Dr Rick Fenny on the benefits of failure

He might have failed his second year at university, but that didn’t stop Dr Rick Fenny from opening practices, writing books, and much more.

  5.5 minutes

Dr Rick Fenny has been thinking a lot about failure recently. It has been on his mind since he was invited to give the second of two talks at his alma mater, the University of Queensland, later this year. The first talk will be given by one of his classmates, world-renowned cardiologist Dr Gary Roubin. “I’m following him, and the title of my talk is going to be ‘What Happens When You Fail Second Year Vet’, because I failed out of Gary's year and had to repeat,” Dr Fenny laughs. “That certainly set me up for life. It seems incongruous, but it's the truth.”

Dr Fenny has been nominated as West Australian of the Year twice. He is the director of multiple practices as well as farms, pastoral stations, an aquarium, and a luxury private resort. He is also a reality TV star of the series Desert Vet. He was chosen by the real Red Dog, the red kelpie who travelled the Pilbara and was immortalised in the 2011 film of the same name, as his vet. He’s also written several books. It’s interesting that it was failure that helped drive his undeniable success.

“I was basically too young and immature, homesick, out my depth, and out my league,” says Dr Fenny, who had grown up in Albany, WA. “I had no real plan. All I knew was that I was a cadet with the Department of Agriculture, they were putting me through university, and they expected their pound of flesh at the end of it. Some of the lessons I learnt by having to repeat set me up mentally for the future. It taught me to not give up, to have a plan and a goal, and to never let go of that.”

Dr Fenny believes the promise of both failure and success are self-fulfilling prophesies. When he failed at university, he could see it coming and essentially talked himself into it. He also then realised that he could follow the same process with success—imagining something, visualising it, working out a process, then realising it. “That's what I've done. I've done little steps at a time, opened this practice and then that practice, and I thought, ‘One day I might do such and such’, and blow me down if it doesn't happen.”

You could say he’s been lucky, and Dr Fenny wouldn’t disagree with you. “Luck is when opportunity meets preparedness,” he says. “An opportunity comes along but unless you're prepared mentally or financially or philosophically, it won't translate into anything. So, when an opportunity comes along, you have to be prepared. I've done that a few times with my other ventures outside the veterinary world, like with the aquarium I have with my son, the station with my other son, and even some of the vet practices we have bought. I've been mentally prepared, I've been financially prepared, and I've been just waiting for the opportunity to come along.”

Dog days

When he finished university and returned to WA in 1972, he was working out of the Kimberley and spotted an opportunity. “I was still serving out my bond with the Government, and I said to them, ‘I want to go to the Pilbara, will you send me there?’ I still had the Government job and Government car, and luckily, they agreed.”

As part of his work around the region, he visited Karratha two days a week, and on one of those days someone bought in “this scungy old, beaten-up dog with bite wounds all over him”, Dr Fenny recalls.

“I took some basic details and treated him and sent them out the door. A couple of days later, someone else came in with him and I thought, ‘Oh, I think I've seen this dog before’, but it was a different person. I said, ‘Is this your dog?’ They said, ‘Oh, this is Red Dog. He’s everyone's dog’.

“And then he must have taken a liking to me, because next time he had something wrong with him, he brought himself in. Every now and then he’d say, ‘I’ll come home with you today’. So I'd get in the car and he'd jump in too. One thing then led to another, with him being brought in to me as a patient. Then he became a friend, then a close friend.”

Dr Fenny treated Red Dog many times over the years, and when he came to the end of his life, it was Dr Fenny who euthanised and buried him. By then the dog’s story had spread, later to be fictionalised in a best-selling book and film. Dr Fenny has written about him—along with other significant kelpies in his life—in a set of four autobiographies, the first of which, Red Dog Vet, is available through his website.

Strategic thinker

It might be stretching the metaphor a bit to say Red Dog taught Dr Fenny the satisfaction of getting something a bit run-down and fixing it up. For example, the expansion of the Pets and Vets chain of veterinary practices came about after one of his clients said they wanted to seek a second opinion from a Perth vet—only because if Dr Fenny was working in Karratha, he must be a B-grade vet as all the A-grade vets worked in Perth.

So he decided to set up shop in the big smoke, where the supposed A-grade vets were. “I bought out a very run-down old practice in Victoria Park,” he says.

“That's been my modus operandi over the years. I have often bought a practice that’s not doing very well, where the owner is jaded and it appears to not be worth very much. I like to make a few changes, apply our model to it and turn it into a much better practice. The difficult part was then trying to be in two places at once and learning how to manage two practices that are 1000 miles apart. Once I'd done it I said, ‘I can replicate this’. That's when I started the third practice in Albany, where I did exactly the same thing. The established practices have had the turnover and the runs on the board to support the fledgling one.”

One of the secrets to his success has been forming strong partnerships, with staff and suppliers. “One of the best things that happened to me is getting a good general manager,” he says. “I try to trust people and to delegate to them, so I put my trust in Celeste and she’s risen to the occasion.”

He’s had a similar long-term relationship with BOQ Specialist, who has helped him finance various projects over the years. “The best thing I've found with BOQ Specialist is their speed in making decisions and executing the deal. With most banks, the fastest they can do it is too slow, but BOQ Specialist has always been very fast, and we've developed a good partnership and a good understanding like that,” he says.

“When it comes to finance, Rick has many interests that are aligned to many passions,” says BOQ Specialist’s Josh van Bruchem. “Our specialist understanding of the finance requirements for our veterinary clients has resulted in quick funding for a range of equipment across his practices. We've taken the headache out of financing that you may typically experience with a major bank. Whenever we’ve worked with him, we've always done it really quickly and seamlessly.”

Dr Fenny adds, “I'd also say that one of my recipes for success is that I have formed long-term relationships with support teams. I think it's very important to develop relationships and then stick to them. In time, it benefits everybody to keep the relationship going.” 

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