In this episode of the Harvest Growth Podcast, host Jon LaClare interviews Constantine Abanda, CEO of PrescriptionQuest, an online marketplace dedicated to helping patients find scarce prescription drugs quickly, thereby reducing drug shortages. Constantine shares the inspiration behind his product and the growth strategies that have enabled him to attract, onboard, and earn the trust of pharmacies and patients in a highly scrutinized market. He also emphasizes the importance of refining and consistently communicating your brand messaging to your target audience. Additionally, you'll discover how Constantine is leveraging PicMii, an equity crowdfunding platform, to attract investors and raise awareness for PrescriptionQuest, and how this led to a $10 million valuation. Tune in now!
In today’s episode of the Harvest Growth Podcast, we’ll cover:
The importance of crafting a clear brand message and compelling value proposition.
Tips for growing a user base in a two-sided marketplace.
The power of leveraging PicMii to expand your business and connect with investors.
And so much more!
You can listen to the full interview on your desktop or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Or, click to watch the full video interview here!
Say goodbye to the stress and uncertainty of searching for prescription medications with PrescriptionQuest. Visit www.prescriptionquest.com to discover how they can help you find your medication quickly and stay on track with your treatment.
Interested in partnering with PrescriptionQuest or becoming an investor? Visit www.prescriptionquest.com/picmii to get started.
To be a guest on our next podcast, contact us today!
Do you have a brand that you’d like to launch or grow? Do you want help from a partner that has successfully launched hundreds of brands that now total over $2 billion in revenues? Set up a free consultation with us today!
Prefer reading instead of listening? Read the full transcript here!
Jon LaClare [00:00:00]:
If you or a loved one has ever had to search around to find a medication from multiple pharmacies in your area, you know how much of a pain it can be. Today we discuss a brand new website that helps locate even the hardest to find medications. And we also talk about a relatively unique crowdfunding platform that they are using to help scale their company more quickly.
Announcer [00:00:20]:
Are you looking for new ways to make your sales grow? You've tried other podcasts, but they don't seem to know harvest the growth potential of your product or service as we share stories and and strategies that'll make your competitors nervous. Now here's the host of the Harvest Growth podcast, Jon LaClare.
Jon LaClare [00:00:41]:
Welcome back to the show. I'm really excited to be speaking with Constantine Amanda today. Now, he's the CEO of Prescription Quest Inc. We're going to dive into more about what that service is or that website. It's actually a really exciting technology and development that, frankly, is going to be a game changer. I can tell already in the marketplace for finding medications. We'll dive into exactly what it is, how it works, how he came up with the idea, et cetera, as part of this story. But that's a really cool technology.
Jon LaClare [00:01:07]:
First of all, Constantine, welcome to the show.
Constantine Abanda [00:01:10]:
Thank you. Thank you for having me, Jon.
Jon LaClare [00:01:12]:
So if you could tell our audience, what is prescription quest? How does it work?
Constantine Abanda [00:01:16]:
So prescription quest is an online marketplace. Essentially what we do is we connect patients who have a prescription to pharmacies that have the medication in stock and to fill those prescriptions right away. In essence, what we aim to do is give patients the ability to access the medication that they need when they need it, so that in case of a shortage, they don't go months, weeks, months without taking the medication that they need. So our platform brings together the largest network of independent pharmacies in the United States, and we connect those pharmacies with patients on a prescription by prescription basis, allowing patients to find the medication that they need with just one click of a button anywhere in the US.
Jon LaClare [00:02:06]:
It's such an exciting development. And for any of our listeners who maybe aren't on a lot of medications, maybe they have family members that are. Myself, really, I've learned about this need through my mom, who has a particular medication that she buys on a monthly basis, and it's really hard to get. So she lives in Utah and she scours her area, basically shows up at her normal pharmacy, and they're often, if not always, sold out. So then she starts every month calling around to different pharmacies trying to locate it, and then you've got to move your prescription over to a different pharmacy. I love that this sort of short changes that whole process. Avoid calling individual all these different pharmacies in the area by going on there, find the closest pharmacy that has it in stock, and it just really quickens the process. It takes a lot of time off their shoulders.
Jon LaClare [00:02:54]:
Do you have any idea, on average, maybe how much time this is expected to save for the average buyer of prescription medications?
Constantine Abanda [00:03:01]:
For the average buyer, it depends on how they are looking for the alternative medication or for the alternate pharmacies. For somebody who calls, who calls around, they will save about 15 minutes. Now they go from 15 minutes from finding a pharmacy to basically a few seconds from knowing whether there's a local pharmacy that has a medication. And then it just takes about a minute or two to let us know the type of medication where you're located, and then we make the connection automatically. So that's, that's for the people who make calls. If you have to drive around, that will also depend. If you live in a pharmacy desert, that's an area where there's, there are no immediate pharmacies in your location. You, you have to drive about half an hour just to get to one pharmacy, and it doesn't guarantee that you're going to find the medication when you get there.
Constantine Abanda [00:03:51]:
So that will save you from a few hours to a few weeks. Right. We have people coming to us saying, hey, I've been have my prescription at Walgreens for the past two months, and I've been able to feel it. Can you please help me? And when we're able to do that, we have people coming saying, hey, we have our Wacomi prescription on Amazon with Amazon, but they don't have it in stock. And I'm looking like I have five, six, seven pharmacies that have it right now. So it really depends on how you're looking for the medication. But at the very least, we are able to, we are confidently able to say that for the average person, we save you about two to three days from the moment you can't find a medication to the moment you find it, depending on the type of medication.
Jon LaClare [00:04:34]:
Yeah. And I can attest to that from personal experience. You know, just, I was visiting my mom a few months ago, and during one of these processes, when she's calling around to different pharmacies and, you know, if the pharmacies pick up an answer right away, it can be a relatively quick process. Like you said, it could be as fast as 15 minutes. But it really turned out to be days, in her example, and she goes through this every month. You call a pharmacy, you're put on hold, you wait, they maybe call you back later in the day, they don't have it. You start that process with the next one. Right? So it's just that waiting.
Jon LaClare [00:05:04]:
And a lot of times when these medications are in high demand, the pharmacy may not have it today, but we're promised to get it tomorrow, et cetera. So being able to really short change that process and get your medications essentially immediately or as soon as you need them is such a value for many people.
Constantine Abanda [00:05:21]:
Absolutely. Something that gets done immediately through our process, because our pharmacies are incentivized to help you get the medication that you need. And how are they incentivized? These are independent pharmacies, mom and power pharmacies that cannot compete with the bigger chains. So they already have. They have the medication, they just don't have the patients. So what we do on this side of the equation is we'll find the patient. We bring them to you, right. So they have better customer service.
Constantine Abanda [00:05:49]:
They don't have long lines. They don't have a big corporate structure above them preventing them from providing the kind of service that your family member is used to. So because these are the people that the pharmacy that we work with, we're able to tap into a large, into a very large network of pharmacies. There are 20,000 independent pharmacies in the United States. Walgreen only has 8000 and CV's only has about 9000. So twice the size of those big chains when you look at it this way. So that's how we're able to provide that incentive. And it makes the process quicker, and it also help patients get to their treatment and start taking the medication right away.
Constantine Abanda [00:06:29]:
It breaks my heart every time somebody gets a prescription and then they can't start treatment. People are in a lot of pain, and people only think about the pricing. But at the end of the day, the way we see it, the price doesn't matter if you can't find a medication in the first place. And that's where we exist in the marketplace.
Jon LaClare [00:06:46]:
And I think so many people go to Walgreens or go to CV's or Walmart, the big chains, just because they're convenient or they're used to it. This gives a chance, really where you mentioned pricing, it can be a chance to save money. Pharmacies we're not familiar with that are in our local area. Hey, they're the ones that have it, and their pricing may be significantly, oftentimes better. It is something we see. There's such a variance in drug prices, with or without insurance, from one pharmacy to the next, and sometimes from one month to the next. And so it's the ability to get that information on pricing as part of it, or will be in the future, I know as well. But availability, of course, is certainly the key.
Jon LaClare [00:07:21]:
Getting those medications exactly when you need them can make all the difference. Do you have maybe a couple of medications or a handful of medications that come to mind? What are some of the most common that are often out of stock?
Constantine Abanda [00:07:34]:
Weight loss medications are very popular and they are out of stock all the time. Diabetes medications as well. We have some eye drops and some syrups that are out of stock. Baby, baby Tylenol, out of stock a lot. I was victim of that myself. That's actually started the business. I was looking for baby Tylenol for my son at 09:00 p.m. on a Sunday, and I couldn't find it.
Constantine Abanda [00:07:59]:
Epipen is also quite out of stock a lot. And this mostly affect brand new medications, which tend to be more expensive and not readily available. Those are the ones that. But weight loss medication by far, take the cake. Here they are. Weight loss medication, diabetes medication. They are very hard to find.
Jon LaClare [00:08:19]:
They are, well, they're interrelated. Right. A lot of the diabetes medications are now used for weight loss. The demand has surged while the supply has not yet caught up. You can still obtain them, right. But it's just finding the right pharmacy that does have them in stock, and what a great resource to be able to do that. This is an industry that's very complex. Right.
Jon LaClare [00:08:38]:
Working with pharmaceuticals, what are some of the hurdles that you encountered early on as a business? Trying to get connections into pharmacies and get access to inventory databases and everything else. It sounds so complex. Maybe talk about some of the hurdles you faced over the time you've developed this business.
Constantine Abanda [00:08:56]:
The first hurdle has been, was the trust. From the pharmacy perspective, the pharmacists did not believe that they know that the problem exists, but they did not believe that a solution could come in and make a change on their business bottom line. Because when we connect them with patients, they eventually make money, but they get these offers, this type of offers all the time. But we try to let them know that we are really patient first. And it just happens that when the patient comes to you, then you make money. And we, patient pharmacy did not truly believe that. So it was a bit of a challenge convincing the first three pharmacy saying, hey, listen, we have this product sign up, try it out and see. Immediately, though, we had quite a lot of success with patients.
Constantine Abanda [00:09:53]:
We put up a webpage on our website when we first started and patient just came in, came in and fill out a form providing confidential information in the hope that we help them find a pharmacy. So we didn't have a challenge on the pharmacy side. We definitely did. We had a challenge on, also on Google. Right. Because search engine, they don't want, they want to make sure that people who come and advertise on their platform or provide content on their platforms on restricted categories do not validate the law, do not break the law. And we really had to think, how do we allow pharmacy to share their inventory information without breaking the law and without coming across as if we are selling medication? Those were the major hurdles that we faced early on. There are other challenges that we face now as we try to expand away from just weight loss medication to let people know that we are different.
Constantine Abanda [00:10:45]:
We're not just a weight loss medication company, but we actually a wide marketplace. So getting that message out is a big challenge. But we are working towards conquering that challenge as well and getting over that hurdle.
Jon LaClare [00:11:04]:
You alluded to it already a little bit, but there's really kind of two sides to this business. Basically, you're servicing the pharmacies by bringing customers into them that are looking for medications that they have in stock. And of course, you're helping the patients or the people buying medications by being able to find those, connecting the two. So you're providing value to both of these, as you mentioned. In order to do that, you've got to get awareness very high, especially with consumers. Right? Making them aware of this website, helping them to find it. And it takes money to do that. And so I know we're in the early stages of your business, and you are in crowdfunding right now to bring funding into the business to get the word out.
Jon LaClare [00:11:43]:
So the technology's there. A lot of the work has been done. Now it's about growing awareness behind that. And I want to talk a little bit about the way you're doing crowdfunding. You're using a company called PicMii for our audience. That's p I C m I I. Their website is PicMiicrowdfunding.com. and you can learn more about this product@prescriptionquest.com.
Jon LaClare [00:12:06]:
and if you do prescriptionquest.com PicMii, you'll see their exact listing on there. Raising funds for this business to help out, a great one, to learn whether you're a potential investor, as an audience listener right now, or if you are just curious and learning, hey, how can I use crowdfunding for my own business to help it grow? Whatever stage you might be very early or even later on, just looking for some infusement of capital in your business. It's a fairly unique or different approach that PicMii takes. Can you talk a little bit about your crowdfunding approach on how you're using this PicMii platform to bring funds into your business to really help you scale?
Constantine Abanda [00:12:46]:
Absolutely. PicMii allows us, gives us the opportunity to meet investors who understand what we're doing. These are investors who are looking for an opportunity to invest in companies that make change that will have an impact in the lives of everyday Americans. And they provide us with the ability to tell our story from our perspective and lay out what our vision is, where we are trying to go as an organization, in the hope of us attracting the kind of investors who want to participate in building something that we really believe is going to be a market changer. So PicMii is giving us a platform. They've allowed us to tell our story, and they have given us the ability to raise funds at different stages. Stage one, there's a cap limit there for $124,000. There's a $200 minimum investment.
Constantine Abanda [00:13:52]:
So it's not a lot of commitment for anybody trying to come in, but it gives you foot to the door. We already had a $10 million valuation from a previous company. So when you come in at $200 now, you know that you're getting yourself into a captivating company that has a very big upside potential with. And the way we operate, the company is very minimal in a very lean manner. So there's a potential here that if you come in at this stage, you would be making a substantial amount of profit within the next two to three years. So PicMii is really the launching part for us. And you can find us, like John, you just said at prescription request.com PicMii, there's a button down the main page that you could go to, and it'll take you straight to our page, put $200 share, let other people know about it, and yeah, let's get this done together.
Jon LaClare [00:14:52]:
Absolutely. And it is very different from a Kickstarter or Indiegogo that many people might be familiar with. PicMii is more flexible, let's say, in the way that funds are raised. It's actually more of a true investment as opposed to just buying a product or getting a sample or that kind of thing, that can sometimes take months or years. And there's some limitations, obviously, the way Kickstarter or Indiegogo work, but PicMii is much more flexible. So check out the platform.
Constantine Abanda [00:15:18]:
You really become part of our company.
Jon LaClare [00:15:20]:
And yeah, a real investor, right? A true partner in the company as opposed to just a buyer, an early purchaser, as it were. So I do encourage everyone, please check out prescriptionquest.com PicMiii. You can learn more about the investment opportunity, but also about the business, how PicMii works, how prescription quests as a business works, and take a look, look at this unique opportunity as well. Well, Constantine, is there anything I didn't ask that you think would be helpful for our audience?
Constantine Abanda [00:15:48]:
Yeah, I think we cover almost everything. Once again, like to call on all potential investors and people who are interested or people have this need to check us out. Go to our website if you have any. If you look for any medication. We always promise to do our best. Sometimes we can't, especially at this early stage. But we are working diligently every day to bring the solution to the public, solve this problem for people over the United States and expand to Canada, Latin America, Europe over the coming years, and really make this the place to go next time you're at the doctor's office, if they ask what's your preferred pharmacy? Don't guess. Don't just say Walgreens or CV's.
Constantine Abanda [00:16:33]:
There could be multiple small pharmacies, even clothes that you don't know about that can help you come to us. We help you find them. We hope you find a medication right away and you can start on, get on with your treatment. And if you're an investor, if you're a patient you want to invest, please go to prescription quest.com PicMii and become part of the family.
Jon LaClare [00:16:54]:
Thank you, Constantine. And as always, if you're driving, check out the show notes. All these links are in there. And did you know you can meet with a member of my team also absolutely free for a 30 minutes strategy consultation. We've launched and grown hundreds of products since 2007 and learned some of our strategies while growing Oxiclean back in the Billy Mays days. We're here to help, so please go to harvestgrowth.com and set up a call if you'd like to discuss further.
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