You may know Dr Glen Richards as the 'growth guy' from Shark Tank Australia.

He's also a successful leader and entrepreneur in his own right, having built a successful veterinary practice which grew to a number of practices, before 'thinking big' and bringing together other practices under the banner of Greencross.

As co-founder and CEO, Glen oversaw incredible growth which culminated in Greencross being listed on the Australian Stock Exchange.

Today, Greencross owns and operates Australia’s largest network of veterinary practices with over 150 clinics including general practices, speciality and emergency centres, pathology labs and pet crematoria.

Greencross is also Australasia’s leading speciality pet care retailer with over 200 stores, operating under the brand names of Petbarn and City Farmers in Australia and Animates in New Zealand.

In this episode of Think Big, Act Small, Dr. Richards shares his experience in leadership, business growth and the importance of employee engagement.

TRANSCRIPTION OF TRISTAN'S INTRODUCTION:

Welcome to episode one, I'm Tristan White today's very first episode has an interview with a wonderful Australian leader and entrepreneur by the name of Glen Richards. Glen is most famous, recently, for being a shark on the TV. He's one of the starts of Shark Tank Australia and if you've watched at least one of the episodes in the last few years, you'd know that Glen is the shark that sits on the far right of the screen. He likes to call himself the growth guy on Shark Tank because he's going businesses and growing the people within them, is his thing.

I first met Glen at QUT uni in Brisbane almost 10 years ago. I was there studying an MBA, a master's in business, Glen was guest presenter and we connected then, and I've been so fortunate to have Glen as a mentor ever since. Glen's career started out as a vet surgeon, working with small and large animals. He studies and Queensland, has worked in Brisbane, in Townsville and in the UK, in London. He started his business career in Far North Queensland, Australia, where he founded a small veterinary clinic, which quickly grew into a number of locations.

After a few years, Glen decided he wanted to think big and create something even larger. He found some other vet practises with a similar vision, and together, they created Greencross Vets. Greencross Vets has become Australia's largest group of vet practises, employing over 2000 people around the country. Glen was the founding CEO and led Greencross for almost a decade remains as an important non-executive directive on their board. Glen has taken his learnings from Greencross and now invests his time, money and experience into other business and other entrepreneurs, especially in the healthcare world.

From the chat with Glen, the one thing that really fascinated me was that he said that many small business owners think too small. That's an interesting idea, I'd never heard that before, I'd never considered, it was an interesting idea and just one of the really great learnings from this conversation with Glen Richards. Alright. Lots of things to lean, that's it from me, let's dive straight in to the interview with Glen Richards.

Find out more about Dr. Glen Richards

About Tristan White