Franklin Rove graduated from UNC with PharmD in 2002. He was interviewed by Taylor Enrico on September 17, 2020 when he was a Cofounder and President of IndyCare.
Can you tell me a bit about IndyCare and what it means to be a healthcare hub?
Indy care is a retail health model. I think healthcare has always been a “we build it, and you come” model of service. Retail health flips that and makes healthcare more accessible, more individualized, and more on the terms of the customer or patient.
What inspired you to start IndyCare?
An old friend of mine, that I graduated pharmacy school with almost 20 years ago, pitched me the idea. After school, my friend opened, operated, and owned a lot of his own pharmacies, while I was in the business/industry/corporation world. Some of [my friend’s] pharmacies were located next to an urgent care, and he started to see the potential of combining the two businesses. He recognized that he had done a lot as a small business owner, and the skillset that I had from my experiences is what he needed from a partner to take this thing from a local small business to a scalable large business. It took about a year of convincing, but we have a long history, and there was a lot of familiarity, trust, and friendship that made it easy to partner up.
What was your career path leading up to starting IndyCare?
My career path started while I was in school. I worked at Michael Jordan’s restaurant and as a bouncer for a bar at the Jersey Shore. I worked under the COO for a long-term care pharmacy company. I interned at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in marketing, and that internship led to me taking a job at GSK when I graduated. I started in marketing, moved to sales, sales training, and then hospital account management. Next, I got interested in an opportunity to work overseas. I found an opportunity through a market access and medical communications consulting firm that I worked with while I was at GSK. They were expanding, and I started up their sales, business development, and commercial function in the Asia Pacific region. I did that for 5 years, and it got me experience with doing business in that region. That led me to take a job with PPD [a contract research organization based in Wilmington, NC], where I worked in a business development role for the same region of the Asia Pacific. I was there when I made the choice to move back to the US and start IndyCare.
A lot of students want to know about starting companies. What did starting IndyCare entail?
It’s a little different when you’re 40-years-old, and you’ve worked for 20 years, and then decide to be an entrepreneur, because you’re a bit more risk averse. I spent a lot of time doing my due diligence. I wanted to feel confident that there is a strong market opportunity, and that the business value proposition had legs. My business partner and I met with pharmacy owners and soft pitched them on the idea to get a sense of their reactions. I went to conferences in the urgent and convenient care industries to understand where things were moving, and what challenges and growth opportunities exist.
What does your current job entail day-to-day?
A third of my day is focused on things that will help move the company forward. So, what is our expansion plan? What is our financial performance looking like? What is the strategy to improve financial performance? What is our strategy to raise capital? Another third to half of my day is focused on operations. And 15-20% is more blue sky and innovation. We are constantly evaluating opportunities to innovate and add services.
What excites you the most about your work?
This is the first time in my career that I’ve moved to the frontline of healthcare. Of course, if you work in Big Pharma or for a contract research organization that operates clinical trials, those things make an impact on peoples’ lives, but it’s different than when you really touch a life, personally, and give people care.
What advice would you give to UNC students getting ready to start their career?
I would say, try everything. Make as many relationships as you can, branch out, embrace learning. Develop your professional relationships, because those will always come back and pay you in dividends. Whatever job you do when you leave school, chances are, you won’t be doing that 20 years later. Don’t worry about your first job being the perfect stepping stone, because you’re going to grow, and learn, and see things in business that interest you that you didn’t realize exist.
Thanks to Franklin for spending time with us to learn more about his experiences! The GBCC offers many resources to make it easier for graduate students to launch business-related careers like in consulting. You can also find Franklin on LinkedIn.