diff --git a/examples/simple/simple.cpp b/examples/simple/simple.cpp
index 10e79a0a..633b87e5 100644
--- a/examples/simple/simple.cpp
+++ b/examples/simple/simple.cpp
@@ -84,13 +84,13 @@ int main(int argc, char ** argv) {
     model_params.n_gpu_layers = ngl;
 
     llama_model * model = llama_model_load_from_file(model_path.c_str(), model_params);
-    const llama_vocab * vocab = llama_model_get_vocab(model);
 
     if (model == NULL) {
         fprintf(stderr , "%s: error: unable to load model\n" , __func__);
         return 1;
     }
 
+    const llama_vocab * vocab = llama_model_get_vocab(model);
     // tokenize the prompt
 
     // find the number of tokens in the prompt