Hello, it's Anthony Chadwick from the webinarett welcoming you to another episode of Vet Chat, the number one veterinary podcast in the UK. I'm joined by a very old friend of mine with the emphasis on the word on the word old. Alan Robinson, we go back a long way, don't we Alan, I remember it must have been.

1516 years ago when I went to one of your invoice workshops when I had my practise in Liverpool, and, got to know you, saw all the good stuff that you were doing, and then invited you, I think, to the first series of webinars that we ever did. And you're still talking to me despite the fact that I forgot to record the first webinar we ever did together. So it's, it's good to see that we came through that rocky period and still good friends, at least in my eyes.

Still very much so, Anthony, thanks for having me. On this webinar now just check did you press record, so that's the only thing. I've, I've left it to much more capable people than myself these these days.

We've got Charlie, the AV guru. In control of all things technical excellent. So that was possibly our first mistake is relying on either of us to actually make sure that original webinar worked, but we've learned a lot since then and as you say, we're still here and still doing good work, so yeah, great to be here.

Alan, fantastic to see you. It's always good to chat. Sometimes, of course, we meet at meetings and we sort of say hello to each other, but we're both chatterboxers, probably me a bit more than you, so we don't really get the chance to have a proper conversation.

I was just speaking to another good friend of mine on a podcast and I'm learning all sorts of interesting historical things about them that I really didn't know. So maybe before we start into the podcast. It, you know, fully, perhaps tell us a little bit about your, your background.

I mean, it sounds like you have an accent which is not from these Fair Isles. That's very true. I, it's, not trying to mask it, but I feel I'm multilingual, so trying to cover that.

I've just been back to Australia on a trip, and of course over there they think I'm a posh Australian because I've got a slightly British accent, and over here they think I'm probably an impoverished Australian so I've sort of worked both of those. So, and you, you made the point earlier, very old friends, so there's a long history there, but yes, I'm from Brisbane in Australia. I went to Queensland University, did my, veterinary degree after leaving school.

Worked in a very rural, very remote practise in Esperance in Western Australia for about 3 years, very mixed practise, it was the sand plains of cattle raising sheep, etc. But then they had a racetrack there, and they had small animals. So I kind of buried most of my mistakes there and then I eventually had the usual young Australian need to go travelling, on my knapsack.

I actually jumped on a, Live sheep export boat that was going to Singapore, on my original escape. So I was, we were vaccinating those sheep for anthrax before they actually went abroad, and I just happened to follow the last one on and off we went. But I ended up in the UK, did a lot of locum work, I, I was living the James Harriet dream, to be honest, it was, this is the, Sort of early, early 80s, basically.

So life was very different then. Veterinary practise was thoroughly enjoyable. I think possibly some of the best years of veterinary practise, I had.

I worked in place of my first job was actually in Ilkley, which is not far from James Harriet territory, of course, so I was just in living the dream very much there. I worked for Goddard's or like I think every locum that's ever been here has worked at, worked in a lot of different places. Across the board and just gained the experience.

I eventually, decided to set up my own practise in rural Wiltshire. It was a building being set up as a practise, unfortunately there was a problem in family problem, and they had to sell that, so, my wife and I, took that on, early days, we were painting ceilings and, Setting things up on, on midnight on New Year's Eve and sort of opened the door 2nd of January and off we went, that was sort of the start of my, my veterinary career as a business owner, always enjoyed, The business side of things, maybe something a bit strange in me. I mean, as a reasonably good clinician, I was charming enough to the clients and I seemed to do OK.

But all the mistakes I teach and train at the moment around finance, looking after people and things, all those were barriers and problems for me. I was learning stuff. And of course, even in that, more so in those days, there was no business management taught at university.

Anything you picked up. Was, completely, osmotic for you, you picked it up as you went, and I was perhaps a slightly slow learner, but we, we, we got through stuff in time. But I always loved that interaction with clients, how the, the mechanics of veterinary practise, how it worked, and I developed that skill.

I, in amongst all that, apart from having three children in amongst all that, I also did a management diploma at the local college, just cause I was curious enough and interested enough to go and do that. That did two things. It gave me this management information and, and more importantly, I was mixing with non-veterinary business people, people from nationwide, Thames Water, Atomic Energy Commission, all these different companies, and it was just an eye opener for me to see how that level of commerce worked, but equally, Those people were caught up in a layer of management.

They were middle managements with with reporting structures and structures. Whereas I had total autonomy, I'd go back to my practise. So, I want to do a marketing plan, so I'd do a marketing plan.

And it gave me that freedom to really use the material, dramatically well. And so that was sort of an eye opener for me, and I always felt other things. Being equal, I mean, the practise did OK.

We went through the 80s, I don't know if you remember, but the interest rates went up to 17% at that point. We complained about the 5 or 6% today, but there was a time when life was even tougher. And, you know, just managing all those sorts of things, well, just life experiences.

And it kind of set me up, so, can I do something different? And that's when really I sold the practise in '97, 98, . And decided I wanted to go and do something different, a shift, a shift in my life to look at, business consultancy.

And I think that's around about the time we met, I think, because I was, again, very curious, into other marketing ideas. We, we did stuff with, other marketing and group coaching models that I kind of adapt, I've adapted and adopted. I think I think in that mode as well.

We probably met later, . Allan, but I think I certainly became aware of you at that time, because of course we had the Fort Dodge indices, which was a really useful tool. I had Fort Dodge vaccines.

I actually set up my practise in '97 in in Liverpool. I'd been doing dermatology, I added the practise element in. And fairly quickly I I sort of linked in with Fort Dodge.

And of course that was fascinating seeing all that sort of data. And then of course I also came across John Sheridan who was like probably the grandfather of veterinary practise management in or one of the grandfathers in the UK recently, and I know we both miss him, you know, he's a a great mentor. But that was really the beginning of it, but I suppose in '97, 98, you were very much at the forefront and one of the early adopters of this whole idea of let's.

Work at how we can run practise more efficiently and thought Dodge was, you know, the, probably the biggest example of the work that you were doing. Yeah, all credit to Fort Dodge, they, they set up this programme. I've had about 250 practises, they were collecting data off practise management systems.

Of course in those days, these systems were, Far more rudimentary than they are now, and the fact they got this data in the first place was was a miracle. Proceed and put together. I was asked by, Matt Rowe at Fort Dodge at the time if I could take on the, the looking after it, they had a consultant at the time doing it, but he was retiring.

And so that kind of gave me my leg up into guru ship of, of data, the data guy, the Fort Dodge guy. And again, love the material, loved the, but it was just data until someone does something with data that's not knowledge or information or wisdom or anything else, it's just data. And so I took it on that we needed to organise this stuff and sort of see what the trends were and what, what it actually meant in practise.

And, but I developed a process around that, and a bit of a following for that as well. And I mean, the people in the Fort Dodge, Index community were really people who liked business as well, so very much a like-minded set of people doing that. And I did that for 12 years, with Fort Dodge from year about 2000 to about, 2012, and of course as you know that time Pfizer took it on.

And, and, and moved it on from there, and things have changed in those days. But what it gave me was this, deep understanding and love of that data side of things. And I know that's not the be all and end all, but it's certainly a good baseline upon which practise development, practise growth, even the people development side can come from.

And I think that was the other interesting side. You you and I have both done a lot of Profiling around our thinking style and our decision making style, communication styles and you are very similar to me that we have this sort of factual refining energy and then we have this sort of big picture, . Strategic energy and I think the combination of that means, gives us that entrepreneurial edge, and then good people around us to actually deliver, which is the secret of all these things, of course.

At that time, I was on my own, I was a busy one man consultancy running round the country, north to south, east to west, nearly, doing myself a damage in the process. In fact, in 2009, I had a health scare that said, Alan, just slow down, stop. This is just too much for the system.

And it was, it was fixed and repaired and carried on. But that, at that time, my brother, who you've met actually came over from Australia just to see whether I was all right, which was very kind of him. And he and I actually we started going to some of these internet marketing group coaching, procedures.

I was a member of one of those as well with you. And I thought, here's a model we could adopt. This could work in the veterinary profession.

Many people thought not. And so that's where we started developing the vet, . Coaching model from really the decision was from that point, let's build a business, let's build something bigger and better rather than just me being the one man show.

And that's where the sort of genesis of that came from. Yeah, and obviously I was kind of there at that stage seeing you starting to promote the the that dynamic days that you were doing out of practise and. Of course you've developed that into these groups which, you know, I've been to some of your conferences, there's there's very much a camaraderie and.

A lot of the benefit, which I think we both agree comes from just that peer, development of relationships and then people help each other, don't they, and the, the head if you like of the group becomes, Less important in that sense, and I know also you've carried on with the data so some practises just sort of take data from you as well and and sort of, you, you're obviously the expert at how to, Look at data and then make sense out of it. Yeah, a couple of things in that. So the data side, we've now redeveloped our own Vet dynamics index, and go on our website and you can have a look at that.

There's a free demo version there. But yeah, again, this is a great platform. I've developed a lot of the ideas I always wanted to do with the Fort Dodge index into that, and that's, that's a really powerful piece of work, and we're adding to that at all times, as a, a, a good platform, to run that.

And, and you write about the, the community side of things, what we, we, we now know, I, I, you can promote these courses and come to business things and speech and you know, others are doing excellent work in this field as well. It's now an accepted thing to do business management in the veterinary space. When I started, it was a rare and unusual thing to even consider.

But the real value of it is exactly what you've just said, Antony, it's community. Where is a place I can go with like-minded people that is safe and I can actually talk about these things, and that's what I think we've built very well. You mentioned the conference, we started doing those fairly early on.

That was, to be honest, it was a time saving process because you were seeing 4 or 5 different groups. You know, 4 or 5 times a year, so there was a lot of running around still to see these groups, well, let's just see them all in one place. So we did the conference just through efficiency more than anything else.

And what we got out is this real, real sense of community, real sense of like actually this is like my course we only deal with independent practises, we don't deal with corporates because they have their own structures and own support mechanisms to build into that. But we are really here, and independents don't really have that. It's kind of in the name they're independent, therefore, they're on their own, very much so, and we, we were sensing a degree of, distraction, loneliness, not connected to the system and people working very hard, very dedicated, doing, good work, but just disconnected from the profession and from each other, and I think we provide anything, it's that reconnection, it's that community, and we're really quite proud.

Yeah, I'm, I almost saw my practise, you know, 2000 and. At 11 to look after sick parents, and so I never really got as involved, but obviously I've come to, you know, most of the conferences and you get that real feeling of that friendliness and, you know, friends coming together, sitting on tables, you know, for the meals, etc. There's a real camaraderie around the groups and even, you know, I know you've had individual groups develop over time, but people mix together at the at the conference, so it's, it's a really powerful thing and I think you're right, you know that.

Kind of feeling that you're on your own can then lead to bigger problems. So the fact that you can go and chat to, you know, people at Vet Dynamics or, you know, amongst their peers, I think has been a, a real massive help for, you know, for many vets I'm sure. And then I noticed some of your alumni then go on to win all these awards at spivs and things, so the the award ceremony obviously something you've done at Vet Dynamics and.

Again, I think it's a real fillip for practicers if they do get an award. Obviously spivs are now doing them as well. And of course we've at London Vet show had the Vet Trust Awards, which is slightly different because, That's not about practise, but it's about what practises and individual vets and nurses think about the various companies and trust is really important, and I think we're blessed within the profession that we have a more close knit, even relationship with vets and commercial people than than the medics have, you know, I know a number of people who've been in the medical industry.

Coming into the veterinary industry and just seeing it as a more inclusive and a more friendly environment in which to work and do business in. Yeah, I'd agree with that, it's massively so as well, we, the other thing I'm now involved with is working with building garden vets at Harper Kellett School, which is a, a commercial enterprise within an academic veterinary. School environment.

So it's a, it's almost a public-private relationship. And it comes back to trust that would never happen. And there's kind of three-way trust there.

There's Harper Adams University, there's Keele University. Just two universities talking to each other needs a huge degree of trust. Then us coming in as a commercial enterprise in the middle of that is the other thing of that.

So the trust is really important and, I think the drive. And as a, it always has been, but post-COVID, the current world we're in, a lot of the uncertainty, trust is becoming more and more important. And the, and what we often forget is that these suppliers, the people who work with us in this profession, often just get treated transactionally, you know, can I get a better deal, what's the discount, how does this work?

Are you, have you got supply or not? I think it's very nice that we have this opportunity through the Trust awards, which has its own history as well, that we can actually give them recognition, give them some feedback to say, guys, you know, you're doing a good job, you're helping out here. And I think that encourages them to step forward because, you know, they're, they're run by budgets and they're run by, you know, corporate top-down decisions, etc.

That don't always align with what we need to do, . But I think it's a great open communication channel that you've created there. And you know, my feedback from the people, certainly the people on the ground face to face with the coalface, really appreciate the fact that they're getting some acknowledgement and feedback through the trust awards.

And it's a, it's just a great thing to do. I think we were talking about it before we came on and I'm, I'm not sure either of us know who created it, but I think it was a dual effort. And, and probably people like Vicky and, and Catherine have probably done more than we have cos we just occasionally come up with slightly strange ideas and then as you said before with the profiling, it's.

It's getting clever people to actually do the hard work and put it into place and make sure it happens, isn't it? Mm. Well, I mean, there's this opportunity at the conference.

We have so many conferences now. So how do you spend your time in veterinary CPDs, but one of those questions. But, you know, we've got BSAB at the beginning of the year, we've got London Vets at the end of the year.

We've got these nice bookends, and, taking these awards, we were doing a, a, I think, members, you've got members, we've got members, we're doing members appreciation event. We have pizza and prosecco, come along, have a pizza, have a prosecco, have a chat and just meet up some people. And that's all it was, it was not a sales pitch or anything.

That was just our, our nice thing to do. And then you were, I think, had the idea of the trust awards, or as you say, I think you borrowed it from somewhere else and saying. Let's do this acknowledgement thing, and the natural thing to do was, well, we've got this forum, we've got these people in the room, we've got them with a bit of prosecco inside them, let's do it there, and I think that worked out really well, in that process.

And of course what it also then it it because people were up for awards, it did bring in the commercial element to it as well, so it became, In a, in a nice social environment, people could just shoot the breeze. It wasn't a commercial enterprise in any shape or form. I think that's the nice thing about it.

Yeah, I think we both have been good at borrowing, or as I like to call it, R&D rip off and duplicate ideas because we've probably got to at least mention, Daniel Wagner, who we both worked with, we did a Mami together with which I know we both thoroughly enjoyed. Sometimes actually the best ideas are just in another industry and, you know, you went into the business world to look for stuff. I went into the internet world, and that was what brought, Webinars in because I just saw even Esa talking about webinars and I thought, why are we not doing this in our own profession, you know, I wasn't really that involved in education.

I did dermatology, I went out and did a few lectures. But it was interesting, you know, it wasn't the traditional companies who'd been around for a long time, who liked the market the way it was, who said, oh, let's go and disrupt and do virtual online education. You, you sometimes need to have somebody who comes from the outside or, Comes from the inside, but sees the problems in the way that the producer doesn't always see the problems, you know, it's very much what does the vet think and obviously the reason webinar vet I think moved very quickly was, I was a practising vet, the pain I felt was being felt by other vets who didn't want to go to evening meetings after a long day or nurses.

So you need that sometimes, don't you have one, bringing people in from the outside or going outside to look, because we can as a profession. Be quite conservative and a bit navel gazing, so it's. To bring new ideas in, sometimes you just need to look elsewhere because the future is already there, isn't it?

Yeah. No, this, . Going outside the profession I think is really important, you know, we can go down different, we know the profession is somewhat impoverished at the moment, it's got its problems for sure, and it needs some level of disruption, reinvention, and take, and that can, will be and could be painful for the whole profession, but we're seeing some good stuff happening out there, we're seeing people picking up the banner.

Some of the new business models, so Garden vets for one is one of those disruptors, innovators, and what we've done is brought in expertise from very much outside the profession who've come in and just looked at and said, Why are you doing it like that? Why, why would you do it that way? Well, you could do it this way.

But we've always done it that way. So we, you know, we're, we're doing this. I think the veterinary internal knowledge is one thing, and, but bringing in that outside and then forming this partnership.

But if you look at some of the other, Business models out there, veterinary practise business models, you've got Creature Comforts, you've got Snooks, you've got, can't remember them all now, coming through that are really looking at a different way of delivering veterinary care, different way of looking after the people in veterinary care, and it's really, really encouraging that these things are happening on multiple sites, almost emerging. Together, but independently. So the thought in, in the work is that, and all of them, if you look at them, the important feature of it is exactly as you said, Anthony, a, a, a veterinary plus external partnership, that bring in the expertise but keep the veterinary, prospect of it.

Yeah, not to put too fine a point on it, I think some of the corporate entities, the, the large employer groups, Are losing out because they haven't kept a veterinary balance in there. Some of them have and doing that quite well. Others have lost some of that, and it's kind of falling more to the commerciality rather than the veterinary.

And you do see a difference in my observer of that loss of in and yeah, we are all of us vets like say, well, we're different, and, others could say, well we're just businesses, but I think we're different businesses, very much so. I think we do have our own. Peculiarities that we that that work well for us if we hang on to it, but I, I could be toxic if we're not careful that we don't manage it, so it's interesting times in the veterinary world.

I think it's just I suppose before we forget, the Vet Trust awards are going to be part of the virtual congress this year, so, you know, you didn't mention the world's biggest virtual congress, which happens in February, Alan, but I'll let you off with that. I will give a shameless, nudge for it for people who haven't already registered. And I think it's on the Wednesday afternoon we're gonna be doing the Vet Trust awards along with my other super passion, which is the Veterinary Green Awards, which we've been running for the last 2 years.

How do we facilitate the profession to regenerate into a more sustainable in all of its forms, a more hopeful, cos I think hope is something that's missing, . You know, in in a more environmentally friendly place, cos we as vets should be leading on this, and there's some good things happening, but I think there's a lot more, that we should be doing. But those awards, will happen as part of those veterinary green awards.

I think it's Wednesday afternoon, which is, it's about the 5th or the 6th of February, you can tell that this has been well prepared. Let me look, let me look in the calendar and give you the exact date so that I don't get told off by . By Catherine or by Vicky.

So it is the 7th, Wednesday, the 7th, I think it is that the, that the awards are, are happening. So those of you haven't voted, by the time this comes out, it may have closed, but do feel free to, to come to that, to come live is, is free of charge. Well, I would endorse both the, the, the, your virtual conference.

I've been on that in the past, and I've been a speaker on that in the past, and that's always a, a good event. There's some hidden gems in there. I, I, I was really surprised having been a speaker and then sort of gone through some of them.

Obviously, most of my interest is on the management side and the people side, and you've got a lovely mix of of content in there, and I mean, and of course it's just there, you can just go and access it at any time afterwards, just as the beauty of it, attending is, is great as well. The, the Green Awards is something new and well done for putting that together. Slight danger is there.

It's an award ceremony, and it celebrates those people have done stuff, you know, well done you, etc. But what it really should be doing is encouraging people to say, well, what can I now do on the back of that? I've seen what other people have done.

And it's not about getting the award. It's about getting a planet that stays on, stays around, it's kind of the trick with it. But I think the other part of this is, can we think about it broader than some of these slight stovepipes we're in, you know, regenerating the world, sustainability is a very important thing.

You could say, well, I haven't got time for that, I've got too many other things, and then it falls to one side. But if you start to encompass it. Within things like business, like sustainability, like people first, like technology, suddenly you've got a broader base to work from and we, we work on a principle of regenerative economies, so which is actually looking at the broader view.

So, you know, there's, there's diff there's, there's certainly financial capital, that's, that's kind of what business does do, but there's natural capital, there's keeping the planet alive, there's . Human capital, there's the people we work with. There's social capital, that's the environment, you know, the social environment we work in.

There's manufactured capital, the stuff we produce and make, and we should do that, ecologically and economically as well. And, and I think that's part of the education process of all these award processes and things. That there is a bigger picture that vets have certainly an influence on, but also a responsibility within to take charge as business owners, but just as human, you know, conscious human beings on this planet.

We need to be standing up and say, hang on a minute, I, I might be able to save the planet, but I can save my bit of it. I think it's, it's a really great point, Alan, because there, there was the BVA survey which said 89% of people, you know, vets and nurses are, you know, concerned about sustainability, want to get involved. And then when you actually talk to people, they go, but, but how, you know, how do we start?

And, and actually it is the old adage, you know, a journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step. There are simple things you can do, you know, let's not have plastic. You know, Coke bottles in the practise, if you want to buy a drink, let's all agree that we're gonna go more with aluminium cans which are, you know, beautifully recyclable and, and very circular.

And, and so as part of the Veterinary discussion, sorry, part of the Veterinary Green Awards, we do a two hour sustainability summit before, and that's very much showing people in more detail some of the things that you can do, you know, from speakers who are already doing work in the area, sometimes bringing people from the outside, cos it's good to see, you know, people like investors in the environment, what they're doing. And just encouraging in the first year we had 300 people at the award, you know, the good thing about webinars is you never know how many people are in the room, and I was thinking it might be one man and his dog on a Wednesday afternoon in February. But we got 300, you know, connections, obviously some of them in practises where perhaps a vet and a nurse were watching together because, Trying to do this on our own in a practise is difficult.

We need management to buy in. We need, you know, people at all levels to really believe in it. And then this year we had 450 on, so it's obviously something that people want to know more about.

We've got the Investor in the Environment awards that people are taking now. And it was actually even interesting the first year we did the awards. I was one of the judges.

I don't judge it anymore because I want it to be independent. And I had myself and two other people, both of whom were female, and we had two people we just couldn't separate and I'm going, well, we must find a winner. And actually women who are often more collaborative, I don't want to be accused of being generalistic, but.

They said, well, why don't we just share this because actually in the end. You know, if we're going to compete on sustainability, you know, as practises, as businesses, we are the worst of fools. We have to collaborate in this area because if we're learning things, we're almost duty bound to share that even with competitors, in my view.

Yeah, exactly right. Yeah, it has to be, . It's, it's sort of in, in the nature of what you're trying to do, what we're trying to do is preserve an ecosystem.

So if we're not producing ecosystems, if we're producing hierarchies, we're defeated from day one. It's not, there's not winners and losers in this, it's all in or all out this kind of question. So you know, applaud that, that approach.

And award ceremonies always tend up a little bit competitive, you're not right, but I think you, if it's pitched well, it's, here's some really good ideas. Here's some people who have really committed to this, and a few of our members are very much in that, that realm. They're doing some marvellous things from a.

Sustainability point of view within their own practises. And, they're sharing it with broader membership all the time, and that makes a huge difference. And I think at the dinner at Dynamics with the main, vet group, and, and they're doing some amazing work.

Obviously village vets inform the solar panels on the roofs, you know, . Kate and and Howard. They're, they're not wacky things, they're just straightforward activities.

But, you know, if everybody put a solar panel on the roof in the veterinary prep business, you know, that would be transformational and that's where we've got to start moving people. It's obviously some things are more expensive than others, and perhaps it's not affordable for everyone, but if you have money in the bank, putting solar on your roof is a very sensible and in fact a very economically sensible thing because, It makes you money in a way that if you put money in the bank at the moment, you're probably not getting a 20% return on it. Yeah.

Yes, well, and, and it's that cost of living and everything else, energy, etc. We've got to move in that direction anyway. That's.

And we're doing something good for the planet, which is pleasing everybody then, isn't it? Alan, just to finish, because I, I'm, I'm, you know, I wanted to just talk about Harper Keel cos obviously I was there for the opening of their new building. Really impressed with what they're doing.

As you say, even just two universities coming together is a big trust thing. You then bring in a, a slightly crazy Australian into the mix and then that makes it really, I'm being facetious, you're not crazy, I know, but bringing, bringing you in. I was very impressed meeting Jason who I think is a Kiwi, doing a lot on psychological safety as well.

So there seems like there's some really good things going on and I think what I also kind of perceived was, Trying to create GPs because that is the majority of the profession, so you have to give them things that they're gonna be seeing on a daily basis so that when we leave university. There's a number of things we can do immediately and be useful, because that also builds our confidence. If we've got a, a, a baseline knowledge that we can immediately apply, that helps to build, doesn't it, after, you know, when you do CPD afterwards you can build and and learning from experience, you know, in the practise as well.

Yeah, I think the Harper Keel vet school of taking a very radically different view. I mean, every school that opens up will say they've taken a radically different view. And we've seen it since, you know, Nottingham and Surrey, etc.

Have been sort of part of that evolution of the education system. But one of the key things in veterinary education worldwide, not just in the UK, is exactly what you've just said there, that the students, Well, the veterinary veterinary teaching is a little bit of an edifice to specialisms and so it's run by high-level academics, the students get exposed to interesting but not probably not very practical approaches and so they graduate with not the basic skills, and I think there's a general trend out there. Some of these new graduates are brilliant, I must say there's some superb things that I've been involved with some of the 4th years here in their business studies and things.

Some really good people, very passionate, but they, they, we're, we're kind of educating them for a business model that doesn't exist anymore. And we've got to change that. So we, our, our view is to bring in first opinion, primary care, emergency, critical care, skills and capabilities.

So we want every student to put in 25 catheters before they graduate, not the day after they graduate, they have to start fumbling around. That sort of thing, and I'm, I'm being a bit ingenuous around some of the education. Equally, Harper Keel have changed the entrance criteria, wanted to broaden out the the accessibility of veterinary education to a broader market, .

So they've lowered the 3 A stars to something more like, you know, B's and C's and that, and, and maybe not three sciences, but you can have some humanities and other sort of stuff. Maturity is an important thing. So if you had a previous career, previous degree, or done others, veterinary nurses are a prime candidate for this course, you get the higher grades.

And I think I met somebody at the BBA dinner who I think was at Harper Keel might be somewhere else, but was a veterinary nurse and you're right, these are very practical people who will come into the job with a lot of practical skills and knowledge. Yeah, it's an experiment, we won't know for 5 years whether it's actually worked or not. One of the, this interesting thing came out, we, we know there's this gender bias in the profession that we 80% are are women coming through, and there seems to be, and it's, and the thought was, well, that's a selection process.

It's just that girls do better at high school, they get the higher grades, because they're asking for higher grades, that's who gets in. Even without the shift, and this is what, Mike Cathcart will tell us here head of head of curriculum and, and the juice, even with the shift of entry criteria, it's still about 80% women coming through. OK, it's just naturally that way.

It seems to be that's the attraction, the profession attracts that, which is fine. We've got to be careful of some of the assumptions we make of why we are the way we are. The other thing we needed was more diversity, obviously different ethnic groups coming in as well.

That's, that's gonna be a slow burn as well, I think, because there's a, Kind of Resistance built into the professional entry, but there's also a a a thought out there that says, well, I can never be a vet, particularly if you come from inner city London or something, or you're in that particular ethnic groups. So that's a, that's a piece that has to be worked on as well. So it's, it's, it's interesting times.

And then our business model is to remove what we call the suckiness of veterinary practise, all the things that actually burn out anxiety, stress, and damage, etc. And that's systemic, it's not, What we're trying to remove is a stigma on people. Well, you're a bit of a snowflake, you can't cope, you know, when I was a lad, I had to do 3 bitch days a day, blah blah blah.

It's not about that. It's the systemic business model does not work, and we need to change that radically. So a couple of things, you know, people first, number one, that we really look after people.

That's been hard because. People come in with a mindset of, well, you know, this is the way it is, this way it works, and this way, I need to act in this. We need trying to change people's behaviour.

Technology, huge part of it as well, so we can adapt, adapt and adopt better technology. To ease the cognitive load, to ease the emotional load. You mentioned Jason, he's a clinical psychologist on our, board, and he's developing well-being and performance processes.

We've got a whole team of, learning and development specialists working with us as well. So, it's a pretty impressive thing. Key thing is the subscription model.

So we've taken out the discussion of money in the consulting room. We've moved that to a different place because people are paying a basic subscription for all their veterinary care. So they can get that get two things with that, takes the discussion of money out of the room, but two, it creates a heavy primary first opinion caseload for our students to learn so much better and quicker.

So yeah. So what's this space. It's fantastic.

I know it's been opened to a couple of months. You've got the clients coming in, people are putting in catheters and doing all sorts of exciting stuff, so. I just wish you good luck with that, Alan, and obviously the, the continued success both the garden vets but also the the vet school which you know, on my viewing of it, it, it looks a really promising er project.

Yeah, well, what will make the difference here, Anthony is, is, is you and me and the rest of the profession collaborating and working together exactly as we are in sharing this information. So, well, well done you and Webinar vet for all the good work you do in the profession. Well, and, and seeing as this is becoming a mutual appreciation society, and thanks for everything you're doing at that Dynamics as well.

We're massaging our egos, but the main thing is that the . That the profession is, you know, as I, I'm, I'm not gonna say elders, but you know, a bit older, we, we do have a responsibility, as you said before, you know, this, oh well, we used to do 5 pitch bays a day and all that sort of stuff. I think it's important that we're there to support the profession and, you know, make sure that people stay in love with it because it is one of the best jobs in the world.

And yet somehow we've managed to turn people off and we need to . I know you're doing a lot of work on that and please continue and, you know, come back and do a podcast with us when you know what the answer is. OK, I'll hang around for long enough for that.

Thanks for having me on, man. Thank you very much. Yeah, I appreciate this.

Thanks for your time. Take care. Thanks everyone for listening.

Some really important issues I think that Alan's, looking at and discussing, so, thank you so much again, Alan, and thanks everyone for listening. Hopefully see you on a podcast, a webinar, or who knows, even face to face sometime soon. Take care, bye bye.