah, I love the fact that you mentioned about, yeah, those little emails or the calls where people actually, yeah, can be bothered to actually say, how great this is. Cause yeah, as you said, yeah, I'm not going to call Mark Zuckerberg up.

speaker-2 (37:23.598)
Certainly hope so.

speaker-2 (37:40.398)
No, no, I mean, look, we had a, think probably my best memory of everything was actually at a, at APP and it was the, I think it was the first APP we went to and we had an exhibit at, and I'd told my wife that I'd like her to come and help on the floor, you know, help in sales, just talk to people, meet people, meet the people that, you know, meet the people that are using the product because my wife is a teacher, very skilled teacher, and she's recently become more involved in the business and

She came to this APB and I was busy, demoing a product to someone and somebody walked up to her and said, do you know about Cuda? And she actually said, that's actually named after our kids. obviously they went, you're, you're, Glenn's wife. And they ended up hugging her and just said, thank you so much because I know that he's been up late doing all this stuff because we asked for this, this change in Cuda and he did it and it helped them. I, I honestly, I can't remember who it was. That's, you know, it was, it was.

Two years ago on a busy APP day, but my wife still remembers, so name's Sharn, so Sharn still remembers and she will still make a comment of that because it was kind of like, that was the turning point for her that it wasn't, it wasn't what I'd done with his effort claims. It wasn't a tiny app that, you know, 10 or 20 pharmacies were going to use. The hundreds of pharmacies were using across Australia and it was actually helping them. And in, such a positive manner that they had that.

Kind of, yeah, you're walking up to a software vendor and hugging them.

speaker-0 (39:08.43)
It was a unique experience and it was very

speaker-2 (39:10.85)
Very nice. Cause I saw that and I'm like, wow, what's happened there? And she just, and, Sean just said, we're just so happy that you've done for the app and that would really change things for them. So that's the kind of thing that also lets us know that we're heading in the right direction, that, any resistance it's completely understandable. don't get offended by people who are like, no, I don't like change. That's perfectly fine because we're so confident with the people that are just so happy with it. They were like, we're not stuffing people up. We're not going to put a process in their pharmacy that

speaker-0 (39:17.74)
XYZ.

speaker-2 (39:40.054)
breaks things that causes problems. going, we're giving software that is not just for the dispensary, it's for the dispensary staff. It's for the counter staff, the literally everybody in the pharmacy can use our software. And that's what we like because you know, that's, that's the thing that I feel like we're not just touching the dispensary that we're helping everywhere, you know, and that, that, helps all staff to know who we are as well.

speaker-1 (40:03.168)
Absolutely. And I think that lesson too, of just that experience we're shown as well with someone coming up and hungrier and saying like how great it was. it's like, maybe it could even just be the littlest thing, but even just moments like that I think of when I'm in the pharmacy and yeah, some days it's just the daily grind and then someone, I don't know, comes in and say, well, you know, you helped me the other day or something with this. And yeah, I've got no idea who they were. don't remember. okay. Right.

Cool. they're like, they're so grateful. And you're like, that's right. This is why I get up and do what I do every day.

speaker-2 (40:38.398)
Yeah, that's exactly the same feeling. Yeah. And I think a lot of that stems from knowing that you've actually made a difference because that's the difference between just working transactionally in the pharmacy. Because what you do has lasting effects on people. And that's a hundred percent it. You don't know if you've just dealt with someone who's got an antidepressant for the first time and you've actually taken your time to explain it and they've walked away. And maybe in six months time, they're still.

speaker-0 (40:45.358)
Bye guys.

speaker-2 (41:07.31)
taking it, they're still compliant because they remember that somebody sat down with them and said, look, this is how you do it. This is how it's going to help. Whereas just chucking someone a packet and going, haven't used it before, you might feel sick for the first week or so. Good luck with that. You know, they haven't had the time or the energy to put that into that customer or that patient. you know, and it's those kinds of people that come back. yeah, if you don't put effort in, then you're not going to get any kind of positive return otherwise.

And I don't think that in a calmer way, I just think that in a, general, if you don't put the effort in, they're not going to remember you and put the effort back into you as well.

speaker-1 (41:41.714)
yeah, exactly. I totally agree. Now we're coming up to the end of the podcast, but is there anything that you want to share with our listeners, maybe some advice or anything that we haven't touched on that you really want to get out there and put it to our listeners?

speaker-0 (41:58.902)
I just,

speaker-2 (41:59.714)
generally think, you know, as, someone who's changed career, you know, I've changed career a silly amount of times and, I've obviously been in this one for 10 years and I love it, but I think just do what makes you happy. we all need money, you know, unfortunately that's, that's the, the ant was called like an ant race, like the life that we live and we do need to make money. however,

speaker-0 (42:22.488)
test test

speaker-2 (42:28.334)
You know, you've got to try and put effort into the job the way you want it. You've got to treat the job the way you want it. Stand up for yourself in your workplace. and, and if there's things at work that you do enjoy, try and focus on those things. and kind of build your career around those things positively and don't feel afraid to seek other opportunities. You know, I'm not saying get on seek right now and look for things, but,

But if you're not happy in your job and then you think, I might like to try something that's never going to change unless you actually do try it. Or if you have a talk to someone about it, talk to someone that does that job because grass is always green on the other side as well. And you might find that where you're at is where you should be, but maybe you just need to be in a different mindset as well.

speaker-1 (43:17.23)
100 % think that's, yeah, really great place to kind of end on. And, you good piece of advice. Thank you so much, Glenn, for taking the opportunity to speak with me today and talk about your journey. I think the key thing, the key themes that I'm hearing from you is, yeah, to give things a go. Don't be afraid to make some changes.

whether that's your career, or even if there's maybe things in the pharmacy that you might think, hey, maybe there's a better way of doing this, but I'm not going to raise it or whatever. But yeah, just taking that opportunity and saying, hey, maybe we could do this way or something like that. And you never know, maybe the people around you might surprise you and support you like they did in your case.

speaker-2 (44:03.5)
Yeah, none of this, none of this wouldn't have happened. Yeah. I was working at place, Warmbra pharmacy, the owner's name's Aaron. He still owns the pharmacy and he's still a huge supporter of ours. None of this would have happened had he not, when I'd said, I don't want to do this with paper. I'd like to see if I can do a system. None of it would have happened if he'd said, no, I don't want that. But none of it would have happened if I'd never said it in the first place either. If I just sat there and got angry that I was doing this old, you know, annoying system, then.

You know, so it's, it's on me. It's on, it's on him, but it's also on me. So if you've got an idea, make sure you scope out the idea, think about it hard. Don't come up to someone with some half-baked plan because an owner's never going to go, Oh, that sounds like a great idea. You can't answer one of my questions, you know, come up with a plan, come up with an idea. And I'm not just talking about making money. I'm just talking about just generally like if there's a new system at a pharmacy, a new process and new efficiency, Hey, have we tried this?

Hey, can we use yellow pads instead of white pads? But you know, some actual thought process into it. and then get the plan, get the idea and then have, have an honest chat with an owner or manager, but not in a busy middle of a busy working day, just say, Hey, for five minutes after work, can I catch you? Okay. Can we grab a coffee halfway through the day? If there's another farm, sister on board or something like that and go, look, this is what I'm doing. I'm really not enjoying it, but I've got this idea. Can I give it a crack now? Sure. The only can say no, but.

If they say yes, and then that gives you something else to really work on and try and inspire you then, you know, that's, that's just a win-win. You're going to win and the owner's going to win. And that might lead to other things, which is exactly what it did for me.

speaker-1 (45:42.558)
Exactly. Yeah. You never know where those, yeah, small kind of, don't want to say sliding door moment, it's not really, but those little, little actions that happen and then next thing you know, it's yeah, just gone off on its own.

speaker-2 (45:54.786)
Yeah. Well, I mean, Aaron, Aaron years ago, after I did Zephyr and I had WebIt working there and I just made Q2, he goes, Glenn, you might as well quit here. Go and make the angel suite. And that's what he called it. And he actually said that to me when we had three apps and now here we are, you know, years later. so that was during Zephyr, the Zephyr period. so yeah, seven or eight years later with nearly seven applications, you know, there's staff, hundreds of pharmacies using the system, like over 500 pharmacies using the system now. And.

You know, sure. may have got hit. If you hadn't have said that, but, you know, that's, that's quite cool thought that, you know, somebody just said, just go and do it. I'm like, I guess I will. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. I'm just resigned from your pharmacy.

speaker-0 (46:25.592)
here.

speaker-1 (46:35.054)
Now I have to do this.

speaker-1 (46:41.353)
You

speaker-0 (46:42.638)
jeez.

speaker-1 (46:44.814)
it. Well, thank you so much, Glenn. It's been an absolute pleasure. for anyone that's wanting any more information on any of products, let's reach out to Glenn. We'll put all his details in the show notes. But I'm sure he'd be more than happy to hear from you via LinkedIn, socials or via your

speaker-2 (47:04.398)
Correct, they Email, yep, whichever you like. Always around for chat.

speaker-1 (47:07.382)
Maybe not a post at night.

speaker-0 (47:09.496)
So.

speaker-2 (47:09.88)
Carry a pigeon in the mail, something like that. Yeah.

speaker-1 (47:12.366)
Well, thank you so much and...

speaker-2 (47:15.512)
Cool. Thanks for having me. Yep. All right. Cheers.

speaker-0 (47:17.571)
day.

speaker-1 (47:18.934)
It's always weird to the wrap up, but that's all done.

speaker-0 (47:24.046)
Thanks for tuning in to Your Pharmacy Career Podcast, proudly sponsored by the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia. The PSA is committed to empowering pharmacists through advocacy, innovation and industry-leading professional development. To become a member or learn more about how the PSA can support your career, visit www.psa.org.au. Don't forget to subscribe, share this podcast with your colleagues and join us next time as we continue to explore your pharmacy career journey.