Pharmpreneur of the week Fabio De Rango: “We are focused on patient-centred care.”
Snapshot
Education: B.Sc. Pharm, RPh, CDE, University of Toronto 1999
Role/Title: Associate owner of three locations in Oakville and Burlington. Clinical Instructor with the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto, Preceptor for the University of Toronto PharmD program, Preceptor for the Ontario College of Pharmacists, Guest Lecturer at the University of Toronto and University of Waterloo. Also a minor hockey league coach in Oakville.
What was your key driving force to become an entrepreneur?
I have always approached life, whether it be in my relationships, personal growth or in my career, that today has to be better than yesterday, and tomorrow must be better than today. As I began practising pharmacy, I was able to learn from many different colleagues and owners. Gathering the best practices from everyone allowed me to envision what I would do differently if I were leading the way, if I were running my own pharmacy. In order to best control how to make today better than yesterday and tomorrow better than today, I knew that I had to become an entrepreneur.
What excites you about being an entrepreneur?
Helping others fulfill their potential is what excites me the most. It is why I love what I do. I challenge everyone within my team, not only at work, but also in their personal lives, to make today better than yesterday and tomorrow better than today. My ultimate goal is to see others move on from my business to fulfil their potential. At work, in all my locations, I have a ‘wall of fame’ where I celebrate all those who have worked for me and have moved on to becoming owners or managers of their own locations. I have their picture and name embedded in a star which are then displayed on a wall. In my 21 years of being an entrepreneur, my count is up to 62 stars. Adding to this list is what excites me.
As a successful entrepreneur, what continues to drive you?
Both my parents have been diagnosed with diabetes. Watching them struggle with the disease motivated me to become a pharmacist and help others who may also be struggling, or help prevent disease all together to help people live their best lives possible. That is why I create an environment at work where the patient is the driving factor. We are focused on patient-centred care. This is why my pharmacies lead the way in patient services offering nutritional consultations, pharmacogenomics, atrial fibrillation screening, heart health assessments, A1C and cholesterol screening. These services not only help manage disease but also help in prevention. I always tell my team that patients do not come to us because we have the best medications on the market. Everyone can sell what we sell, and everyone can copy what we do. What they can’t reproduce is the relationships our patients have with each and every one of you. These services help foster those relationships. We can then lean on these relationships to help patients live healthier lives.
What are the biggest challenges to being an entrepreneur?
As a pharmacist, I was already proficient at being organized, efficient and multitasking. I was also good at analyzing problems and coming up with a solution. As a pharmacy manager I was experienced in hiring individuals and dealing with customer concerns. As an entrepreneur, however, I was not prepared to build entire teams and then continue to develop them. What I learned is that everyone needs to be coached differently, but everyone needs to be coached. My approach to building teams is not hiring the best individual, but hiring the best group of people who complement each other. Hiring great individuals is similar to saying 1+1=2. Hiring a team that makes the skills of the those around them even better is more like 1+1=4; they become greater than the sum of their parts. Learning that was the most challenging concept about being an entrepreneur.
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