Joanna Gossett 14:00
Yeah, so I mean, we look for someone who has run a successful business in the past of some type, you know, it doesn’t have to be huge. And again, you don’t need restaurant experience, necessarily. There’s, like I said, a lot of support from the franchise that can help people be successful if they have a good business mindset. So I would say the the desire to want to impact people to want to grow and having some operational and business acumen for sure, you know, and then the good finances to obviously that you can run a profitable business.
Chad Franzen 14:39
Hey, you mentioned your recruiting experience in 2020. You started your own small business, Joanna G consulting, where you’re an executive recruiter, trainer, resume writer and career coach. It looks like you have a kind of an extensive background and all of that and it’s come in handy with the other things. Tell me about it and how your small business came about.
Joanna Gossett 14:58
Yeah, so now Other great questions. So, as I mentioned earlier, I’ve been in recruiting for a long time. I actually, in a prior life, I was a drug and alcohol and mental health caseworker with adolescents and children’s in the school system. And it wore on me very quickly. And I decided I wanted to kind of get out of that, but I have a sales background from prior, I sold Cutco cutlery, I don’t know if you’re familiar with Cutco Knives. Back in the day, and I was very good at it. Anyway, I got recruited to be a an admissions counselor at a college and worked at a couple universities doing recruiting for new students. So that sort of was wet my whistle in recruiting and I realized how much I loved it, it kind of married my passion of helping people like underprivileged kids, but more and more professional atmosphere and feeling like I was actually making a difference, getting people signed up for school versus hitting, you know, hitting my head against a wall with people that were continually coming back to me for drug and alcohol issues. So then I got recruited from there to be a headhunter, with an executive recruiting firm in property within property management. And things were going well, I went through an acquisition, well, kind of a separation, a divorce, so to speak of the partners at the one firm I worked with for a long time, and was retained by the next company to stay on with them. And it was great, awesome group of people. I mean, I would not be where I am today without that whole group just because they taught me everything I know about head honey, and but then in 2020, during the pandemic, our we have two small kids, they’re both that we have a three year old, and a one and a half year old. And at the time, we just had a nine month old and our nanny quit with two days notice. I’ve worked from home for 10 years, but full time in my office door shut, you know, and she quit. And we were like we got it, something’s got to give you like Brian needs to quit, I needed one of us needs to do something, or at least for a take a break to like find somebody else to care for our kids. And I made the decision to resign and spend some time with my youngest. So I did that for about three months, and then was like, recruiting just pulls me back and resume writing kind of was my my pull back into the recruiting world like three months later, I mean, not very long later and helping candidates write their resumes. I’ve done a lot of consulting with that I’ve done some training for hiring managers, and companies to on how to effectively interview I’m kind of a little bit of everything in that space. And it’s been really, really great. And now I wouldn’t change it for the world. And I’m so glad that happened.
Chad Franzen 17:58
So you are an executive recruiter what? What goes into recruiting that the average person might not know.
Joanna Gossett 18:07
Um, so I mean, what I’m doing is I mean, that’s what they call us, a headhunter. I mean, I am looking in the internet, mostly, and cold calling companies and businesses to find people at an executive level that aren’t looking for jobs. So I’m filling positions with companies and clients that have a you know, maybe it’s a director of property management need, and they want the best of the best they want someone who’s done it before, they don’t want to put it on Indeed, and get a zillion resumes of people that are unqualified. So they hire me to go out there and find the people that are qualified, that are doing this for their competitors. And then tell them the reasons why this opportunity is compelling. And, you know, help them through the process.
Chad Franzen 18:54
How much selling goes into recruiting, so
Joanna Gossett 18:58
definitely selling um, but it’s it’s more skill matching and personality matching than really selling. I don’t really, I don’t really think of it as selling. I mean, I guess I would call it a pitch. But it’s it’s very much I mean, I get to know my candidates, I know what my client wants. And I can tell within five minutes of being on the phone with somebody if there’s going to be a chemistry match. I mean, nine times out of 10, I’m able to tell my clients when I send that resume to them like, this is your hire, because I know them and I know the candidate.
Chad Franzen 19:31
You’re also a resume writer, what can you tell us about writing resumes that maybe most of us wouldn’t know? I feel like I’ve been writing the same resume for the last 20 years. But in the
Joanna Gossett 19:44
right i mean it’s it’s a it’s a tough world to navigate and honestly everybody will tell you something different even executive resume writers, you know. So, what you want to do, I always ask my candidates that are having me write their resume As What have you done different or better than someone else who has the exact same job that you do? What sets you apart from them? Because I don’t really care about the bullet points. You know, if you’ve had this job for three years, I know you can handle the duties and responsibilities of it, right? But, but so you know, this person has that same exact job. So what what did you do, that you can speak to? That sets you apart that makes you different? And that’s what we could kind of highlight when we’re going through a resume. So what accomplishments you know, did you win this award? Did you be you know, raise? And Ally? Did you get creative with something? Did you do some sort of outreach marketing that was unique? You know, things like that?
Chad Franzen 20:47
Would you say most people write their resumes like that? Or do they just list their tasks and kind of what they do?
Joanna Gossett 20:54
I mean, I would definitely say the majority are more task related. Like, I feel like so many people just take the job description, and copy and paste the duties and responsibilities, you know, and but we’re not taught, if you’re not taught it, that mean, it’s hard to know. And you know, how to do it and how to do it effectively. And I will always say to a chronological resume is best, at least in my eyes, where you have your most recent position, first, your duties and responsibilities. And then the next one, accomplishments, I should say, not just duties and responsibilities, versus sometimes people will put like skills and abilities, and they’re like, Oh, I’ve done all these things. But then after it is just like a work history. And you don’t know where they did all those things, if that makes sense.
Chad Franzen 21:44
Sure. Sure. So you, we talked about how you kind of you guys kind of got involved with Anytime Fitness. And then before that, in, I believe it was 2016 Your first family business was Gosset homes. Tell me a little bit about that, and how that started and what you guys do?
Joanna Gossett 22:04
Yeah, so interesting. There, too. My husband and I’ve always had an interest in real estate. We didn’t buy our first home till 2014. And, but shortly after, I mean, we just we have we had a friend who’s been very successful in real estate in St. Louis, Missouri, and he had always told us to read the book, Rich Dad Poor Dad, and if you’ve ever read it, but um, great book and, and we ended up reading it, and it kind of lit a fire under us. It doesn’t it’s not really a how to guide to be successful in real estate, but it changed my way of thinking about passive income from real estate. And long story short, we were looking at a couple different rental properties. And then my husband lost his job. Um, I don’t remember who he worked for at the time, but it was him wireless. And very unexpectedly, you know, we’re like, oh, you know, this is bad timing, like, we’re about to close on a loan, right? But we decided to like, move forward. And I’m so glad we did. Because now all over the real estate we aren’t I mean, we and we continue to acquire assets following that all residential at this point. But, you know, they’re all worth three times that now. And it hasn’t been that long a period. But yeah, so we self manage our properties. We manage a handful for other investors as well. We have short term rentals as well as long term so like Airbnb vacation rentals, which is its whole own ballgame. As well as just, you know, longterm.
Chad Franzen 23:39
How scary was it to do the first one? If you hadn’t done it before?
Joanna Gossett 23:44
Yeah, no, I mean, it was certainly like scary and is I’m very conservative mindset, so to speak. And my like, I grew up with two parents that both have PhDs and like you, I was always just taught like, you go to school, like you get a good job, you have a salary benefits. I mean, I actually quit a job with salary and benefits, the social work job I talked about to move to Cincinnati, Ohio, I was in Pittsburgh at the time. And I quit and move to Cincinnati with no job to follow Brian because he might, that’s my husband. He had moved there for a work promotion. And I was applying to all these jobs and not getting anything and I was just like, I need to be there. You know, when I’m telling people these interviewers that I can be there in a week, when I give notice to my boss and this and that. Anyway, I took this big leap of faith and everybody my family and most of my friends were like, You’re crazy. I mean, you’re leaving that stability in the field that you went to school for, you know, all the things and yet again, so glad I did it right. So everything looking back has always been like a blessing and it’s really hard to see at the time when You’re going through hard things professionally, personally, whatever. But like, I can’t say there’s been anything ever in my life where I can’t look back and like, there was some good or positive that came out of it. And that was one of the things.
Chad Franzen 25:12
So you’re you’re involved in, you know, five different professional endeavors along with your personal life. What does a typical day look for? Like for you? And are there any kind of rituals, I guess, that you consider to be very important?
Joanna Gossett 25:25
Um, so yeah, so every day is different. And my husband even more so. So I still and with our kids? Do you know, primarily? We have we have an in house help, too, that comes all the time to or regularly. But, um, but yeah, so I mean, my days are spent recruiting, putting out fires helping with the business stuff, I do all the back end, you know, like accounting billpay, we still haven’t outsourced any of that we have, you know, two locations here and two locations here. It’s like, can you justify it yet and, and to give away the reins on something so important, we’re just not ready yet. So I still manage all of that. Payroll, you know, employee issues and things like that as well. So it’s a little bit I mean, I do a lot on this every day. You know, my kids see me on it a lot. And, I mean, a lot of phone calls, you know, with candidates to depending on what projects I’m engaged in at that exact time.
Chad Franzen 26:25
You I have one more question for you. But first, tell me how people can find out more about becoming a franchisee with Romeo’s and about your consulting service and, you know, anything else that you’re involved in?
Joanna Gossett 26:36
Yeah, so to franchisee information, it’s romeospizzafranchise.com. Easy. You can fill out a request form on there and whomever is responsible for the territory that you might be interested in, get in touch with you. You can find out about my executive recruiting services and the resume writing at executive J. G, my initials, executivejgconsulting.com. And I’m on LinkedIn to just search Joanna Gossett and you should find me in South Carolina.
Chad Franzen 27:09
Okay, awesome. Hey, last question. When you go to or when you order from Romeo’s as a as a customer, what’s kind of your go to item?
Joanna Gossett 27:19
Oh, everything’s good. But I’m gonna take two things. So what what had me the first time is our Chicago deep dish. It’s it’s called The Italiano. And if you’re familiar with Chicago, deep dish that the sauce is on top. So it looks kind of weird if especially if you’ve never seen that. I mean, I’ve showed it to friends. And they’re like, Oh, what is that, you know, because the sauce is on top and all the toppings are under it. But it is a amazing. It’s just so good. I mean, our dough is good. It’s a three day process to make it and you can tell when you taste it. And then my second favorite is our thin crust. So we have what’s called our thin credible crust. And I like it like kind of all the meats, we have something called the butcher shop, which is basically our like meat lovers. And I love that on a thin crust.
Chad Franzen 28:08
Sounds great. I’m starving now. Hey, join us. Great to talk to you. Thank you so much for your time and your thoughts and your insights. Really appreciate it.
Joanna Gossett 28:17
Absolutely appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Chad. Take care.
Chad Franzen 28:19
Thank you soling everybody.
Outro 28:21
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