Jenny Christopherson grew up on a farm in rural Australia before moving to the UK and setting up Portland Vets.
In this episode Katie and Jenny discuss the importance of purpose, values, and personal relationships in business and how important it is for storytelling for businesses.
Jenny also shares some stories of unusual animal cases she’s been part of – including some interesting methods for operating on tortoises, giraffes and fish.
Key Takeaways
- Be passionate about your purpose and values in your business.
- Build relationships and treat clients with care and respect.
- Embrace corporate social responsibility and tell people what you are doing – it makes for fabulous story telling
- Share your experiences.
Guest Information
JENNY CHRISTOPHERSON
Founder and Veterinarian, Portland Vets.
Website: https://portlandvets.co.uk/
Your host:
KATIE FLAMMAN (she/her) – Voiceover Artist, Presenter, Announcer, Podcaster, Founder of Storyteller Media.
Website: www.katieflamman.co.uk
Podcast: https://katieflamman.co.uk/the-storytelling-for-business-podcast/
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Transcript
“Hello, and welcome to Storytelling For Business, the podcast that helps you connect with your customers by telling stories they want to hear. I’m Katie Flamman. I’m a voiceover artist specializing in corporate storytelling.
That means I help businesses to sound as good as they look, narrating companies, explainer videos, brand films, and training modules, and voicing their adverts, award shows, and answer phone messages. I’ve worked with clients like Google, Deloitte, and the NHS, helping them all tell their stories. But storytelling isn’t just for the giants.
As we found out in the last episode, all businesses, no matter what their size, can benefit from this type of marketing. And today’s guest has some amazing stories to share. Little warning for any pets in the room with you, we’re off to the VET.
This story starts in Australia, where Jenny Christopherson was born, grew up and became a you-know-what. And after working on Aussie farms for a while, she fancied something different and headed to the UK with nothing but a backpack and her veterinary skills. Over the next nine years, Jenny worked in various vets practices in the UK and gained lots of experience and a husband called George.
In 2004, Jenny and George set up Portland Vets. She looked after the animals with the help of just one nurse and he took care of the business. But that was just the beginning.
Jenny, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you for having me.
It’s brilliant to have you. So let’s start at the beginning. What made you want to be a vet?
I think growing up in rural Australia, you as a child, you really only familiar with a few careers. Maybe I did some time thinking I might be a teacher or generally looking at anything to do with being a farmer. But I grew up on a big farm.
We had merino sheep and beef cattle and really animals was all I knew and I just wanted to be a vet.
So was there a particular vet that used to come to your farm that was kind of inspiring to you?
I think we had several farm vets and actually it was a practice I ended up working in when I graduated. And even right through my schooling, I used to go and do work experience with that particular practice. We were in such a rural area that there really was only one practice that covered probably 200 kilometers in every direction from that location.
So it was just really all I knew and I absolutely loved it. I think I decided when I was about probably five or six, that’s what I wanted to do. And fairly horrific story of me standing in the middle of a freshly butchered animal that we were to eat within my pink wellies, wrapping its intestines around my throat pretending it was a necklace.
I think by that point they probably decided that I had the stomach to be able to do it.
Either a vet or a butcher, right?
One or the other. But it was a way of life. You live on a farm, you grow what you eat.
To drive into town for us to do the shopping was an hour, an hour and a half’s drive. So, you only went every couple of weeks.
And do you think that that rural background is what made you decide, okay, I need to see a bit of the world here? I mean, I said you were at uni in Sydney, but had you travelled much?
I haven’t traveled much at all, but I did go to school. My secondary education was in Sydney. I qualified for something in Australia called a rural child allowance, which meant that my family could help send me to a boarding school because sitting for two and a half, three hours on a bus to and from school every day, which would have been my high school commute, wasn’t really practical.
So the government in Australia at that time helped educate rural children. It was called an isolated children’s scholarship.
And why did you pick the UK?
I’m actually a dual citizen. My dad was born here during the Second World War, so I was very lucky to have a UK passport and some distant family here. So I guess it was a safe option.
And vets in the UK at the time, and I hope still, were very well recognized professionally and it was a good place to come and expand my horizons.
I think what’s so inspiring about your business and full disclosure, my cats are looked after by Portland Vets. And I happened to meet Jenny at a birthday lunch for a mutual friend of ours. And we had the most amazing chat.
And I’ve been badgering her to come on the podcast ever since. So yeah, I’m very invested in your business from a personal point of view. But I think that’s what I really love about bringing my animals to your vet’s practice.
Because you said UK vets are very well respected, but it’s not all a level playing field, is it? Tell us a bit about why your practice is different from a lot of others.
I think most vets, I’m going to be generalized here, go into our profession with a genuine desire to do well, to care, to do the best job they possibly can. You know, they’re all A type personalities that with big caring hearts. But, you know, ultimately, we’re often slaves to business now, and particularly as the profession in this country is changing to be a much more corporate, outward focused business.
You know, we all have to survive. We all have to put food on the table as well. But I think somewhere along the way, there’s been a massive paradigm shift in the way our profession runs.
And so the bits that I love about being a vet, the personal relationships, the, yes, it isn’t always easy. You can go from 15 minute gap between the cutest, fluffiest kitten you’ve ever seen and then putting someone’s best friend down the next 15, 20 minutes later. But that’s actually ironically the bit that I enjoy.
And when I set out to be in practice, it’s about the relationships and it’s about people as much as it is about their pets. It’s about being a very extended part of their family, but making sure that we’re treating both the animals and the people with the respect that we would want in those happy times and those sad times.
And that’s really stood out to me. I mean, everything from when your animal has an operation, you send a little get well card that’s been drawn by a little child. And yeah, I think that as a customer of your business, you really get that sense and your vets will phone up and check up on our animals.
You can request to see the same vets if you want to. And yeah, I think that’s something that you do really well. So you’ve got more than one vets practice now, haven’t you?
We started off, as you said, just with myself and a very brave nurse that took the plunge to join an Aussie bird in a bit of an adventure. And we now have three small animal practices spread across actually three counties. And we have a equine practice and a cattle vet practice as well.
Although I don’t have so much to do with those. My husband has more to do with running those. It was very, very fortunate to marry a man who has amazing business sense.
I can look after the making sure the practice is what we want it to be. And he can concentrate on making sure that we can grow it and make it profitable for everybody that works in it.
So how many people are you employing now?
We have just over 30 vets and around about another 40 or 50 nurses, receptionist managers. So it’s certainly changed in 20 years. Although I’d like to hope that the core values that we set out to push and become are still what we do on a day to day basis.
And that’s really a sign of a really strong business brand, isn’t it? As you grow, you want, as you say, those core values to still be there as you scale the business and as more and more people come in. So is there anything that you do when people join to kind of, I mean, obviously you get to know people at an interview process, but is there anything you do to sort of indoctrinate them is completely the wrong word?
Make them feel part of the family.
This is why you’re the best and I’m not.
I think I’d rather do my job than yours. It’s far less scary than doing this. No, I think it’s about the right people.
It’s about finding people that are, yes, very skilled at what they do, but they also have the same desires and the same focus that you do to make sure that, you know, that care is the first thing that they want to do for, you know, for the patients, for their owners and for each other. You know, it’s a team at the end of the day and we do very heavily rely on each other for clinical support, for emotional support sometimes. And, you know, it is about building that.
And I think that almost is where it starts. You know, you can’t care for other people’s pets or other people very well if you’re not looking after each other. And, you know, I’m really proud that since 2018 we’ve taken on seven graduates and all seven of them are still working within the practice, which is remarkable given that, you know, most of us have a job for a few years and then find greener grass and they’d stay because, you know, they’re happy and we’re looking after them.
And that means they can do their jobs better.
Definitely. And I read in your newsletter about a new initiative you’ve got to do some volunteering work abroad. Can you tell me a bit about that?
We’ve always had charities that we support. Every year we vote for a charity that as a group we’re going to support. We used to alternate between a human one and an animal one and sometimes we’d mix the two together and we always support locally things like, you know, the Lions Clubs, you know, dog shows and all the rest of it.
But a few years ago we decided that we’d look a little bit further afield and at the same time it’s about looking after your staff as well and we each now are sending two of our employers, usually a vet and a nurse, to Africa to work with a game vet and expand their horizons working with rhinos. They did some helicopter darting and then sadly they were actually doing things like removing rhino horns to stop poaching, but also, you know, working just with big cats, you know, they get in scrapes and fights and get abscesses and things, just like our domestic muggies do, just on a slightly different scale. And so they’re getting the experience of going out there for a couple of weeks, you know, volunteering, doing some good and coming back with some great stories and, you know, just generally expanding their horizons.
So, yeah, so it’s a nice thing to be doing for the big furry ones as well as the small furry ones, although I’m glad we don’t see too many rhinos in East Grinstead.
I know you’ve had some experience beyond the domestic and the farm animals, haven’t you? I remember from our lunch you telling me some amazing stories. Okay, here come my…
Yeah, the wine definitely got the mouth talking.
Here come my fangirl questions about them. I want to do what you do, Jenny. So what’s the biggest animal you have ever had to look after or do an operation on?
The biggest one is probably a giraffe. Actually, ironically, here in the UK, I worked in a practice for a while that did the vet work for a zoo down in Winchester and with an ophthalmologist who was at the top of his field and he needed some help one day to go out and examine a giraffe. So he had a sore eye, which is quite a long way up.
So cherry picker involved. And yes, because sedating giraffes isn’t very clever. They’ve got very unique blood pressure, having such wrong necks and having to pump their blood all the way up to their brain all the way up there.
So, yes, you try and do everything you can with them still standing up.
So how did you stop it from running away?
It was in a enclosed space. The zookeepers are amazing. We cut swan in and take the glory.
Actually, they do all the hard work, to be fair, let’s be honest. And yes, so that was a bit of a different day at the office.
So tell me about the giraffe.
So what did you have to do? The giraffe’s eye?
It just had an ulceration on its eye. It had obviously run into a branch or done something silly. So it just required a little bit of a minor procedure to try and de-bride its eye as best you could with a moving head and the top of a cherry picker.
It’s probably more of a comedy moment than a great story.
The images in my mind are pretty intense. You also told me you’d done an operation underwater.
That was… You’re picking some good ones. Obviously fish can’t breathe air.
If you need to do something with a fish, you usually do it in a bucket. This was back in Australia. We had a valuable, I think it was a koi carp or something similar to that.
It had had a fight with another koi carp that had bitten off its lip. So you put the anaesthetic in the water and then sew the lip back on whilst it’s underwater. So it’s a bit different.
But again, I haven’t done too many of those, but it’s a good story.
Water anaesthetic, and then you just put the fish back into a bucket of normal water and it…
Yes, it wakes up. Well, hopefully that’s the plan.
Yes, yeah, yeah. Okay, one more question. I think this is the most mad.
You may remember telling me that you had done an operation to saw open a tortoise, and then you stuck it back together with superglue. Was that wild or was that real? Because that sounds completely made up, Jenny.
No, no, that does sound made up, doesn’t it? I think possibly reptile medicine or surgery has probably progressed a little bit for Parcys, but it was probably about 10, 15 years ago that I was working in a practice with a reptile specialist, and we used to get tortoise’s legs. We used to get egg-bound tortoises, and if you couldn’t get them to deal with their eggs, you would have to literally take a saw to the bottom of the tortoise, cut a flap or a sunroof, except it’s on the bottom, out, and then remove the eggs there.
And then, yes, the only way to repair the shell, and actually quite a lot of shell repairs done with, what at the time was super glue, we probably now use surgical glue, but back in the day, yep, a bit of araldite did the job quite nicely.
Unbelievable. What do you love about your job?
Lots of people ask that question. I think it’s a couple of things. I love the variety.
I love the relationships that you build with colleagues, with your clients. I do love the animals, don’t get me wrong, they are a massive part of it. But I think at the end of the day, a lot of it is about people, and it’s about just the variety that you can see.
I mean, you’ve picked three very random dinner party stories, but just even the everyday, the challenge of something that might be a mystery illness that you’ve got to get to the bottom of, just to making sure that someone’s cat is as healthy as they possibly can be, or someone’s dog’s hurt or poor, they’re really worried about it. It’s fairly normal stuff, but actually it’s variety and it’s people and it’s for them a very important part of their lives and a very important part of their day. So it’s really important that we understand that and that it’s not just, here’s another vaccination.
It’s not, it’s a, here’s another pet that we have the opportunity to make sure is as healthy as they can be. Let’s make sure we do it properly.
And do you find that a lot of your clients stay with you? Do you see animals throughout their whole lives?
Yeah, and that’s hugely rewarding. I mean, it is hugely rewarding. And then to be, even when you’re as old and great as I am, you’ve seen generations of animals.
And, you know, it is part of, like I said, being a very distant, extended part of people’s family. And that’s a real privilege that I think we never ever want to take for granted that actually to be there. I mean, I’ve had ones where I’ve been there at their birth and been there at the end, and that’s just really bizarre.
Even had a few named after me over the years that have been delivered by sections or, you know, been born in the surgery or whatever.
What rules have been named after you?
Oh, silly. I’m sure every vet gets it. Dogs, cats mainly, given what I do.
But yeah, a cow once, but that was a very long time. I was clearly in a bad mood that day.
That’s fantastic.
Yeah, Jenny the cow.
Something you touched on before we came on air was about your kind of mission to turn some of your practices or maybe all of them into kind of employee owned trusts, like a sort of John Lewis styley partnership. Can you just explain a little bit more about that?
Well, I’m going to leave the business side of that. I leave to my husband because he’s far more clever than I am. Key to any success is making sure you surround yourself with people that are a lot more clever than you are.
But basically, we obviously aren’t going to be alive forever. We want to make sure that our practices continue with what we feel. We’ve worked really hard to become, hopefully, a practice that people feel comfortable coming to, that it’s not just a business.
It’s almost a gesture. I love it when people bring their kids into the surgery, and it’s a family outing. The kids can have a listen to the dog’s chest, and I can talk them through some bits and pieces about their pet and listen to their stories.
That’s what we want to be. I think to keep that and make it not about targets and not necessarily about this is a cat bite abscess, therefore you must treat it with this antibiotic for this long, and this is the way you must do it according to this flow chart. We want to make sure that we keep that.
Rather than look at always selling to the highest bidder, there’s a lot of offers. We get offers every week for the practice from corporate buyers, but we have decided to go down the route of easing out and basically selling the business to the employees over time. The core employees will have the option to become part of the Employee Ownership Trust and have a say in how the business is run going forward as we head off into the sunset.
It’s brilliant. It’s a really…
Not next week.
It’s a lovely way to kind of hand over your legacy or your dream into the hands of the people who you trust already.
And who have made it what it is. It’s not me. It’s not my husband.
It’s all those people that… The nurse that I started with is still working with us. We are planning to open another surgery in a couple of years’ time.
And she is going to be the partner in that surgery and she started with me 20 years ago. And what an absolute just reward for an amazing person who’s been with us every step of the way.
That’s fantastic. I was just going to say you’re coming up officially for your 20 year anniversary, aren’t you? Any plans for a party?
Oh, yes. We’ve been having a few practice ones because our Hawley branch turned five the other day and our Edenbridge branch is turning 10 and opening a cat specific clinic this month. So we’re having a few sort of rehearsal practice parties and then we’re having a few one over 20.
No, you can’t. They work very, very hard or my team and they deserve every bit of party and success they get.
That’s lovely. And my last question is really, I think we’ve kind of touched on it, but do you know what your story holds for maybe the next five years? You said you’re going to kind of ease out.
Can you imagine your life without doing what you do?
I think personally, I have eased back quite a lot in the last five years anyway. I haven’t been and it was very hard not being the face of the practice for having been the face of the practice. But I think it’s now has an identity of its own rather than being about the initial people that started it.
And that’s an amazing thing to be able to hopefully say. So, yes, I mean, the next five years, as I said, the equine practice is actually heading towards the ownership of the employee ownership trust as we speak. And over the next five to ten years, we hope the small animal surgeries will follow suit and maybe a bit more traveling, a bit more being being semi-retired.
I don’t think my husband will be able to walk away quite so easily. And I will, you know, I already miss the clients and seeing people every day. But it is part of life, isn’t it?
You’ve just got to learn when is the right time to bow out. You know, already, there’s a far, far more clever people working for me than those that own it. So it’s the right way forward.
Maybe some amazing holidays as well. You’ve earned it, I think.
Definitely.
Well, Jenny Christopherson, thank you so much for talking to me. It’s been an absolute pleasure.
It’s been lovely Katie. Thank you for having me.
Wasn’t that fascinating? If you’re interested in finding out more about Jenny’s practice, Portland Vets, the website is in the show notes. So what did we learn today?
Here are my key takeaways.
1. Be passionate about your purpose, your values and know what’s really important in your business.
Jenny’s vets practice is super successful because every member of staff is invested in those values and they shine through in every customer interaction.
2. Jenny said that for her, the most important thing is building relationships and treating her clients, both the animals and their owners, with care and respect.
I think that should be the case for any and every business. You can’t go wrong if you look after your customers as if they’re an extended member of your family.
3.Surround yourself with people who can support you. Even if you work by yourself or as a freelancer, everyone needs a support network. Jenny’s vet practice is a family business, literally, but that family feeling extends to everyone who works there.
She said it’s all about the team. They rely on each other for clinical support and emotional support sometimes, too. She said you can’t care for other people’s pets or other people very well if you’re not looking after each other, and that is such an important takeaway.
4. Are you embracing corporate social responsibility? Remember Jenny’s team who went to South Africa as vet volunteers?
Everyone’s a winner there. The staff members had an amazing experience. The work they did was needed, valued and welcomed, and the business was able to share the stories afterwards in its newsletter.
Could you do something similar?
5. Make sure you’ve got the right tools for the job before you start.
To operate on a fish, put the anaesthetic in the water and get some goggles. For a giraffe, you’ll need a cherry picker, and for a tortoise, don’t forget your saw and your super glue. If you need more details on implementing Takeaway Number 5 or anything else from the interview, do reach out to Jenny and her team at Portland Vets.
Even if it’s just to say hello, they’d love to hear from you. Tell them I sent you. And of course, if you’re a pet owner in South East England, I highly recommend the practice.
Full disclosure, Monkey the Studio Cat hates going there, but she’s just a drama queen.
OK, nearly time to go. In our next episode, practical tips for content creation and storytelling success.
There has never been a better time to be a small business owner. We have got tons of tools at our disposal that are free. People, when they talk to me about video, say, I can’t do video, I can’t talk on video, I can’t do that.
There is more to getting your brand feeling out there than just you talking on video.
That’s corporate filmmaker and founder of the creatives private members group, Melanie Perry. Episode 13, Creativity, Content and Connections is all yours. You can listen now if you want.
It’s lined up and ready to go. OK, I’m off to feed the cat. She’s called Monkey and I’m Katie Flamman.
And this is Storytelling For Business. Till next time, goodbye.”
From Storytelling For Business: Family: Animal Magic, 29 Feb 2024
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