A Podcast | Pete Neubig

Peter Hernandez: [00:00:18] Well, hello. NARPM family. I am very excited to be on the other side of the table today. I will be interviewing Pete Neubig, uh, founder, uh, of VPM Solutions. I'm excited to, uh, to have him as a guest, if you will, today. So let's jump right into it. And, uh, Pete, tell us a little bit about the story behind VPM. How did this get started? Why did you feel the need for starting VPM?

Pete Neubig: [00:00:44] Yeah. So, Peter, you have big shoes to fill from the other podcast host. So hopefully, uh, hopefully you do a good job. So, uh, so how did how did VPM come to be interesting enough? Like when I ran Empire, I was an early adopter on virtual team members. I think there was a few of us that were early adopters, but most of the people that were early adopters were just giving kind of like checklists to the virtual team members like, hey, these are the checklists, and this is exactly what you have to do, and you're not going to do any more or any less. And that was really it. So they're doing really, really low level, uh, tasks where I, what I ended up is I ended up using the team members to actually own a full process. So for example, I had a team member that owned the collection and eviction process, one that owned lease renewal process. And what happened was we started using them, um, to actually do all the property management. And, uh, when it was all said and done, I had run the business with 23 virtual team members and ten people in, in the US. And I actually had some virtual team members, supervising team members in the US. And so when I had sold Empire and I was looking for the next thing to do, um, I had owned a corporation in Mexico and we were going to go the traditional route, which we'll talk about later, uh, where, you know, we hire them in our Mexican corporation and we kind of rent them out to you. And, uh, I ended up connecting with who is now my co-founder, Ross. Gilbert and Ross came up with a whole different idea. He's like, I like this idea. However, I think we should do it through technology. And, uh, I think he was very surprised when, after he gave me the pitch, I said, okay, let's do it. And he was like, wait, what? I'm like, what do you think the check is? I have to write. Let's go ahead and let's build the technology and let's, let's do this. And, um, easier said than done, brother. I thought I would write a check, and tech people will just build something and it'll work right away. Um, I could tell you that I wrote the check in February. By September, the money was gone and we didn't have a product, and, uh, we had to basically restart and write another check. And I realized I was not an investor. I was the CEO at that time. I just thought I was an investor at that time. Wow. That's so I started it because a lot of property managers are getting were getting squeezed by by the, you know, their profit was getting squeezed. And I knew that this literally was the thing that saved my business. I went from being not profitable to being profitable, um, with getting these great team members. So I'm like, I can help lots of people get jobs and I can help lots of companies reduce their overhead and, and become profitable, maybe sometime in their career.

Peter Hernandez: [00:03:40] So this was literally something that you implemented in your own business and then and then realized, you know what? This could scale and I could help others, uh, do the same and become profitable. So you touched on a checklist and this is how you started. Or a lot of PMS start when they use virtual assistants. The checklist. Right. A task list of here's what I want you to do. Uh, you want the remote team member to do throughout the day. But this has evolved. So tell us how how can the property management industry use virtual assistants, remote team members, international team members, whatever you want to call them?

Pete Neubig: [00:04:14] Yeah, well, I think that that you can use them in almost any capacity now, as long as they don't have to be physically at the property or need a license to do something. So some examples of how we used our virtual team members when we were at Empire. Excuse me, were I'll give you an example. We had one we had around 900 properties when I when I sold and I had one person, Jessica, ran all the lease renewals. Now you're the first thing people would say is to listen to this is well, lease renewals. Well, that means that if they negotiate, they have to be licensed in certain states, right? Texas would be one of those states. But what we did is we used policy around that, and our policy was we increased the lease by X percent every year. And so now there was no negotiating. Now, if a resident or an owner client wanted to negotiate, like, I don't want you to raise the rent or I don't want you to raise the rent, only x percent, then and only then did that get scaled up and escalated to the property manager. So this is the kind of 80, 20 or 90 10 rule. So the property managers, what happened was we stopped doing all the we call it like the, the busy work or the typing work, and we allow them to start doing the head work right from the neck up so they would get the escalations they were starting to build, you know, um, a proactive business. So we were never proactive. And if you're listening to this and you're running a reactive business, you're there's when you run a reactive business, your churn rate goes up and you potentially not making as much money as you could make because chaos, you never make money in chaos. So lease renewal was one of them. Rent collections and evictions was one maintenance coordination a lot of people didn't realize, like, wait, you let your maintenance, you know, coordinators talk to owners all the time, right? So this there was this, um, this stigmatism where remote team members can't speak to owners, only residents. We blasted right through that one. And like my team, my team members were talking directly to owners, um, onboarding inside sales reps. So even my sales reps eventually became our BDMs became, um, remote at one point. Um, but the the marketing people, the SEO people, the property accountants, the utility connection, like all the utilities, you know, checking all that out. All was done with virtual team. And again, this freed up the my property managers told me that they spent 80% of time in maintenance. And in about 90 days after I hired people. And by the way, I can hire more people for the same amount so I could back, you know, right now, we could probably hire two and a half to three people for every one person United States. And if you think about property management, Peter, it's like the tasks are like water. They it never stops. It just keeps coming over and over and over again. And if you don't have enough people to perform those tasks now what happens is you're, um, you get backlogged, and now that owner client is calling you. And even if you have answers, you're what happens when you have so many tasks? A lot of a lot of stuff goes away. Like, all of a sudden you don't you don't do those extra tasks, all of a sudden you don't do the, um, you don't make those calls. The communication goes down. Uh, all of a sudden you're not getting the online reviews or the customer satisfaction reviews and all of that matters. Right. And so as you as you go more reactive, what happens is your owner client calls you and once they call you, they feel they're managing a property through you. Right? Right. The manager

Peter Hernandez: [00:07:55] Yeah.

Pete Neubig: [00:07:56] I can be more proactive and reach out to the owner client before they reach out to me. Now I'm managing the property effectively. And you get more referrals, you get more properties, and you and your churn rate goes down.

Peter Hernandez: [00:08:11] Absolutely. So we're talking about how the industry, uh, can, can, can use a virtual assistance. And this has evolved. And you're out there at conferences, you're doing workshops, you're doing webinars where you're educating the industry on how to use virtual assistance. Do you see the industry adopting, uh, this now and using virtual assistants in at different levels? What are we seeing at what are you seeing at VPM as far as how these are being used?

Pete Neubig: [00:08:37] Yeah. Well, you know, we're seeing a lot of adoption in the property management space. Um, we're starting to see adoption in, like, the HOA space and the multifamily spaces. The last one, they're kind of laggards on this. But the single family property management companies have really adopted it. And that's because there were early adopters who got it to work, saw their profit margin go up, saw the quality of people, and they started telling everybody what the one thing I like about I love about NARPM, one of the one things I love about NARPM is that when people find something they really like, they let everybody know.

Peter Hernandez: [00:09:13] Yeah.

Pete Neubig: [00:09:14] So, um, we're a young company. We're only, what, two and a half years old. We have over 845, 50 jobs post, uh, on the platform already using it. We have over 200 clients already, and we're one of, like, 14 remote team companies out there.

Peter Hernandez: [00:09:28] Yeah.

Pete Neubig: [00:09:29] It is being adopted dramatically, and people are using them like I used to use them. And now they're actually using them at even a higher rate. So I've heard that they're CFOs...

Peter Hernandez: [00:09:41] Yup.

Pete Neubig: [00:09:41] That are running, you know, property manager companies that are living, you know, abroad, um, that that are virtual. Um, I'm hearing that, you know, there are, um, HR directors that are living abroad. So the talent that's out there is just because they don't live in the US doesn't mean they don't have the talent. There's a lot there's a lot of talent. Um, I could just tell you, we just placed somebody who's got a master's degree.

Peter Hernandez: [00:10:07] Yeah.

Pete Neubig: [00:10:08] Coordinator job. Right? Awesome. So, I mean, so the talent's out there. There's tons of great people out there.

Peter Hernandez: [00:10:13] What are the top three positions that you're seeing, uh, being filled the most? Um, in the VPM platform on.

Pete Neubig: [00:10:19] Our platform, I would say maintenance coordinators, probably number one. Um, then like admin, you know, like executive admin, lease admin, um, you know, just, um, property management, admin, something like that, just like an admin or executive admin. And then um, leasing seems to be number three, right? Like a leasing specialist. Uh, and then of course you have your property accountants and your, and your SEO marketing people. Uh, I'm starting to now see some sales, so I'm starting to see some bdms. I'm starting to see some, you know, some assistants for, for sales where people actually will answer a sales calls. So we're starting to see some of that. But I'd say those are the main ones. Yeah. Did you did you.

Peter Hernandez: [00:11:00] Personally see a challenge or do you think the industry faces a challenge in using Vas because they're a little concerned of letting go or not having what they think is complete control?

Pete Neubig: [00:11:12] Yeah, I think there's well, there's there was a lot of that before the pandemic. Right. I really, truly believe the pandemic really unlocked, uh, it unlocked a lot of things. Right. If you think about it, I know a lot of people that tell me they would never do self showings. And then the pandemic hit and now self showings, right. There were owner clients of mind at the time when I was, when I was the regional vice president there that, you know, would never allow us to do self showings. And all of a sudden it's like, oh yeah, we're going to allow you to do self showings. So I think there's a percentage of companies that said I would never do remote. And now they're like, oh, I'm going to go ahead and do remote. And I think, I think the pandemic nudged that. I think the other I think the other nudge that's happening right now is, let's be honest, inflation over the last couple of years has really impacted our country. And it's impacted the world, by the way, because I'm seeing dollar figures go up all over the world. And so not just in the United States, but, you know, people that used to pay in Mexico at $8, that now it's $10. People I used to pay in Philippines for five, now it's seven. So you're seeing it go up. The percentages might be a little bit smaller, but you're seeing it all increase. Uh, so if I am if I'm a, you know. So to go back to the original question, um, I'm seeing inflation kind of nudge people to look at other avenues because, uh, they just can't afford like our, our pricing hasn't the rents haven't increased that much. So we can we the, the salary requirements have increased dramatically. And the lease where we, where we make our percentages have not increased dramatically. So we can't cut cost. So you're almost forced to go out. The last piece I'll say is no one wants to drive to an office anymore. And so, like when I was at Empire, um, if somebody lived 30 minutes away from the office, that was it. After 30 minutes, they wouldn't they wouldn't want to come work for us. And so you're having you're once you're, you're kind of you're kind of stuck, like, if I'm going to have people come to the office, I'm stuck in that 20 to 30 minute range. It's only so much talent that. 

Peter Hernandez: [00:13:20] You're limiting yourself. Yeah,

Pete Neubig: [00:13:23] 100%. And then the last piece is, I truly believe, the low end office worker. I hate to say that, but the back end office worker that those jobs used to be 30 to $40,000 a year. I believe that there are people like college. College graduates don't want those jobs. But that used to be when I graduated college, I made $25,000 a year, like I like that was an entry level, and you kind of worked your way up. But you can't make a living in the United States with $35,000 a year. That's called like, you know, you're slinging burgers at Burger King for that now. And so, you know, years ago, the construction industry went the route of, you know, we have these, these illegals or we have people that just came in over the border, whether illegally or illegal. They took those jobs because no one else wanted those jobs. I think we're seeing something very similar. I think we're seeing maintenance coordinators, like people that are that are college educated and us don't want them, and people that are not college educated, that really used to fill those jobs. They need more money, they want more money, or they're just not really good candidates. Like they're just they're not good team members, if you will, to be politically correct.

Peter Hernandez: [00:14:32] Yeah. And we'll talk a little bit about that here in a second. So let's touch on the benefits which you already did a little bit touch on, on the benefits of using a remote team or a virtual assistant. Uh, specifically you mentioned high level low level tasks.

Pete Neubig: [00:14:45] Yeah. So um, well I think the main benefit is, is the is economics, right. So I, I can hire somebody in, in Houston for, I don't know, whatever 55, $60,000 a year is. I don't know what that is on an on an hourly rate, but I can hire the same person who what I mean is a same person, meaning like the avatar is the same, right? They have the same college, they have same experience, they have the same, you know, you know, uh, training. And I can get that person in Mexico for 25,000 a year. I get that same person in Philippines for, you know, 20, 20,000 a year, 18,000 a year, whatever it is. So it's like, so again, just as good quality, if not better in a lot of cases. And of course everybody's bilingual. Right. So that's an add on benefit versus somebody that's you know, that that's just in the US. So I think that's the first benefit is economics. The second benefit we kind of talked about as well is I'm expanding my market, you know, for talent across the globe. So now if, if I, if I need a CPA um well look at that. There's two guys in Philippines or one in Costa Rica and three in South Africa. They're all CPAs, all have all these years, and they're, they're cost, uh, their hourly rate is way cheaper than I could get a CPA here in the US. So your back end office workers, you actually get people that are a little bit overqualified. Almost. Um, but think about what that does to your business. You get these incredible people that are not just they don't just have a job with you. They have a whole different mindset. So somebody in the US might have that mindset, right? You get somebody with a GED and they're getting their $40,000 a year. I mean you have so many issues with that right? They their car doesn't work. It breaks down or they have the baby mama drama going on and they can't they sick all the time or they just don't care. It's just a job with these folks. You're getting that college degree type of mindset with a low cost, but they're getting paid more than they ever have. Yeah. For them it's a great windfall. One of the things that a lot of, you know, US based company owners, they feel bad only paying $7 an hour. But I'm like, dude, that's $7 an hour. It's like three times, you know, two and a half times what they typically get. And what I love is when I see some of our remote team members literally changing their lives, like we know one that was able to buy a house for the first time because of the rates that they're getting, the $12, like they were making real big money for Philippines at 12 bucks an hour because they had a lot of experience and whatnot. Um, they spent there. They spent like, you know, a few years at this company and the company, you know, gave them a bunch of raises, and they were able to buy a house like they're now they're like making a lot of money. So you're changing lives. So the mindset for that person is not a job. It is a career. And one of the challenges that that we have as small business owners have is we don't think of people as career steps because we're not thinking growth potentially. It's true. You could lose good people, um, if you don't have a career ladder. So yeah, everybody out there start thinking about a career ladder for your team, whether the US based or remote.

Peter Hernandez: [00:18:12] And that takes us into our next question a career ladder. So training how to how do folks go about, uh, training their, their remote team. Uh, how did you do it?

Pete Neubig: [00:18:23] Yeah. So, um, I don't know if the way I did it is the right way. It's the way I teach today, but, um. So I trained over zoom, and we and I did not record the zoom. And I highly recommend that you do record the zoom. I also trained for three hours a day, and now that I realize it shall only be about an hour and a half to two hours a day because people's brains just go to mud after a couple of hours. Um, and so what I did is, um, there's a great book called The One Minute Manager that I highly recommend. And I say this a lot all when I speak and I and I talk a lot, a lot about it, the main premise of the book is spend a lot of time with your new hires on the front end. This way, on the back end, you don't have to spend a lot of time with them. And I took that same concept with training, so that was kind of a management book, but I same concept with training. So the way I train my people is it's the same time every day and we do training every day. So literally it's typically it's, it's uh, it's the first of the um, uh, in the morning. And we do an hour to an hour and a half and I train not just on the task that they need to do, but I train on the process because if I if I just train on the task, they only know the task and they don't know the bigger piece to the puzzle. And so they don't know what how their task affects other people. So by going over each process it does a couple of things. One, it gives them obviously the complete picture. But two, when I was doing this, I realized that there was a lot of pieces to my process that were not documented. There was some policy that wasn't created. There was some reports that needed to be done. So I realized that there was a lot of stuff that needed to be done. And so I took that on my, on, on, on those are my tasks. And I would create those. And then as I train them, they would, they would then and now they watch the video. And here's the other thing. A lot of people think, Peter, that they have to have the manual before they hire somebody, but they can never get to the manual because they're too busy. And what I say is like, just don't worry about the manual. Train them, you know, and then let them write the manual so they watch. So their job the first couple of weeks is watching the video and writing the manual. And then I just learned this kind of recently in the last year or so, I tell I have them regurgitate back everything they learned. Right. So now they have to become the professor. They're, uh, there's some studies that that show that you have to listen. You have to hear something or, or, you know, you have to hear something six times before you understand it, before you get it. So just in that one video right there, listen to me before the video, they're watching me on the video and they're and they're writing it down in the manual, and then they're regurgitating it back to me. So they're using every piece, you know, listening, learning, regurgitating, writing, all of that, uh, all the ways we learn to, to, to, to get trained. And then what I do is after they kind of, you know, explain to me what they do, I go back from the beginning, I go over that, I go over what we did the day before, and then I move forward. And this takes training a little bit longer, but the retention rate is a lot higher. So in my opinion, every back office job in property management can be taught between 2 and 3 weeks, except for except for maintenance coordinator. I think maintenance coordinator takes a little bit longer. Um, and my rule of thumb is if there are more decision points in the job, then it takes longer. Like lease renewal. There was only a few decision points, so it wasn't that bad. Maintenance coordinator is a lot of decision points. Is it over the threshold? Is it cosmetic? Is it an emergency? Uh, you know, does this owner have their own vendor? Is this, you know, is, um, you know, do they have a home warranty company? So there's a lot of stuff that goes on. And so each one of those has to be trained on, uh, and then after you train them, uh, by the way, training is terrible, right? It takes a long time. You know, I was putting in ten hour days at, at Empire, and then I was adding two more hours of my day for training. That didn't mean I worked ten hour days. It meant I worked 12 hour days for the for the duration of the training. But once the training was done, I got back 4 or 5, six hours a day in perpetuity. Yeah, yeah. You know, uh, and so once they're trained up, they have the manual, the next batch that comes in, they train them or they have the manual. And if and if and honestly, if you start using somebody, some of the new technology out there like notion I think is a big one. Uh, then you can literally put in all your documents and videos and you can create, you know, training courses, and you can have, you could, you could build all that. So your training even gets even gets better. But that's, uh, I know that's not an easy way to train, but that's, that's the way that we did it. And if, um, I'm sure there are people who have better ways of doing it, but that that's how we did it. And it works for us. It worked for us. It works for us at VPM.

Peter Hernandez: [00:23:22] I love what you said about training the person on the process, not the task. And I'm sure you or anyone that does it that way can see how that changes that person's mentality. Now they see the entire picture, what they're involved in. And it's not just a task. It's not. It's not tedious. It's not something that they're just doing repeatedly, repeatedly. Well, we did it over.

Pete Neubig: [00:23:44] And what we did at Empire is um, if anybody was part of that process, uh, including my accounting people, because your accounting people are kind of part of every process. We would bring them in and train them on the process because, um, your accounting people, they're the caboose. And a lot of times all the mistakes that the process makes lands on their lap. And so we wanted them to have their input. And here's the other thing. When I was building my processes, my team, once they were trained, I gave them carte blanche on modifying the process. Yeah, but they cannot modify the policy, the policy, the company policy. I'm the company owner. I own the company policy. But the process is now no longer owned by me. You own the process. It's your process, and you're in that seat. And if you find better ways to do it, I'm all for it. Even if it doesn't work because you don't know the full picture. I, um, but by the way, I always said, hey, just follow the process for at least for the first, you know, 30 or 60 days before you make any kind of modifications. But I'll give you a one really great story on this is Jessica ran a lease renewals and we used to do lease renewals I think 60 days out And um, it was really, you know, it was really time crunch and she just moved it to 90 days out and it made things so much better. And when I asked her, I said, well, just curious, what made you decide to do 90 days out? And she goes, oh, and she gives me all these really valid points. And I'm like, can't argue with that. Love it. I'm glad you did it. Let's do it then. Let's keep it. And so when somebody that you hire, whether they're us or remote, when they own that process, you got them. You got them. They are they're a lifer. They're they take ownership accountability and responsibility. And man, if everybody in your organization took ownership, accountability and responsibility, instead of blaming excuse denial, where would your organization be? Yeah, it might be ten, 15, 20% better than it is now, if not more.

Peter Hernandez: [00:25:48] Absolutely. Let me let me ask you this. As far as we're just speaking on training. Um, I think something that anyone that you ask in the industry would agree with is that every property management company does things very differently. Everyone's got different processes, different, uh, different way of doing things. How is VPM specifically helping when it comes to the training part of a remote team member?

Pete Neubig: [00:26:14] Yeah, so look, most people don't have a lot. Most people in second and third world countries that are not in the United States do not have a lot of experience in property management. Right? They just don't. So what we did is we created a free, uh, free training courses. Right. Property management 101. I think it's got like 12, 12 courses on property management one on one. We now started teaming up with, um with partners in the industry like rent vine and property, mold and pet screening, uh, for, for courses on that. So what we do to help the both the industry and the remote team member close that gap on lack of training is provide some training so it's not the end all be all and I get that. But if somebody takes these training courses now they know the basics, right. So at least I'm not getting them in there. They don't even know what our acronyms are now. They know the acronyms now. They know the basics of rent or property or whatever it is. Uh, and so for the remote team member, it helps them get a job quicker. And for the, for the company, it helps get somebody who one They showed that they have the capacity to learn, because every one of these courses has an exam at the end. They have to pass that exam. Uh, two it shows that somebody is willing to take time out of their own day. It shows three that they're interested in that subject matter, and they're interested. And it shows how hungry they are on getting that job. So those are those, to me are all ingredients in a person. I'm looking for those all like have some those are core values that are wrapped up in there that I'm looking for. So that person that does those trainings that takes 12 courses or takes all the recommended courses that you post a job on and they can test, test out those people I know I can train, those people I know are going to be, uh, great, uh, great team members for, uh, for our organization. So that's how that's how we kind of bridge that gap.

Peter Hernandez: [00:28:10] I love that approach.

Pete Neubig: [00:28:14] Yeah. We got, uh, we got time for one more question, buddy.

Peter Hernandez: [00:28:20] Uh, I was going to touch on, uh, letting the experts do the training versus. I mean, you couldn't be the expert in that folio manager property mailed everything. So letting the experts, the technology, the courses that they've built do that for us.

Pete Neubig: [00:28:37] Okay.

Peter Hernandez: [00:28:37] And then, uh, we'll skip culture and we'll dive into the you want to dive into, how do we pay them with the different models?

Pete Neubig: [00:28:46] Um, I think you just, uh, just let's dive right into the different models, okay.

Peter Hernandez: [00:28:53] Okay. So I love the approach that you that VPM is taking, uh, when it comes to the training. So it would be really hard if for you, Pete Neubig, to sit down with the VA and train them on Appfolio, rent manager, rent vine and all these things. Right? But you guys are providing the courses. VPM is providing the courses directly from the experts from these partners in the industry. Great love that approach 100%.

Pete Neubig: [00:29:17] Yeah, we we're not the experts. So rent vine created rent vine course probably created the product course etc..

Peter Hernandez: [00:29:23] Excellent. There's a lot of different models out there when it comes to hiring, uh, or bringing on a remote team. Tell us about that.

Pete Neubig: [00:29:32] Yeah. So, uh, so VPM is called a direct hire model, right? So there's direct hire and then there is the I don't even know what you call it, but like, you basically, uh, hire a virtual assistant that works for a company, and they basically rent that virtual assistant out to you. So those are the two main models. Um, we run a direct hire model. So what happens now is you get on VPM’s site, you can search over, I think right now at the, at the at the time of this recording is about 35,000 virtual assistants that are on the platform looking to work. You can search, search, however, by the certification we've talked about by other aspects, and then you can connect with them. And if you and so we let the market kind of the market kind of dictate the hourly rate. So everybody has a different hourly rate. We're not we don't set the market, we don't set the hourly rate. And when you post a job you're putting in an average, you're putting in a range of hourly rate. So then once you decide, okay, this is the person I like, you can hire them directly. You pay them through our through our platform directly. And the way VPM makes money is the remote team member pays us 10%. So for example, let's say Peter, you are a virtual assistant. I liked you, you went to 12 bucks, we negotiate ten. Um, you would pay VPM $1, you would get $9 an hour. Is that that works now they don't work for VPM. They work directly for your company. In this case, Um, and, um, and they just get paid through the platform. They enter time through the platform, you can manage them through the platform. The training is on the platform. So the platform becomes kind of like your I call VPM like an ADP for remote team members.

Peter Hernandez: [00:31:15] Yeah. Love the transparency with that process. Hey. Well Pete, this has been super informative. Uh, love everything that VPM is doing and, uh, love that you are, uh, you are leading the VPM, um, uh, team and experience. So, so.

Pete Neubig: [00:31:31] Well, we're going to cut Peter. Uh, we're going to cut to a commercial break. So go ahead and take us to a commercial break, and then we'll be right back. And then you can ask me the lightning round.

Peter Hernandez: [00:31:40] So let's do this. Let's do this. Let's cut to a commercial break and we come back. We'll, uh, we'll go right into the lightning round that Pete Neubig loves to do for the sound effect.

Pete Neubig: [00:31:49] Peter, you gotta do it.

Peter Hernandez: [00:31:51] Lightning round, right back. All right, so we are back. And, uh, just wrapped up our interview with Pete Neubig, uh, CEO and founder of VPM solutions. We're going to dive right into the lightning round. This is, uh, we don't have, uh, we're going to do a couple of them. I'm going to throw you off with some of these, but I know you're going to you're going to do real good. So let me ask you this. What would be one piece of advice that you would give someone who is just starting a PPM business?

Pete Neubig: [00:32:23] Ppm business? That's an easy one, right? Join Northam. Uh, we're on a Northam podcast. Find a mentor and, uh, and join Northam. It's the number one reason why my business blew up. Uh, was the Was Narbonne.

Peter Hernandez: [00:32:36] Awesome. What was your first job?

Pete Neubig: [00:32:39] I was a daily news. News boy. So, New York Daily News newsboy. I think to this day, bro. Hardest job I ever had. Seven days a week. I had to get up at, like, five in the morning, and, uh, I had a route, and I was. You're literally typical news boy where I had the satchel with the papers, and I had a, I had a dog at the time and he would run with me and I would go ride my bike, and I would I'd put the papers in there and I had to be done in the mornings. Not before school, not after school. So that was. Yeah, that was a rough job, man.

Peter Hernandez: [00:33:14] So it sounds like that would almost be something that most people don't know about you, but is there something else that most people don't know about you?

Pete Neubig: [00:33:21] Um. Let's see, I would I mean, if you don't, if you haven't seen me at a conference, then you haven't seen my little Iron Man bag, so I that's something. I'm pretty. So I would say that a lot of people don't realize that I am a three time Ironman finisher, and I am also an, uh, a Ironman, um, retiree. I'm retired from Ironman. Like, I'll leave that to the Young Bucks, like, Like the Green Machine, Trent Ratliff like diamonds.

Peter Hernandez: [00:33:51] Now the big green machine. Yeah, well that's awesome. I think a lot of folks know that about you. And congrats on that. So got one more question that you like to ask your guests. But I'm going to I'm going to turn this one around. You always ask, does pineapple belong on pizza? That's one of your questions. Here's mine. When it comes to burgers is it mayo mustard or ketchup?

Pete Neubig: [00:34:12] Ketchup only.

Peter Hernandez: [00:34:13] Love it. No way.

Pete Neubig: [00:34:16] No. Do you know McDonald's? Like in McDonald's in the Bronx. In New York, always ketchup only. And then McDonald's in Connecticut, which is a stone's throw. Ketchup and mustard. What the heck? Condiments are not meant to be put together. And it's always ketchup on a burger. Always.

Peter Hernandez: [00:34:36] Always very much like pineapple has no business on pizza.

Pete Neubig: [00:34:40] 100% you so much.

Peter Hernandez: [00:34:42] Pete. Thank you so much. This has been fun and very informative. Uh, appreciate the opportunity to be the host and you be my guest today. Thank you so much.

Pete Neubig: [00:34:51] Awesome. Thanks for being the host. If you are not part of NARPM, please go to NARPM narpm.org or call them at (800) 782-3452. I get that right. Yep 3452. And if you are interested in talking to me about remote team members, go to vpmsolutions.com or you can email me at pete@vpmsolutions.com. Peter, thank you for so much for being the guest host.

Peter Hernandez: [00:35:18] This was fun.

Pete Neubig: [00:35:19] Everybody talk soon.