They Offered Me Twenty Million! And I Sent Them Packing…

I met the doctor on the recommendation of one of my clients.
“Petr, please, could you take care of Markéta? She has big problems with her pharmacy…”

In 1994, she opened a large pharmacy at a polyclinic in the center of Prague. Everything was fine, business was doing well. The pharmacy prospered.

After 2002, she received an offer from a larger pharmacy chain to sell the pharmacy and an out-of-town dispensary. The first offer was 20 million CZK (≈ 800,000 EUR). “I sent them packing, silly me,” she says.

In 2008, someone arranged for the doctor to receive a lease termination. She had three months to vacate the pharmacy. It was not possible to secure alternative premises or negotiate with the building owner.

Severance payments for 10 employees, write-offs of medicines, and converting the out-of-town dispensary into a pharmacy cost nearly 2.8 million CZK (≈ 112,000 EUR). Of this, 2 million CZK (≈ 80,000 EUR) were loans.

She did not give up. She relocated and started again. Outside Prague. With three employees. But there it was not so easy, and debts could not be repaid as quickly as she had originally planned. Gradually, she laid off employees until she was left running the pharmacy alone…

In 2016, we met for the first time.

It was necessary to negotiate new loan terms with the bank. The main stumbling block was the smaller turnover of the pharmacy, which the bank considered insufficient. We managed to negotiate, and she did not have to repay the loan immediately.

Her husband breathed a sigh of relief, because the loan was secured by a promissory note, and there was a risk they would have had to sell their house if the bank had insisted on immediate repayment.

We listed all the liabilities she had at that time. The total was 1.6 million CZK (≈ 64,000 EUR).

She was repaying about 110,000 CZK (≈ 4,400 EUR) per month. It looked good—everything would be repaid in a year and a half.

It wasn’t.

The situation of independent pharmacies was worsening, and the pharmacy was not earning as much as before. Some medicines were also unavailable, as they were mainly supplied to the big chain pharmacies, which meant fewer customers for my client.

At our next meeting, the doctor had debts to the pharmaceutical wholesaler, to an acquaintance, and to her accountant. On one side she was repaying, but on the other, new debts were arising. Unfortunately, even her long-time accountant did not warn her of the situation in time.

She tried to sell the pharmacy, but since she was indebted to the pharmaceutical wholesaler, it was not possible. In September 2018, the wholesaler eventually took over the pharmacy for the value of the current receivable—800,000 CZK (≈ 32,000 EUR).

After more than twenty years, she became an employee again.

At that time, her debts had grown to 1,780,000 CZK (≈ 71,200 EUR).

From an income of 32,000 CZK (≈ 1,280 EUR), she was repaying 25,000 CZK (≈ 1,000 EUR) monthly.

In October 2020, she retired but continued to work. She began repaying 40,000 CZK (≈ 1,600 EUR) per month.

In February 2021, she paid off the loan tied to the pharmacy’s turnover with a loan from Zonky. Just in time—the bank was threatening to call in the loan.

We listed all the remaining debts, I prepared a new analysis of the family’s income and expenses, including life and property insurance. Alongside repayments, we also prepared for retirement, started building larger reserves, and began saving “for retirement.”

Since 2022, she has been working as a responsible pharmacist for all the wholesaler’s pharmacies, and her income has been rising. On average, she repays 70,000 CZK (≈ 2,800 EUR) monthly!

She is unbelievably disciplined! All this time she has also been teaching at a school, and on weekends filling in at another pharmacy.

Finally, the debts are shrinking!

By the end of 2023, she will still be working. The remainder of the loan she will manage to repay only from her pension.

It took almost seven years, but she made it!

90% of my job is to support clients on their journey toward their goals. Sometimes that just means meeting a few times a year over coffee and a slice of cake.

The doctor has since recommended me to more of her acquaintances. One of them has just had to close her pharmacy…

Note: All amounts originally stated in CZK have been converted into EUR using a fixed exchange rate of 25 CZK = 1 EUR.