After graduating from university, Nerida Richards had some life and career choices to make. And she recalls thinking, “I don't need to do things the way other people do them.”
This ongoing decision to shoot for what she truly wants – and knowing herself well enough to turn down what she doesn’t – has seen Nerida forge her own path through a career with an abundance of interesting work and clients.
Including, literally, a king.
Country girl at UNE
A country girl who enrolled in a Bachelor of Rural Science at UNE, Nerida lived in Duval College and has “just so many beautiful memories of time spent with people and playing sport and having fun”.
Becoming a rural scientist meant she was able to understand the whole production system, starting with pastures and soils and ending with livestock. After her undergraduate degree, she completed her Honours in Dairy Nutrition, and then a PhD in Horse Nutrition.
“I actually had a job lined up with a company when I finished my PhD, but as fate would have it, I was in an interview with them and a couple of other people walked into the room.
“All of those people made comments about working with this particular company, how there was a lot of travelling involved. I hate to be away from home a lot, and it really made me rethink.
I don't need to do things the way other people do them.
“From a very young age, I wanted to run businesses, and I thought I’d be a consultant. And I had people saying to me, ‘You can't be a consultant, you need to go and get a job and get some experience’ – and actually, you know, it probably would have helped.
“But me being me, I thought, ‘Ah, I don't need to do things the way other people do them.’”
Nerida landed her first consulting job for an equine feed manufacturer in Gunnedah NSW, taking on the formulation and technical nutrition work. Under her brand Equilize Horse Nutrition, she picked up work for companies in Australia, the US and Japan. “I was good at nutrition. I ‘got’ nutrition. I love it. I was just good at coming up with ideas for companies and putting together particular feeds and supplements that worked really well.”
“I was good at nutrition. I ‘got’ nutrition. I love it. I was just good at coming up with ideas for companies and putting together particular feeds and supplements that worked really well.”
I've never advertised my consulting services, ever,” she says. “I just seem to always have plenty of work, which I'm so grateful for.
As her business grew, Nerida says she struggled to find time to take on private clients. She did, however, made an exception for the King of Saudi Arabia.
“I've never advertised my consulting services, ever,” she says. “I just seem to always have plenty of work, which I'm so grateful for.”
During the early days of her consultancy, Nerida developed a feed-formulating software application, which she sold to horse owners. But distributing it via CD and maintaining it was cumbersome. Then she bumped into fellow UNE grad Susan Meszaros, who at the time was building cloud-based genetics software. Susan and Nerida started working together and developed the successful cloud-based horse nutrition calculator FeedXL. They released it to the Australian market in 2008, and then to the US in 2009. But something was still missing in Nerida’s life.
“I had worked from home for 15 years, from a home office. I was going crazy.” She recalls her younger brother – UNE meat scientist, Dr Peter McGilchrist – encouraging her to make a change, saying, “You love people, but you’re working alone at home - you need to get out of the house!” She began the search for some shared office space.
It was just lovely coming back to UNE and being with like-minded people.
In Tamworth, Nerida discovered the UNE SMART Region Incubator (SRI). “I thought it was awesome. It wasn't driven out of the need to improve my business or anything like that. For me, it was just lovely coming back to UNE and being with like-minded people.”
So much more than an office space
But over time, things changed. “Since I got here, the SRI has become so much more to me than just office space – FeedXL has grown massively and we are so much more organised as a company,” she says.
Through the SRI mentorship program, Nerida learned to structure her business, streamline her finances, and update her systems. This knowledge has paid dividends and the team is now 11 strong, spread over six different countries.
Nerida reflects on how her Rural Science degree helped prepare her to be a business owner and believes the rounded thinking skills she learned from taking a holistic approach to agriculture have also equipped her well for her business. “I think you need to be able to step back, have a look at things from a broad perspective and have the ability to critically think, often on the run,” she says, laughing.
Her advice to other aspiring business owners is simple. “Be prepared to do a lot of hard work, but back yourself. So many people told me I couldn’t start a business without working for someone else first, and I thought, ‘Nah, I reckon I’ll be alright.’” And she was right.
