Jazz Shaper: Antonia and Jonny Philp

Welcome to the Jazz Shapers podcast from Mishcon de Reya.  What you’re about to hear was originally broadcast on JazzFM however the music has been cut due to rights issues.

Elliot Moss

Welcome to Jazz Shapers with me, Elliot Moss, bringing the shapers of the business world together with the musicians shaping jazz, soul, and blues. My guests today are Antonia and Jonny Philp, which I really like as a name, a new name for me, Co-founders of skincare company Nursem.  When Antonia, a newly qualified paediatric nurse, was forced to take time off with cracked, bleeding hands due to the necessary but excessive hand washing required in healthcare, Antonia was, she said, devastated that her career could be over.  Realising she wasn't alone, with almost 90% of healthcare professionals suffering from severe dermatitis at some point in their career, Antonia and her husband Jonny sought to find a more effective solution than existing hand creams and that avoided their often harsh synthetic ingredients.  Nursem was launched in 2012 under its previous name, which I love, ‘Yes Nurse’, but spurred by feedback and then by Jonny's recovery from a brain tumour, they rebranded as Nursem in 2019 and created the Nursem promise at the core of their brand.  Which is for every product sold, they give a month's worth, yes, you heard that right, a month's worth of free Nursem to a nurse, midwife, or other healthcare professional in the NHS.  I've got goose bumps.  And to date, they've delivered over 750,000 months' worth of free hand care and I believe they're after a million by the end of 2026. 

I'm so happy that you're here, transported all the way from the north of England, from Gosforth, which for those who don't know is sort of in Newcastle, right?  But it's a, I always think of it as quite a posh suburb.

Antonia Philp

Yeah, it's lovely.

Jonny Philp

Yeah, it kind of is.  It's as close to the village vibe as you can get being in a city.

Elliot Moss

Yeah, yeah.

Antonia Philp

Yeah.

Jonny Philp

So, yeah, lots of green space and the town we’re in it's nice and close to grass and trees, which I think is what we need.

Elliot Moss

You need that, yeah.  And you two are both from there and you both met at the age of 16.

Antonia Philp

Yeah, we were high school sweethearts.  So we were quite lucky.  Both Jonny's parents both were teachers at the school so I used to always know him as not Jonny, but Mr and Mrs Phelps' son.

Elliot Moss

Oh, yeah and it gets credibility, sort of.

Antonia Philp

Yeah, it does.

Elliot Moss

And a bit of mythology around it and a bit of fear.

Antonia Philp

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.  Absolutely, 100%.

Elliot Moss

All those things.

Jonny Philp

Like the early version of an influencer or something.

Elliot Moss

Oh yeah, and Jonny, you feel like an influencer to me.  I've already got that vibe, because you were probably responsible for this.  Nursem is the name of this amazing company that you've now created, and we're going to hear lots about that, originally called, you're going to have to say it for me.

Jonny Philp

Yes Nurse.

Elliot Moss

Yes Nurse.  Who is the person with the, is that you, Jonny?  Was it you?

Jonny Philp

Oh, it was me.  Do you know what, I think it was because we were so focused on 'How can we help you?' The name was like last on the list.  But yes, I appreciate it was a pretty rubbish name.

Elliot Moss

It came from a good place.

Antonia Philp

It came from a good place.  Yeah.

Elliot Moss

A very good place, Antonia, because as I researched the two of you, obviously you're from the caring profession.  You are naturally, I listened to an interview you did and you said, 'I need to care. I'm drawn to caring’.

Antonia Philp

Yeah.

Elliot Moss

And Jonny, you kind of seem to be drawn to making.  You're the guy who likes to make stuff.

Jonny Philp

Yeah.

Elliot Moss

Can you just explain though, the thought behind why you created what is now called Nursem.  What was going on for you at the time?  Where did it come from?

Antonia Philp

So I did my nursing degree, so I was specifically a paediatric nurse, so I trained as a paediatric nurse from the very start in Manchester University, so between 2005 and 2008.  And I graduated and started my out on my first ever job on a really busy medical ward, so children's medical ward.  So loads of kids with kind of general respiratory problems, lots of children with cystic fibrosis, lots of need to wash your hands a heck of a lot.  So lots of people coming in with like nasty bugs and things, and there would be lots of IV antibiotics and probably about 6 months into my job, my brand new job as a newly qualified, my hands just broke down.  So they were cracked, they were bleeding, they were incredibly sore.  The only thing that relieved them momentarily was to wash them.  But actually that then, it's a vicious cycle.

Elliot Moss

Yeah.

Antonia Philp

Then if you have to quickly apply some alcohol gel, you're applying it to open, open sores.

Elliot Moss

It’s stinging.

Antonia Philp

And it was so bad that I went to see my ward manager and she was like, ‘You need to go straight to occupational health’.  And they signed me off work for 2 weeks and they said, ‘You're not allowed to work until they get better. And you need to really get a hand on this, because this is not a good sign. You might not be able to continue to work as a nurse, like work clinically if this continues to be a problem, because not only are you, like, is it open sores that you're risking your own body's kind of resistance, but then also you're from bugs, but you're also putting other people at risk’.

Elliot Moss

I was going to say, yes, there's an infection risk for other people.

Antonia Philp

Exactly, infection risk for other people.

Elliot Moss

Yeah.

Antonia Philp

So I was like, grief, like, I really need to get a handle on this and just found that there was nothing on the market.  So kind of did what I think most people would do, had a trip into Boots and literally bought a whole shelf of various hand creams, tried them, found that they just, nothing really worked effectively and the only other option was to turn to steroids, which I didn't want to do, because there is that cyclical nature that you end up kind of relying and depending heavily on steroids at times.  And I was like, I wanted to avoid that as much as I could.  So we started kind of looking into the problem. I was kind of pitching it to Jonny in a sense, because he at the time was doing another business and I was like, what do you think?  What do you think?  Like, do you think we could do something with this?  And, um, I was like, I feel like it's not just me.  It's, I'm not, I don't, I'm not the only person with this problem.  There's many, many other staff out there who have the same problem who work in healthcare.  And after a lot of research, we decided that this, there was actually, you know, legs for something that was more effective, something that was super nourishing, fast absorbing, and that would be primarily for healthcare staff.

Elliot Moss

Listening to Antonia talking, Jonny, um, I think, and she talked about it in an elegant way and calm way.  I imagine at the time it was, there was a bit more anger and a bit more pain and a bit more like, excuse me, as much as occupational therapy want to help me, they don't seem to be doing enough.  Which left it at your door.

Jonny Philp

Yes.

Elliot Moss

Is that fair?

Jonny Philp

Well, I'd seen her, you know, work really hard for 3 years or so at university and then to, to sort of fall at the first hurdle.  I think you'd been in position for maybe 6 months at her first job, and it was tough because you had your 2 weeks off work that you had to, you had do because when your hands are bleeding, it take time to recover.  And I think it was just that sense of frustration where nothing's working, you spent 3 years, you know, working really, really hard, and obviously healthcare professionals, they're vocation-based degrees, so.

Elliot Moss

You want to do them and also that's what you're then trained to do.

Antonia Philp

Yeah. 

Jonny Philp

Exactly and you know, I saw, you didn't get much downtime through your degree.  You do your lectures, then instead of, you know, going and maybe doing some socialising, you basically, you're on the Ward because that's the vocational.

Elliot Moss

Yes the practical piece.

Jonny Philp

Okay, the practical element to your degree.  So yeah, it was lots of hard work and then you're off and yeah, I think there was a real sense of frustration and thinking, well, grief, what on earth are you going to do now? Either you're going to have to do something that's a lot more, you know, sedate on the Wards, not, you know, in intensive care environment, things like that.

Elliot Moss

But then you go from that to 2010-ish and then eventually you launch your first official product in 2012.  Is that right?

Jonny Philp

Yes.

Elliot Moss

Give or take?

Jonny Philp

Yes, that's right.

Elliot Moss

So in that period, Jonnie, because often people say, how do you get started?  How, what was the secret to actually doing something?  What do you think you both did that took your frustration, Antonia, and your anger and converted it into an actual product that you could then sell on the shelf? Because that's quite a leap.

Jonny Philp

Yeah.

Antonia Philp

I think there was a degree that was realising that there was a real need so that it wasn't just me as a standalone person that had this problem.

Elliot Moss

And how did you know?  How did you know there was a real need?

Antonia Philp

So we spent a lot of time studying like Government white papers and various like NHS, like skin surveillance stuff and actually seeing that in healthcare professionals, contact dermatitis, eczema are a real problem and I think the statistic is something like it affects about 94% of us.

Elliot Moss

Yeah, I read originally it was 87%, but it probably has gone up just because the world that we live in and all the different things that our hands do and the materials and all the artificial stuff that's around as much as anything.

Antonia Philp

Yeah exactly.

Jonny Philp

At some point in a healthcare professional's career, it's very likely that someone's going to…

Elliot Moss

It’s going to happen.

Jonny Philp

…yeah, occupational contact dermatitis is what it's called.

Elliot Moss

Now we've had people on the programme and Stu and I talking about this, producer Stu, and many people have done the kitchen table thing.  But when you're talking about highly regulated stuff, when it's actually got to go into a hospital environment, you can't do that.  So then just help me understand briefly how you managed to create a real prototype.

Jonny Philp

So, I mean, I’d had a little bit of experience working with labs before, and so I knew of someone to call that would be able to take our ideas, start to translate that into an actual sample, you know, something that we can go, ooh, this looks good, or this is terrible.  I remember sitting actually in the Northern Quarter in Manchester when, which is when you were living there at the time and sat around with a coffee looking at all these ingredients and all of these, um, like medical white papers.  So like clinical research into the problem, into dermatitis, and trying to understand, you know, like what's happening in the skin, why is it happening.  So rather than just dive straight into a solution like dive into the problem first, because it's too easy to just jump straight to the natural, like, oh, let's make a hand cream.  That was almost like step 10.

Elliot Moss

So did you come up with a thesis about the things it had to do?

Jonny Philp

Yeah.

Elliot Moss

And then kind of work backwards and go, okay, if those are the things from an efficacious point of view that it has to deliver on, I've now got to go and work out what will deliver on that.  Is that the way round?

Jonny Philp

Exactly, exactly.  So start with interrogate the problem, because actually you could try and get the, you know, healthcare professionals to wash with something else or sanitise their hands in a different way.  But that's an institutional level change that's never going to happen, especially for two people living in Manchester, that's not, that's not feasible.  So then you start to look through the logic of like, okay, so what's the most practical way to be able to implement a solution that you can actually create, you know, positive change?

Elliot Moss

And that first thing you create, now I'm just going to jump to that moment where you actually got your product.  Where's it selling on day one?

Jonny Philp

Oh, grief, that feels like a long, long time ago.

Elliot Moss

Go on, go back.

Jonny Philp

We, I think we were selling it through our website to start with.

Antonia Philp

Yeah.

Jonny Philp

This, I mean, this is, my heart's pounding now just thinking about this because we used to live in a 2 bed flat, upstairs flat, and we had like a pallet of stock.  This was after we launched the brand and we had sort of graduated from what was called Newcastle Sign City at the time, which is where there was a lot of testing work done and the real science behind the product.  And we used to stash some of our products on the steps going up to our flat, and I used to take them to the corner shop where you could get like a courier collection and, you know, if orders picked up that day, the guy in the corner shop used to hate us because I would take up his entire corner shop with stock.  But we literally lived on that pallet of stock and we would find, you know, we never really intended for the brand to go into retail.

Elliot Moss

You assumed it would be a medical professional kind of play…

Jonny Philp

Exactly, yes.

Elliot Moss

…and it would just be there and available for those people.  And now look where we are.

Jonny Philp

Yeah, I know, I know.

Elliot Moss

Look at the fine mess you've got Antonio and Jonny into.  Stay with me for much more about the very fine mess, because this business is now kind of exploding and it isn't just for healthcare professionals, it's actually for the mainstream market, including my family, which I'm forever grateful.  Much more from Antonio and Jonny coming up in a couple of minutes.

You can enjoy all our former Business Shapers on the Jazz Shapers podcast, and you can hear this very programme again if you pop ‘Jazz’ and ‘Shapers’, two words, not difficult, into your favourite podcast platform. My guests today, I'm sure you've been listening, are Antonia and Jonny Philp, Co-founders of skincare company Nursem.  You were talking about this, the palette.  You are now where you are, Jonny, and you said your heart was pounding then.  I read somewhere that you were paying yourself £500 a month and that you were going to the Job Centre to look at jobs while you were focused on this endeavour, which is now really starting to bear fruit.  What did that feel like?  You know, smart guy, driven entrepreneur, and yet there's absolutely no money or only just about enough money and obviously, Antonia, you were earning money at the time.

Antonia Philp

Yeah.

Elliot Moss

Nurses aren't paid a fortune.

Antonia Philp

No.

Elliot Moss

Because the world's upside down and we know that.  But what for you as the man of the house and all those other silly things that, but the people think about, you know, where were you on that?

Jonny Philp

Well, that's probably why my heart was pounding because I think just casting my memory back to those days it is pretty scary.  I mean, we used to live off your salary, didn't we?

Antonia Philp

Yeah.

Jonny Philp

And if I'm honest, at the time, it was sort of, you don't know what you don't know so that £500 we could stretch across filling the car up and getting some groceries, and our little flat didn't cost us an awful lot.  So actually, it was okay.

Antonia Philp

Yeah.

Jonny Philp

There was a few conversations when you were like, when are you actually going to get a real job?

Antonia Philp

Well, it wasn't, I think it was more like, we need to maybe think about putting, doing this as a bit of a side hustle. And then like have a job that actually brings the money day to day.

Elliot Moss

Well, you were still, and you were still until around September, October '24 roughly, or maybe slightly later, you were working as a nurse while you were running the business.

Antonia Philp

Yeah.

Elliot Moss

While you were looking after however many children you had by then, 3.

Antonia Philp

Yeah, yeah.

Elliot Moss

Yeah, I mean, that was, that, I mean, you saw it as a side hustle until very recently.

Antonia Philp

Well, I think, I think it was more, so the thing that I guess changed things for us was the, we got married in 2015, and then...

Elliot Moss

After being together 700 years.

Antonia Philp

No, 25 years.

Elliot Moss

Since the beginning of time.

Antonia Philp

25 years this year, which is crazy that we've been together.

Elliot Moss

They're both like, they're both like 27 years old by the way.

Antonia Philp

Oh, I don't feel it.  Um, I think, yeah, it was kind of the arrival of our first child, Oscar, and it was like, oh my goodness, we need to do something like things need to change.  And I think it was that, but then also, a few months after we got married, um, Jonny had been having some issues with kind of tinnitus and this kind of vertigo and started having some tests looking into that and that's where we found out that he had, um, a benign brain tumour called an acoustic neuroma.

Jonny Philp

I sometimes joke that she should have kept the receipt, because we only found out about 3 months after we got married.  I still say to my wife, ‘didn't you do well’?  And I raise my right eyebrow and she looks at me and she says, ‘mm, well I'm never bored’.

Elliot Moss

But I'm not so sure I did so well.  So Jonny decides to get a brain tumour, as you do.

Antonia Philp

Yes, yes.

Elliot Moss

And that's 2016 and that's, I imagine, pretty life-changing on every level.

Antonia Philp

Yeah, well, it definitely kind of, in a sense, it, I guess we always say this, that it makes you just think, well, what are we doing?  Like, what are we doing with our lives?  Where are we at?  What can we change?  What can we control?

Elliot Moss

I'm looking at you, Antonia, as you're talking about this, obviously, this is 10 years ago.

Antonia Philp

Yeah. 

Elliot Moss

That's a pretty massive thing to happen to someone, you rather than Jonny, for a moment.  You know, your love of your life, been together since you were 16.  How did you cope with it at the time?

Antonia Philp

Um, I think it was pretty hard and I think that when you kind of see your loved one going through so much, uh, I think in a sense, we were lucky.  I feel like we were very lucky because, you know, it could have been a very different.

Elliot Moss

Yeah.

Antonia Philp

They always said from the start, the offset, that they felt it was likely to be benign, um.

Elliot Moss

But your head still goes to, what if I lose Jonny?

Antonia Philp

Yeah, yeah, 100%.  And I think that you kind of, because we had our eldest at that point and it was like, oh my goodness, like all of this, um, actually, no, our eldest hadn't arrived actually when we found out, but it was almost like we just need to crack on with life and enjoy it as much as possible and do the things that we want to do and try and build at the time what was Yes Nurse into something that we feel really proud of.

Jonny Philp

Well, do you know what though?  I think there's so many, as I'm sure you guys probably appreciate this, there's, you think of things that are maybe your dreams or the things that you would love to achieve, but there's always times when you think, well, I've got commitments or there's things that I need to do that aren't necessarily going after those dreams.  And then when you get some, you get some news like that, it immediately makes you go, why on earth are we just delaying these things?  Like, I've always wanted to build a successful business.  Let's just give it our very best shot and it just almost like it's a kick, you know, in the right direction to go.

Elliot Moss

And do you think without the kick we'd be talking now about this business called Nursem?

Jonny Philp

Maybe not, maybe not.  So you have to sort of reframe it as a blessing in disguise, um, because that's the only way that you can look at it, I think.

Elliot Moss

Things happened in quite interesting, you know, quite rapid succession.  You end up on Dragon's Den. That was a few years after that.

Jonny Philp

Yep.  Yeah, yeah.

Elliot Moss

Um, suddenly the sales thing starts to tick up.  You get some really good distribution.  I mean, it sort of begins.  If you could trace it back from that moment where you both went, okay, life's short, which we all know until someone, you know, when you lose someone close to you, you kind of do go, oh, it's real.

Antonia Philp

Yeah.

Elliot Moss

People do actually die. 

Jonny Philp

Yeah.

Elliot Moss

Were there moments along that way after that where you go, and what that meant was I did that and that?  Were there things that you can look back on and go, those things were the things I was talking about?

Jonny Philp

So, so we, in, I think it was 2016 or 2017, we partnered with a company here in London actually and the two founders who were introduced to us through sort of a mutual connection who are part of a very successful business already in marketing and advertising. And I think that that was probably the, the turning point.

Elliot Moss

And did you find them?

Antonia Philp

It was a really weird connection.  So it was an anaesthetist that I worked with at the Freeman who I just got on from the very second I met him.  He was one of the PICU consultants in the space.

Elliot Moss

PICU?

Antonia Philp

Uh, Children's Intensive Care, so cardiothoracic, PICU.

Elliot Moss

Right, yes, yes

Antonia Philp

So I started there 2011, and it was after kind of these issues with my hands, obviously and but at the time when people first started to meet me, they were like, ‘oh, you're the hand cream girl, aren't you’?  Um, which is quite funny.

Elliot Moss

Oh well, that's a new name, but that's what you want to call me okay.

Antonia Philp

Exactly.

Elliot Moss

Hand cream girl.

Antonia Philp

Hand cream girl.  You’ve got hand cream boy.

Jonny Philp

I got hand cream boy.  I was going to get a cape with a big C on the back.

Elliot Moss

Why didn't you come with your t-shirts on?  I think this is an obvious side line here.  Next time.

Antonia Philp

Absolutely.  But I can remember chatting to this anaesthetist and I was like, oh, um, this is actually, like we got to the subject of hands and he said, ‘oh, like, oh my wife suffers from problems with her hands as well’.  And I was like, ‘I'll bring you some Yes Nurse then’, and gave some and she, bless her, for Christmas presents for all of her family, I can remember it was like one of our biggest orders at the time, she like ordered like a couple of hundred pounds worth of hand cream and when I met her, she was like, ‘if you ever want an introduction, my brother is the founder, one of the co-founders of one of the biggest ad agencies in the world and my brother-in-law runs a, like a huge brand, um, what would you call it?

Elliot Moss

Consultancy or something.

Jonny Philp

Yes.

Antonia Philp

Yeah consultancy.  So if you ever need any intros, then we'll do these intros.  And I can remember kind of going home and saying this to Jonny, who was like, oh, wow, that's a big deal.  And then we kind of shelved it.  And it was then when we found out about Jonny and we were like, oh, maybe we need to just we need to start doing more, we then reached out to them and said, ‘can you do that intro, please’?  So reached out to them, and they just happened to be setting up a kind of like an incubator, I guess, for start-up consumer brands.

Jonny Philp

But in the background, we had, um, we were having really, really late-stage conversations with some grocers, a massive pharmacy chain.  This was pre-Boots and you only get one chance to launch into those retailers and do a good job and we knew that we weren't, our strength wasn't marketing and brand, obviously calling it Yes Nurse.   There’s still time for a revival.

Elliot Moss

You can only go up. There's only one way from Yes Nurse, and that's okay.

Jonny Philp

You can only get better.

Elliot Moss

You can only get better and we got to Nursem.  So actually, again, you wouldn't have made that call if you had not probably decided to just go for it.

Antonia Philp

Yeah.

Jonny Philp

Yeah. Yeah.  We had these, you know, really great conversations in the background with these huge retailers that had taken years to get to a point where, you know, to get the right level of interest.  And we knew we needed to get the right sort of level of support so I think that was definitely a turning point to get, you know, all the backup support and obviously the brand getting that right and the way that our packaging looks and everything, um, and that was, for me, the linchpin in the trajectory for us.

Elliot Moss

And turning down Dragon's Den, just very briefly, because I've had a few guests on Dragon's Den, it always intrigues me.  You go there, you do your pitch, they're all in.  You get one that you were going to go with and then you turn him down.  That's the short version.

Jonny Philp

Well that's the short version.

Elliot Moss

And the slightly longer version is?

Jonny Philp

Slightly longer version is we already have or had, um, shareholders, investors, and trying to get these guys to agree behind the scenes on a valuation and share price and all that sort of stuff takes time.

Elliot Moss

Yeah.

Jonny Philp

And these guys don't always see eye to eye.  So still, you know, I'm a huge fan of Tej, but unfortunately

Elliot Moss

You couldn't quite pull it off.

Jonny Philp

Yeah, couldn't quite pull it off and it was, you know, we both sort of very amicable and just sort of said, well, let's keep in touch.

Elliot Moss

Those words.  Good.  And you are still in touch.  Final chat coming up with my guests today, we’re still staying in touch at least till the end of the hour, um, Antonio and Jonny will be with me, and we've got some Kamasi Washington and Patrice Quinn for you as well. That's in just a moment, do not go anywhere.

Antonia and Jonny Philp are my Business Shapers just for a few more minutes, and they are the Co-founders of Nursem, and they make stuff to make sure your hands are well looked after.  Um, I mentioned right at the beginning the nursing promise, Antonia, and I said at the moment, or we were at the time we were looking at the research, 750,000 or so months' worth of product had gone to nurses with a challenge for this year to get to a million.  How is that looking?

Antonia Philp

Yeah.  So, sorry to correct you.

Elliot Moss

Correct me.

Antonia Philp

It's the Nursem Promise.

Elliot Moss

Nursem Promise.

Antonia Philp

Yes.

Elliot Moss

Sorry.

Antonia Philp

No, no.  Um, so basically it's, for us, especially for me as a nurse, it's always been super important for, for us to build a brand with purpose and I think the purpose then helps.  When you, when you have a purpose, it helps with the day to day struggles of building a company.  And I think, I think the feeling of being able to give back to healthcare staff who we know have the same problem as what I had, and I see it still every day, it gives you that warm fuzzy feeling, but it also just helps drive what we're doing.  So yes, like you said, we've done just short of 750,000 Nursem Promises.  Um, so that's months' worth of free hand care.  So for every, every product that we sell, we give a month's worth back to, to healthcare professionals in the NHS and we're hoping for a million in, it will be probably more like looking at early next year, so 2027.  But obviously it's driven by the sales of, of, of the business.  It's such a lovely thing for us to be able to do like, I, I stepped away from my, I was a paediatric transplant nurse specialist just up until June last year, and it was just a bit too much of a juggle, kind of like taking days of annual leave to go and work, to come and work for, go and do various things for Nursem, and then also being a specialist nurse, which is quite a full-on role and quite very emotional at times.  And then having 3 young children and a fourth on his way is, it was just a bit too much but the Nursem Promise allows me to still be very much part of this healthcare community.

Elliot Moss

The caring profession.

Antonia Philp

The caring profession.

Elliot Moss

You’re still caring.

Antonia Philp

We're still caring, but in a different way by I think through what we've developed, we're allowing people to continue on in their profession.  And we have people, like I do a bit of customer service, which I absolutely love. But people, when they reach out and tell us about how much Nursem has changed their life, and how they've been maybe a nurse for 20, 30 years and they've not been able to work for the last 10 years because their skin has been so bad, specifically on their hands.  However, they've then tried Nursem products and it's allowed them to go back to work.  Those are the emotive stories that we get coming through, which kind of, it makes you feel like you do, we are able to do more.  And I'm still a registered children's nurse, so it's a lovely kind of, I guess it's…

Jonny Philp

Balance.

Antonia Philp

It's a lovely balance, and I feel like we could, yeah, I like the warm and fuzzy stuff, like the kind of the giving back, and, um, Jonny's very much product hat and developing new amazing products so.

Elliot Moss

So that balance between you, because obviously you've been together a long time and now you've been working in this business a long time, has it shifted your relationship massively now that you're actually working together?

Jonny Philp

Uh, I don't think it's not for the detriment, we went out for dinner last night and we either talk about kids or talk about nursing.  We need to find some more hobbies.

Elliot Moss

I don't think you do, actually, I think you've got plenty.  Don't find any more hobbies slow down.

Antonia Philp

It's nice because it feels like we're in it together though.  I think more now that I've stepped away from my kind of like pretty much full-time role as a nurse, it's better because we can kind of, I understand the peaks and the troughs of the business and, you know, what a bad day looks like and what a good day looks like and how you can motivate a team of people and all of those various different things.  It feels like we're doing this together and it's like a yeah.

Elliot Moss

Yeah, yeah.  And on the doing it together, Jonny, if you could just sum up briefly before I ask your song choice, whoever I'm going to be asking, someone will jump in.  Um, what does the future look like?  If we were having this conversation 5 years from now, what would you be telling me about the size of Nursem and the things you were doing?

Jonny Philp

Uh, I mean, our ambition is to be able to obviously deliver the millionth promise and beyond.  So if we can provide a regular supply of free hand care to every NHS healthcare professional in the country every single day of the week, I think that's a, that would make us very happy.  Um, but in terms of the brand, we would love to see the business become the number one brand in the UK, you know, potentially even take it abroad.  And there's so much potential within Nursem that we believe in, and we would love to just see that realised in the next 3, 4, 5 years.

Elliot Moss

Amazing.  Listen, it's been really lovely meeting you both and again, thank you for the third time for what you've done for my family, because, um, it really has, it really did, it was a game changer for one of my children.  It really was so, super levels of appreciation.  And just before I let you disappear, back to wherever you're going, what's your song choice and why have you chosen it?  And who am I looking at? Antonia?

Antonia Philp

So, um, this song is by Eric Clapton, it's, I don't know why we kind of…

Jonny Philp

It was our wedding song.

Antonia Philp

It was our wedding song but, I do know that.

Elliot Moss

Antonia it was our wedding song.

Antonia Philp

Thanks for the reminder.

Jonny Philp

I hope you remember that.

Elliot Moss

Yes, this whole being together thing you just mentioned, you know, I'm your husband's and I love her.

Jonny Philp

Dearly.

Antonia Philp

I think it was, I don't know why we were drawn to it in the initial stage though, because it was not long after we started going out, and we must have just both loved the song.  Um, it's funny actually, when you listen to the words, it's about a previous love, but it wasn't, it was like an old love as well.

Jonny Philp

Uh oh.

Elliot Moss

Is there anything to disclose here, Antonia?

Antonia Philp

But for us, it was more about an old love as in that we've been together for a long time.  So it was our first dance at our wedding, and, um, we just loved the kind of, acoustic side of it and yeah, we, we love Eric Clapton so.

Jonny Philp

Yes.

Elliot Moss

And Jonny, why don't you introduce him?

Jonny Philp

So it's Eric Clapton, Old Love.

Elliot Moss

Old Love from Eric Clapton, the song choice of my Business Shapers today, Antonia and Jonny Philp. ‘Interrogate the problem’, said Jonny, the initial step towards building yourself a business is actually to start with the problem.  Don't jump into how you might solve it, be really clear on the shape of the problem itself.  Reframe the situation. Post being diagnosed with a brain tumour, Jonny relooked at the way he was going to approach his business, as did Antonia.  And finally, be really clear on the purpose of your business.  For Antonia and Jonny, that is all about care, and it's where the Nursem Promise comes from.  Brilliant stuff.  That's it from Jazz Shapers, have a lovely weekend.

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