Gene O’Neill, CEO of NAVC, joins Dr. Andy Roark to talk about something most of us never thought we’d live through, guiding one of the largest veterinary conferences in the world through a global pandemic. What happens when your flagship event relies on thousands of people flying into one place… and the world shuts down? Gene shares a behind-the-scenes look at the massive decisions NAVC had to make in the early, uncertain days of COVID. From survey results and postponed plans to sacred cows and cutting-edge pivots, Gene walks Andy through the hard choices, team dynamics, and the surprising wins that came out of the chaos.
Whether you’ve led a team through crisis or just wondered how big vet orgs stayed afloat, this conversation is packed with real talk on leadership, transparency, and making peace with imperfect decisions. Gang, let’s get into this episode!
You can also listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts!
LINKS
Conflict Management Certificate on Vetfolio
Leadership Essentials Certificate on Vetfolio
Dr. Andy Roark Charming the Angry Client Team Training Course
Dr. Andy Roark Swag: drandyroark.com/shop
All Links: linktr.ee/DrAndyRoark
ABOUT OUR GUEST
Gene O’Neill is the Chief Executive Officer of the North American Veterinary Community (NAVC), a leading nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting and advancing veterinary professionals worldwide. He assumed the role in April 2020 after serving as interim CEO since October 2019. O’Neill joined NAVC in 2013 as Chief Financial Officer and was promoted to Deputy CEO and CFO in 2018.
Before joining NAVC, O’Neill held executive and financial leadership roles at the Institute of Internal Auditors, including serving as Interim CEO for IIA-Australia. He also held various finance and administration positions at SeaWorld of Florida and spent eight years as the General Manager of Baseball City Sports Complex, the spring training site of the Kansas City Royals. O’Neill has held CPA and CIA designations throughout his career. A New Jersey native, he has lived in the Orlando area since 1986.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Andy Roark: Welcome everybody to the Cone of Shame Veterinary Podcast. I am your host, Dr. And Roark. I’m here today with the CEO of NAVC, Gene O’Neill, and we are talking about something he wrote that really caught my attention. He wrote his reflection of leading NAVC during the Covid Pandemic, and you’re gonna hear me talk about why that’s important to me.
I just can’t imagine being in charge of one of the biggest veterinary events in the world, which is a live event that people come to. There’s hotels involved, there’s airfare involved, and it’s the global pandemic. I was really fascinated to talk to him more about how he made decisions, how he looked at things.
Does he second guessing himself? Does he question decisions that were made? What changes did they make? What changes did he really not wanna make, does he look back and pick his own decisions apart after they’re over? I ask him all of those questions and it’s just fascinating to hear how Gene thinks about things.
And again, he’s driving a massive ship, and he’s making decisions when he really didn’t know what was gonna happen or where things were going. And so anyway, I just really enjoyed this episode and kind of learning from him. Guys, I hope you will as well take a look at NAVC if you’re not familiar with them.
They’ve got their hive event coming up in Chicago in June, especially if you’re a nurse technician, practice manager. They’ve got their veterinary innovation summit, which is an event later in the year. You can read my column in today’s veterinary business, which is also an NAVC property.
So they just, they do so, so much. It’s hard to explain how big and sprawling NAVC is and how hard it would be, I think to make choices about how you’re gonna spend your time and effort and what you’re gonna do when you have no certainty about the future.
Let’s get into this episode.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: This is your show. We’re glad you’re here. We want to help you in your veterinary career. Welcome to the Cone of Shame with Dr. Andy Roark.
Dr. Andy Roark: Welcome to the podcast Gene O’Neill. Thank you for being here, my friend.
Gene O’Niell: Hey. Hello, Andy. It’s great to be here. Good to see you.
Dr. Andy Roark: Oh man, it’s, it is always good to see you. So I it’s funny, I have a, I have a history with you and I have a history with NAVC, and so those who don’t know you are the CEO of NAVC. You are the interim CEO starting in 2019 and then took over as A CEO in 2020.
I, so lemme give a little backstory here for people listening in. So I went to University of Florida’s College of Vet Medicine and when I was there, Colin Burrows was on the faculty and he was also, you know, really involved with NAVC. And well, it was called the, well it was then the NAVC conference.
And so, I was involved with the VBMA the student business group, and we were a young group getting up and going and, I talked to Colin and I said, would our student group be able to come to NAVC? And he said, absolutely. And so , he got it set up and we were able to have the vet students get together in Orlando in January, which everyone is thrilled about Orlando in January.
And that started a love affair for me with NAVC, which is now VMX. And so only missed one of those conferences and we’ll talk about that today. I always enjoy January in Orlando. I think there’s a lot of Florida grads there, and so when I speak, the rooms are always really, really full.
And I’ve, I’ve always attributed to that, to, to the Florida grads coming out for, for one of their own. But you wrote an article. I saw it go out on LinkedIn recently, and then I also saw it in today’s vet business. So you wrote an article about a five year look back at COVID-19.
It’s called Re Reflections on Leadership and Enduring Lessons Learned. And so I saw this and I was immediately thrilled about it. It’s actually you did this thing where you actually posted something saying, in a week from now, I will release this article. And I, I, I. It totally worked on me. I don’t know how many people it worked on, but I was all about it because one, I’ve been a huge fan of VMX for a long, long time, and there’s literally one of them in the last, gosh, we’re almost at 20 years now that I’ve missed, and it was because of the pandemic.
And then two, as the CEO at Uncharted Veterinary Conference. I got my world rocked by the pandemic and trying to have a live event in a conference, and I have looked back on those years or on that year so often and thought about, did I make the right decision? Did I make the right call? What could I have done differently?
What did I learn? And so when you wrote about this from your position as CEO of NAVC, I just, I wanted to talk to you about it, and I just had so many sort of questions for you. So let me start at a high level here and just sort of say talk a little bit about NAVC and what that is.
I don’t know that people really realize how big an organization NAVC is.
Gene O’Niell: Yeah, sure. A quick summary of what we are and what we do. We’re a 5 0 1 C3 nonprofit association charitable association. So we are in the education space and education is naturally for veterinarians, anyone in the veterinary space, lemme put it that way.
So NAVC is the umbrella organization, but we’re probably more well known for the VMX event that we put on every January. But behind that, behind the scenes, what they don’t really see or, but they may not realize, we are so interconnected with things from a, our publishing arm with titles like Today’s Veterinarian. Today’s Veterinary Business, today’s Veterinary Nurse. So, we have about six titles in the media arm, but we also have an online community. An online education platform called VetFolio, which a lot of people probably participate into subscriptions or just downloading articles or, or white papers.
And it also provides them the opportunity to get certification. So we have a lot of things besides the VMX title that we use as our distribution models for education. The most recent thing that we started that that is getting great traction in the marketplace is our Hive product. Now the Hive product is smaller.
In-person events, but it’s got the flavor and the feel of a VMX and the NAVC touch to it. So very intimate focused learnings for veterinary nurses, veterinary technicians, practice managers, and we take these around the country, so it’s not like we’re asking you to come to Orlando for these learnings.
We’re taking it to the areas where we don’t see a lot of educational penetration in the veterinary space. So, we do have a lot of products in our portfolio, but obviously the flagship of what we do is VmX.
Dr. Andy Roark: So in 2020 VMX was held in January. It’s in the Orlando Convention Center. When did you guys move to the Orlando Convention Center from the old Gaylord Marriott Hotels?
Gene O’Niell: We moved in after 2016 event. we’ve been there since then. Taking it from two campuses to one campus under the roof of the convention center.
Dr. Andy Roark: So we did the conference and I was, there in January and it is lovely and then February, there was other conferences going on and so, we were there and, and Covid was just starting to get mentioned as a thing on the horizon that might become an issue.
And then I think it was really sort of March that, we started to see you know. Oh man, this is real. And I think we’re into shutdowns and things in May of that year. Talk, talk to me a little bit. So, so I just wanna stress this. This is why I think it’s so interesting. You’ve got this event that is massive.
I mean, VMX is huge and it requires a lot of. People to come together in a space, it requires ’em to take airplanes and come and travel. And so you’ve got this huge thing. You’re also dealing with the Orlando Convention Center. This is not like a little hotel somewhere that you’re, you’re working with.
I can’t imagine all the moving pieces and things that you have to, that you have to to work with Eugene. How did you start to receive this news? You’re starting to see lockdowns, things like that. What were your initial thoughts? Did you, were you, did you first think that maybe you could dodge this and maybe it’ll be gone by next year?
How did that realization man, this is gonna be a real thing? How did that settle on you?
Gene O’Niell: It was a period of a lot of unknowns. Everything was new to us. And you know, coming out of the 2020 vmX event. I mean, we were on a high because it was one of our largest events attendance wise and as far as expo wise and, attendance and international travelers, and that was my first event as the interim CEO. So I came out of that and I’m thinking, this is great. we’re gonna run this thing for, you know, the next 10 years and we’re gonna go strong every year and get better every year. And then, like you said, the headlines start to get, you know, a little louder and more frequent about what’s been going on or what’s going on in the country.
And it wasn’t until March sometime when I said this is pretty serious. This is, but I’m thinking we’re still eight months away, we’re still eight months away, nine months away from the next VMX, so, we’ll do the shutdown thing, whatever they’re asking us to do, shelter in place.
And then when this is over in the summertime, we’ll come back we’ll plan online and then we’ll just come back and, pick up where we left off. Through the summertime, you know, after the shutdown, I remember it shut down in March 17th of 2020, everything shut down in Orlando.
We shut the office down. We had just moved into a new building that we purchased and renovated. So it was it was weird. Not to be able to occupy the space. And we just went through the summer months doing what everybody, everyone else was doing, keeping in touch, communicating, doing virtual things.
And then we realized that. We had this event coming up and we’re the first one outta this. We’re the first one outta the gates every year, every January. We’re the first one outta the gates, so we’re getting calls from our sponsors, from our largest partners. we’re, we’re getting emails from potential attendees.
So we decided to run a survey in the community and ask if people would be, and this is like in the fall of 2020, we. Because at this point we hadn’t really canceled anything yet with the convention center or with the hotels because we still have some time to play with. So we asked the community, we sent out a survey and said, would you be willing to travel in January to VMX?
And the responses came back 50 50. But the things that really. The things that really had us leaning towards not having it in January was when we started to hear from some of our larger partners saying that they were forbidded to travel, so they couldn’t come to the event. I’m, so then we started to, you know, mobilize, plan B.
And what I talk about in my paper is, you know, always plan, plan for something else. And we were lucky enough to at least find a time in 2021 at the same location because there were cancellations all over the place for events in the con in the conference convention center events were canceling just, days before they were supposed to happen.
So we were able to find an event with the same footprint as as ours in, June of 21. And we just planned it and no one had gone out yet. And put on a live event. So this was sort of like the first live event after the Covid crisis. Now, it wasn’t a VMX size event from a participation standpoint, but I think the quality of the event was probably a little better because those were the people that really wanted to get back to the live events and they wanted, to network and socialize and participate.
So from that perspective, it was a home run. Because we did what we truly believed was the right thing to do to bring these people back into the live conference environment. And from there it just took off for us.
Dr. Andy Roark: What was your team thinking in like late 2020? So, you know, you’re, you, it’s unknown. You’re sending this survey out. I mean, did what, yeah, what w what was the mood and kind of, how was your perspective that they were looking at you, right? You had to feel like you were the, the captain on a ship who didn’t exact, didn’t know where he was going
Gene O’Niell: Right,
Dr. Andy Roark: anything.
What, what was that like?
Gene O’Niell: No. So that was, so that was one of the things that I learned about, you know, the, the leadership style. You know, I, I, at, at, at some point we had to just make a decision and what was that decision going to be? And, you know, most of my staff and they that, that they are so innovative and so creative and they’re so supportive of what we do for the, for the veterinary profession.
And there was a period of late summer, early fall of not knowing what we should do or could do. And then I just said, listen, this is this is our mission. This is our, business to run. And I was more concerned about keeping that intact, about who we are and what we do. And I said, we have the opportunity not to cancel it but to postpone it six months, five months into June. And, they bid into that and we ran with it. And we planned and, The ironic thing was we planned for the event being in January, but we had to postpone it. So we were somewhat in the planning mode still with, with programs and expo floor and things like that.
So postponing it wasn’t that bad, but during that period, we also had a plan for the next event, the following January, which is only six months away. So that’s, that. That was the crunch that I was a little, I was a little concerned about with the staff, but because we’ve done this year after year and you, you said there’s a lot of moving parts, but it’s pretty, it’s a pretty well-oiled machine when it comes to putting it together.
Dr. Andy Roark: One of the things I always struggle with when times have changed with my team is figuring out how transparent to be with people. Because I want to generate confidence, right? Like I want to be able to answer their questions and I want to be confident. That’s really hard to do when you just don’t know what the answer is. Did, were you transparent when you didn’t know what you were going to do? Did you have a way that you kind of would sort of put people’s fears at ease while you figured it out? How did you navigate that part before you said, we are going to here, let’s do it.
Gene O’Niell: communication to me was the key. And it, and you say, well, how much? And, and whatever amount you do, do more,
Dr. Andy Roark: Okay, good. That’s
Gene O’Niell: Yeah. communication to the point where I would communicate, I don’t know, I don’t know what we’re gonna do, but we’re gonna figure this out. And we, we did it together and sometimes there was a time where we just said, what should we do?
And I just made a decision and we did it. And the team surrounded that surrounded the idea and support it. We just went ahead and did it. It was, as I mentioned in the paper that I wrote, you know, thinking about things, doing things differently and this gave everybody, In around the world, the opportunity to change your model and what you do. So when, when we started to talk about what we can do differently, there was an excitement behind there. And now we wanted to, let that run out, to see how that would play out with all the things that were going on during COVID and things that we sort of experimented with, like online learning and Zoom calls.
So how can we. How could we use that new business model into what we want to do in the future? so they were all eager like everyone else in the world was to get out and to get back to business, but maybe with a little twist on doing things a little bit differently. So I think that’s what, that, that’s what the hook was for a lot of the staff was to, yeah, this sounds pretty cool.
We can do this virtually. We can do this electronically. We can, we can zoom. you know, it, it was a learning for everybody, but, but they embraced it. They, they didn’t just say, this is gonna be the same old, same old way we did it before. It’s gonna be somewhat different.
Dr. Andy Roark: VMX has got a long history, right? So VMX, going back to when it was NAVC going all the way back to when it was Eastern States, like, it’s, it’s, it’s a legacy sort of brand and, and, and experience. And I know like at Uncharted we have sacred cows, you know, we have ways that we do things. We have things that, you know, the staff just says, this is who we are, this is what we do.
What Sacred Cows had to die for you guys to innovate? Were there things that you know had been the way that they were done at VMX that you say, this is, we’re not gonna do it this way, or we’re not gonna be able to do it this way? Yeah. What were the things that had been entrenched that had to be abandoned.
Gene O’Niell: Yeah. I, I, I think it started with saying goodbye to some of our staff that, you know, we hadn’t done since I’ve been here. You know, I, I started in 2013 as the CFO and then, became the CEO in 2020 officially. And we never had a period of time where, where we had to say goodbye to some of our family because we really were a family.
So it started there looking at, taking into consideration the unknowns of what was gonna happen on the other side. Didn’t know how long we could last, you know, and have, you know, having the CFO background, you know, looking at cash flows and you know, expense ratios and things like that. And, taking into consideration the unknowns.
You know, we had to cut some programs and, you know, so that, that was that, that was something that we did that. That allowed us to concentrate more on our core, mission of education. And it wasn’t just being able to provide education, it’s to, it was to be able to provide the education that NAVC does.
So the sacred cows that we, that, that we looked at, one is always making, I mean, we didn’t cut. You know, other than cutting two programs, we really enhanced our sacred cows. So we didn’t cut anything, but it was the way we delivered things. I remember talking to my now chief of staff back then because I, during the summer of 2020, I started to see these organizations pop up with virtual learning experiences. You know, spend the weekend and get eight, eight CE and, you know, here’s a night you can have eight, you know, a, a a, a session on something for three C. So I saw a lot of this virtual thing, these virtual things pop up, and I was a little I I was a little maybe annoyed that we weren’t, we weren’t doing that.
But then I, but then, like I said, in, in what I wrote about is, you know, just remain calm. You know, just take a take, take a breath and just, you know, wait to see what happens. And what we were able to do was not just jump out there into the fray and start putting out education for everybody to get, it was okay, let’s take a step back and let’s, let’s enhance what we currently do and really put out a product there that people are going to.
Expect NAVC to put out there. And that’s when we really invested more in our VetFolio product. So we had more, and now we have our Level Up sessions that came out of the Covid period. We’ve enhanced our certification programs due to the Covid period. So these are things that we waited. We waited and we said, okay, now we have a product that we can put at, put out there and be proud of, rather than just throwing something out there like spaghetti on the wall to see if it sticks.
So, you know, the, the sacred cows that that we had, cutting staff was not something that we were familiar with cutting programs was not something that we were familiar with, but you know, I looked at it from the standpoint as what’s important and what, what was important was sustainability of the business.
And number two is the employees. You know, I understand that we had to, we had to say goodbye to some, but those that remained, I said we have to start taking care of the employees if sustainability is going to be the main focus of the organization.
Dr. Andy Roark: Whenever I have to make cuts, I can’t help but put myself under the microscope and go. Did I do everything I could? Did I read this right? Is there other things, now this is going on in, in the much greater context of the Covid pandemic, so obviously this is wildly out of your control, but Jean, did you ever have those internal thoughts of like, am I not good enough?
Did I do something wrong? Could I have done this better? Or were you able to say, this is a pandemic. That’s ridiculous.
Gene O’Niell: In, in, in retrospect, as I look back at, back on it you know, we had done things even at the leadership level that were that, that were received in unison as a good thing for the organization to continue. And one, one was, you know, I told the staff that I was going to cut my compensation.
I cut my compensation for, the months going through the summer, not knowing how long it was gonna last, and my leadership team. They did the same thing. I didn’t ask ’em to, but they said, well, if you’re going to do this, then we’re gonna do the same thing, because we believe that what we’re doing is it’ll, it’ll pay off in the end.
You know, so when I look back at those types of things, I. I say, you know what, it’s the right team, the right place, and the right time to come together to do this. And you know, I, I look back and, like I said, during the 2020 event, I was the interim CEO I guess ostensibly the board was out looking for replacements for CEOs not knowing if I was going to make the grade or not.
But then, you know, getting us through the pandemic period, at least. I think they had enough faith in me and saw that what we did was the right thing. I guess evidenced by, I’m still here as the CEO, so,
Dr. Andy Roark: Were, were there any missteps that you look back on? Is there anything that you said that you think, I wish I’d done that differently, or I would’ve made a different choice if I could go back?
Gene O’Niell: I don’t question myself on the decisions that we made. Could things have been better looking back, I, you know, we may have miscalculated some things that on the technology side, maybe we didn’t buy enough into the technology because we came. We went into 2020 VMX with a platform that, that allowed us to provide 365 day a year access to the Expo Hall.
We called it VMX 365 and we, we rolled it out in, at VMX 2020. And, you know, we just thought it was a great idea that. the attendees would leave VMX and start visiting everybody’s booth virtually. And that could have been a miscalculation on our part because what we found for the couple years that we ran that program, the greatest time that they used VMX 365 virtually was during VMX.
Yeah. Which was, you know, so I think if we had, looking back, I would say that, you know, that’s probably the one thing, you know, it served a purpose for its time. But again, going back to what do we do and what do we do best? Maybe we didn’t put enough effort into thinking other applications for it.
We did u we did try to use it for, for job postings and things like that. But you know, the marketplace I. Really didn’t want to continue on with that type of virtual experience. They wanted the live experience. But you know, to our credit, we cut it. We, I mean, we cut it when we did, because we realized that for us, this wasn’t going to be the future for NAVC.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah, no, that makes sense. You guys have continued to do really great hybrid stuff as far as having virtual interfaces at the live events. I was really impressed this year with the streaming like on demand video that’s going on in concurrently with the live sessions, and I saw. I saw people taking breaks and, and watching lectures on their phone at the pool, and it
Gene O’Niell: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark: has been amazing watching how people use it.
Gene, thank you so much for being here. Where can people find you online? Where can they learn more about what NAVC has going on?
Gene O’Niell: they can always visit what we’re doing here at navc.com. There’s a lot of information on there about all of our live events, all of our virtual events, download some some documents to read. And, it’s a great resource. Visit Vetfolio as well. That’s another resource that, your listeners may, may like to experience if they aren’t doing it already.
Dr. Andy Roark: Oh yeah. Well, I got I know you guys have, you have an event in Chicago coming up. So the Hive Chicago event is June 7th and 8th. It’s for technicians and practice managers. You want to chime in on that?
Gene O’Niell: I think it’s, it is becoming one of our greatest, smallest events that we can replicate very quickly and get to market very quickly. So I’m, I’m really excited about the whole Hive platform. What’s coming up in, in Chicago is what I would call our standard hive event, which is for the nurses the technicians and practice managers.
But we have other focused hive events like we have one on CBD coming up later this year. We have one on the future of veterinary education coming up. So these are other Hive events but suited for a different audience. But our standard hive event coming up in Chicago is is gonna be a good one.
Outstanding. Well, I put links. I put links to the NAVC. I’ll put a link to your article as well. Guys, thanks for tuning in and listening. Everybody take care of yourselves. Gene, thanks for being here.
Andy, thanks for having me. Good to see you.
Dr. Andy Roark: And that’s what I got guys. I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for being here. As someone who was a CEO of a conference, , I wanted to see what somebody else who went through a similar experience had, and it was not similar.
Uncharted is a tiny, tiny version of VMX. But it’s still wonderful and it’s mine. And I had to make a lot of hard calls during the pandemic about our live conference, and we canceled our conference and it was scary and challenging and, it was tough. And so anyway, I really appreciate you guys coming along and let me get to talk to Gene about what his experience was.
Take care of yourselves. I’ll talk to you guys later on.
