 Well I graduated in 2004 from the University of Sydney and worked there for four years until I moved to the UK and I did my time locating and I worked in a lot of different practices from very small solo practices to quite large corporate ones even to doing a little bit of university work and I came back to South Australia again and rejoined the family practice. I've taken over the business since then. I am obviously from my accent from England and I qualified over there and was in practice there for four years before I moved here. It was just the two of us. I did everything from answering the phone to the clients to organising the diary to treating the horses to entering the vet notes to processing and delivering the invoices. I did everything so that was very good as a first job you really get to understand what's involved in that aspect of it and what your boss is really thinking about when they're looking at the numbers at the end of the month and what's important to them because I had to do all of that and wanted to stock take, be very aware of what was on the shelves and what was in the cars and what we were using. Still having that appreciation of where the money goes and just that little bit of business sense that really helped us benefited me even in this slightly larger practice. So clinical work is fairly similar. I was working in sport with sports horses in England and I am doing here a bit more variety here as well which is quite nice and I've been able to transfer my skills definitely both on the clinical and administrative side. When I was at uni I always felt like I should know more about it and I didn't know much about it and the boys in my year were always very business orientated and used to make me feel like they knew about it and were always planning to set up their own business from an early age and I felt like I didn't understand much but then my first job really threw me in at the deep end in terms of knowing that there was just no room for error you really had to be on top of your gains. I mean on the financial side it is important for you, well I think it's important for you to know how much money you're bringing in each month and and having an appreciation of where that goes within the practice. You also know what you're actually worth in terms of your you know yearly meetings, contract updates, financial updates. You have a lot more ammunition and confidence asking for pay rises if you really know what you're worth to that practice so there is the financial aspect definitely. If you do have a bit of business sense and you're interested in the finances just be very open about it. I think that's a big selling point and if you show your boss that you know how much you're bringing in and you express some interest in looking at the monthly reports and then I think that they'll be very appreciative of the fact you're worrying about the same things they're worrying about. Myself and my boss definitely take very proactive leadership roles in the financial side of the practice. We're always going over prices, costing, working out margins, doing monthly deals for various vaccinations that kind of thing so yeah a lot it depends on the personality of the vet and the drive I guess of that individual but no there is definitely I think role for leadership. Some practices might be looking to go from a first opinion to possibly building a hospital site and you can be really proactive about trying to help guide or help and just put your input and what can you do to help actually save the money and build up the client base that means that a hospital site is justified because they've got to pay for themselves and you've got to have the clients there to continue paying for them so you can. We know what we've got to do for that we've just got to start saving X amount per year and this is what the renting the building is going to cost. What do they say? Good medicine is good business. I never would have thought it when I qualified but it is very important and I picked that up in a short space of time how important it is. Also because there are some new grads now coming out with business sense you've got you have to there aren't a lot of jobs available a lot of the time particularly in the equine industry you do have to say yourself you not only have to be a good clinician and reliable but you need to have a few extra things. At the end of the day bills have to be paid and having an employee that's aware of that just makes you stand out a little bit more so it's really important. If a new graduate understands these sorts of issues earlier on then they're going to have a much easier time talking about them but also working with them. I suppose I liken it to practicing medicine. You can't practice medicine unless you understand physiology and I actually don't think you can work in a small animal practice without understanding how it works. There's only one thing I look for in a new graduate is the confidence to work in the business well and by the time you're in your first year of practice there are so many other things coming along you've got to understand it beforehand you need to know how a practice runs because then you'll be able to hit the ground running. The first thing to remember is that from every hundred dollars that you're billing out only 10 to 15 dollars of that is actually available to increase staff compensation be reinvested into the practice go on to pay interest taxes and then a little bit of profit for the practice. Number two is that learn about the commercial environment and know the realities of what you're going into before you enter it so as an undergraduate learn about it. Private practice small animal private practice large animal and then performance animals all have very different cost centers and they're important to examine those and the third one and most important is to be proud of your degree and not be embarrassed to charge for your time.