Happy birthday to us:
My journey and what I've learned
It’s our fifth birthday!
When I launched Practice Made Purrfect and set out on my own in 2020 I knew lots about veterinary marketing – but nothing about running a business.
Fast forward to today and it’s very satisfying to look back at what’s been achieved.
I’ve taken some lumps and learnt hard lessons along the way, but I’ve also had a blast and couldn’t be prouder of the quality of work we’ve produced.
To mark the occasion, I’m going to indulge in a little nostalgia. I’ve enjoyed putting this together and I hope you can gain some insight from the lessons I’ve learned.
Thanks for reading!
The pre-PMP days – how I got here
Stepping into the veterinary industry as a marketeer for the first time in 2012 was fascinating.
I believe I was one of maybe only 20 people doing full-time marketing for vets practices at that point in time.
I joined my local practice, White Cross Vets, and little did I know I was joining an incredible journey, stepping into a business that was growing and had huge plans for expansion.
My role was to understand what levers to pull to drive footfall into practice: how to choose a site, open it with a bang, and grow it to a busy two-vet practice in as few months as possible.
It was the best job I've ever had.
But looking back on it now, it was the perfect apprenticeship too. I got exposure to everything – all the different elements of marketing, also business, procurement, culture, IT.
It was amazing. Then that journey came to an end. And anyone who knows me knows I found it heartbreaking.
Then there was my switch to VetPartners, which was, in hindsight, a perfect stepping stone to set up Practice Made Purrfect.
Up until then, I'd only seen one way of running a practice and I believed my own hype – I assumed the way we did things was not only the right way, but the only way.
What working at VetPartners for 18 months gave me was the opportunity to walk into a hundred other veterinary practices. And it was humbling to see that every practice was doing something both different and better than I knew how to.
It gave me the opportunity to see how you can support practices at scale, with different brands, identities and target markets.
Plus it introduced me to lots of contacts who’ve proven invaluable since. You guys know who you are.
But it wasn't a happy time and I went from loving my job to going through the motions.
So, after it became apparent that my time at VetPartners was coming to an end, I decided to go out on my own.
Getting started – becoming my own boss
Making the decision to launch your own business is one thing – navigating that process is entirely another!
I’d been an employee for 19 years with little to no aspirations of being an entrepreneur. Now I had to tackle a load of questions that weren’t particularly glamorous and to which I had no answers, like:
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Should I be VAT registered?
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Should I be a limited company?
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How do you set up a bank account?
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How do you send an invoice?
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How do you send an email?
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What am I going to call myself?
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Who’s going to hire me?
But I’d heard the saying that your network is your net worth and that saying proved so true in my early days.
I can’t thank people for their generosity enough.
From the people who reached out with advice to those who were so open with their time when I asked for chat – you were all incredible.
I got something from everyone, even from the person that advised me that I didn’t need business insurance. I took two lessons from that one – it’s okay not to agree with everything that people recommend, and I definitely wanted insurance!
The early days of being a consultant
Imposter syndrome wasn’t something I'd suffered from previously in my life. I owe that to the way my parents dragged me up. Thanks, mum and dad. 💗
But all of a sudden, as the owner of my own company and as a newly labelled marketing consultant, I was second guessing everything.
Without the armor of a brand and the support of a team, I had to find my confidence.
I'd get nervous before going onto a call. I’d overthink what to wear before going to a conference. I’d expect every client to hear my spiel and say “thanks, but no thanks”.
But actually, after a while, I realised people came off calls saying “wow, that's useful – thanks”.
I was lucky that I didn't start from a standing start. People knew who I was from seeing me talk at London Vet Show, or on social media, blogs and podcasts.
But I still needed to sell myself and I spent a lot of time figuring out what I was selling – how do you productise marketing?
I was told by a friend about the shotgun technique, which is where you make as many phone calls as possible – getting your name out there and eventually finding leads by sheer inevitability.
So I gave it a go. I went through all my LinkedIn contacts, I made a database of everyone I knew, and I started at the top of the list.
I agonised for about 10 minutes before picking up the phone call. I phoned them up, got put through, and I basically had verbal diarrhoea on the phone. At one point I said “I can do dead good marketing”. And this person got rid of me off the call as fast as they could – and I don't blame them.
I put the phone down and I had a head in hands moment sitting alone in my spare bedroom. That was bloody awful. How do I never do that again?
And so what I've learned instead is that the approach that works for me is to put out as much quality content as I can on the website, share as much knowledge as possible via calls, via webinars, conferences – and as a result, new people get in touch wanting to work with me on a weekly basis.
In a beautiful moment of everything coming full circle, the practice I cold called and who (rightly) rejected me, reached out in response to seeing several of my talks, and we’ve since revamped their pet health plan, website and overhauled their marketing.
What I’m most proud of
I take so much pride from the work we've produced.
Clients such as Thrums, Stellar, Pennard and North Star have been with us for a number of years now and each has gone on an amazing journey in that time, growing, innovating and having fun.
We've launched over 20 health plans and each one is meaningfully different. We now oversee £9.5m of annual subscription revenue. Amazing, isn't it?
There are the cool moments along the way: the awards we’ve won, the fancy speaking gigs I’ve been invited to, seeing Andy, Fika, Anna or one of the extended team deliver a piece of work that is far better than I could have done myself.
But it’s the relationships you create that mean the most. We've learned exponentially from every practice we've interacted with, with exposure to different ways of working and different ideas. At any one time, we have 20+ experiments running, which means we’re learning at speed and then we can roll out the things that work.
The quality of work we're putting out is fabulous and keeps on improving. Long may it continue.
What does the future hold?
Rightly or wrongly, there’s no grand plan for Practice Made Purrfect – much to the dismay of my business coach. I love doing work I’m proud of and collaborating with people who bring positive energy and share my values. That’s not going to change.
I’ve always had the idea that one day I will open my own practice.
Who knows if it will happen?
But to put my money where my mouth is and put everything I’ve learned and advised over the years into something that was entirely mine would be really cool.
But the thing that is most important to me is to try and pay all of the help, emotional support and advice I received five years ago forward as much as possible.
So if I ever see someone setting up, stepping out of employment or making a career move, I drop them a message on LinkedIn and ask how I can help.
A totally unexpected development is that my network has gone from just being people within the company I work for to anyone, anywhere, who has values aligned with me.
That's energising – and it’s what is going to keep me working hard for the next five years and beyond.
Do you want to be a part of the next five years of our journey? If so, we’d love to hear from you.
Get in touch below to find out how we can help your practice grow.
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