Hello everyone, Anthony Chadwick from the webinar Vet, really, so pleased on our latest episode of our podcast to have the great Tom Jenkins on. You'll be very, pleased to know that this is a podcast rather than a, a video because Tom is, is sporting locks that are unlike that on his LinkedIn profile. I think it's a real.
Some real coronavirus curls going on there, Tom. I mean, this closing of, hairdressers is having a bad effect on all of us, isn't it? 100% and with 3 under 5 in my London flat, I've decided shaving is entirely optional.
So, I've got to say, I've never been introduced as the great before and and that was, that was, that was very pleasing. I, I might insist on it from now on. Well, I think absolutely, you know, when we, when I hear what you've been up to in your relatively short veterinary career, I, I took a long time to .
To get moving into the digital space, but, but you've moved very quickly on, and I suppose that's part of your background of before you went off to vet school instead of doing paper rounds, you used to do websites, didn't you? Yeah, well, I, I actually had, I think, about 5 paper rounds at one point, paying about 1 quid a day, and I quickly found out that you could design, pretty horrendous websites for people for more than 1 pound a day. They still pay you more than that, so yes, swapped, swap the paper round for, for a bit of web development.
And I'm very much taken a, a slightly less traditional route after leaving vet school in in 2012, going over to China, that must have been. A huge learning experience and at at a relatively young age to be a CEO of a group of practicers over there. Tell us a little bit about that journey.
Yeah, I think the sort of non-traditional route partly was just a series of, of errors that led me there and I'll I'll explain why. I, I'd always wanted to be a vet, but I didn't know any vets, and I had no idea what the path would be to get there, so took me a bit longer to sort of get to vet school than I would have hoped, you know, a couple of unplanned gap years. Ended up with sort of 7 A Levels, took the wrong subjects initially, nearly applied to an all girls college at Cambridge because it's the only prospectus, prospectus I could get my hands on, and I thought it looked, it looked like a fairly attractive option.
So, yeah, there's a bumpy path, but along the way, you get to do all these other things and it exposes you to other opportunities and so. Doing the web development, getting some sort of project management experience, commercial experience, it became obvious that there was an opportunity to combine that experience with a passion for veterinary medicine. And so in my final year, I actually read a book called The Growth Map by Jim O'Neill, where he comes up with the BRIC concept with Brazil, Russia, India and China being growth economies, and I thought, well.
Where you've got an emerging middle class, you're going to have an emerging population of pet owners who are going to need veterinary career, so maybe I can find a, a platform to grow, and help be part of that growth journey. I'd also done some work in, er, South Africa, making a. Programme called Safari Vet School, where we'd worked with rhinos, we set up an advocacy group called Team Rhino.
And I had this idea that I could work on the demand side of the equation with a lot of anti-poaching efforts being on the supply side. I could be in China and I could help. With, you know, reductions in the, the consumption of rhino horn, incredibly naive, as if people are gonna be out on the streets drinking rhino horn and I could run around saying no, don't do that.
Had almost zero impact there, but certainly the journey on the companion animal side was was was really good fun. And of course they're such noble creatures. I, when I was a student went over to Zimbabwe and actually one of my enduring memories as a vet or a vet student was to bottle feed a baby orphaned rhino, which was a huge thrill.
So yeah, great great work that you've you've done there and I think it, you know, you, you hit the nail on the head. If you don't try things, you know, you don't get anywhere and actually we probably learn more from our failure than we do from our success, don't we? Definitely, I think giving yourself the permission to fail is something we don't do enough in veterinary.
I think it's a self selecting population of highly achievement orientated people, and that includes me and a certain level of. Perfectionism and holding yourself to a to an absurdly high standard, and I think that can stop us trying new things and, and, and yeah, risking failure, but if, if, if you fail, you just sort of dust yourself off and you, you, you either try again or try something else. I, I did some lectures a few years ago at a couple of the vet schools and part of my, I was in dermatology, but I started it off by, you know, saying to them some of the things I'd done in my early career because I think there is a fear amongst vet students that they'll be struck off within a year or two of qualifying and actually it's.
It's highly unlikely that that will happen. There's a, there's a Churchill quote that I like, it's success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. And of course he, he set himself up as a relatively old.
Man to be hugely successful at a time that we really needed somebody to be hugely successful, didn't he? Oh, definitely, and, and a Nobel Prize for literature to to to cap things off and a fairly accomplished painter, so. And and a good bricklayer as well, Tom.
Is that right? Yeah, he, he used to do his own bricky work, so a a very talented man. Obviously spending time in China gives you all of that cultural benefits as well of learning how other people think and work, but then thrown back in as CEO of Village Vets with Brendan, how, how was that journey?
It, yeah, it, it was, it was, it was a lot of fun. It was, it was a real opportunity to show that what we had done out in China, the systems that we'd put in place to augment the veterinary teams, patient advocacy efforts, the way we'd built a culture, overlaying the, the local culture and the culture of the er people, the whole team from 20 different countries. And so then bringing that back to the UK, bringing it to a more established business.
What I loved about Village Vett is Brendan and his team grew that business over 30 years. So they had real operational bandwidth. If they wanted to implement a new strategic initiative, they could because they knew the business.
They knew the teams, they knew how to get stuff done and so it really was about operational excellence. How can we best, most effectively run these veterinary clinics, and I enjoyed that for sure. I've been reading Vern Harnish's book, which is all about scale up and he said, you know that actually.
Companies that are 25 years old, that's when often they see their massive growth, so companies like Apple, Starbucks, actually, if you look at them when they're 25 years old, they're still relatively small companies and the massive growth has come afterwards, and of course, Brendan and Village Vets were always seen as very innovative, so, you know, a great place to, to work in, and then of course, You, you next pop up on my radar doing the excellent vet forum, which for those who don't know listening, it was an opportunity for pharmaceutical firms, service companies to actually talk to, to vets, you know, on a more informal, almost a speed dating type format, which I think, having sent Claire over there, I think she thoroughly enjoyed her few days in, I think it was Marbella. But a a fabulous business that you've brought into the veterinary profession as well, but. A bit like with myself with webinars, maybe a bit different with you, but you know, I don't really have any original ideas.
I just go out to other industries and steal theirs, and it sounds like you, you did that a bit with the, with the vet forum idea. Yeah, I mean there was already a fantastic team called Open Room running these events, and I actually got an email in my inbox saying, hey, how would you like, two nights in the Algarve, we'll pay. And I'm thinking this, this has got to be a scam.
and I thought, well, you know, nothing ventured, nothing gained, which seems to be the theme of our conversation. And I got back to them and I said look. I'd love to help you bring this event to the, to the vet New world, take it to the USA and APAC as well, if you like.
And they said, yeah. And so we had the first event in the Algarve, the second one in Marbella, and we've had events in Austin, Texas, and Bangkok, Thailand as well. And they've just been, the, the vetting new world has really, really embraced the format, .
I mean, who wouldn't like to spend a couple of days with their, with their peers in sunny Marbella, especially right now in the current context, we're all, we're all missing that he. Well, I'm, I'm taking the vitamin D tablets instead, which is not nearly as much fun, but there you go. No, it's gotta be done.
But it, it's. Obviously a really difficult time for hospitality. You know, it's really sad to see businesses struggling so much.
I, and I know you've talked about it and I've certainly talked about it for a long time about how businesses need to be digital businesses, you know, whether you're a vet practise, whether you sell bread, whatever you do, you know, you need to be a digital business and, and to a large extent, and not really being listened to, but of course this nanometer sized virus has, has been a real . Encourager for people to to go digital, and those who are already digital have obviously had an advantage, but . There's a lot of people saying, you know, this is the beginning of the digital decade and actually we've probably digitally transformed in the first year of that decade more than we would have done in 10 years without the virus.
What, what are your thoughts on that? I think you're right that it's certainly accelerated the adoption of digitalization opportunities across, across a number of sectors. And I remember sort of at the start of all this, there was a post on LinkedIn saying who's driving digital transformation.
At your company, is it the CEO, the CTO, the COO, or, or COVID? And everyone knew what the answer was. I think it has been a double edged sword, because of the manner in which people are adopting the digitalization opportunities.
For me, I'm very passionate about online to offline, offline to online, this 020 concept, which for a long time got laughed at. And then Uber comes along and people suddenly understand that you can have online facilitation, online augmentation of physical products and services. And I think that's the real opportunity for er veterinary clinics, but at the start of the pandemic, people thought we need to find a way to digitally replace what we do physically.
And no vet, no veterinary nurse is really gonna want to embrace that, I don't think, where it's, it's not a replacement for having hands on the animal when you need that physical exam, but it is something that can digitally augment your, your existing patient advocacy advocacy efforts. So I think there's, whenever you sort of. Have are forced into anything, it's gonna be a little bit less thoughtful than when you had the time, but I think, I think it's net net is a, is a good thing.
And we, we can work on refining and getting it right, over the next, over the years to come. Yeah. The speed of transformation has been enormous, and it, you know, in some ways Zoom has gone up 30 fold in the number of clients it's had, everybody now knows what Zoom is, everybody's a Zoom expert, which is helpful.
For our business, you know, we've been on the Zoom platform for 5 years, so we, we know a lot about it and of course, I now do some cool stuff, our congress is gonna be direct from our website instead of using the Zoom platform as a separate thing, so. Just as a, a little plug and aside, obviously we're running our virtual conference. This will be our 9th annual virtual conference, so we've been doing virtual conferences when it wasn't sexy to do virtual conferences and last year we had about 10,000.
Vets and nurses registered for our conference early February, obviously just before COVID hit. So I, I, I don't know how many we'll get this year, but we've helped about 20 events that were physical and would have obviously had a big loss of revenue because they'd booked conference centres to at least break even or make a small profit, so that's been a real satisfying thing for me this year, but of course, You've come from the other angle of a similar angle in in that a lot of practises were struggling to see clients and you know, as a triage system, you know, PettApp is a is a brilliant tool. Tell us a little bit about how the last year's been for, for PettApp.
Yeah, no, I, I think it's, I think just, just for a little bit of recognition there, I think it's great that we've had Webinar vet ready with the knowledge and understanding to, to help other events digitally transform in the way that you have. And I've, we've attended and sponsored many of those events, so, so grateful to you and your team for that. In terms of PETA helping clinics, I think.
Like I say, we started 2.5 years ago. We're not a, we weren't built for the pandemic.
I certainly didn't anticipate the pandemic. Actually, a friend of mine, Mike in Glasgow at Pets and Vets, he was telling me in, I think mid February that this was gonna be a big deal and we should be prepared for it, and I was still kind of, you know, thinking, oh no, you know, it'll be alright. So no foresight really on, on, on my part in that regard.
But then, we had built a video consulting platform about 2 years ago and we had found that it was a pretty shoddy experience, especially for vets. You, with these one and done video consults, you spend the first half of the consultation under the bed with the owner, trying to retrieve a reluctant cat, and the second half, hoping the cat sneezes in exactly the way the owner's describing, cos if it doesn't, you've got no hope of adding any value, providing any kind of diagnosis, any kind of treatment plan. And so I think that was good that we had that learning, that that failure, frankly ahead of time.
So we knew that the text chat backbone, the asynchronous interaction, making sure you include the whole vetining team, not just vets, but the reception team, the nursing team, making sure you layer on payments, an ongoing digital ecosystem with push notifications, etc. This more complete environment where you can have these joined up online to offline, offline to online experiences, that's the answer, and if you get that answer right, your, the versatility of your use cases is, is, is, is just extraordinary. You can do the revenue replacement that people especially needed at this in the first lockdown.
And then you can do the capacity utilisation and improvements that people need now with pent up demand in the face of reduced capacity because of the social distancing measures. Mm, I think . I hope that the veterinary profession doesn't make the mistake of throwing this away when everything gets released, you know, we're talking about events potentially going hybrid.
For me, you know, apps like PetApp are very useful moving forward in that . It does give people the opportunity to come on and and you know, have a chat with their their vet. Maybe they're, you know, a bit more infirm, they can't get around or the cat is very fearful when it goes to the practise.
I think as a triage system, it's excellent and I, I do hope that vets don't throw that away and then, you know, get all upset when perhaps there's big groups that are are doing it and and they're losing clients from it, so. I think it's a real good opportunity, you know, we looked at this in again just before the pandemic, although the pandemic then came with a company in, in Canada. I'm very much seeing that you know, it's something that can be beneficial, you know, before the pandemic, but you know, also after, so I hope that it continues to be utilised.
You know, when restrictions have, have gone away completely. Yeah, we see, we've seen sort of robust and consistent usage over the the years since Pets App has been launched, and people are saying that it's, it's bringing down the inbound call volumes. And that the asynchronous way of interacting, it puts them back in charge of their own workflow, so that they can prioritise things at a glance, and it's not the sort of 3 rings and you have to answer the phone regardless of whatever you're doing.
So I think that use case. Plays out on a, on an ongoing basis, and I think you're right that we can sort of sit back and say, oh no, look at this sort of disruption that's coming in, whether it's direct to consumer telemedicine offerings or larger groups with offerings, whatever it might be, your competitors down the road, using PetsApp even. You can sit back and sort of say, well, it's not like the, the good old days, but if you don't embrace the digital transformation opportunities, someone else will.
And you've got a unique selling point as a local veterinary clinic, people want to engage with their veterinary team, but we know that the local veterinary team only addresses 8% of all pet issues currently. So there's 92% of all pet issues that you and your team are not addressing. And, and you can't do more than you're already doing.
If there's the, the solution isn't that you guys need to work harder. So there needs to be another solution and using digital tools to augment your existing efforts so that you can better serve clients and their pets without asking more of your already stretch threatening team. To me, whatever that tool is, whether it's Pets App or some other tool, I think is a no brainer.
I think you're right, Tom, you know, in the end, I've been talking about those companies who aren't digitally transformed probably won't exist in 10 years. Actually, what's happened with the whole COVID thing is a lot of businesses have gone out of business immediately because they've not been able to cope and they've not prepared themselves for digital transformation, of course, the virus has taken away their business and and you know, may continue to do so. I, I, I think it's so important.
Is there a possibility, can you shout out a sort of email address that if people are interested they can get in contact with you? Of course, you can get me on er Tom at petsApp.com.
That's Tom with an entirely unnecessary H, so T H O M at PET SAP.com. I, I think one of the lovely things about doing webinars and we lose it when we do a podcast is, of course, not everybody will be able to see the beautiful cat that was climbing over your books before.
It's it's been great to see so many pets getting involved with Zoom as well and I, I, I, I got the feeling that the cats had enjoyed the conversation. Yeah, I, I, I, I think you're right, and he's gonna enjoy my seat as soon as I stand up. Tom, it's been so good to speak to you.
I'm always encouraged and, and, amazed by all the things that you've managed to do in, in such a short career. I'm really looking forward to what's gonna be happening over the next couple of years because. The speed of change is, is, is going ever quicker and I think we're in great hands looking to you to see what maybe will be happening over the next couple of years, so looking forward to to seeing how the journey continues, and maybe we'll get you back on a on a webinar or a podcast soon.
You're, you're very kind, thanks for having me on and thanks for the inspiration you've provided too. Thanks, Tom, take care and yeah we look forward to seeing you. Everybody listening on another podcast very soon.
Take care, bye bye.
