Antonia and Jonny Philp: Co-founders of Skincare company Nursem

0:00From GEICO Subconscious News, I'm Tammy Racing Thoughts broadcasting from your brain. You think you live in a pretty safe place, but you just heard about a break in four miles away, which isn't close, but it isn't far either, you know? Art Palpitations is on the scene. I sure am, Tammy, and I don't even know why I drove out here, because as you know, you got customized renter's insurance through GEICO, so your stuff is covered. Oh, well that's great. Any sign of crime there, Art? Just some light littering, Tammy, but like they say, a little litter can lead to a lot. Wise words. It feels good to worry less.

0:28It feels good to GEICO. Welcome to the Jazz Shapers podcast from Mishkondorea. What you're about to hear was originally broadcast on Jazz FM. However, the music has been cut due to rights issues. The world's greatest jazz, soul and blues. From the world's greatest artists. This is Jazz FM. Jazz Shapers with Elliot Moss. In partnership with Mishkondorea. It's business, but it's personal. 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 Johnny Philp, which I really like as a name, a new name for me, co-founders of skincare company Nursum.

1:12When Antonia, a newly qualified paediatric nurse, was forced to take time off with cracked bleeding hands due to the necessary but excessive handwashing required in healthcare, Antonia was, she said, devastated that her career could be over. Realizing she wasn't alone with almost 90 % of healthcare professionals suffering from severe dermatitis at some point in their career. Antonia and her husband Johnny sought to find a more effective solution than existing hand creams and that avoided their often harsh synthetic ingredients. Nursum was launched in 2012 under its previous name which I love, Yes Nurse, but spurred by feedback and then by Johnny's recovery from a brain tumor they rebranded as Nursum in 2019 and created the Nursum promise at the core of their brand, which is for every product sold, they give a month's worth.

1:58Yes, you heard that right. A month's worth of free nursing to a nurse, midwife, or other healthcare professional in the NHS. I've got goosebumps. 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 it's i always think it's quite a posh suburb yeah it's yeah it kind of is it's as close to the village vibe as you can get being in a city yeah yeah yeah so yeah lots of green space and the town we're and stuff it's nice and nice and close to grass and trees which i think is what we need you need that yeah and you and you two are both from there and you both met at the age of 16 yeah we were um high school sweethearts so we were quite lucky um both johnny's uh parents both were teachers at the school uh so i used to always know him as not johnny but mr and mrs philp's son oh yeah um that gets credibility and a bit of mythology around it and a bit of fear yeah yeah absolutely 100 % like the early version of an influencer oh yeah and johnny you feel like an influencer to me i've already got i've already got that vibe because you were probably responsible for this we've Nursum is the name of this amazing um 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 yes nurse yes nurse who is who is the person with the is that you johnny was it you oh it was me i know i know 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 it came from a good place a very good place yeah Tony because um 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 and Johnny you you kind of seem to be drawn to making you're the guy who likes to make stuff can you just explain though the the thought behind why you created what is now called nursing what was going on for you at the time where did it come from?

4:09So I did my nursing degree so I was specifically a paediatric nurse so we trained as a paediatric nurse from the very start in Manchester University so between 2005 and 2008 and I graduated and started 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 like respiratory problems lots of general of 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'll be lots of IV antibiotics and probably about six 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 um but actually that then it's a vicious cycle yeah then if you have to quickly apply some alcohol gel you're applying it to open open sores and it was so bad um that i went to see my ward manager and she's like you need to go straight to occupational health where and they signed me off work for two 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 at work clinically if this continues to be a problem because not only are you like is it open source that you're 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 i'm gonna say yes there's an infection risk exactly infection risk for other people so so i was like grief like i really need to get a hand 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 brought bought a whole shelf of various hand creams, tried them, found that they just, nothing really worked effectively.

6:07And 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 Johnny 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 I was like, I feel like it's not just me. I'm not, I don't, I'm not the only person with this problem.

6:39There'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. Listening to Antonia talking, Johnny, I think, and she talked about it in an elegant way and calm way, I imagine at the time 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.

7:17Yes. Is that fair? I'd seen her work really hard for three years or so at university and then to sort of fall at the first hurdle I think you've been in position for maybe six months at her first job and it was tough because you had your two weeks off work that you had to you had to 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 spend three years you know working really really hard and obviously healthcare professionals their vocation-based degree. You want to do them. And also that's what you're then trained to do.

7:53Exactly. And I saw you didn't get much downtime through your degree. You do your lectures then instead of going and maybe doing some socialising, you basically are on the ward because that's 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, an intensive care environment, things like that. But then you go from that to 2010-ish, and then eventually you launch your first official product in 2012.

8:32Is that right? Yes, that's right. So in that period, Johnny, because often people say, how do you get started? What was the secret to actually doing something? what do you think what do you think you both did that took your your frustration and your anger and converted into an actual product you could then sell on the shelf because that's quite a leap yeah i think there was a degree of it was realizing that there was a real need so that it wasn't just me as a standalone person and how did you know how did you know there was a so we 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.

9:18And I think the statistic is something like it affects about 94%. 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 is around as much as anything. At some point in a healthcare professional's career, it's very likely that someone will bump into occupational contact, dermatitis is what it's called. Now we've had people on the program, and Stu and I were 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.

9:56So then just help me understand briefly how you managed to create a real prototype. So, I mean, I had had a little bit of experience working with labs before and so 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 oh 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.

10:50So did you come up with a thesis about the things it had to do yeah and then kind of work backwards and go okay if those are the things from an efficacious point of view that has to deliver on I've now got to go and work out what will deliver on that is that is that the way around. Exactly, exactly. So start with, interrogate the problem because actually you could try and get the healthcare professionals to wash with something else or sanitize 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 good.

11:19That'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 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 oh grief that that's that feels like a long long time ago go on go back we i think we were selling it through our website to start with this i mean this is my heart's pounding now just thinking about this because we used to live in a two-bed flat upstairs flat and we 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 Science City at the time which is where there was a lot of testing work done and and you know 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.

12:30But 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. You assumed it would be a medical professional kind of play and it would just be there and available for those people. And now look where we are. Look at the fine mess you've got Antonio and Johnny 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 Johnny coming up in a couple of minutes.

13:01This is Jazz Shapers with Elliot Moss in partnership with Mishkondorea. It's business, but it's personal. You can enjoy all our former business shapers on the Jazz Shapers podcast and you can hear this very program again if you pop jazz and shapers, two words, not difficult, into your favorite podcast platform. My guests today, I'm sure you've been listening, are Antonio and Johnny Philp, co-founders of skincare company Nursum. You were talking about this, the palette. You're now where you are, Johnny, and you said your heart was pounding then. I read somewhere that you were paying yourself 500 quid 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.

13:44What 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, Anthony, you were earning money at the time, but nurses aren't paid a fortune. 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 but the people think about you know where were you on that that well that's probably why my heart was pounding because I think just casper back my memory back to those days it's pretty scary I mean we used to live off off your salary didn't we yeah um and if I'm honest at the time it was sort of you don't know what you don't know so that 500 pounds we could stretch across, fell in the car up and getting some groceries and our little flat didn't cost us an awful lot.

14:26So actually it was okay. There was a few conversations when you were like, when are you actually going to get a real job? Well, 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 Well, you were still, and you were still into around September, October 24, roughly, or maybe slightly later. You were, you were working as a nurse while you were running the business while you were looking after however many children you had by then three yeah yeah i mean that was that i mean you you saw it as a side hustle until very recently well i think i think it was more so the the thing that i guess changed things for us was that we got married in 2015 and then after being together 700 years since the beginning of time 25 years this year which is crazy that we've been together they're both like they're both like 27 years old I don't feel it.

15:20I 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, Johnny 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 when we found out that he had a benign brain tumour called an acoustic neuroma. I sometimes joke that she should have kept the receipt because we only found out about three months after we got married. I still say to my wife, didn't you do well?

15:58And I raise my right eyebrow and she looks at me and says, I'm never bored, but I'm not so sure I did so well. So Johnny decides to get a brain tumour, as you do, and that's 2016. And that's, I imagine, pretty life-changing on every level. Yeah, well, it definitely kind of, in a sense, 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? I'm looking at you, Antonio, as you're talking about this. Obviously, this is 10 years ago. Yeah. That's a pretty massive thing to happen to someone, you, rather than Johnny for a moment.

16:36you know your love of your life been together since you're 16 how did you cope with it at the time um i think it was 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 they always said from the start the offsets that they felt it was likely to be benign um and but your head still goes to what if i lose johnny yeah yeah a hundred percent and i think that you you kind of because we had our 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 it was almost like we need to 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 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 do and do you think without the kick we'd be talking now about this business 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 things happened in quite interesting you know quite rapid succession you end up on dragon's den that was a few years yeah after that 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 whether you both went okay life's short which we all know until someone you know when you lose someone close you kind of do go oh it's real people do actually die yeah 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 so so we in uh 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.

19:23And did you find them? It was a really weird connection so it was an anaesthetist I worked with at the Freeman who I just got on from the very second I met him he was one of the PICU consultant and PICU children's intensive care, so Cardiothoracic PICU. So I started there in 2011 and it was after kind of these issues with my hands obviously but at the time when people first started to meet me they were like, oh you're the hand cream girl aren't you? Which is quite funny. Well that's a new name but if that's what you want to call me, okay. Hand cream girl. You've got a hand cream boy. I've got a hand cream boy, I was going to get a cape with a big C on the back.

20:00Why didn't you come with your t-shirts on? I think this is an obvious sideline here. Next time. Absolutely. But I can remember chatting to this anaesthetist and I was like, oh, 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, nursing. 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 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 like brand um what would you call consultancy or something yeah consultancy yeah um 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 Johnny he 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 Donnie and we were like, oh, maybe we need to just, we need to start doing more.

21:06We 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 startup consumer brands. But in the background, we had, we were having really, really late stage conversations with some grocers, a massive pharmacy chain. and 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 so you can only go up from there there's only one way from Yes Nurse and that's okay you can only get better you can only get better and we got to nurse them so actually again you wouldn't have made that call if you had not probably decided to just go for it.

21:57Yeah, we had these really great conversations in the background with these huge retailers that had taken years to get to a point to get the right level of interest and we knew we needed to get the right level of support. So I think that was definitely a turning point to get all the backup support and obviously the brand getting that right and the way that our packaging looks and everything. And that was, for me, the linchpin in the trajectory for us. And turning down, Dragon's Den, just very briefly, because I have a few guests on Dragon's Den, it always intrigues me. You go there, you do your pitch, they're all in.

22:34You get one that you were going to go with and then you turn them down. That's the short version. That's the short version. And the slightly longer version is? Slightly longer version is we already have or had 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. And these guys don't always see eye to eye. So still, you know, a huge fan of Tej, but unfortunately... Couldn't quite pull it off. 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.

23:15That was worse. Good. And you are still in touch. Final chat coming up with my guest. They were still staying in touch at least till the end of the hour. But Antonio and Johnny will be with me. And we've got some Kamazi Washington and Patrice Quinn for you as well. That's in just a moment. Do not go anywhere. This is Jazz Shapers with Elliot Moss. In partnership with Mishkondorea. It's business, but it's personal. Antonio and Johnny Philp are my business shapers just for a few more minutes. And they are the co-founders of Nursum. And they make stuff to make sure your hands are well looked after.

23:47I mentioned right at the beginning the nursing promise, Antonio. and I said at the moment or 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? So, sorry to correct you. Correct me. It's the nearsome promise. Nearsome promise, yes, sorry. No, no. so basically it's for us as for 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 nursing promises 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 the 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 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 pediatric transplant nurse specialist just up until June um 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 nursing and then also being a specialist nurse which is quite a full-on role and quite very emotional at times and then having three young children and a fourth a fourth on his way is it was just a bit too much but the nursing promise allows me to still be very much part of of this health care community the caring profession we're still caring but in a different way but I think from 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 nursing 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 near some 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 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 it's a lovely kind of i guess it's balance it's a lovely balance and i feel like we can yeah i i like the warm and fuzzy stuff like the kind of the giving back and um donnie's very much product hat and developing new new amazing products 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 uh i don't think it's not for the detriment we aren't out for dinner last night we either talk about kids or talk about nurses we need to find some more hobbies i don't think you do actually i think you've got plenty don't find any more hobbies 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 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 and all of those various different things it's it feels feels like we're doing this together and it's like a yeah yeah and on the doing it together, Johnny, if you could just sum up briefly before I ask your song choice, whoever I'm going to be asking, someone will jump in.

27:56What does the future look like? If we were having this conversation five years from now, what would you be telling me about the size of NURSEM and the things you were doing? 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 would make us very happy. But in terms of the brand, we would love to see the business become the number one brand in the UK, potentially even take it abroad. And there's so much potential within Nursum that we believe in, and we would love to just see that realized in the next three, four, five years.

28:40Amazing. 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 it really did, it was a game changer for one of my children, 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. So, this song is by Eric Clapton I don't know why we kind of It was our wedding song I do know that Thanks for the reminder song yeah i hope you remember that yes this whole being together thing you just mentioned you know i'm your husband i think it was i don't know why we're 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's it wasn't it was like an old love is there anything to disclose 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 and we just love the the kind of acoustic side of it and yeah we we love eric clapton so yes and johnny why don't you introduce him so it's eric clapton old love old love from eric clapton the song choice of my business shapers today antonia and johnny philp interrogate the problem said johnny 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 tumor johnny re-looked 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 johnny that is all about care and it's where the nurse and promise comes from.

30:36Brilliant stuff. That's it from Jazz Shapers. Have a lovely weekend. Jazz Shapers on Jazz FM. In partnership with Mishkondorea. It's business, but it's personal. We hope you enjoyed that edition of Jazz Shapers. You'll find hundreds more guests available for you to listen to in our archive. To find out more, just search Jazz Shapers on iTunes or your favourite podcast platform or head over to mishkon.com forward slash Jazz Shapers.