Podcast | Jon Dwoskin

Pete Neubig: Welcome back, everybody to the NARPM radio podcast. I got my special guest here is Jon Dwoskin, who wrote the book, "Think big movement" and, as you guys know from the intro, he's a business coach. And Jon and I have actually been spending quite a little bit of time together over the last couple of weeks. I was on his podcast. He's on mine. We actually had a couple of meetings and really great to have you on, John. Thanks so much for being here.

Jon Dwoskin: Yeah. Thanks so much, Pete. Appreciate you having me on the show. It was great having you on last week on my show.

Pete Neubig: So, in your book, you talk a lot about getting unstuck from your business. So talk a little bit about that. What does that mean? Like what do people get stuck? What does stuck look like?

Jon Dwoskin: Yeah. It means getting in your own way. It means not knowing what your next step is. And that with clarity, it means it's a feeling that you just, you know. Things are getting monotonous. It means you're not growing the way that you want to grow, that you're getting bogged down with things that are not leading activities and you just have lost control of your of your day and kind of how to execute at a higher level.

Pete Neubig: So like, you know, most of our listeners are property management companies. So being kind of letting the tail wag the dog, so to speak, and being involved in everything and having the phone ring all day long, and like, you know, doing the $10 an hour job instead of the high level thinking, is that all kind of stuck in your business?

Jon Dwoskin: Yeah. You know, I think a lot of times, especially in the property management role. There's a lot of little minutia things that happen all the time because you have different divisions, you have maintenance. I mean, you have all of these different people servicing the tenants, the owner of a building. There's so many there's so many moving parts and so many things seem to happen at the same time. And so if your org chart isn't set up, where you have enough people to kind of divvy up the roles and responsibilities and everybody kind of understands their role. And we know who's doing the $10, $15, $50, $100, $500, etc. dollar an hour work. You know, you really want to kind of We'll zoom out and look. What's really important in the property management world is the lead person, the regional, who's running a lot of that in many cases. And so if you have the wrong person in place, then you're in trouble. And if you're not training those people and hiring great and keeping great and having great and retaining great, especially in the property management field, it can fall apart really, really fast.

Pete Neubig: So what I'm hearing is kind of like one of the steps, if not step one is create your org chart. Are you a big fan of creating an org chart for what it looks like today, or are you a big fan of creating one for today and one for like five years from now?

Jon Dwoskin: I'm a big fan of doing one today, doing 1 in 6 months, doing 1 in 12 months. In 18 months. Yeah, really kind of zoom in on the law of proximity because I think if you're in growth mode, you got to reverse engineer, that it takes a long time to find great to interview and find great. So if I'm looking at an org chart and an org chart that has each person and the three leading roles and responsibilities of each person, and I'm saying, okay, I'm going to grow, you know, 20%, whatever percent I'm going to grow, which means I'm going to need X amount of additional people. All right. Well, it's going to take me potentially 3 to 6 months to find those people. And so I really want to kind of lock in there. I don't not that you can't do a five year org chart. I think it's great. But I think sometimes people get lost in the five year plan when the 12 to 18 month plan or two year plan is really difficult. And if you don't reverse engineer to make sure that things get done, then all of a sudden you're hiring the wrong people. It just becomes a mess. You know what I love about your business is, you can actually find people that you can delegate to and scale and build, and accelerate your business at a faster rate because you've already kind of vetted a lot of them. So I think it's pretty great.

Pete Neubig: I actually built org charts for the industry. If you go to vpmsolutions.com you can actually find org charts for the industry. When you can just take those and just start use them as a template and then just kind of change as needed. So all right. Now I've always been taught you build the org chart for what it is today. Then, you know, plan out the next five hires and then build it for when the company is done. And really, it's more of a thinking practice to make you think outside the box.

Jon Dwoskin: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: I love what you said though. So a lot of times people don't look at that next six months or 12 months and they get caught up in the high level and not like, hey, this is what needs to be done to get there.

Jon Dwoskin: Right. So, okay. It's like just real quickly. One thing I find is, you know, people create a business plan and then they look at it January 1st and December 30th, you know, and but so a business plan, an org chart. Those are living documents. Those are things you should be looking at every single day and saying, okay, this person here, we can see that they're 30 days from burnout. 30 days from being overwhelmed, 30 days from, you know, having too much on their plate, which means we we're behind having to hire someone because now it's just going to take longer to hire someone. And now I want to be in front of my people. Because I think today more than ever, for sure. And I don't think this is going to change. Retention is number one. So people have options today. So if I'm going to, you know, put too much on somebody's plate, and I. And I'm not thinking about recruiting and delegating and divvying up roles and responsibilities. Et cetera, et cetera. Then that person's going to get a bonus, a bigger salary, and they're going to end up moving somewhere else. High probability A lot of times when I'm talking to companies that are just not functioning, I come in and they're just not functioning well. I say, you know what? 50 to 60% of the people won't be here in three years if and maybe even more if you keep this kind of pace. So I think an org chart is so important in reverse engineering and recruiting.

Pete Neubig: There's so much to unpack here. So one of the things that you said is you talked about hiring. But before I get into that, you talked about some documents that you look at first of the year and last of the year.

Jon Dwoskin: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: In your practice, when you when you're helping, you know, people and you're helping people get unstuck in your coaching business. How often is the leadership team meeting, or how often are they looking at these documents and what documents are they looking at in your practice, like how do you what do you teach or coach?

Jon Dwoskin: You know, org charts. But most importantly, pipelines are are critical. Marketing, editorial calendars for marketing. I think every company needs to be thinking like a media company today. Period. The end. If you're not thinking, like, if every company isn't thinking like they are a media company today, they're falling behind. You know, there are so many companies I think, that are even still behind the curve when it comes to using social using video, using, you know, AI, whether they use ChatGPT or they have their own internal custom. Um, people are scared to get in front of the camera, scared to post content. Can't keep up with the consistency, but today, business is kind of like, you know, when you get referred a client, if you if you're watching TV and you go to a TV station and there's nothing there, you're not going back to that TV station, maybe you will once today, everybody who's in business has to be building their TV station for when the prospect turns on your station, because when the when the prospect turns on your channel, if there's nothing there, if there's no relevant information to make you credible in today's world. Blogs, videos. I mean, we could name a ton of things, then you're not as relevant as you need to be. And so some people may say, well, that doesn't matter. Well, it does, because first you lose one client, then you lose two clients, and you begin to quantify. Then the generation of who's making a decision changes the generation. The generations that are younger are relying on videos, blogs, and getting to know the people that they choose to work with. So by the time they call, they have a relationship already and they've made decisions.

Pete Neubig: You're building trust.

Jon Dwoskin: You're building trust. Right. And so so when you when you're when you're looking at documents on a daily basis, most people aren't thinking about marketing. They're not looking at their pipeline. They're not looking at their business plan. And those three documents run your business. And then you layer on that, a CRM, so people know kind of who to call. And it works for them. So it saves them time. Those are the documents that they that they should be. And, you know, whether it's rocks you're looking at or this, that or the other. But your business plan, your pipeline, your marketing editorial calendar and your business plan can be a lot of different things. You know, I mean, I'm a business coach. Um, I'm I am not an EOS implementer. But for some people who use EOS, you know, they have their level ten meetings and in the rocks and, you know, but even so, even in that realm, it's you got to make sure that you're tapping into the intuition in your guts when it comes to any type of system that you're using, that it doesn't get too pragmatic that you actually allow your intuition to settle in as well.

Pete Neubig: I would say on on some of that, like, um, what we do here at VPM is we have our L10 meetings, our level ten meetings each week, same day, same time, hour and a half, same structure. We have certain KPIs that we look at. I think the three that we're looking at right now is, number of jobs posted per day, number of jobs filled per day, and number of phone calls, made during a podcast per day. No, no, I think that not that third one. I'm teasing. I think the next, uh, so we have like, three KPIs and, and they're, you know, they're not marketing based, but marketing activities. Get us to those final numbers. Yeah, right. If I'm not marketing and I'm not getting leads, I'm not getting jobs posted, jobs filled or, um, I think the last one was actually, um, profile created per day. So we look at a per day type thing. Uh, but having the same date and time changed everything for us. Yeah. Because originally it was like, oh, wait, we could have it when we have it. And it was like, now that we have it Tuesdays at 830 in the morning and everybody shows up unless you're on vacation or sick, we've we've seen a lot like, uh, a lot better, uh, solutions to, you know, just just the business runs better. Yep. Yeah.

Jon Dwoskin: Well, but I just want to comment on that for one second. Uh, you know, I'll just I'm just going to add some commentary on that. I think what people crave but can't define to your point, and I see this in my coaching business, which is why my coaching business, the model people really like my coaching model. Excuse me. My coaching model is a 90 minute deep dive and then 15 minutes a week or 30 minutes every other week. And typically they're at the same time typically. And the reason people like it, because what people crave but they can't define, is they crave predictability and without predictability, they, um, they already feel more scattered today than ever before. So without predictability, they can't get grounded in something. And so to your point, right, you have the same time and day every week. It's predictable. They can work around it and everything that they do. I see that as a um, as a big thing. I was talking to clients today. I had two clients that I was meeting with, and I won't bore you with the details, but they have this whole thing that they're doing. But it lacked predictability, it lacked consistency. And so we built a framework that made it work for them, and it's simple. Now you just have to implement it. But I think more people need to be thinking about the more hectic the world seems to get, uh, the more dopamine rushes that people need. And delayed gratification is like yesterday's news. Unfortunately, we need predictability.

Pete Neubig: Yeah, I think when things speed up, I slow down. the other thing we do is we have an agenda and we go over the same agenda, like it's the same structure every week as well. Which which, um, now you're not having a meeting just to have a meeting, but there's, you know, and then during the week when there's challenges, we don't slack or email each other all day long, all week long, we put it on our meeting, and then we come up with, with plans to, to solve that. Uh, the other thing you touched on was hiring. So I wanted to ask you, do you have, like, a hiring kind of system or what? What are some of the things you tell your clients on some best practices for hiring because people just get scared to hire people.

Jon Dwoskin: So only this is what I suggest, only higher great. If you're 99% sure, don't hire them. Um, if after you hire them. I've been in situations where I work with clients a lot of times, uh, in the recruiting process where we've sent out offers and we didn't like the email back, and we called and called them and rescinded the offer.

Pete Neubig: Oh, wow.

Jon Dwoskin: You got to really kind of tap into your gut. You got to check social media to see what type of personality they have on social media. Only hire grade. I like a couple interviews, 2 or 3 interviews, because I think you want to make sure that the same person keeps on showing up. Pay attention to the questions they ask. If sometimes, like I was at an interview and the person asked, well, at the very end and the interview was going pretty good, we weren't sure about the person, and the person says, hey, you know, I live about a half an hour away, so if I'm late most days, does that matter? Like, well, you're you're an adult. Yes. It matters. You know, like, well, you know, if I wake up and there's traffic, we're like, all right, well, this is this conversation is over. So, you know, you got to listen to kind of like, are they do they come prepared. Only hire great. This is to me the quintessential question that I have found in interviewing, at about five minutes in, when they get comfortable, you say to them something like, let's use, you know, property management as an example because that's what you do. "Hey, Pete, let me ask you a quick question. On a scale from 1 to 10, ten being the highest, how badly do you want to be in property management?" I've never had somebody that doesn't answer it honestly. And they'll say, oh, like a seven. And to me, the interview is unless somebody answers a 10 or 9 and then works their way up through, uh, talking it through a ten. They're done. They're done. Because if because if you only want someone who's passionate about a business. So if you like I've. When I was selling commercial real estate, I had to interview so many people every month when I was running my office. I worked at Marcus and Millichap for 12 years, six years as a broker, six years I ran the Detroit office. I had so many people I had to interview. And finally I came up with this question. On a scale from 1 to 10, how badly do you want to sell commercial real estate investment, commercial real estate? And the people that came in and said, you know, are ten, 12, you know, I used to drive with my grandpa, my dad, you know, my mom and dad. Those were great hires and hindsight. And I learned this the hard way sometimes that the people that you hire that you think are great, that I didn't ask the question. You realize they kind of only were like a six or a seven. And so then when you start asking the question, you know, hey, I would start asking a question at every interview how badly they would say like a six or a seven. So say a six or a seven. You know, like why a six or a seven? I'm just not sure. But if I didn't ask the question and quantify it, I may we wouldn't, maybe wouldn't have known because they were so like selling themselves hard.

Pete Neubig: So if they were like, let's say they were going to work in the accounting department, would you ask them the question on how bad do you want to sell real estate? Or would you ask them the question, how much do you love accounting. Accounting?

Jon Dwoskin: Yeah. How about a scale from 1 to 10? How much do you love accounting? First of all, accountants that, uh, most accountants love being an accountant. If you're not an accountant, you think that's boring? But if you're an accountant, you love being an accountant, typically. And so if somebody asks me on a scale from 1 to 10, how badly do you want to be an accountant? I would say -90. I mean, I remember being in accounting in college and thinking, I'm really good at math. And I, I couldn't even, like pass the class. And I remember thinking, I'm just going to have an accountant, like, why am I taking this class? So but so. Yeah, so. But yeah, on a scale from 1 to 10, you know, tell me your passion for accounting. I say I'm a ten.

Pete Neubig: I actually I think I'm going.

Jon Dwoskin: To say I just want to say one thing. If they say I, you know, my dad wanted me. My mom and dad wanted me to be an accountant at ten. I'm a five. I don't want that energy in my in my office.

Pete Neubig: Right. I think I'm going to take that and use that question in our hiring process. Yeah. I'm a big fan of hiring on attitude. And I think you've hit on that. Right. Like passion for what they do. Um, so I go through like what are my characteristics that I want as an organization. And then I ask, I ask questions around those characteristics and I'm looking for specific ways to answer. Do you do you use negatives or do you use positives or do you use 'Is' or do you use 'Yous' like and there's like some specific words that just kind of trigger us. And what we started doing is we started recording all the interviews and in transcribing them so that we can, like, read them back. Because sometimes you miss some stuff if you just listen. So now the other thing you said is it could take you a long time to find somebody.

Jon Dwoskin: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: Obviously the more like, uh, higher level, I think the harder it is to find that person. I think the lower level it's a little bit easier to find is would you agree on that?

Jon Dwoskin: Uh, I don't know anymore. I don't know anymore. I think, um, I don't know. I don't I don't think so. I think it's it is so hard to find reliable people who actually show up and want to work and, you know, are passionate about working. I mean, my son's interviewing right now for jobs. He's graduating college, uh, in May, and, you know, he wants to be in an office five days a week. I mean, Monday through Friday. He'll probably work on the weekends, too, because that's how he's wired. But he wants to be in an office and that's like a differentiator, you know?

Pete Neubig: That's crazy. Yeah.

Jon Dwoskin: Yeah. So I don't know. I just think it's hard. I mean, it just seems to me I interview so many people for clients and I can't believe some of how sometimes people show up for all different levels to an interview. It, like, boggles my brain.

Pete Neubig: I hate to say it, but I built a whole company to, you know, reach people in different countries because the the amount that you have to pay people in the US and the level of expertise that you get or the level of person you get, it's just not equal. Yeah. And so that's why we built, we literally built the platform to reach other people to get better qualified folks.

Jon Dwoskin: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: All right, so we talked about, uh, to get unstuck out of your business. We talked about having an org chart. We talked about hiring. Um, what else? Um, would you recommend if someone's listening? Like, what are some of the, "Oh, man, I didn't realize I was stuck in my business. This is happening." How can they do something else that they can do to get unstuck?

Jon Dwoskin: Well, you want to really kind of take stock into not only you as a leader, but your managers and your salespeople and across all departments are the people who are, are all of your people doing the leading activities that grow the business, or are they getting stuck in admin work because people can look really busy? You got to really look sometimes closely at people. They can look really busy, but they're busy doing non leading activities, things that don't drive the business forward, things that don't drive the people forward that don't inspire people to kind of get to their next level. And so if you have salespeople that are doing proposals all day and not on the phones and in meetings and doing sales like legit leading activities, if you have managers that are not walking and talking and calling and texting and going on appointments and influencing and, you know, raising their people up to be their next 0.01% best sellers. And if you have leaders that are not spending time tightening their message to all the different generations that are within companies today, and then you have higher leadership that has not taken a closer look at reevaluating what the meetings look like within an organization. And what I mean by that is I have a I have a time management, um, workshop that I do training. I've been doing it for eight years. And one of the things I extracted from that is, um, a training and a keynote I do called Cut Your Meetings in half Because there's like this crazy thing where like during Covid, it kind of went away and now it's back. Like the amount of egos at a meeting that have to pound their chests and say in ten minutes, what could be said in 40s and two, three hour meetings, that could be 35 to 40 minutes and 60-minute meetings, that could be 30 minutes. It's like I talk to so many people. They're like in so many meetings all day, they can barely get to their work. Yeah. And the meetings have no agendas. They have no, uh, no ownership. They're not prepping people to come to the meeting. They're not forcing people to actually think and prepare for a meeting. They leave the meetings where nobody has specific and measurable goals. Nobody knows who owns exactly what. And there's no true deadlines in the follow up is lacking. And so you take all that and then you walk into a company, say, oh, everybody's overwhelmed and nobody has any time. It's because the framework is just not there. And so you can make some really small changes that make a really, really big impact. You just got to kind of zoom out as an observer. And a lot of times you need somebody like myself, like you, who can come in and say, okay, let's, let's, let's dissect. Okay. These people are doing this. These are doing this. Let's get some virtual assistance for this. Let's get a framework for it. And you just organize a little bit. It doesn't take a lot, but it but it sure goes a long way.

Pete Neubig: You made me laugh because there's a couple of things there that I got a couple personal stories. So one is I used to work for a big firm called Stage Stores. They owned about 700 plus stores, retail when retail was pretty good back in the early 2000s. And every time I would see my boss or like the C-suite. Yeah, I used to grab my hair. I had hair back then. I grabbed my hair. I do this, I walk like I was always stressed, like I had something that like, I was always busy with something and I used to carry papers with me and they thought I was the busiest guy in the world. I think one time I won employee of the quarter. I think just because they saw me walking around stressed out in the hallways. Yeah. The second thing was there's a book by Patrick Lencioni called Death by Meeting.

Jon Dwoskin: Yeah, it's a great book. He's great. All his books are great. I love his books.

Pete Neubig: Yeah, I love the way he writes. Yeah. And so. So when my company empire was purchased by a Mynd which was a venture backed company, um, I used to have all these meetings. Used to be meetings all the time. So I bought my boss that book and sent it to him in California.

Jon Dwoskin: Right. It's like, remember? It's like, like sometimes. Remember back to school with Rodney Dangerfield. You know, he didn't want to go to class, so he sent his assistant. It's like, you know, I, you know, I hear about people who call these emergency meetings and then just don't show up. They send their secretary. Well, it's like it's so backwards. Like it really? You you everybody can have way more effective meetings. It's something that, uh, I'm giving a keynote next week, you know, to 30 leaders within an organization on how to cut their meetings in half. Because because there also becomes kind of this, like sub fear and culture where nobody can stand up and say, we have to make this change. We we have to change the meetings. There's too many egos in the room because politically it doesn't necessarily maybe work. And so, um, you know, so you can't have their voice. You have to have somebody come in and reset it. So then they can say, you know, the the speaker can say what's going on. And then people can speak, have their voice be heard, and then change and awareness can be, you know, elevated.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. I would say at VPM, every one of my meetings has an agenda. Like we're not meeting just to meet uh, the other thing that we do and I'll get your opinion on this. So, you know, now there's all these. There's Teamwork and Slack and email and there's all these ways to kind of communicate. More and more people are working virtual. And so two things. One is we don't allow Slacking back and forth all day long. It's just like, if you have a question or, you know, whatever, you can Slack. But any kind of issue that comes up, we put it on an issues list, and that's part of our agenda on each meeting. And we meet either daily or weekly. So we we really minimized the amount of back and forth. And then the second thing that we do, and I'm losing my train of thought because I had two things. And now I can only think of the, of the one thing, the Slack and, um, basically. Oh, uh, the other thing was, now that we're virtual, I use meetings part of the time to build the culture or kind of maintain that culture. And I know sometimes it's it looks like we're wasting time because we're talking about like today. We talked about the Super Bowl coming this weekend and, you know, asking the Filipino folks, hey, do you know what the Super Bowl, right. Just it sounds like it doesn't mean anything. And I let it go on for about ten minutes. And then we get kind of get to business. Where is your stance on that stuff?

Jon Dwoskin: That's great. I think it's great. You can't you mean by I'm not saying cut it down, be rigid, be black and white. There's great. But part of the agenda is rapport building and getting to know and laughing and listening. But that doesn't mean you then have to have a two hour meeting, right? It's like there's there's a piece of it, and then the person who's leading needs to be able to transition out of that. Right? It's like like, okay, that's fine. But a lot of times you have the person who's leading it then then tell a ten minute story, and now all of a sudden you're 20 minutes behind and then you're trying to squeeze everything, you know. So it's just one thing I find again, I'm not necessarily I don't mean to like, talk about myself and say, this is like what I find with my coaching model is. But what I find is when you have an agenda, right? So when I'm talking to clients, we have 15 minutes or 30 minutes. They have an appointment right after and so do I. And so you're kind of forced to be tight. Hey, how are you? How's everything going? Good. How's your family? Great. Let's dive in. And? And when people can mentally predict that kind of the flow of the conversation, then. Then it makes it easier. But I'm never one to say, oh, be rigid or this, like, you got to have fun and get to know people and rapport, build and build all of that type of stuff. But people can only receive so much just going back to what I said. So it's not like you could you don't need an agenda with 500 things on it. It's like, okay, because if you're consistently executing at some of the ways we've talked about, then hey, here's the three things this week. Here's the four things this week. Here's the five. Right. You become you... You get in flow and that way you're not... So every company's got to find their cadence.

Pete Neubig: When we meet, I have a small team. I have, I think 11 or 12 of us, we meet daily for about 30 minutes, called the Daily Huddle, and we go over, we have an agenda. It's about 5 or 6 things, and then we have a couple issues, um, that we solve. Not just the issue, but we solve the root cause. So we don't have lots of issues bubble up. We I call them taps, two by fours and Mack trucks. I saw them at the top level. What are you what are your thoughts on a daily huddle? You think I can continue doing this till, like, how many people do you think? And it's like, hey, now you got to split your daily huddles up. Bye bye bye.

Jon Dwoskin: I love daily huddles, you know? Listen, if you can, I think daily huddles are really important to set course. I think it's really important that people come prepared to daily huddles and see if you can cut it by five minutes. You know, you take five minutes and you times it by the amount of people that are in that group and, and you compound that over time. That's a lot of time, right? And so, you know, if you can make it 20 minutes and not lose the the feeling of it or make it 22 minutes, you give people eight minutes back times the amount of people that are in the meeting, times that per week, times year. Then you're giving, you know, you're giving them a lot of time back and maybe 20 minutes, you know, half the five minutes of that time is just them sitting in their chair taking a breath. Maybe some of that time is doing some work or catch up work or, you know, it's all about how you take the extra time and divvy it up. Some for you, some for your family, some for your business.

Pete Neubig: Do you think there's a certain amount of people at some point where the you it's just not it doesn't it doesn't get you the, the you know, the the the juice isn't worth the squeeze.

Jon Dwoskin: Well for a daily huddle?

Pete Neubig: Yeah. Like if I have eight people on there, is that too many. Like once you get, like at some point I'm thinking you have to break it off and do departmental daily huddles versus a company daily huddle.

Jon Dwoskin: You know, anytime you get anything over nine it changes it.

Pete Neubig: Mhm. I'm so I'm at I'm at the limit of 10 or 11.

Jon Dwoskin: Yeah I think so. I think you, you lose the intimacy. You know when managers I always know when a manager calls me or an owner calls me and says I'm having a lot of trouble. Um, you know, or my manager, somebody will come and say, I've been managing people for a long time, and I'm having trouble. I said, let me guess. You just went from 9 to 10, and a lot of times they'll say, how did you know? Because there's a there's just a difference from single to double digits. And so I think to keep it, to keep it intimate, those huddles, huddles can be great. They're great. You know, and sometimes the seven, the five minute huddles or the ten minute huddles are great too, because you get a jolt of dopamine with no lag.

Pete Neubig: Right. Right.

Jon Dwoskin: Right. There's no like, oh my God, I listen to this person talk for five minutes and this person talk for five minutes.

Pete Neubig: So you just just boom.

Jon Dwoskin: Go boom. So, you know, you gotta figure it out.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. All right, John, we're going to hit a commercial break real quick. And then we're going to put you in the lightning round. Very scary, very scary. All right. We'll be right back, everybody.

Pete Neubig: All right John, are you ready for the lightning round?

Jon Dwoskin: Yes, yes, yes.

Pete Neubig: All right, here we go. Okay. All right. Let's see. What is one piece of advice you'd give someone just starting out in business?

Jon Dwoskin: Um. Ask for help a lot. Like, never be afraid to ask for help. Embrace the, uh. If you're young, embrace your youth. Don't try to, like, be 30 or 40. If you're 20, be 20. People will want to help you out. Um, and if you try to be something that you're not, it turns people off.

Pete Neubig: Does pineapple belong on pizza?

Jon Dwoskin: You know, I liked it when I was a kid. Um, pineapple on pizza. Then I didn't, uh, and my kids do, so. Yeah, I'll say I'll go for a yes.

Pete Neubig: All right. What was your first job?

Jon Dwoskin: My first job? Uh, I worked at camp. I was a camp counselor.

Pete Neubig: Camp counselor?

Jon Dwoskin: I worked at, yeah, I worked as a camp counselor. Yeah.

Pete Neubig: What is your ideal vacation?

Jon Dwoskin: Uh, being with my wife and kids. Doesn't matter where we are.

Pete Neubig: Okay. What is something most people don't know about you?

Jon Dwoskin: Um, I would say that I'm more of, uh, more of an introvert than people think. I like my I'm a homebody. I like, um, you know, I just like being home with my wife, with my kids. Um, I'm not as social as people think.

Pete Neubig: If you could have dinner with anyone alive, who would it be?

Jon Dwoskin: Um. Um. Anyone alive? Yeah, that's a tough question for me today. Um, you know, the world is so crazy, I there's some of the people that I would have wanted to have dinner with. I don't want to have dinner with anymore. So, um, you know, it's and for for a multitude of reasons, which could be a different podcast, but, um, so I don't know if I'd want to have dinner. I would say if I could have dinner with anybody in the world legit, it would just be my wife and kids.

Pete Neubig: Alright. You get you get to do that as often as you like or kids are out of school?

Jon Dwoskin: Kids are in college right now, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Pete Neubig: Uh, what is, uh, a book or podcast that you would... That has impacted your business or life?

Jon Dwoskin: So I love reading, um, and, uh, and I'm, I'm reading a, um, I'm reading a book right now that I am. I'm loving. But there's there's a my my favorite book of 2024 was, um, Smart Brevity.

Pete Neubig: Smart Brevity. Okay.

Jon Dwoskin: It's by the guys with, of Axios. And, uh, it's just the book is great. The book is great. Um, and I'm reading a book right now, which I'm loving, which is, um, which is called. Hold on. I'm going to tell you what it is called. It is called where is my. Where are all my books? Um. Oh, here we go. Um, get a meeting. You could, um. I don't know. Why am I, uh, I think it's called. You can get a meeting with anybody. With anyone?

Pete Neubig: You can get a meeting with anyone. Okay?

Jon Dwoskin: Yeah. Yeah.

Pete Neubig: What is one challenge you're facing in your business?

Jon Dwoskin: Um, I don't know if I would call it a challenge. Uh, now that both my kids are in college, I want to start speaking more, uh, because I can. And, you know, when I was, when my kids were home, I wanted to be home. I traveled, I spoke, but it was more it was never me proactively pursuing it. It was just, um, what kind of came my way through my clients, etc.. Um, so now I don't know if it's a challenge, but now I'm, you know, I just hired someone or I'm in the process of hiring someone to kind of grow that piece of my business. Um, I don't know if I would call it a challenge, but it's, um.

Pete Neubig: Let's say a more of an opportunity.

Jon Dwoskin: It's more of an opportunity. Yeah.

Pete Neubig: All right. What do you prefer, dogs or cats?

Jon Dwoskin: Dogs. I have two of them. Yeah.

Pete Neubig: Dog guy. All right?

Jon Dwoskin: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: All right, John, you're off the lightning round. Um, if someone wanted to reach out to you, uh, what's the best way to, uh, to contact you?

Jon Dwoskin: They can call me at, uh, my cell phone (248) 535-7796. Or they can go to jondwoskin.com

Pete Neubig: And that's D-W-O-S-K-I-N. And Jon is, J-O-N.

Jon Dwoskin: Correct. Yes.

Pete Neubig: Jondwoskin.com.

Jon Dwoskin: Yes.

Pete Neubig: And if you are listening to this podcast and you're not a member of NARPM. Feel free to go to narpm.org or call them at (800) 782-3452. And if you are interested in hiring and call Jon, and Jon will help you out. Tell you, identify all your org charts and you find out that you need to hire some remote team members, give us a try at vpmsolutions.com, we have about 39,000 profiles and growing about about 100 each week. It's free for you to create a profile, browse, look through. The way we make money is once you hire somebody and you pay them, that remote team member pays us 10%. John, thanks so much for being here. See you everybody.

Jon Dwoskin: Pete, thanks so much. Thanks, everybody.