Episode #83 – Giovanni Abruzzini

Do you work in the animal health industry or veterinary profession? Have you ever wondered how people began their careers and how they got to where they are today? Hi, everyone. I’m Stacy Pursell, the founder and CEO of The VET Recruiter, the leading executive search and recruiting firm for the animal health industry and veterinary profession. I was the first recruiter to specialize in the animal health industry and veterinary profession in the United States and built the first search firm to serve this unique niche. For the past 25-plus years, I have built relationships with the industry’s top leaders and trailblazers. The People of Animal Health Podcast highlights incredible individuals I have connected with throughout my career. You will be able to learn more about their lives, careers, and contributions. With our wide range of expert guests, you’ll be sure to learn something new in every episode. Thanks for tuning in and enjoy the episode.

Welcome to the People of Animal Health Podcast. Today’s guest is Giovanni or Gio Abruzzini, president and CEO of Virbac North America. Since stepping into the role in 2023, Gio has been leading the company’s commercial and industrial operations across the US and Canada with a focus on sustainable growth, innovation, and profitability. Prior to Virbac, Gio spent more than 26 years at Johnson & Johnson holding senior leadership roles across Europe and North America. With deep expertise in strategy, marketing, and global leadership, Gio brings a uniquely broad perspective to animal health. Gio, welcome to the People of Animal Health Podcast, and how are you today?

Thank you, Stacy, and thank you, everyone. I’m doing great. It’s awesome. It’s Friday afternoon, and it’s looking great, so thank you.

Well, I’m so excited to talk with you. And Gio, I’d love to start off at the beginning. What was your life like growing up, and where did you grow up?

So, that’s a great question. So, I don’t know if I already grown up yet completely, but I’m trying to do my best. And I’m from Italy. I’m from Rome, Italy. So, I grew up in a big eternal city, Downtown Rome from an Italian family. That’s the way we grew up. I’m the youngest of five children. I’m the baby of the family. So, it was very interesting to have that different perspective, seeing all the big guys doing great things and you trying to grow up right behind was a fantastic way of being in Italy, of course, and in Rome, a city full of art, full of activities, full of tourists, and gave me the opportunity also to continue my study over there. So, then I just had a lot of opportunity with the family, of course, to follow the steps of some of my older brothers that were giving me some directions and then take my career from there onwards.

When I started working, I started traveling around the world. So, I came up from Rome and I’m a Roman, but from Italy, but at the same time are citizen of the world. So, I’m sure they will have the opportunity, but I’ve been traveling extensively, living in many different places after that.

Well, I love the fact that you come from a family of five kids. My mother was the youngest of five kids, and you may not know this, but I have five kids myself.

Wow. That’s definitely a handful. I’m pretty sure.

It is. Well, Gio, you stepped into the president and CEO role at Virbac North America in March of 2023. What were your top priorities in the first 90 days and how did you assess where the biggest opportunities and challenges were?

So, first of all, I had to figure it out what was going on. I was not coming from the industry and coming from a very different company. So, coming from a behemoth and probably one of the largest pharmaceutical company across the globe and going into a different type of company. And secondly, just talking about animal health. I’ve never been in animal health. So, I was definitely positively surprised that everybody that I was talking to probably have been in animal health for 20-plus years and 30 years and everybody was a veteran and I didn’t know even what we were talking about. So, the first step was definitely understanding the animal health business. But let’s step back for a second. There was a big mandate that I was given at that time that bringing Virbac in North America to where we should deserve as a company. What do I mean by that?

That is outside the North America business, Virbac is having a much higher market share, much higher and differentiated portfolio, much higher presence in the market, and in the US was not as developed as the rest. And we know all that the North America business is the largest market globally and definitely was a priority for the business. So, my key focus was trying to understand why. And I’m a big fan of the question why. I love asking why, why, why as many times we can. And so, that was probably one of the key focus area, trying to understand why Virbac North America was not as developed as the rest of the world. And one thing that I can tell you that I try to understand that by asking the question to multiple people, I started with people out in the field, actually our customers. So, even before I started, a couple of weeks before I started, I went out and asked people in my friend community if someone knew a veterinarian.

And I showed up at the vet office basically, and I did a full day of staying in the vet even before starting. And the question was trying to understand not only the work that the veterinarian was doing, but also understand what did they know about Virbac. I didn’t say anything that I was going to work with Virbac. I would just say, “Hey, I’m interested in learning more about that market.” And that’s where I started starting getting feedback and opportunity to understand what is the market, number one, but most importantly, why Virbac was where we were and how was Virbac perceived? And then of course you start from the external view that is one of the most important elements for me at least is critical. And then you move slowly into the internal view. So, then you ask, of course, your employees, your historical people around, your leadership around the world and people on the ground.

And I spend probably majority of my first 90 days out there in the field and out there with our people. I like to believe that the obsession of getting external and outside feedback is one of the most powerful tool that you may have to understand what the situation is. So, that was my priority and how I focus in my first 90 days in Virbac.

What did you find, if you’re willing to share?

So, one of the first thing I learned that from a conversation with that famous veterinarian before I even started, I asked, “Hey, what do you think about Virbac?” And they told me, “Oh, they are French and they have some good products on the dental category.” And that’s it. And at the same time, I went back to Carros actually in France in our headquarter, and I was having a conversation with the team over there, and they explained to me the whole huge history that we have in Virbac and the massive business that we have around the world and some leadership position that we have in some markets. And probably I’ve learned that we have one of the most extensive portfolio of any other company in animal health that we can go from pet nutrition on one side to euthanasia on the other side and a lot of things in the middle.

And so, I had this stark difference of saying, “Okay, the market is saying, ‘Hey, they’re French and they have some products where they’re good.'” While on the other side, I realized that we are way more than that across the globe. So, my first insight was there is probably a big disconnect on how we are going to market. There is a big disconnect on how we are making sure that we reach out to our customers, we organize our priorities, we execute in the marketplace. There was probably a big gap versus what we have done around the world versus what we have done in the US. And so, to me, that was probably one of the most important insight that we have been not able to drive the North America business in the way we know how to do it globally. So, there was a loss in translation, let’s put it this way.

How have you been able to pivot to improve things there?

So, so far, I could say there is always a journey. We are very excited and very proud of what had been happening in the last few years. I’m pretty sure that if you guys had the opportunity to look at our earnings report, there’s been a critically, Virbac continued to grow very strongly globally, but the North America affiliate has been the fastest growing market and the fastest growing affiliate. So, when I look at least from where we were before, where we are now into our projection to grow, we see that the results are starting to happen. Now, am I satisfied? Probably not. Am I happy? Probably yes. So, are we happy but not satisfied yet where we’re going? There’s still a lot of work to be done, but you start seeing the market reacting positively on our actions and we see also the results coming along with that. So that’s pretty exciting so far.

That is exciting. Congratulations on that. And Gio, I’m curious, after more than two decades at Johnson & Johnson, what motivated your transition into animal health and what surprised you most about the industry once you made the move?

So, first of all, the reason why I moved from pharma, let’s say, or from J&J to Virbac Animal Health is really linked to a personal focus. So, I’m definitely very interested in the market and the business where you have both a professional and a very strong technical recommendation. And on the other side, you have the complexity of a consumer pool and channel complexity. That’s where I grew up in my career in J&J, [inaudible 00:11:17]. And at some point, J&J, you probably are all aware, had been moving through some different decision where actually became mostly focusing into pharma and medical devices. So, we spin off the consumer business, we started focusing more into just the purely pharmaceutical business. So, when I look at what J&J was becoming was a little bit of a different company versus what it was when I joined the organization 20-plus years ago, where you had the opportunity to have really not just a pure pharma view, but really a broader market perspective.

So, I was looking more to continue to expand my opportunity into businesses that do have that, what they call the three leg stools. So, the professional, the consumer, and the channel complexity. And that was one of the reasons why I was looking for those kind of market. And animal health is a great example of it, right? It’s really built on those three main pillars. And one of the surprises when I joined that is actually the people. The people in animal health are so different than what you can find in big pharma. There is the purpose and the energy that is in the organization. That’s the first thing that I see from everybody working in that category that’s just amazing. It’s completely amazing. I know that people may decide that they want to work with animals when they are in their teenage. I don’t know if I grew up thinking, “Hey, I want to do marketing or sales for a big pharma company.” I never probably said that.

But when you look at people that want to work in animal health, they actually love to work there. They really want to be in that category and their passion is amazing. And the other piece is the collaboration that is going on in this industry is something unheard of. So, I would not really imagine just to have the same level of connection, collaboration or discussion that we have with the different actors in the market here in animal health, as we have in other businesses. So, the level of connection and openness on trying to work together to do better is much higher. In big pharma, there is probably big walls. That are you ever going to talk to one of your competitors? No, you don’t want to do that. While here there’s opportunity to say, “Hey, let’s learn together. Let’s share together. Let’s build something together.” There’s more collaboration, I think.

That’s what I love about this industry too. And the people and the purpose is what attracted me to this industry back in 1997 when I was working in consumer packaged goods and started working with animal health companies like you said, it’s not very typical in other industries for competitors to collaborate like it is in our industry, and it’s amazing. Well, Gio, you have led businesses across Europe and North America. How has working in countries like Italy, France, Sweden, the UK, and the US shaped your leadership style?

That’s a great question. So, first of all, when you work in so many different countries, when you get to a new country, you have a sudden realization that is happening when you arrive at the airport with your family. I have three children and they all been coming across all those countries with me. Actually, they’ve been born in three different countries. But anyway, you arrive to a country at the airport and you don’t know how to go home. So, you’re not in vacation, you’re home, but you don’t know how to get home. And that’s a realization of saying, “Oh, my goodness, this is going to be a big adventure.” But immediately open up the curiosity of learning and understanding what is out there, right? From the simple thing on how to get home, to how to go to school, to where to go to the grocery store, how to drive on the other side of the road, and you can keep doing all those different things.

Immediately, you start connecting with the idea that you don’t know everything. You don’t know, you don’t. And so, what you need to do, you need to be curious, you need to ask questions, you need to be humble. And I think that is one of the most important thing that you learn when you work across many different countries is the way you lead. And I like to believe that leaders need to have three very critical, if you want, overgrown organ or part of our body. And the first one is our ears, actually. You need to have big, huge ears because you need to be able to listen and you need to be willing to listen. It’s not about being interesting, but being interested. And I think that is the first thing. The second element is making sure that you have a big hand so that you can operate at different level.

And when you are in such different organization, different parts of the world, you don’t know how they work. So, you need to be able to learn that and being able to be at the distribution center of the cold center or in the boardroom. So, you need to be able to operate at a very different level. But the last thing that to me is the most important one is you need to have a huge heart. So, what do I mean by that? That you need to love what you’re doing, you need to love your employees, you need to love your customers, you need to be obsessive by that.

And I think that what shapes you by living and working in many different countries is number one, your ability to hear and that I think is so critical to listen, not to hear. And the other critical element is the ability to love, right? To actually understand that you need to be genuine, you need to be open, you want to make sure to be trusted, you want to make sure to be authentic. And it’s okay if you’re different. It’s okay that I’m leading people here in the United States. I’m not American background, right? Not at all. I found myself many times having conversation about football or baseball, and I have no idea. It’s basic, but you are just not grown up as an American. And it’s the same if I would be in Sweden and learning how to do curling. I’ve never done curling in my life, but I know this is a very simple example, but what it’s saying is that you need to be able to learn and adapt and being always yourself.

So, the more you build trust because you may be different, but you need to recognize the other people may be different and you’re always trying to learn more. So, to me, those are the things that really shape the way I lead and the way you may lead when you are such a broad experience in different markets.

I love that. And I follow you on LinkedIn and I love your LinkedIn posts because they’re very authentic and I can see that you’re having fun. Well, a key part of your mandate at Virbac is growing market share in companion animals, including pet nutrition while strengthening livestock health. How do you balance innovation, profitability, and long-term sustainability across such diverse segments?

So, that’s very interesting. So, three things. Number one, you need to have a very clear view of the goal, the end goal. All those things are happening for a reason, they’re all need to add up to our bigger goal. So, you need to make sure that you have a clear vision of where you’re going and why you have all those different categories or different things or different weapon that you may use depending on what you’re trying to achieve. So, the first thing is really, really working on a clear goal and connect the dots on this. So, that’s number one. The second piece is about the balance between short-term and long-term. And I think that that has been always very important in my career. You need to get short-term wins to buy oxygen if you want for your long-term strategy. Because the overall strategy, changing a culture, addressing a strategy change or implementing big changes in your organization, it’s not going to be quick. It’s not going to be overnight.

And unfortunately, you’re not going to have time because you need to deliver the next month, the next trimester, you need to deliver the next quarter, you need to deliver the next year. You are not going to have time to say, “Hey, I’m going to go slow.” You need to deliver. But the key point, so the second point is having that balance. How you do identify your quick wins and your short-term wins that is going to make sure that you’re going to deliver against those numbers that we discussed, those strategic pillars that you’re talking about while you are working towards the longer term? And that helps you define what the different role, and this is actually talking about my third point that is how do you define the different role of the categories, the segments, innovation versus execution, et cetera, et cetera.

And when I’m talking about different role, I’m very high on prioritization, but I would say I’m more interested in segmentation. And here I do, the cultural shift here. And as an Italian, I just can do soccer parallel. I cannot really focus on football or baseball or basketball. But if I think about soccer, if you look at the headlines, you will always hear about the striker. The striker is the one that is making the goal, the scoring the goal, that’s making a difference. It’s everybody know Ronaldo or Messi or whatever, those guys. But the team, you have 11 people on the team and you have midfielders, you have defenders, you have goalkeepers, and everybody has different roles. So, the point to me is not about prioritizing because you may say, “Okay, if I have a clear priority, I would just do A, B, and C.” It’s not enough.

You need a segmentation when you have a clear role for each of the cars that you need to play. So, you know what are your strikers, you know what are your midfielders, you know what are your defenders, your goalkeepers, and each of them have different role. So, when you define that, you’re able still to focus on the goal. That is the point number one that we shared. You’re making sure that you balance the short-term and the long-term strategy, but the third piece, you know where and how to segment your tools so that you can deliver against that. And that to me is the best way to manage a more complex organization.

That’s a good analogy. Well, Gio, you’re often credited with building models for excellence in commercial execution. What does commercial excellence actually look like in practice and how do you embed it across large complex organizations?

So, I’m a big fan of execution. We all know you may have an amazing strategy, but without execution, you don’t go anywhere. And the commercial execution is definitely a very important point. How do you define commercial excellence? I would say three things. Okay. So, number one, the definition of commercial excellence is pretty straightforward. I use the old definition of it that is making sure that you have the right customers with the right message with the right frequency so that you can achieve the desired results. So, it’s a very simple framework. So, you want to call on the right guys, you want to make sure that you have the right messages and you visit them properly so that you can, or you connect with them properly, so to make sure to give the right message. That’s very straightforward, but that is coming also with a lot of details.

The devil is in the details of what that means. How do you work on a segmentation? How do you make sure that you have the right messaging? How do you coach the people properly and what is the level of coaching of sales messaging or sales process? So, there is a lot of elements behind those three steps that I talked to you, but that is the most important point. The definition of that and aligning to that definition of what we mean by commercial excellence. Then the second point is, okay, how do we bring organization there? And that to me, there is a clear concept that I call it the [inaudible 00:25:01] or the what great looks like. You need to align throughout the organization of what great looks like, and you need to be obsessed by that. At least I am obsessed. What do I mean by that?

If you train people or your sales leader on coaching, it’s not enough that you just train them. You want to make sure that we are all aligned on what great looks like so that they can help each other, then they know what they need to go towards and they can make sure to get feedback or work on the feedback, having a feedback loop. And until we will achieve what we want to achieve and we agree that is what great looks like. So, aligning on that concept of what great looks like to me is a second key step to bring the commercial excellence to life.

And then there is a third piece that is not only KPIs and raising the importance of sales force excellence, but it’s really being out there in person. And I have trouble sometimes in seeing not only sales leader, but business leaders or people in the organization saying, “Hey, we need to improve SFE.” And then the key question is, “What was the last time that you were out in the field?” Oops, maybe a few years ago, maybe never, maybe, I don’t know. And that to me is unacceptable. I think that the whole organization need to be out in the field observing with their eyes and understanding what’s going on. And that gives, first of all, an understanding of what’s going on from a execution perspective, but also gives you a tremendous number of insight, the insight that then you can bring into your function, even if you’re not in the sales function or in the marketing function, in the commercial function.

So, I do expect every single leader in the organization to go out. I mean, we just had a head of industrial operation joining us. And you know what? In the first week, we went out in the field. Doesn’t happen very often to have a commercial industrial director going out in the field the first week. Is that a priority? Yes, that is a priority.

That’s good.

You need to understand how to be out there. And when you have that culture of excellence and commercial excellence, that means that everybody need to focus on it and everybody understand the relevance of it because at the end of the day, that’s what we are here for is to serve our customers. And we see the people that are in the first line, what they’re doing, what the challenges and what the feedback they receive.

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Well, marketing and customer experience have been central themes throughout your career from consumer skincare to medical devices to animal health. How has your view of brand building evolved over time?

Well, brand building has been my first love. I started as a marketer and I really love the brand building idea is fantastic. So, I think that there is a very different conversation that we’re having today versus let’s say a digital age or a social age or an AI age, whatever we want to call it. Let’s call it a modern age versus a more analog age that was probably a little bit before until the beginning of the 2000. So, what is the big difference? Especially brands are built in connection, through connection. So you need to connect with your customers in a way or in another, and that’s where the magic happens, right? But a lot of that connection may happen even where you use the product, but you have an idea of the brand, even if you don’t use the product. And a lot of that brand image is built by the product itself, is built by the delivery of the promises.

And a lot of that is built by the communication. What is out there? How do we communicate as a brand? Now, if we look the more analog age, the communication was all about interruption. What do I mean by interruption? I’m watching TV and I’m watching a beautiful movie and I got interrupted by an advertising or a commercial. I’m reading my newspaper and I opened the page and I got interrupted by what is out there. I’m listening to the beautiful music on the radio and I’ve got interrupted like that. I may be watching my phone and I get a text message on it. It depends on how you look at it. It was a lot of interruption. So, it was pushing the image of a brand on our customers so that we were pushing the idea of what we were and how we want to be seen.

In the current age is very different. You need to be invited by the customer into their life because today I can avoid every single interruption that I want. I can stream music with no interruption. I can watch TV without interruption. I don’t read anymore newspaper. I may go online without interruption. But the conversation is happening not because of the interruption, because it is happening because we are inviting the conversation in our life. When you look at social media, for example, or even just the current search that you went to Google and now is Mr. AI, not even Mr. Google anymore, or Google powered by AI. But the way we ask questions is because we are interested on that, because we’re looking at those conversation. We are generating the conversation, and that’s where we can invite the brand in. So, the brand is not anymore something that is pushed on you, but it’s something that is invited in your daily life.

And that create a completely different dynamic because you need to be able to be part of those conversation. And one of the critical element is the genuinity and the trust that you need to build is massive. You’re not going to invite someone in your home if you don’t know it. You’re not going to invite someone in your home if you don’t trust it. So, the level of trust and reliability that you need to have on a brand is becoming way more critical versus what it was in the past. And so, those to me are few of the key things that are changing or they’re different when you think about brand building.

That’s good. Well, looking back to your early days as a product manager and a marketing intern, what advice would you give to leaders who aspire to build a global career while staying grounded and adaptable?

So, I think we discussed a little bit about the curiosity. I think that stay curious, make sure that you focus on the why, try to be humble and not saying that you know everything, but just be out there trying to understand what the customers really want is probably the number one. And the number two from a career perspective, I would say just let’s make sure that the people focus not on titles, but on portable skills. So, how do you make sure when you go from a job A to a job B, or how to design your career from a job A to a job B is how do I build those capabilities that are critical to bring me where I want to go? So, if I have an idea that I want to do this job or that job, it would be good to understand which kind of capabilities you need to get at that level. And when you’re clear on that, trying to make sure that you find the right job that can help you building those capabilities. So, focusing on not job titles, but focusing more into capabilities.

Capabilities. That’s good. Well, I’m curious, what’s been the most surprising thing to you so far during your time in the animal health industry?

So, I didn’t have a lot of pets actually in my family. And I had a cat while I was in the UK and I brought him over here in the US during my last move, but I never really reflected what is the impact of ownership of animals or pets on your family, on your wellbeing, on your life. And actually during COVID, we moved during COVID from UK to here, the US. And one of the key things, the promise that we did to our kids is when we moved to the US, we’re going to get a dog. Fast-forward five years, six years, we have two dogs now. And the fact that is most surprising is the support that you receive, the love that you receive, the impact that you have from animals into your wellbeing and into your family is massive. So, we are very proud that we started cooperating and working just recently with HABRI, the Animal and Human Research Institute is amazing.

To me, that was one of the biggest aha moment says, what is the value for yourself, for your family, for your health of pet ownership? And that to me was so surprising, so uplifting that it’s really fantastic.

Well, there’s probably been some changes that you’ve seen since your time in the industry. What are some changes you’ve seen in the animal health industry since you got involved? And how do you think the industry is changing right now?

So, I joined less than three years ago, so I don’t have a lot of history from the past, but what you see is that the industry, in my opinion, is becoming more mature and very fast is getting more mature. There is more opening in also getting more and more people from the outside the industry. So, the industry is opening up, is looking for capabilities to bring in and then create an acceleration of development. So, I see that trend of maturity, if you want, to being accelerated dramatically in the past few years. I see that happening. And the other element that I mean by that is also, there is, it’s not a shift of focus, but it is a complementary focus, not only on the medical side, that is the science and the medical is always a starting point, but there is also an understanding that the consumer, in this case, the pet parent centricity is becoming more and more relevant.

So, I do think that in many conversation, this is an evolution. It’s not a departure, the focus into science, the focus into who is making the recommendation, the focus on the doctor that take care about the animal. That is never going to change, in my opinion, but there is more and more interest or a need of understanding what is the impact or what is the benefit or what is the conversation that need to happen with the pet parents. So, those connection and that ability to create a ecosystem, if you want, that goes both from one side, the professional and the other side of the pet parents is becoming more and more relevant. And that to me is a trend that is accelerating as well.

What does your crystal ball say about the future of the animal health industry? What do you see ahead?

So, I would love to have a crystal ball. I ask it for Christmas. I didn’t get it, but I think that would be amazing to have. Definitely there are a lot of changes that are happening at the moment in every industry, especially not only the AI, but as I was saying, the different empowerment, if you want, that you have from a customer perspective, that is definitely going to shape the industry going forward. And I do think that there’s going to be a need, and that to me is a critical point, to better communicate and better connect with the end users. So, I do think that everybody in the industry need to do a better job in that messaging, clear messaging to the pet parents. The innovation, the medical innovation, the science innovation will continue to go in unchartered territories, and I think that is great.

And bringing more and more learning from the medical industry, the human health, I think that will continue to happen and to accelerate because the time of development will go faster and the ability for technology to drive those conversations will be faster. But there is a need of connecting also to the end users, to the pet parents. And that would mean that we need to find ways to better together, explain our value proposition, our problem solving, what are we trying to achieve? What are we trying to do better? What are the different options that are available? All that job need to be doing better because if we are not going to do it, pet parents will figure out by themselves and they may go in the wrong direction. And if we focus on the health of the animal, it’s our responsibility to make sure that the pet parents do understand better what are the choices, whether the options, what are the consequences, et cetera.

And as I said, the other piece is the acceleration of innovation. It will be dramatic because technology probably today, or if we get also some help from a regulation perspective to make it a little bit more agile when we think about our go-to market, it’s probably faster than the past. And so, we will be able not only to have purely innovation, medical innovation for the animal industry, but we’ll also be able to translate successes from the human pharmaceutical or human industry faster to the animal industry. So, I think that those are the two things that will probably continue to accelerate.

That makes sense. Well, Gio, what are a few of your daily habits that you believe have helped you to achieve success along the way?

So, daily habit, the first thing is self-reflection. So, actually, here we go. I have it here. This is my little… I have also a lot of joys. My daughter put some stickers on it. This is the ability to really reflect when I have some time, when it’s our early morning or late in the day, I’m more of a night owl than an early bird. So, sometimes it’s better for me when I’m on the plane, when I’m coming back home, or when it’s late at night, just having some self-reflection. I believe on the power of self-reflection is critical, and I’m not a very nice person to myself. I’m really, really harsh, always. “What did you do well? What can you do better?” And that to me is number one. And number two is mindfulness. Mindfulness, I did a training years and years ago, and I had all my team at that time, I was in Sweden, I think, about the power of mindfulness.

And the way I achieved that, so I need to train. I love sport and activity, and I love to train basically every day. I try to do crazy things, but that’s not because I do crazy things. It’s just because I need time for myself to focus on something that is not just work. I love surfing. So, I may go surfing, and when you are surfing, your mind goes completely in different places. You cannot think about something else because you may drown or you may have issues. I love playing piano. And sometime, again, when you’re playing piano, I cannot be thinking about something else. So, the mindfulness, I do that by doing some stuff that I love that I’m not that good at. Yes, I know how to play piano. I know how to surf. I know how to run. I know how to bike, but I always want to do better.

So, I need to focus myself in doing those things. Basically, I could say, just find something that you love and you suck at it and just try to do that. That’s what I’m trying to do every day because then my brain, my mind goes completely focusing on that and I’m not thinking about something else. So, what means that gives me the power then when I’m thinking about work, my job, or on the other side, my family or my friends or my sport to be really fully present. So, I need to do that. If I don’t do that every day, I always go around with my running shoes. The easiest thing to do, I may go on wherever I am, I hit the gym right after the meetings or early in morning. I need to have that time for myself. So, self-reflection and the mindfulness to me are the most important routine, if you want, habits that I do every day.

That’s so good. I love the piano. I made all five of my kids take piano lessons. It’s so good for the brain.

It is. If you’re good to play sometime, because sometimes you go that [inaudible 00:44:59], it’s not that fun to hear the whole time the same note [inaudible 00:45:03]. Oh, my goodness, that sometimes is hard, but it’s good because it’s so, so much fun.

It is. Well, what advice would you give the younger version of yourself?

Patient. That’s what I would say is probably one of the biggest advice. When you have a lot of ideas, a lot of energy, a lot of things that you want to do, it’s very easy to lose people. It’s very easy to lose people because you may go too fast and you don’t realize that at some point you turn around and nobody’s behind you. And this is probably the biggest advice that I would give to myself. Just make sure that you are bringing the people with you. Make sure that sometime you slow down.

I mean, I hate it when I was, especially younger leader, I hated to slow down. I was getting very impatient, very upset if you want, almost, disappointed. Why you guys don’t get it? We need to go, go, go, go, go. And people are like, “What exactly is going on here?” And what I’ve learned probably is that sometime slowing down is the best way to be able to accelerate. So, at some point you need to slow down, make sure that where you are, make sure that everybody’s aligned, make sure that we are all together, and then the acceleration that is afterwards is way more powerful. And probably when I was younger, I thought it’s a waste of time.

I would just definitely say be patient, make sure that people are following you, make sure that you follow them, make sure that we are all together because we are not going to win any battle, any fight by ourself. We need a team, we need to be together, and so we need to take the time to be together.

I can relate to that. I am very similar to how you just described yourself. Well, Gio, what message or principle do you wish you could teach everyone listening to our podcast today?

So, I’m a big believer in business as in life that actually love is more powerful, way more powerful than hate. And so, when you think about leadership, there are sometimes two very different approaches, even if we don’t realize that. Sometimes we may be pushing down and we may enforce direction and we may lead from the top. And sometimes there’s no hate, but there is probably a need for pushing and not always being able to love the people or love what we’re doing. What I think on the other side is the leadership of love, if you want, is very powerful, and it starts from loving yourself. So, if you lead by example, if you don’t love yourself, you cannot expect people to think that they want to follow you because everybody wants to love ourself. So, we want to love ourselves. So, you need to start there. You need to take the time to do that.

The second point, you need to love your customers because that’s what we’re here for and you need to be obsessed by really loving your customers. And I use the word love because love is way more powerful than anything else. The third thing is loving your employees, loving your teams, loving the people that you work with together with their communities. And I think that when you start pulling together those different level of loves, the impact that you can have in the marketplace is way bigger than not just repression or hate, but just that you may have from a leadership perspective. I think that we need to really have this different kind of approach that is more powerful in the marketplace and more powerful for both not only the customer, the end customers, but also for the people that you work with.

And that’s really good because I think your customers know if you love them or not.

I think so. Yeah.

Well, some of our guests say they’ve had a key book that they read that helped them along their way. Is there a key book in your life that’s impacted you the most?

There’s many books I love to read actually, but there is one book that is very special to me and it’s so special that I know that it’s very difficult to get it in the US because it was not sold in the US. Think about it, but it’s called The Dolphin. And The Dolphin is a book from Bambarén is a Brazilian writer. So, now the story about The Dolphin, and I’ll tell you the story about the book itself. So, the story is just very simple. There is a dolphin that doesn’t accept to live life like all the other dolphins. All the other dolphins are staying safe, close to the harbor. They spend their time fishing and eating, and that’s what they’re doing. But the dolphins had a dream to go out there and had a dream to be discovering new places. He wanted to do surf waves.

He wanted to becoming so good at surfing and discovering new places that he wanted to go in a trip and finding the perfect wave. And so at some point against everything that was told by all the other dolphins, he left that group of dolphin, and he went on a journey around the world. And he met crazy people. He met big sharks, he met big whales, he met a lot of different animals that push him and challenge him and scared him, but help him to finally get to a place where he found the perfect wave and he found a way to achieve his dream. And that book was given to me at that time by my dad when I left for the first time Italy to go, actually, I was very young, was 23 years old, and I went to the US doing an internship at that time.

And he gave me that book and said, “Just remember that you have a very clear view of your goals, of your dreams, not just your goals. Make sure that your dreams become your goals. Never stop dreaming and dream big and make sure that you’re going to go outside your comfort zone. You’re not going to listen to haters or people that are saying, ‘Don’t go there. Don’t go there.’ Just try to achieve your greatest dreams because that will really make you a fulfilled individual. And yes, you’re going to go outside your comfort zone. Yes, you’re going to face your fears. Yes, you’re going to be challenged, but you’re going to live life in a very different way.” And so, I think that that book for me means a lot because it means how it’s important to continue to dream big, having ability to dream, and at the same time, making sure that you go outside your comfort zone to achieve that.

That was very encouraging of your dad, and what a cool gift.

It was amazing. It was amazing.

Well, Gio, you’ve got the mic. What is one thing that you want to share with our listeners of the people of Animal Health Podcast before you drop the mic today?

So, what I can share is that I love the industry and we are Virbac. We are really focusing on trying to collaborate with everybody, and we believe in the power of collaboration to make our industry better and to serve better our customers and our animals and the people that care for them. So, my message would be we want to hear from you. If there are ideas, if there are thoughts, if there’s something that you have in mind that we can work together on, we definitely want to hear from you. We want to connect to people. We want to make sure that we have the opportunity to hear ideas and evaluate partnership. We really want to do good together, and we will be very willing to talk to anybody and reach out directly, reach out to myself, to other people from Virbac. Just let us know what you have in mind because we would love to partner and work together on that.

Well, Gio, I enjoyed having you as my guest today on the People of Animal Health Podcast. Thank you for being here today.

Thank you so much, Stacy. It was wonderful. Thank you so much, and thank you everyone for listening.