Dr Barry Odesnik on the best laid plans

Dr Barry Odesnik originally planned to move to Australia and start his own veterinary practice. But things don’t always go as you plan.

  6 minutes

At times it must have seemed like the universe didn’t want Dr Barry Odesnik to grow his practice. From a one-vet show in 2007 when he and his wife, Lara, started out in Ellenbrook, WA, Vital Vet Animal Hospital had grown to a four-vet practice and was running out of space. “In about 2015, I decided that we were doing well and projections were indicative of us outgrowing the practice,” he recalls. “And then towards the end of 2016, we had a large number of vets moving into the area. So we had a sudden increase in competition. Also, there was an economic downturn in 2016, going in to 2017 and suddenly our turnover dropped by about 20 to 25 per cent.”

Expansion plans were put on hold until 2018, when business started to pick up again. “We could see a slight improvement and we were starting to think, do we reignite this process of building and developing a new practice?” he recalls. “Then in May 2018, we had a fire in the building above our practice. It completely destroyed the top floor. We sustained such severe smoke damage to our facility that we had to vacate it for seven weeks.”

Escaping South Africa

But it takes more than a surge in competition, a significant economic downturn and his practice burning down to dissuade Dr Odesnik. After dreaming about becoming a vet from the age of six, he studied at the University of Pretoria in his native South Africa. Upon qualifying in 1987 he was immediately conscripted into the army, where he served for the next two years.

“Obviously, when you get conscripted, you don't want to be there,” he says. “But there was definitely some invaluable experience, working on your own in rural environments. There was certainly a positive aspect to being a military vet, but when you are controlled by the government, it can be challenging.”

When he’d done his time and started working in private practice, he began to develop an interest in qualifying as a specialist veterinary physician. He even got through the postgraduate honours degree necessary for the qualification, before another hurdle became apparent: South Africa itself.

“Many people we knew had been affected by crime and had horror stories,” he explains. “We decided we wanted to make the move to provide better opportunities for our children and enjoy a better lifestyle so we decided to move to Australia.”

Dr Odesnik's in-laws had moved to Perth about eight months earlier. He worked as an emergency vet for a year then moved to one of the larger corporate groups while he gained the understanding of what it takes to run a practice in Australia.

A fight on every front

“Coming from my own practice in South Africa, it was part of my evolution that I decided to open up my own practice and be my own boss again,” he says. “Once I'd been in Australia for about seven to eight years, I felt that I was now in a position to understand how veterinary science works from a business perspective in Australia. And so in December 2007, we opened up Vital Vet Animal Hospital in Ellenbrook, which was a growing area. There's been a lot of expansion and development in this area, so it has proved to be a good decision.”

It wasn’t a random decision. He had researched which parts of Perth were growing and looked carefully at factors that could impact the success of a practice. “I looked at what percentage of the area were rentals, and we looked at the mean average income. But most importantly, we looked at areas that weren't saturated with vets,” he explains. “There was one other practice in Ellenbrook, so we felt that it was in the right place. We found a building that used to be a land sale office and that's what we rented for the next 12 years.”

As the practice grew, he started to look for a greenfields site where he could potentially expand. The perfect spot was about a kilometre up the road, near a major medical centre so it would potentially see a lot of foot traffic.

“That land had remained vacant for years, ever since we had started this current practice,” he says. “I went to the land sale office here, and I said, ‘I would like to purchase the land. That's where I want to be, but there's no signs of any activity’. The land hadn't been surveyed or anything.

“As you can see, I've fought on every single front. I had to go in and discuss the land and explain why we wanted to purchase it. And eventually, after literally hounding these people, they eventually said, ‘Okay, well, we're going to survey the land’. They eventually released the land for sale and provided us with a thousand square metres.” That was in 2017. He held onto the still vacant land, paying off the interest on the finance for it, while he waited for the economy to turn around. And then, a year later, his existing premises caught fire.

Rebuilding

It was a Saturday morning in May 2018, when the beauty salon on the floor above Dr Odesnik’s practice caught fire. “The nurses had to run out with the practice cat and they didn't have a chance to switch off the air con,” he recalls. “The air con, which is above the practice on the top floor, sucked in all the toxic material from the fire and spread it through the clinic. Everything was contaminated. We literally threw away 50 per cent of the practice. And so it was a very tough moment, because we now had to try and maintain our client base but communicate with our clients that we didn't have a practice.”

But slowly, they rebuilt. At no time did Dr Odesnik think perhaps the universe was against him. “Not for a second,” he insists. “I just thought to myself, ‘We have a problem, how do we solve it? How do we get through it? And how do we get to the other side intact?’”

Even though he had committed himself to developing the new site, finance was a problem. He explored a number of options and was rejected by a couple of other banks. “But once I'm determined to do something, I will not let go,” he says. “I went to BOQ Specialist, who had funded the original practice and had continued to fund the equipment and various items that we had purchased over the couple of years, and said, ‘I need help—what can you do for us?’ They have provided us with a degree of confidence and been very patient.”

According to BOQ Specialist’s Josh van Bruchem, the success of Dr Odesnik’s practice comes down to some smart strategic decisions and good old-fashioned values. “The location of his practice initially, but also of the land release, were excellent,” he says. “But also just their absolute level of service. They are very much a family-run business—Barry and his wife, Lara, started the business and still run it—and the locals responded well to that.

“Ellenbrook is a good strategic position. The area exploded with development and population growth. Plus there were a number of land releases for new development.”

A beacon of good practice

But it has finally got to the point where Dr Odesnik and his staff—and patients—can enjoy a purpose-built facility that’s state-of-the-art. “It is the dream of always wanting to have my own purpose-built practice, but a really sophisticated, good quality, bold one,” he says. “Something that I can be really proud of. My dream of specialising was something I had to shelve. But I've poured my focus into growing this practice and trying to improve it."

He’s yet to make any further plans. But he will likely expand the range of services in the future. Given the last few years, though, it’s more than enough to “just be a beacon of good practice”, he says.

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