Hello, it's Anthony Chadwick from the webinarett. This is another episode of Vet Chat, and I'm really pleased to have a, an old friend on the line, Jenny Goya, who is a veterinary surgeon. Jenny will tell you a little bit about her history, but, we got to know each other through Vet Dynamics, which is run by another friend or two friends, Vicky and Alan Robinson.
And Jenny was at that point starting to look at how she could do some different things with coaching and has gone on to do some fabulous things supporting the profession in coaching. And we'll talk about that today, but Jenny, first of all, you know, welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much, and we're excited to be here.
Thanks Jenny. So tell us a little bit about yourself. Obviously veterinary surgeon, where do you qualify from?
What did you get up in up to in early career and, and what made you perhaps make that jump? Into coaching. Yeah, OK.
Right, I'll try and keep it in a nutshell. So I graduated 22 years ago now, which is, yeah, from 2001 from the RVC, and I started out in small animal practise on the edge of London. With a kind of fairly typical, you know, I think it is changing now, but, kind of quite typical mindset, I think, of, of having very high expectations on myself.
You know, you've just come out of being trained in a very academic, referral type environment. So, I enjoyed practise and I feel like I was a, was a good vet, but I did struggle with sort of constantly comparing myself to referral surgeons, worrying a lot, and And finding it kind of quite high pressure. So, I'd always enjoyed surgery and I thought specialising would be the way forward.
You just try and be, be really good at a slightly more narrow range of things. So, I went back to the RVC and did an internship and started down the kind of specialist pathway, really. I wanted to go and be a referral surgeon.
And I had a bit of a, an, so I loved my internship, really enjoyed that. But I did kind of start to look further down the pathway of specialisation and And came to the realisation during that year that that probably wasn't the right thing for me either, mainly around work-life balance reasons. So I I went back to general practise and I thought, right, OK, well I'll do a certificate, that's like part of both, and I'd been back in general practise in a really lovely supportive practise for about 2 weeks.
And I just, and I committed to them for 2 years, but I just, I just knew within 2 weeks that it wasn't, like, I was just thinking, I, I don't think I can do this till I retire. And that was a really difficult time. I continued, I just buried that though, because I've made this commitment, and I, I was looking around thinking, well, everyone else seems to be quite happy.
Maybe the problem is me. And so I, I just doubled down and I kept kind of reaching the point of burnout and mental health problems and I'd wanted to be a vet, very typical, Red James Harriet, come from farming backgrounds, always wanted to be a vet since about 5 years of age. It took me an awful lot of hard work and effort to get into vet school.
So I, I didn't know what to do with those feelings, really, you know, my, my whole lifelong dream I had achieved. And then it kept pushing me to the point, point of burnout and mental health problems. And I, I really struggled with that.
So, I, that was when I sort of started this, OK, how do I resolve that? I don't want to leave my beloved profession, but I can't keep, keep going like this. And now, back in the day then, life coaching was, was a very new thing, and it wasn't, you know, there wasn't vettego diversify didn't exist.
So I just started dabbling myself, really, in a bit of life coaching and I went down to London and worked with some careers analysts because I knew I was good at stuff. I, I knew I had skills and talents, and I couldn't understand the cognitive dissonance about it. And through doing that coaching work on myself, having it done to me, I started to see through the mists.
I started to see, OK, right, I can understand my transferable skills because I was like, OK, so I can diagnose diagnose and remove a splenic torsion. That's brilliant. I don't know how to port that into anything else.
Not realising just what an incredible set of transferable skills that we have as veterinary professionals. So that really helped. Also looking at things like my psychometric profiling, I don't, my mind doesn't, you know, my brain preferences are not like that of a typical veterinary surgeon, and, and that was a real moment of self acceptance and understanding for myself.
And so, to cut a long story short, from then, since then, I've done about 6 or 7 diversifications through the vet profession. Some clinical, some non-clinical. And really, as you mentioned at the start, it was when I moved.
So I kind of, I worked my way, kind of up to the top of, of vets now in various non-clinical roles, which was, which was really brilliant, actually, to, to, I learned by osmosis, a lot of things around practise, finance, HR, recruitment, marketing. How multi-layered organisations work, and lots of useful things. And, and, and then kind of, when my journey with Vets now came to an end, predominantly because I'd moved to Devon and met my husband and didn't want to be, I was living out of a suitcase and travelling all over the UK, which was fab.
But then, I joined Vet Dynamics and, Alan Robinson and, and the team. Working with independent practise owners, and that's really where the coaching aspect came in. Because a lot of the work that they do is around coaching practise leaders on many different aspects.
And it was through that, that I kind of discovered, I discovered how much I enjoyed coaching and how it's, it's a really natural style for me anyway. And, and I just happened to be quite good at it. I was surprised by the feedback that, that I got and actually it took me a while to, to grow into the confidence of accepting that that's what I'm really good at.
Then, then the, the diversification after that came after I had my daughter. And a lot of the work I've been doing with Vet dynamics was around practise development and business as, as well as developing leaders, . But I'd realised through that journey that my heart, my heart was deeply in personal transformation.
And so I set up that harmony at the back end of 2017, actually with your, with your assistant, Anthony. So thank you very much for that. And I've been doing that now for the last 5 years, which is me in my absolute career sweet spot.
I've, I've really, really loved that. You talked just a little bit before about psychometric testing and, and obviously you've done some of those earlier and then obviously came to work with Alan, where I'm sure you've come across talent dynamic. I mean, which are the ones that you particularly most resonate with?
And is that something that you use pretty much in all your coaching, because I found it quite transformational for me, realising in the talent dynamic, . For forum that I was a star, and this was why, you know, I actually really liked doing all the consultations with clients because you are presenting, but I probably wasn't that great at the administrative side, and so beginning to understand yourself more is probably the first stage of actually having a more . Fruitful life, isn't it, because if you know what you're good at and what you can become world class at, you'll probably do more of that and less of the stuff that you're not terribly good at and that frustrates you when you have to do it.
Yeah, absolutely. So I have quite strong feelings about profiling. I've, I've had just about every different type of profiling test done on me, .
And I think they've all got different, they all measure slightly different things. What, what I feel about, I, I feel that profiling is an absolutely fantastic tool, but it has to be, it, it needs to be in the right hands. So, what it, what you, what it doesn't need to be is about pigeonholing or about labelling or sticking you just in one box or one quadrant or whatever, because I think as human beings, we are holistic.
We are all things at all times. So, so I think the skill, it, I think. So yes, I have a particular type of profiling that I do in my business that I've gravitated towards because I find it works really well with vets because it's based more on brain physiology than and dominance patterns within the brain than it is about personality.
So I, I find that one for me works really, really well. That's HBDI. It's quite similarly aligned with talent dynamics.
But I think really a lot of it's around the skill of the practitioner as well. So the way I work with profiling is that I take the person fills in the thing. I take those suggestions, and I feel like your job as a practitioner is to say, right, based on how you've answered, this is what it's suggesting.
What do you think? And then your job is the kind of being the person being profiled is to see what resonates, but taking into account your timeline, your life journey, who you feel you are. And in that space between the profile and the practitioner, That's where the magic happens.
So we, we are not something that comes off a off a printer saying, oh, you're a blue quadrant person, but it, but by using that as a tool, you can have really brilliant levels of self, self acceptance and choice. So as you say, Antony, it, it, it's not about trying to be omnicompetent in all things, but it's about saying, right, I am going to lean even further into this zone of genius, and actually I'm going to outsource or. Not take roles that are are in this lower preference area, or we can say, actually that's a lower preference area and actually I do want to upskill on it, so I'm going to put myself in a growth mindset and work really hard.
And I've seen my profile shift through my choices in, in accordance. So I do, I love it. I find it fascinating, and I can never stick to time when I'm doing one of those.
And, and talk to us a little bit about how that harmony has developed because obviously, you came out of Alan's business, obviously with a child, priorities changed, this was something that you really wanted to start to er develop. And you know, from the outside looking in, it's been really exciting to see how that's helped people because we. We all need coaching, don't we, and not all of us accept that we need coaching, but actually, you look at football teams when they're doing really well, they don't suddenly say, oh we're doing really well, sorry, Jurgen, you don't need a job anymore because the football team's playing so well.
How do we make that, is, is that becoming more mainstream, do you think, Jenny, with you know, people like yourself working on that in the veterinary profession, or is it still a little bit of a, You know, a sort of niche area that some vets go into, but not as many preps and nurses, you know, as they should be. I think it's changing, I think it's shifting. And I think, I think sometimes there's a difference, so I think when it comes to clinical coaching and mentoring, I think the profession is all over that and doing, you know, doing the focus is.
Heavily on that. And actually, I probably give a shout out to Ebony and the vets get diversified team here in terms of, I think they've done fantastic work on shifting people's opinions on having coaching and mentoring for yourself, for your own personal development. And hopefully myself and the other vet coaches in the space like Libby, Cam Cron Thompson and Katie Ford and Caroline Crow, you know, there, there's a few of us that have been supporting the profession and I think raising that awareness and Adrian Nelson, Pat, I need to mention as well.
So, so I think it, when, so when I've done talks, quite often, that's a question that I will ask at London Vett show or at Spes or where wherever I'm speaking to say, who here, put your hand up if you have had non-clinical coaching, so coaching for your own personal development. And I would have said 56 years ago when I got started, there would barely barely be a hand up. Now it's probably 3, sometimes 1/3 to 5%, which is brilliant.
So it's going in the right direction. And I think the shift to come next is that coaching isn't only for. We not, it's not like a remedial therapeutic thing always as in.
You know, when I, I just did my professional certified coach training and a big emphasis there is on it, it's almost like it helps you to get the best out of yourself. So it, it's, it's it's, it's very helpful when you are lost and stuck, but it's not only for that as well, it can, it can just help you, as you say, with sports coaching, for example, to get the best out of yourself. Yeah, I think that's very important because it can be linked in with counselling, which of course, you know, it isn't, that people seem to think it's only the time to do it is when you are going through a bad spell.
And, and, and then obviously you possibly need more counselling than coaching, don't you? Yeah, I have some clients where we're doing both. So I, I think your skill when you're doing your onboarding, I'm always tuning in for what does this person need?
Do they need more therapeutic help? Are we trying to get them from -5 up to ground zero? Or is this person ready for coaching?
Because coaching asks you, it's very, you have to have accountability and self responsibility. You have to be in a place where you see that you're the common denominator in the things, the, you know, what's happening in your life and be ready to shift your thinking, not do what you've always done. You know, what, what you've always done has got you very successfully to this point.
But what's got you here isn't probably not what's going to get you to where you next wanna go. And they, you're gonna need to change behaviours, thinking patterns. It's not necessarily that it's very cathartic work, but it's not always the easiest of work, and you have to be ready.
And when I'm talking to a potential client, that's what I'm assessing, and I will signpost quite vociferously to say, actually, I think you need more therapeutic help, whether that's, you know, the therapy is more looking at what not. I don't believe anyone's broken and needs fixing, but therapy is more, more focused around where are the challenges and, and what needs to repair and heal. Coaching is much more future focused in terms of where do you want to be?
Do you even know what you want? Let's work out what you want. Well, let's create what you want and how are we going to get you there.
So it's focused in the opposite direction to therapy. As you said, the skills that. Got you to learn how to ski as in snow ploughing down a greener slope won't actually get you down a black slope, you have to learn a different technique to get down a black, don't you?
Yeah, and, and I think an important point there is it's not always about more upwards, more qualification, higher level, harder work, like I talk a lot about. Evolving and evolution of what's the, what's the next, what's the next right, most aligned thing for you at this stage of your life? And that might be upwards and more.
It might be less and down. It might be sideways. It can evolution can go in any direction.
And I think sometimes quite a lot of the clients I work with need permission to actually do less, to slow down, to go for what they want rather than what they think they should have, or what they see their peers doing. Especially in a quite, you know, perfectionist, high level goal orientated profession. I do a lot of giving, helping people give themselves permission to actually do less.
Yeah, and I think it's right with the skiing thing, I took up skiing quite late. And although I would love the idea of going down a black run, actually I'm more a sort of blue type person who can just about manage blues. I, I'm pretty tall and I, I sort of turn at the same speed as the Titanic, so I'm probably not best on these tight black runs, so.
No, it's a, it is a really good point because I think we all want to do. Better, but it's also accepting ourselves as we are with our, you know, we do have limitations as well, don't we, sometimes, you know, if you, You know, we have limitations of height or whatever, so, no, it's a really good point as well. The webinar vet has been serving the veterinary community with CPD for over a decade, but did you know we offer so much more than just that.
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I wanted to talk to you about your own personal growth now, Jenny, because your, your side hustle, which has become a bit more than a side hustle, but which has excited me almost as much as your journey on, on, on coaching and training has been your, your journey on the pod with your husband. So perhaps tell us a little bit about what the pod is. Yes.
So, oh my goodness, how to, how to keep it concise and in a nutshell. OK, so the, the pod itself, is this beautiful, incredible creation from my, husband, Kyle. It's a floating glamping pod, in essence.
So he, he has, it's been probably 1010 years in conception and creation. It's hand built from wood. It's geodesic, but like a solid, a solid wooden geodesic dome structure.
It floats on a 7 metre platform. It's, it treads very lightly on the, on the, well, it floats on the lake, so it's not even on the earth. And it's for two people and you can go and stay in it, and it sits on a gorgeous 200 metre long.
Lake nestled on the edge of Dartmoor in Devon, and it's, it's, yeah, taken quite a lot to get it to where it is now. I think it probably shows that the two of you are quite persistent because I know you've had problems with planning, with finance. You know, I've been chatting to you quite often and, and, in the sort of period of it, of it sort of developing and growing.
But now it is actually having people coming in to stay and I know you've had. So many wonderful testimonials from that and I suppose. When something like that works well.
Having that gratitude sort of reflected back to you is hugely satisfying, isn't it? It is definitely, and, and actually people are very interested in the story of how and why it came to be, because it is quite a unique thing. And so quite often when Kyle's doing the check-ins, he, he's trying to say to someone, can I show you how to use the log burner?
And they're like, Oh, how did you make this? And why did you make that? And how does this bit work?
And, and the, the journey of why we even made it and, and how it came to be is often more interesting to people than, than when we're trying to check them in. Yeah, no, that, that's really interesting and I, I think it's. Storytelling is, is such a great way of, of actually being able to get a message across, and I think part of the message, although it's this physical pod that you've built, has been, I think, both of your love for the environment, hasn't it, and for environment, but also how environment ties together with mental health.
I mean there's a lot of studies now that show that people who are having a hard time, are actually getting prescribed green spaces and blue spaces by their doctors, and that that prescribing is often more effective than necessarily, you know, giving depression tablets or whatever. Mhm. Yeah, definitely.
I mean, Kyle's original driver to build the pod in the first place was to create a beautiful space. That just takes you out of your normal life and, and captures the essence of, I don't know if you've had this experience, Anthony, but when you're a kid and like you discover somewhere, usually in nature and you think you're the first person that's ever found anything like it, and just that, that magic, that childlike magic of discovering somewhere secret and and amazing. And, and that was the, the sort of feeling that he wants to create and It being in nature and it being well off grid and in nature, not in an urban environment at all, was important for, for that kind of getting back to the wild, benefit to mental health.
And then with it being floating, that adds another, another dynamic and the number of people, when we, because we didn't own a lake, we didn't have any investment money, we didn't have planning permission. The lake can't be in a flood zone because people stay in it. So trying to, and it can't be on the area of outstanding natural beauty or in the Dartmoor National Park.
So. Trying to find a body of water that fitted all of those criteria. And the number of people who said, just build it on land.
It's a nice structure. Why don't you just stick it in a field and and completely missing our, our point of no, we want it to be here. .
And the, the, the number of guests where they arrive and they're seeking that mental health benefit in terms of, we just want to stop. We just want to do nothing. We want to hunker down.
And because there's no Wi Fi, because there's no signal, because there's, you, you just have to be in this beautiful environment, then it, it all, people are saying it gives me the excuse. To, to legitimately stop and do nothing and just rest, and I think people need that. We, well we know we need it.
And I think. When I look back and you talk about the secret places, my parents had a caravan in Gisborne in the trough of Boland, and I used to wander off into fields, you know, where you could see the spotted flycatches flying, and I remember just lying on my tummy with my binoculars and just spending, you know. A long time there just watching them because of that joy and that secret place which I'm not sure if we could, if we would send, you know, a sort of young teenager out into those areas now, which is a shame, but anyway, I, I really agree with that idea of the secret space and also.
We didn't have that disturbance of internet, which has been a great thing in a lot of ways, but actually to digitally detox for a couple of days is. You know, is massively important, isn't it? Absolutely.
I mean, there's there's a, there's a singular estate vineyard on site and it has a beautiful cafe and restaurant and so where you can, if you're desperate, you can go up there and, and have a coffee and check your messages, but when you're actually at the pod, there's zip, zilch, nothing. But this, but, but then what it does is it brings you into present moment awareness, like Kyle and I have been sat down there on an evening. And, you know, we talk about the dawn chorus, but I'd never realised the racket that birds make when they're putting themselves to bed.
And actually, when you're sitting there with a glass of wine on, on the, you, you, you tune into what the wildlife is up to, and you get this fantastic auditory show, you know, from the birds as they're, they're roosting and watching kingfishers and, and bats. And so it, it's, there's still things to watch, but it's really present moment awareness, which is, is lovely, and I think it just makes you feel better. Now I'm a tiny bit disappointed Jenny, because we have chatted on several occasions about this and you have missed out a very important fact that you've just brought in there that it is actually also situated on a vineyard.
And I think not too much wine, but a little bit of wine also really helps the spirits as well, doesn't it? It does on a lake with a with a loved one. Yes, completely.
The vineyard is a really good, the the, the, cos the, it's the, it's a farm. The chap who owns the farm, he's a bright old character. He's in his, he's in his 80s, an ex pro retired surfer, and all his 4 children have stayed on the farm and they've all diversified.
And so, it's his daughter, Sarah, who runs the vineyard with her sons. And, the, the vines are beautiful and you can see the, the, the cafe is all locally sourced produced food. So it's a similar ethos to what we're doing with, with the pod.
And so, yeah, they do like wine tours and, and, yes, so you can go up there and, and literally sit drinking Devon wine that was made in that field that you can see there. Whilst looking down at the pod. So yeah, it is, that's a nice, a nice thing for us to have for our guests to be able to access as well.
And I think the other side is very much the, the conservation side, it's obviously an area that, you know, I'm fascinated and and. You know, passionate about, but obviously it's kind of been in the fabric of what you're building, so not only just in the wood, but in the position on the lake, an area of natural beauty, trying to give people that chance to reconnect with nature, because if we're more connected with nature, we'll make those decisions towards nature, so locally sourced food. Taking a holiday there maybe rather than jumping on a plane, which obviously adds, you know, to your carbon footprint.
And I know also because you are off grid, you've actually had to power the pod with with solar panels, how's how's that all going? It's been really exciting actually, but for my husband's amazing problem solving brain, it, it, it, it, everything that you need in the pod, we've then had to think, right, how do we do that 100% off grid and sustainably, and that's been a lot of chin scratching, but like you say, we, it's, it's all built from local timbers that were made were sourced from sustainable Devon Forest 1010 minutes down the road. The outer shell is also charred, so this is an ancient technique that's been done for thousands of years by the Japanese and the Romans.
And if you char the outside, it makes it all lovely and black, blackened, so it sits quietly. It's basically like a giant bird hide. But also you don't need to use chemicals, so there's no chemicals to preserve the wood.
It's 100% solar powered, so we've got 6. Solar panels on the pod that fuel two batteries. But all they really do is the lighting in the pod, and the, there's a little LPG boiler for the kitchen and the hot shower.
But because of the, the, the, that's all had to be Ecotech, so it's all really low level LED lighting. We want to be minimal impact on the wildlife. So the, the outdoor, there is some outdoor lighting, but again, it's very low level.
So when we had our ecology report done, there were dormice and bats, but we weren't a problem because we, we just, we're low light pollution. Everything, nothing goes, everything comes off the pod, so we have a soak away for the greywater system, a waterless compost toilet, so we're not, we're, we're mindful of water consumption as well. so, and, and just choices, you know, a lot of guests where they'll say, well, have you got a hot tub?
That's how I'm going to decide where I'm having my holiday. Yeah. And we've made a decision not to do that because, they, they're, they're not very sustainable or eco-friendly to run.
So our solution to that was, when this was actually my idea, not my husband's, was to, we, we stuck some catamaran netting on the front edge of the pod, so you can climb into. The catamar netting with your gin and tonic and a cushion and literally you're hovering out over the water. So you may not be in hot bubbly water, but you're literally suspended over the water.
So just creative choices like that, to the, the climate friendly. And I know . Obviously not to sort of encourage people to go for the wrong reason, er but there is also a little family there that are quite unusual er living on the lake, isn't there?
There is. So we have, we have wild beavers, and we just, I've been, I had a fantastic insightful conversation with Sean McCormack, from the, the set up Ealing Wildlife Group. I'm sure many of the listeners will, will be familiar with Sean, around rewilding and conservation.
And so, we, we're get, we're getting some trail cameras so that we can, from a distance, the beavers are definitely there because they keep chewing through the mooring ropes for the pod. And they, we find the, the, the wood that they chewed blocks up the outflow for the lake. So, it's the, well, they're definitely there.
And we, we, we know where they kind of roost hide dam, parts is. So we're gonna, get a trail camera so that we can just document the wildlife and share that with people that are, are following us because I think we, you know, we've got a lot of wildlife on site with, with the beavers, also. Sean's given us some great recommendations for putting our boxes up, bat boxes, doing back walks with bat detectors and things whereby we can just bring that level of wild nature to people who, who perhaps aren't fortunate enough to live, you know, with it right next to them in that way.
But again, from a way, a perspective where we're not disturbing the wildlife, we're just observing it and supporting it and setting up our sites so that it's encouraging. And conserving the wildlife that's that's there. Oh that's brilliant, and I think actually Sean has done a podcast for us and I think they are, or they will be when they are released, the first beavers in, in London for about 400 years, so that's really exciting.
It's been really great to speak to you. I think obviously people will want to know where this place is and how they can potentially book it, so we'll make sure that we put various links at the bottom of the podcast. So do go and have a look at those.
But presumably also, Jenny, you've got a an email you can shout out now so that people can scribble it down if they want to, how they can get in contact with you, either for your coaching or for the, for the er fantastic pod that you've created with your husband. Definitely. So probably my email would be the easiest, and then I can, I can take inquiries on either fronts.
So that's Jenny, J E N N Y at vetharmony.co.uk.
What I think would be really lovely is to offer vet chat listeners a bit of a discount on a stay in the pod. So Kyle and I have created a discount code. That's vet chat 10.
I'll make sure we put this in the show notes. So for any of you listening to this, you fancy a stay in Lilypod, if you, if you go to the Lilypod website, you'd be able to put vet chat 10 in, but if you can't remember that, then just email me and I'll make sure that, we get that for you, sorted for you. Jenny, that's been fantastic.
I always enjoy speaking to you and thank you for everything that you're doing for the profession as well, but also for the natural world, we, if we, If we don't care for the natural world, then it's gonna be really hard to practise veterinary medicine, isn't it? Definitely. And thank you so much for, for having me.
It's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you. You've been so supportive of everything I've done, through my career, so I think the profession is very lucky to, so you're so brilliant at connecting up, different people and, and taking everything forward for, for a higher good. So thank you very much for having me.
Ah thank you Jenny. Take care and thanks everyone for listening. This is Anthony Chadwick from the webinar vet, and this has been another episode of Vet Chat.
Bye bye.
