Welcome to this special recap of Your Pharmacy Career podcast, proudly produced by Raven’s Recruitment - Australia’s experts in pharmacy career and locum services for over 30 years.
From the dispensary floor to the front lines of digital transformation, Kenneth Cheng’s story is a masterclass in what happens when a curious pharmacist follows his passion beyond the script.
It all began in a bustling suburban Melbourne pharmacy, where a young Kenneth juggled scripts, conversations with regulars, and the endless rhythm of community health. Like many pharmacists, he started in the trenches - navigating long days and learning fast. But what set him apart was a quiet frustration with inefficient systems… and a vision of what could be.
That vision took him beyond the dispensary, into product design, software development, and national change projects. In this episode of Your Pharmacy Career Podcast, host Kristi-Lee Patterson sits down with Kenneth to trace his journey from pharmacist to product leader - from launching MyScript to driving Australia’s e-prescription rollout during COVID-19.
This is more than a tale of tech. It’s about resilience, growth, and what pharmacists can achieve when they step into new spaces with curiosity and purpose.
Episode Summary
In this in-depth chat, Kenneth Cheng reflects on his early pharmacy career and how his lived frustrations with dispensing software became the catalyst for a bold pivot into health tech. As a key player in the development of MyScript and later MedAdvisor, he shares what it takes to bridge the gap between pharmacists and software engineers - and how meaningful innovation is built on empathy, clarity, and continuous learning.
Whether you’re a community pharmacist with a hunch that there’s “more out there” or a seasoned manager facing clunky digital systems, Kenneth’s insights offer both inspiration and actionable wisdom.
Key Takeaways from the Episode
Lived experience drives innovation: Kenneth’s frustrations in pharmacy were exactly what made him so effective at designing better tech.
Communication is your superpower: Translating pharmacy workflows into developer language requires clarity, empathy, and nuance - all skills pharmacists already use.
Formal study isn’t always necessary: Kenneth didn’t return to university. Instead, he leveraged free online courses to upskill in tech on his terms.
Hackathons can change your career: A spontaneous trip to Sydney for Australia’s first pharmacy hackathon became a pivotal moment.
Change management is critical: Kenneth outlines how major platforms like MyScript and ePrescriptions were rolled out - and why pharmacists’ buy-in is essential.
Leadership is about influence, not authority: His approach to team collaboration shows that authentic leadership starts with listening.
You don’t need all the answers: Just the willingness to explore, learn, and lean into discomfort.
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Pharmaceutical Society of Australia (PSA)
Proudly brought to you 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.
Pharmacy Daily
Pharmacy Daily is a proud supporter of Your Pharmacy Career Podcast. If you're in the pharmacy world, it's a great resource to stay up to date with the latest industry news. To subscribe, just head to pharmacydaily.com.au to get the newsletter delivered straight to your inbox.
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Full Episode Transcript
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.
Hi, everyone, and welcome to Your Pharmacy Career podcast.
I'm your host, Kristi-Lee Patterson, and today's guest is someone who perfectly embodies innovation in healthcare.
Kenneth is a pharmacist by training and a product leader by passion, Having led some of Australia's most impactful digital health projects, some of which most most likely using in your pharmacies today.
So from launching a prescription functionality during the COVID-19 pandemic to introducing new pharmacy platforms, Kenneth's Story is one of bold transitions thoughtful design and community driven change.
Kenneth, thank you so much for joining us on today's podcast.
Thank you so much, Kristi-Lee, for having me.
It's an honour to be here.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Now, Kenneth, take us back to what inspired you to study pharmacy.
It's a question that I ask everyone, being a pharmacist, yeah, what inspired you to to go down that path?
Yeah.
So it's going back a while now.
Basically, my family has always been in healthcare.
So my parents worked in healthcare.
My brother ended up studying vet to become a vet, and naturally, I saw myself looking at healthcare careers as well.
And when I was in high school, I spent some time working in a pharmacy, just a nice local suburban community pharmacy. And I just, yeah, had a really good time there.
I really liked and respected how the pharmacist worked and operated in the pharmacy.
I could see that, you know, basically the local community would always, yeah, go to the pharmacist and ask them lots of questions.
They would just have conversations.
You'd be on first name basis with like, you know, basically a a lot of the regulars.
It was just a really nice, comfortable environment.
It just felt like a really good place to have to have a career and job.
So I really liked that, my time there and definitely shaped my decision to enter pharmacy.
Oh, that's fine.
I had a similar experience where I started working in a pharmacy before.
I decided to study pharmacy as well.
So I definitely think that really helps you to prepare for what the industry is actually like after. Graduating.
For what was your early experience like as a community pharmacist?
Was it what you expected?
Yeah, I ended up working in some very busy pharmacies in metropolitan Melbourne in the eastern suburbs.
So that was, I worked in a few, some of them were very, very, very busy.
So definitely there were very good moments in still being able to, you know, engage with your patients and spend the time with them to help them with any queries they have.
And that was really good.
But at the same time, you were also, I was always, also juggling a lot of other responsibilities and lots of prescriptions that would always become through.
So it was, yeah, definitely a challenging time, but a very formative time in terms of, yeah, growing in an environment and and being accustomed to, yeah, operating with a lot of responsibilities and, you know, a bit of stress and leading the team.
But it's, yeah, it was definitely a really good state early in my career to help grow and being able to be comfortable in a lot of different situations, challenging situations also really appreciate the time that I could basically, I do look back on those times fondly in terms of having builds up like really good camaraderie with your dispensary colleagues.
That's something I've never quite been in able to recreate, I guess, because of just what everyone goes through and everyone just kind of connects really well.
Every everyone's kind of fighting the same fight and having, yeah, just a really good bonding, I guess, through the challenges of pharmacy.
Yeah, that's all right.
Bonding three shared trauma, right?
A lot of growth.
Definitely a lot of growth and definitely a lot of, yeah, really, really look back back in my time. Form of time.
So do you think that those experiences, especially working in those really, really busy pharmacies, did you kind of look for efficiencies and is that sort of what started your process of?
Maybe tech is where I want to be.
I want to try and help streamline these processes.
Is that what sparks your interests?
Yeah, definitely, definitely.
Basically, it wasn't something I thought would be an opportunity back when I was working in pharmacy, but it was just one of those things that you do experience in those problems, maybe frustrations with software or just difficulties with how it worked and maybe some workflows or bits of a user experience that weren't ideal and there'd just be frustrations that you would deal with.
And then ultimately , when the opportunity came up to help directly work on software, that would remove those painpoints and barriers that I would experience as a farmer system, my day-to-day role.
Yeah, naturally, leapt to that opportunity and was really excited to help work on that directly and solve problems that I experienced myself and I saw my colleagues experience, that was really, really, really, really grateful for that opportunity.
And so how did you come across that opportunity?
Was it something that you were actively seeking or you just kind of came across it, I don't know, on LinkedIn?
How did you find out about this?
Yeah, so basically naturally, I was always asking, I guess, you know, looking for more opportunities, where else I could grow in my career.
The position became open for people to basically to interview for, and I found out about the role.
I interviewed for it, and ultimately, yeah, I planned the role to help build this new clinical system, and that's where I started.
It was basically, yeah, really, really excited to join that project very early on, to shape the development build of that new clinical system.
And so that clinical system that you're talking about, was this through your work with the digital health agency?
So we were building the MyScript platform, so it was a dispense system that was built, bespoke by the chemist warehouse group for their pharmacies.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
Yeah.
Exciting.
Yeah.
Yeah, really proud of that.
Really proud of that product to this day.
And so when you took that role moving into like your clinical pharmacist, you being on the ground and then now you're moving into a very product heavy role.
How did you manage that being a pharmacist?
And what were some of the skills that helped you with this MyScript dispense system that you were developing with the team??
Yeah, very good question.
Naturally, I'm a bit tech nerdy, I guess, is one thing, so I'm just very comfortable with computers and windows and all that.
That is, I guess, the baseline, but also just being able to work well with the developers, being able to understand how to communicate them in a way in the language that they operating, but also integrating my pharmacy knowledge and being able to communicate to the developers with my pharmacy knowledge that was able to connect to them in a way that they understood from a technical perspective.
So it was just being able to communicate the world and language of pharmacy to the developers in a way that helped them understand it.
And that's basically through, I guess, strong, written, and strong, written, and verbal communication with them.
That's kind of the starting point.
And, yeah, it just grew from there, basically.
Yeah, exactly.
That's Now that I'm in the product world myself now of building tech platforms, it really can be quite challenging trying to communicate, yeah, the workload of pharmacy and the industry of pharmacy to develop developers and take teams.
Pharmacy is such a unique industry and there's so many nuances that you need to kind of explain, given them the background and context as to why something means to be done as a certain way, as opposed to just, okay, maybe this is the easiest building way for the developers, but maybe that's not going to give the outcome that you want from a workplace perspective.
Is that something that you found?
Yeah, that's exactly right.
Like, as a pharmacist, you take your knowledge for granted and then you just kind of would assume that everyone thinks like a pharmacist, but sometimes you just need to take the the extra step to explain why pharmacists would want things a certain way and being able to communicate that convincingly, to build a bit more of the empathy around the plate that pharmacists would face and, you know, everything that they're going through.
Sometimes if you're pushing for something that's going to really help pharmacists, but it's just a lot more.
There's a lot more challenges to try to implement that thing.
Sometimes you just need to work through and understand the challenges.
You know, is it worth the challenges and the cost to go down that route and basically just, yeah, try and understand for getting both all parties to understand, you know, all the considerations that everyone has in striking the right balance.
That's really key.
That's so key in the world of software development and product.
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.
Striking that balance.
And I think that's both sides understanding that it is that there are some things that you sometimes need to compromise on.
That is definitely one of the things that I I'm seeing in my own journey.
But with that journey of implementing MyScript, but then not just from a let's build this platform, but then actually rolling it out and across a national pharmacy chain where you really got to get the buying of not just the head offers, but then also people on the ground and the pharmacist and also the pharmacy teams.
And so how did yourself in Chemist Warehouse successfully manage that change process?
Yeah, that was in an incredible project as well.
We're obviously rolling out the dispense system, which is fundamentally very key to pharmacies operations.
Yeah, a very large project, a very large project in change management. Basically recruited a team to help us manage that whole process and help basically guide pharmacies, hold their hands, look after anything that's technical, that might come up so that it could be escalated and looked at, you know, make sure we had a very carefully laid up plan to be able to roll it out to pharmacies, what the project management work and all the change management in place.
And ultimately just making sure that the communication was their place as well.
You know, there was the exact sponsorship, basically that was able to help take the business along for the journey. Because obviously the projects sponsor was incredibly important.
Also, you know, the influ's help was vital for that and vital for that project and also just from a project that level, just, yeah, having the support to roll it out, having the change management in place with chemist warehouses, very strong communication to its pharmacies, basically, and leveraging those methods of communication, you know, speaking directly to owners and, you know, hosting training sessions with owners.
I remember I flew to Sydney just to basically explain MyScript to everyone in Sydney.
So basically, yeah, just a lot of exercise and communicating and educating I and preparing pharmacies with processes, documentation, everything that they need to know to get themselves ready for it.
Yeah, absolutely.
So I think, that experience that you had with the MyScript dispense system , it certainly would have assisted you when you worked out the strang Health agency on rolling out the e-prescription change during COVID and all of us listening to the episode now.
It was a very challenging period for a number of different reasons and e-prescriptions were very much, I guess, kind of, we saw the dream that it was going to solve a lot of a lot of our problems and sometimes it also caused more problems as well on the ground.
But overall, I think it was definitely a success successful project and it's really helped to really drive, I think, pharmacy into coming along to that tech journey and kind of forcing us all to embrace it.
Yeah, if you could maybe just touch on a couple of the key learnings from that project that you had and, yeah, is, are those learning something that you now have brought across to your r at MedAdvisor?
Yeah, yeah.
COVID-19 definitely brought a lot of pressures to definitely pharmacy and also the industry to roll out those changes.
There was a lot of coordination between parties that naturally had never really coordinated before in the past.
And what I mean is the dispense vendors, the network of dispense vendors, there's a lot of them, and the network of prescribed vendors as well.
There's a lot of them and there they just naturally don't really talk to each other.
So there's always a big risk in that that I was personally worried about was, you know, if the prescribed vendors or just decide to build the prescriptions and launch them into the network .
But maybe there weren't any dispensary systems that were upgraded and maybe it wasn't rolled out across pharmacy and that was a big fear for e-prescriptions going to the network, but having no pharmacies to accept them.
So, yeah, we worked very closely with the government and it was key for us to maintain those communications with all the various stakeholders and make sure that we understood our own, you know, our own timelines and just make sure that that communication was always ongoing and working collaboratively with individuals, other parties, other the prescribed vendors that we had never worked with before in the past.
Just a lot more, yeah, a lot more closer collaboration.
It was really important piece and just kind of being up front with, you know, where things were at, you know, when we were able to be ready for our software to finish the build and also just when we were able to actually be able to get it out there.
That was important for us to basically communicate with everyone, so everyone was aware and to make sure everyone was like aware of, yeah, the status of the rad at all times.
So it's very, very, very large number of stakeholders, very another big change management exercise, but that was, yeah, basically another big project where we had to make sure everyone was aligned in terms of timelines.
Oh, absolutely.
That would have just been an absolutely massive massive project basically being a pharmacist on the ground at the time.
It's very easy to, I guess, look at an approach of being, oh, well, this is frustrating, this is frustrating, but yet not understanding all the hard work that goes on behind the scenes.
And so it's very easy, I guess, to be a bystander, the final outcome, but understanding what it takes to get there.
And one thing that keeps coming out in this conversation is communication.
And I think as a pharmacist, our number one, I guess, skill set is communication.
And so I think the fact that you had that bachelor pharmacy behind you and that experiencing really busy community pharmacies being able to communicate with anyone and everyone.
I think that definitely has translated to you being successful in these roles.
But when we were preparing for this podcast and I was asking you some questions to think about, yeah, what we could talk about, you mentioned that it felt like he had a bit of a chip on your shoulder about only having a bachelor pharmacy.
So I just would like you to share, yeah, how you overcame that and what that has taught you.
Yeah.
So, basically, when I first jumped into my role in IT, it was a very, very different environment.
There was a lot of conversation conversations happening with terminology and concepts that I just did not understand.
So there'd always be conversations between my development manager and anyone else who'd come to walk through the door into the office, and we talk talking about sequel and strings and functions and all kinds of computer science concepts.
And, yeah, I was basically just felt like I just did not know a lot of things.
And naturally that makes you put you in a position where you, you know, it's not always comfortable to not know a lot of things and you feel new. Because I guess as a pharmacist, you know, you, you, you're the expert in the pharmacy, you know, you know everything going on in the pharmacy.
But then to transition from that from that into a completely new environment, it's, yeah, very interesting to encounter a lot of concepts and conversations that just fly over your head.
And I guess being in that environment, you kind of, you were kind of, I was always seen as the pharmacist.
I wasn't like, it didn't feel like I completely connected with a lot of my colleagues. Who were very, very technical.
So, and also just in general, like I'm like, someone who likes to learn a lot of things, just like learning new things helps me feel like I'm more, I guess, adaptable.
So I would, yeah, basically spend for very many years of my early, in my career, I'd always just be seeking out knowledge.
There's so many online courses out there, from platforms, from reputable platforms, a lot of universities offer a lot of free courses online.
There's a lot of other platforms to to learn computer science concepts or really anything out there that you want to learn.
So I just spent a lot of time seeking out free courses, you know, doing certifications here and there, just learn more about computer science and engineering and everything else in between.
So that was a really exciting time.
And just over time, you know, with obviously paired with experience, just got me to a point where I just felt a lot more comfortable and confident about operating in technical environments where there's a lot of technical people engaging in a lot of, yeah, technical conversations.
Yeah, absolutely.
I love the fact that you sort out extra like horses and things.
And I guess if I didn't realise that there were so many free things or readily available horses online that you can do and so maybe I might stick some of those out myself so I can understand that with the more terminology in IT.
And I think as a pharmacists, because we understand the academic way, sometimes it's say, okay, well, now I have to go back to university and do a three-year degree in IT or something like that, but we don't necessarily need, we don't need to become the expert in ITE.
We just need to be able to understand maybe some of that language and be able to communicate.
And so I love the fact that you, yes, sort out some of the things that were just readily accessible for you and you were able to take that knowledge and implement it much quicker than you would have been able to than if you decided to do a master's in IT or something like that.
Exactly.
Exactly.
It was, you know, it's always important to lean on being the expert in pharmacy, but at the same time, you know, there's other experts out there, so you don't need to be the expert everything, but at the same time, it's, you know, helpful to skill up a little bit or as much as you want.
You know, it doesn't, you don't have to study your masters, you could.
It's a nice to have, I would say, but definitely it's not a must have.
And yeah, it's just up to to you how much you want to, yeah, how much more do you want to learn and just get to a level that you're comfortable in operating, and engaging with your colleagues.
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I'd love to chat to you now about something else that you participated in your career, and it's called Farm Hat. And so maybe you could just give a bit of a background as to what PharmHack actually is our photos for a listening that might not have heard of it and then explain yeah, what that was like from your experience and what you learnt from that experience as well.
Yeah, Farm Huck was a really exciting thing to happen to me in pharmacy.
So basically, I think it was back in 2017, there was an article in AJP, the Australian Journal of Pharmacy, about a pharmacy Hackathon.
It was Australia's first pharmacy Hackathon, and it sounded really exciting because back then I had this kind of rosy view of startups in Silicon Valley.
They'd always be running hackathons and people would lock themselves in rooms for days and weekends and build really cool stuff.
Sounds fun.
I was, yeah, it just sounded really exciting.
And I was like, I was like, wow, fun is the first to ever pharmacy Hackathon happening.
And so that was happening in Sydney.
It was happening at Fishburners in Sydney, which is a really exciting location.
And it's, yeah, I found out about it and I thought, okay, well, let's just book a flight to Sydney for a weekend and just join the Hackathon.
So it was really funny when I landed there on the Friday evening was basically when people start to meet each other and mingle and start to form teams and I would just, you know, introduce myself and start talking to people and I'd say I'd be from Melbourne and everyone was like, oh, wow, you came from Melbourne for this hackathon .
It was, everyone was quite surprised because everyone's just Sydney, everyone mostly just Sydney locals.
And I think there was probably one other person from Melbourne.
But yeah, ultimately, I went there, didn't know a single person, very uncomfortable, not uncomfortable, but, you know, a very new environment.
So obviously, you know, not something else you're familiar with. It's always good to put yourself in on, you know, I guess, uncomfortable situations to see how you land and see how you grow and stuff.
But yeah, it worked really well.
I managed to convince people to join my team with an idea.
That's always good.
So that was good.
That was a big first step.
And yeah, we basically just worked together over the weekend.
I had one technical person in my team.
We built a mini prototype for my idea.
We prepared a presentation, and then we managed to pitch that to the panel of judges on the final day, which was a Sunday.
Ultimately, actually, we were lucky enough to come second, amongst all the teams.
There were 11 teams presenting.
So it was, yeah, a really good opportunity to get explore this space of innovation and technology and pharmacy.
There was definitely a situation where I had no idea how it would turn out, but I thought, why not?
Just go for it, see what happens.
And I was really pleased with, yeah, the fact that we were able to pull a team together and actually convince people that it was a good idea and, yeah, meet a lot of cool people along the way.
So that was a really awesome experience.
Yeah, that sounds awesome.
What was your idea, by the way?
What did you work on?
Yeah, so basically, I pitched a app that would allow patients to take photos of their prescriptions to be able to submit to a network of pharmacies.
Oh, wow.
Yes, okay.
This is where it all started.
I love it.
So that's also very familiar with a certain functionality in the MedAdvisor app.
So yeah, basically it's just something that I had talked about as an idea and the way things work.
I guess if you operate and work in a space for that long, you end up working on actual software and apps in pharmacy for pharmacies.
So , yeah, definitely a, a really incredible experience. And, you know, leaning into technology and innovation, the unknown, not sure how it's going to turn out, but just giving it a shot, really, and then meeting some really cool people in the industry as well, you know, and then ultimately that just helped me.
Yeah, I guess one of those more stepping stones towards a career and technology and product and innovation and pharmacy.
Yeah, that's awesome.
I love that.
And if a lot of people listening probably haven't, maybe been part of a startup kind of community like fish burners or participated in a hackathon before, they might not have even heard of it.
But it's a really great space. If you are interested in just exploring what's out there and being a part of these startup communities, I actually have been to fish burners myself, done a couple of programs through them.
And I know there's a lot in Melbourne as well. And even in other states as well.
I know the government's also investing a lot of money in supporting entrepreneurship and startups.
But you never know who you're going to meet.
You never know what you might, what ID you might come up with.
And like that idea that you had Kenneth, and now years later, this is now there's a basic functionality of MedAdvisor, which is really cool.
And I participated in a pitch competition as well.
It's one of my businesses and it's extremely difficult for those of you that have never done it to be able to clearly articulate what the problem is, what you, what the solution is, and basically try and convince people in the audience who have zero understanding of your industry in a lot of these pictures.
I don't know how long yours went for, but some of them are less than two minutes, sometimes even less than a minute.
And it's very daunting.
And it's funny when you're put in a position where you're not necessarily an expert where, yeah, as a pharmacists, we're very comfortable, we're the expert in medicines and what we're doing in our pharmacies, but then to be put in a space where, yeah, you've never really done public speaking or something before in that space.
It can be really scary, but I think it really does help you to enhance those communication skills and be able to articulate things really clearly and quite quickly in short periods of time, which I think is very important, not just in your role, Kenneth in products, but then also just as a pharmacist in general, right?
Like we have to be able to communicate complex information to customers or patients in such a short period of time.
And so if, yeah, you're ever able to participate in something like this, if you're listening or even just go and attend, a lot of these events are free to go and watch.
And yeah, who knows, maybe you might find a future business partner there or a future idea that you can convince your company to take on.
So, can, I'd love to chat to you now about what advice you would give to pharmacists that are a little bit curious as to what else is out there.
Perhaps they've been working as a community pharmacist for a number of years or they've worked in hospital or they've been, yeah, they maybe feel like they've reached reached the top of their career journey and they want to know what else is out there.
From your experience, yeah, what advice would you give to those pharmacists?
Yep.
First thing I would definitely say is be curious.
Be curious about anything that you might not normally think of attending.
So, for example, startup communities in in your area, in your city, events, you know, speaking events, networking events, if those things are not things that you are normally think or consider of attending.
Just be curious about it.
Put yourself in uncomfortable positions, lean into situations that, you know, I don't know your comfort zone, and just be curious because ultimately, you know, you just don't know what's going to come about from those, I guess, interactions and events and nights.
You might learn something new that might suddenly spark a little bit of inspiration on, you know, a few days later and or you just might meet some, yeah, you might meet some potential business partners.
People also might have really good ideas.
You just might, yeah, make a few friends or you might just, you know, walk away and realise, okay, well, maybe that's not for me, which is still valuable as well, because, you know, it's all part of just understanding what things will be interesting to you.
And ultimately, you can only really do that by trying new things.
You learn more about yourself and you learn more about the world.
So that's definitely a big one, big curious and seek out new things because you just don't know where that's going to lead you.
And that is, you know, I think we're so lucky in Australia.
There's just so much going on, whether it's in pharmacy or adjacent to pharmacy or in healthcare or anything.
There's just so many opportunities to go out there, meet people, learn new things.
That's a key one.
And the second one is just always be learning as well, which is kind of closely related to being curious.
If you're slightly interested in technology, just learn about, you know, what is software development, what's involved, what's an app, what makes up an app, how do you build an app?
How do apps work?
You know, so, or try yourself, try to build an app yourself.
There's just so, there's just so much knowledge out there.
There's all the knowledge of the world out there at your fingertips and all it takes is for you to just, just, you know, jump in and start learning.
There's lots of really incredible books out there.
There's always incredible podcasts, which are amazing as well.
You know, you can have the wisdom of a person's entire career in a book.
There's just so many incredible things you can learn .
And it's just takes a, yeah, it takes takes a little bit of just jumping in and trying new things and learning new things.
Oh, absolutely.
Do you actually have any books or podcasts that you would recommend to pharmacists that are interested maybe in innovation or being curious?
Anything that you've listened to or read yourself, that has been a game changer for you?
Yeah, classic podcasts.
I don't quite listen to it as much these days, but Tim Ferris podcast is definitely one I would probably call one of the original podcasts and startups in innovation.
That's always, that's been around for a very long, very long time.
There's been a lot of incredible conversations on his platform.
It's always great to hear him just talk to, you know, for example, like the founder of Airbnb and how they started in their bedroom and came about with their ideas and then led to building Airbnb.
And that's an incredible thing to learn about and just hear firsthand from the founders of those companies like that.
So that's, that was great.
That's good great podcast I'd listened to.
And I guess in terms of books, at the moment, I'm reading Diary of a CEO, and that podcast is also quite interesting.
He.
It's quite interesting guests on that podcast, less on innovation and more on like a broader range of topics.
But that podcast is also something that's an interesting one.
Less on again, on innovation and technology, but a broader range of topics.
But his book itself in particular, I actually find, yeah, that's a really good one to have lying around as a reference and just picking up and, yeah, just learning some from his life experiences.
It's always, it's always great.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yep, that not heard of the Tim Farious podcast, so I'll definitely add that to my listen list.
Diary of a CEO.
I have listened to the podcast and that book is on my list to read.
I've got a number of books, actually, that are kind of half read bits and pieces here and there.
But again, yeah, those type of books are good just to, even like certain chapters or something like that, you can get some inspiration from a podcasts that I have been obsessed with lately is one called Acquired.
I don't know if you've heard of that, Kenneth.
It's They're really long podcasts.
They go for like three or four hours, but they talk about the history of all of the big companies.
So they are like Facebook, Starbucks, Costco, and not just from a business perspective, but also like who is a person behind it?
And I really love that because it like understanding all of the things that kind of led them to get to where they were.
And sometimes, and I think you kind of touched on it, Kenneth in our chat, is when you experience certain things, you don't really understand sometimes at that time, how pivot all that moment can be for you.
I'm So lucky if I take your farmer hack experience at that time, I was in 2017.
You just thought it was just a great experience.
But then it wasn't until years later that like it kind of, that learnings from that you were able to implement.
And so you, yeah, those, they're not a sliding door moment, but it's something that it kind of sits in your back pocket and then you can bring them out later.
So, yeah, I really quite enjoy the quiet podcast because you can see those kind of pivotal moments in their careers and you think, oh, wow, sometimes some of the smallest things can, yeah, impact you later.
And one of my favourite ones is actually Steve Jobs.
He took a calligraphy class when he was at uni and it seems so random, right?
But then that actually led him to implement all the different fonts and beautiful fonts and making the experience of the Mac really beautiful for that that easy experience.
So, like, if you'd never done that random class, and I'm sure, I don't know what his parents said, but I'm sure like, some of our parents were been like, oh, you're doing what a calligraphy class.
Like, how is that going to support you in your life?
And now look at where that, you know, one small, yeah, class that he took has had a mousy impact, not just on Apple, but then on, yeah, UXUI in all of product, which is really cool.
Now, can I think say anything that we haven't touched on that you would like to share from your career or maybe something that you've learned that you'd like to touch on before we finish the podcast?
Yeah, yeah, okay.
I think it's really important to learn how to work well and collaboratively with people in all the environments that you work in.
Because ultimately, we all work in teams and we all have we all have our own challenges.
We all have our own motivations, we all have our own understanding of the world.
We all have our own ways of working and everything.
So being able to understand how to work in teams, how to work with people, and how to, I guess, inspire the best out of them and how to basically, you know, bring everyone along on the journey.
And that can be through basically, yeah, being able to communicate the of why you want to do something or why something needs to be done and convincing them and ultimately leading to outcomes that will benefit everyone.
I was actually having a colleague, a conversation with a former colleague the other day and she was talking about how she had been working with other product managers in her new role.
And then she probably saw something in the way those product managers work with the rest of the team.
And she thought, and she literally told me, she was like, oh, I thought about Ken the other day because of how he interacts with his colleagues.
And I was, and then she told me about it when we caught up and I was like, oh, wow, I kind of had influ, I guess, inspired her in terms of how I work with the team and how she respected that versus what she saw in a new company and she probably disagreed with the ways of working for the those other product managers.
So, I guess basically just understanding, yeah, the best ways of working with people on your team, which can differ depending on who you're working with, and just, yeah, inspiring and, you know, inspiring, motivating.
Maybe it's convincing.
Maybe it's telling.
Sometimes you might need to do that, but, you know, you don't always want to be, you know, run around playing the boss card kind of thing.
Yes, that's yes.
So, yeah, that's also really important because again, again, at the end of the day, we're all working a team and it's our job to make sure everyone's working towards that, that shared, you know, shared vision and shared goals and making sure everyone's, you know, engaged and, and really motivated.
And, yeah, basically brought along the journey because, you know, at the end of the day, it's it's a long journey to get to where you need to get to and, you know, software development it's not easy. Pharmacy is not easy.
Just, yeah, uh, that's, that's that's my, yeah, I guess that's my takeaway, just to figure out how, what works best with you in terms of how you work with your colleagues and that's really important to, you know, your own career and obviously the contribution to the company. And ultimately all the outcomes that come out from that.
Oh, absolutely.
That's so, so true.
And what you just described there with the former colleague is that you really don't understand sometimes the impact you can have on people.
And at the time, you might not have set out to have that type of influence.
But I think you haven't described this in the way I'm about to, but I think your approach to leadership is potentially like seeking to understand the person and see things from their point of view, but and then also communicating yet that why and that vision, I think they definitely some key themes that I've seen come out of this conversation.
Final Thoughts
Kenneth Cheng’s journey is a reminder that pharmacists are uniquely positioned to drive meaningful change - not just in patient care, but in the systems that support it. From humble beginnings to national health initiatives, his story challenges us to stay curious, keep learning, and step outside our comfort zones.
So, pharmacist to pharmacist… where could your next bold step take you?
