Jonathan Javier, founder of Wonsulting talks about how to go from underdog into winners.
Jonathan Javier is the CEO/Founder of Wonsulting, which mission is to “turn underdogs into winners”. He’s also worked in Operations at Snap, Google, and Cisco coming from a non-target school/non-traditional background. He works on many initiatives, providing advice and words of wisdom on LinkedIn and through speaking engagements. In total, he has led 210+ workshops in 9 different countries including the Mena ICT Forum in Jordan, Resume/Personal Branding at Cisco, LinkedIn Strategy & Operations Offsite, Great Place To Work, Talks at Google, TEDx, and more. He’s been featured on Forbes, Fox News, Business Insider, The Times, LinkedIn News, Yahoo! News, Jobscan, and Brainz Magazine as a top job search expert and amassed 1M+ followers on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok as well as 30+ million impressions monthly on his content.
Jonathan Javier is the CEO/Founder of Wonsulting, which mission is to “turn underdogs into winners”. He’s also worked in Operations at Snap, Google, and Cisco coming from a non-target school/non-traditional background. He’s been featured on Forbes, LinkedIn News, Yahoo! News, Jobscan, and Brainz Magazine as a top job search expert and amassed 1M+ followers on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok as well as 30+ million impressions monthly on his content.
Follow Jonathan Javier – Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/jonathanwordsofwisdom/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-wonsulting/
Wonsulting
Follow Patti Dobrowolski – Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/upyourcreativegenius/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/patti-dobrowolski-532368/
Up Your Creative Genius
https://upyourcreativegenius.com/
Time Stamp
[02:42] Jonathan’s story from underdog to landing first job at Snapchat
[05:01] How vision boards helped Jonathan
[07:06] How to bootstrap a startup
[09:20] How to create a team with values
[11:36] What to look for when hiring?
[13:30] Why you should reach out to people on Linkedin
[16:20] Why Gary Vaynerchuk fascinates Jonathan
[17:05] How to grow a following and an audience
[20:00] How Jonathan is helping job seekers land jobs
[23:00] Setting and achieving goals
Patti Dobrowolski 0:03
Hello superstars, welcome to the up your creative genius podcast where you will gain insight and tips to stomp on the accelerator and blast off to transform your business and your life. I’m your host, Patty Dobrowolski. And if this is your first time tuning in, then strap in because this is serious rocket fuel. Each week I interview fellow creative geniuses to help you learn how easy it is to up your creative genius in any part of your life.
Patti Dobrowolski 0:39
Hey, everybody, it’s Patti Dobrowolski without your creative genius, oh my god. I’m going to interview Jonathan Javier. Let me just say that this guy contacted me years ago, and was fascinated with what I was doing. He started to show other people how to draw their futures so that they can be successful. And today, he has so many followers. It’s unbelievable. He’s like, his whole business. One salting has gone cuckoo and laka baisa. And so he is off the charts. Fantastic. I can’t wait to do it. Let’s hope he shows up. Come on, Jonathan. You can do it. Come on in here. Dude. I know you’re coming. Anyway, I can’t wait for him to show up. He’s going to be here any second. He’s coming my way. I know he is. Yeah, people. Come on. Here we go. Hey, everybody, it’s Patti Dobrowolski with Up Your Creative Genius. Yes. today. I have the most amazing person here, Jonathan. Javier, right? Am I saying it right? Yes. To start off, he is the most amazing person in the universe. He’s done so much stuff, to help other people land their jobs, fix their resume, start to be confident in front of interviewers and with headhunters and everything. I can’t wait to hear what you’re up to. Because his company has grown from just this little tiny seed of an idea to this major, like 774,000 followers on Tiktok 120,000 followers on LinkedIn. I didn’t even look at Instagram, because I’m so excited to have you here. Because we’ve known each other for so long. Now. It seems like maybe that long, it feels like a long time. Alright, just Hello, Jonathan. I’m glad you’re here. Thanks for coming.
Jonathan Javier 2:35
So happy to be here, Patti. And you’re the awesome one. All the words that you were saying that was literally you’re just talking about yourself. Okay,
Patti Dobrowolski 2:42
You’re so kind now. All right, tell us really. So you know, yesterday, I watched your YouTube, which was your story. And really your tagline is turning underdogs into winners for your company. And you were kind of an underdog yourself. Tell us a little bit about you and how you got into doing this? What happened to you, your story?
Jonathan Javier 3:07
Yeah, of course. Well, first off, thanks so much for having me, Patti, I really appreciate it. And yeah, my story really does come from when I was in school, and I remember going to a nonprofit School, which was UC Riverside. And I remember a lot of the different opportunities that I was trying to go for, they didn’t really have companies come to recruit for my school. So what I had to do was utilize a lot of different unconventional strategies to get there. And at first, I was getting rejected for all the different roles because I was simply applying to them online and hoping for the best when all I got was literally the worst. So when you come from that background, I come from a Filipino background where my parents raised me how I am out today. And it was really difficult because I didn’t really have anybody to look up to in regards to the business field. But by networking with so many different folks like yourself, and so many people who work in these big companies, I utilize those strategies, which I teach all the time on social media to land my first job at Snapchat. And then I went to Google. And then I went to Cisco. And the crazy part was, it was all about number one wasn’t even applying to the jobs never even applied. Just utilize LinkedIn and social media. And number two, manifesting it up in my creative genius. The vision boards that I’ve created with inspiration from Patty from senior TEDx talk, have really helped me become the person I am today. And I’m super excited to be talking about those different topics.
Patti Dobrowolski 4:33
Well, you’re fantastic. I mean, honestly, you were doing Draw Your Future with people long before I was even training people in doing it. And so when I said, Hey, I’m doing certification now, and now like, you don’t need to go through it, because you already know how to do it. So there’s no reason – you’re certified. You know, I’ll send you a little stamp, put it on your LinkedIn profile or whatever, right. But you started early on, to understand the value of having a picture. You know, why did you do it? And what results did you see? I mean, I even see behind you. You’ve got pictures on the wall. Right? Right.
Jonathan Javier 5:10
Right? That’s right. So ever since I saw your TEDx talk, which was about I think was about three years ago, I first saw it. And I remember I was creating vision boards, but it wasn’t as visual. As I thought, right? It was just gonna be a lot of different word vomit. I wouldn’t be a lot of different specific goals, you know? Yeah. But yeah, what inspired me was, I remember seeing your different drawings. And I was like, dang, like, even though I’m a bad draw, or a bad artist, maybe I can make something good. So I started to do was in 2018, I really wanted to leave my first role out of college and wanted to go into the tech field, specifically, in North Cal, white, Northern California. And what I did was I basically drew my different goals that I had in mind, and I separated them based off the different categories, right, so personal in regards to career mental state. And so what I thought about was like, What do I want to accomplish a year from now? What are some realistic goals? I think a lot of people put very unrealistic goals, where you shoot for the moon, and then you hit the sun or whatever, whatever the saying is, like, you should definitely have some realistic goals. And then if you achieve them, then you just reiterate it, or you redo it, you know, so a lot of the different goals that I’ve been able to achieve, they’ve probably been 95% of them have been achieved on that vision board today. I’ve already actually for 2021 goals, I’ve pretty much achieved most of them already. So it’s been a great help, because it’s all about that manifestation. Right. Now, what I would do, Patti is like, I would post it on my Instagram, I would post it on LinkedIn, because then you have that accountability aspect, where if you do not achieve that goal, people are going to see it and be like, Oh, this guy or this girl didn’t achieve that goal. Right? So it was very useful, especially with manifesting my dreams into reality.
Patti Dobrowolski 7:01
Yeah, well now, like, how many people did you have in your company working with you?
Jonathan Javier 7:06
Yeah, we have about my gosh, a lot. Now, we have about 16-17. And then we have a lot of different people or service providers. So if you include them, maybe about 30. Plus, yeah,
Patti Dobrowolski 7:16
That is crazy good! And then did you just use your own startup money to start to kick it off?
Jonathan Javier 7:24
All bootstrapped.
Patti Dobrowolski 7:25
I love it. I love it. Because I think then you have total control of what happens. And you know, something as good as what you’re doing. You want to be able to finesse it. So how have you figured out right what your niche was? So people that are listening, and they’re wondering, like, I want to start my own business. And Jonathan did this, and it came out of this? How did you know? What was your niche before you started to work on it? How did you get that? Or did it happen over time?
Jonathan Javier 7:57
Yeah, I mean, a lot of the content I was creating was being interacted by that niche, which is a lot of different students, job seekers, early career professionals. And just creating that content, you can see that a lot of people that were coming to us, whether as clients or as followers came in that demographic of non target schools, non traditional backgrounds, that’s why it’s our mission of turning underdogs into winners. It’s a lot of people who come from underdog backgrounds. But if you think about it, everybody comes from an underdog background. Right? You could get rejected for different roles, underdog background, you could come from specific ethnicity, underdog background, you could have rejections in your life, right? All these different things. And so when we’re able to adopt that mission, and a lot of people connected with it, a lot of people respected it, and also related to it. Then we got a lot of people who really believed in us, and we believe in them. And so yeah, a lot of the strategies that we love to teach at first people are like, Whoa, like, you can do this right? Some people are like, you can do this?
Patti Dobrowolski 8:58
And in the Instagram comments to what you post they are like, what?! Are you kidding?! Is that legal?!
Jonathan Javier 9:05
Exactly right. But the thing is, like it is, it’s just that people are not informed about it or misinformed, right. So yes, just about how do you bridge that gap between people who come from these backgrounds and these big name jobs. And hopefully we’re able to solve for that.
Patti Dobrowolski 9:21
Yeah, I see so much success. So, you know, I do a monthly Draw Your Future, and even today, there was somebody who came from you, who had come into that session, and I went, Oh, so you know, Jonathan, right? She was early career, had her first internship now. And now she wanted to move to San Francisco or New York, and wanted to grow her own thing. And I’m like, Yeah, well, rinse, repeat, whatever got you into that internship, right is gonna get you into the next thing. But there were some other things that I noted. This is something that I wondered about in your company. Do you have a set of values that you align things to, because I noted in your posts, you have a really some guidance that’s really seems aligned to values around integrity, that’s like a big thing for you in there. So say a little bit about how you look at values, and how you set that up with your team.
Jonathan Javier 10:15
Yeah, values are extremely important, and especially with our team, because to make a great team, you have to have trust and integrity, etc. So with my team, for example, our team has about 16 summer interns, summer part timers, no one full time yet, yet, because we’ll probably eventually get them soon. But it’s just really awesome. Because those values really do coincide with our team, because our team knows not only to look up to those values, but also exhibit them in the work we do. So for example, that integrity aspect, let’s say that you don’t finish your project on time, you just be transparent with us. And we’ll be okay with it. As long as we’re specifically hitting those goals in the next term. Right? We always goal set, we always empathize with our audiences, too, as well, because empathy is the most important piece. We used to be on that job seeking side too, as well. Yeah, the integrity part is extremely important, because we have to be transparent with what we’re doing. And if we’re hitting goals or not. That’s why we set the KPIs and the goals every single month, to what we want to achieve. And then we work backwards from there, because we want to see, for example, like do we hit our follower growth? Do we hit our partnerships, revenue? Yeah, we hit our services goals. And a lot of the different people on our team are very truthful to us. They give us feedback, they’re not scared, we don’t run a company based on getting Apple.
Patti Dobrowolski 11:32
Keep that to yourself, right? That kind of
Jonathan Javier 11:37
All about empathizing with an audience too as well, when you’re able to do that, because you’ve been in their shoes before, then you can see both parts of the spectrum. Like what do companies look for when they’re hiring folks? And then what do I look for when I’m hiring folks, as well? Because now I’ve been on both when I was recruiting, and then now when I’m hiring for my own roles,
Patti Dobrowolski 11:57
Yeah. So when somebody like the person that I worked with today comes to me and asks, you know, how can I get a job? And one of those big companies, what do you tell them? I mean, what do you say? Yeah, I mean, I mean, is it even possible for me, I think the woman was like, I don’t think I have the confidence or the motivation. Her issue was motivation. And so what do you say?
Jonathan Javier 12:19
That’s the thing, the motivation, the confidence piece is extremely important. If you think that you can’t make it into a company, you will not make it. And especially that manifesting part where you have those goals in front of you and say you want to achieve XYZ, I think that’s extremely important. One thing that people always talk about is a resume. Well, obviously, the resume has to be good. And you have to be a qualified candidate for the roles you’re going for. So for example, one thing that we see a ton of is people who are entry level roles are going to apply for management level roles. Like there’s no reason why you should be applying to management level roles, you don’t qualify for that, right? First you have to identify what roles you actually qualify for. I’m gonna repeat that because that is why people get rejected. Number two, sometimes people get rejected from roles because they’re just simply applying. And why I say this is because if you simply apply to a role, guess who else is applying Patti, everybody else! That’s right, you have to be networking with people who can number one, give you insights regarding how they got in. So you can get into number two, you can get referrals or recommendations from these people. Yeah, you can get a boost in the application process. So your resume can be read by an actual recruiter. So you have to go a little bit above and beyond. But if you’re able to do that, you should be doing that for your dream company regardless, right? Yeah.
Patti Dobrowolski 13:35
Yeah, for sure. And that was, you know, one of the things that I remember from the video about your life. I love that you did a video about your life, because I think it gives us insight into what you went through. And what you did, like you reached out to 100 LinkedIn people in a week in a day. Oh, it was it. That’s crazy.
Jonathan Javier 13:55
I would reach out Patti, probably 100 times a week to different people. I probably get about 10% of people who responded, but what matters is that people respond, rather than the people who don’t, you know, I mean, right? No matter but like the people who respond or give message back are the ones who are your mentors, your champions that people will look out for you. And thankfully, out of those 10 people, one of them was you.
Patti Dobrowolski 14:16
Yeah, well, and you are just such a rock star, I think part of it is, you have to understand that, You know, you can draw a dream of the future and you can dream a big dream of the future. You can lay awake at bed at night, and you could rehearse yourself going into Google and interviewing and all that stuff. However, you have to do the work to do it, too. And that I think pays off. And often I think that people, they expect it to happen instantaneously, just the way the internet is, you know, we can get these things to happen with a click. But in the real world, the physical world, in your inner world, your imagination, things do happen instantaneously. But this is a hard world. It’s made out of real things. Right, so they’re solid. So the energy is not even the same as your imagination. And you have to realize that, that you have to take action on things. So what did you do when you felt like you were demotivated by anything. You know, how did you keep yourself motivated to do the next thing?
Jonathan Javier 15:19
You know, where demotivation comes from? In my opinion, I think it comes from the people you associate with. The reason why is because if the people you associate with are complacent and tell you like, oh, Jonathan, you’re doing good enough, you’re gonna think that you’re already just doing good enough, right? When good enough is okay? But doing even better is better. So what really motivated me was seeing my friends, getting better offers and just growing immensely, and I realized what one thing also too as well with motivation is also playing the victim card where you blame external factors that have nothing to do with your work ethic. It’s also being like, Oh, this person got this, like, they’re just privileged because of this, this, this, right? Some people, some people are privileged, of course, but some people also put the work in to get to where they want to be, right. So you have to be able to utilize those connections and resources. And you have to be able to apply to your own life. And instead of just blaming other people for getting jobs in this case, you instead utilize that as motivation to keep on going and get that job in 2021.
Patti Dobrowolski 16:21
Yeah, yeah. I even think that, you know, part of the visioning process, and I would ask this of you. This is one of my questions for you is like, who do you really want to meet, you can meet anybody now! This is what’s true, you can meet anybody. So who is it that you think would be on your bucket list of people you would like to meet and talk to about what’s happening in their world? What fascinates you in the world right now that you’re in? What’s fascinating?
Jonathan Javier 16:48
Yeah, I mean, I think someone that I would want to meet is a little bit basic, but Gary Vaynerchuk, Gary Vee, and the reason why is because, I mean, he has very good motivational speeches, of course, but one thing that I think that he does extremely well, is, he’s very mentally there. And why say mentally there is because you have different opinions about him. Some people like him, some people don’t. But the thing is, how does Gary Vee set himself up? Where he doesn’t mind that people don’t like them and focuses on the people who do the right thing? That happens a lot! How do you, when you’re trying to grow as a company, as a business as a person? What happens is people will always have negative opinions about you. Yeah, have those negative opinions. How do you look at the positivity? I never before when I first started, I was like, Oh, my gosh, someone said a bad comment on my posts. I’m so offended.
Patti Dobrowolski 17:39
Now. haters are gonna hate hate, hate, right? Okay,
Jonathan Javier 17:44
Then, because you have 99% of people who support you, 1% of people might not. But the thing is people will try to go to the people who don’t support them and try to for example, like please, that when you should be pleasing the people who already support you. So That’s right. That’s right. That’s what I think, I think Gary Vaynerchuk is a prime example of that.
Patti Dobrowolski 18:02
Yeah, definitely. I mean, he persists. That guy is insistent, and he really believes what he’s about too. I think another guy that is interesting to me right now is Shawn Anthony, same thing, you know, totally motivating all about getting people to realize you’re worth it. And if you are in a job, and all you’re doing is working for your paycheck, you’re not doing the right thing, because if you’re just working what I call working for a living, or sometimes I would say, in big corporations, I’d say I’m working for the man, because there was always some white guy at the top, who would be the person that I would have to go and do the facilitation in front of right. And they either like me, or they didn’t, you know, there’s no gray area in between. And I’d be like, Well, good thing about being a consultant, you know, I don’t ever have to come back here. And they don’t have to have me back if they don’t like what I’m doing. But if I deliver 150% of what I’ve promised, then everything works out, right. Everybody sort of understands that you bring value. And I think all of your followers, you can see just how exponentially your followers have grown. It’s just in this year that they’ve been like, it’s been like a big kaboom. And so how do you handle that? Or what do you do to keep yourself humble with all of that following? And what’s it tell you?
Jonathan Javier 19:25
Yeah, I mean, we’ve grown to over a million followers in the past year, which has been incredible, most of them coming in the past six, seven months, which has been incredible. I think it’s very important, like you said, is to be humble about it, because a lot of people change based on the popularity of what they get, right. What I say all the time is that you should respect people, of course, the people that support you are going to be there till all ends. And if you keep creating great content and creating value to them, they’re gonna keep on supporting you. That’s what also motivates me every day when I see someone seeing a great comment on my posts, and it’s gonna keep making me make great content. All right. So I think what’s very important is to listen to your audience, listen to your community, because when you listen to them, they’re gonna keep coming back and giving you more ideas. And they’re going to give you more content to create, too, as well.
Patti Dobrowolski 20:14
Yeah. And when you get those posts, you read every post that’s coming through, or a lot of them I know, because you respond to me, you’ll send back and I’m like, that’s totally engagement. Right? So everybody that is part of your tribe, they all feel like I’m in this with Jonathan is going to be awesome. You know, one salting, that’s my thing.
Jonathan Javier 20:35
It’s not me, it’s our team by ICS. mentors, our community, because we all went together.
Patti Dobrowolski 20:40
Yeah, fantastic. I love that now. So what’s your vision of the future? Where do you see things going? Like on your vision board, I know, you had your KPIs, and you priorities, you met them. But when you dream, the dream of yourself? What’s your big dream? Like? This is one thing you’re doing? Or what are there other things you’re cooking up? What do you think?
Jonathan Javier 20:59
I mean, number one, I see scaling out our services. So we have like services regarding resumes, LinkedIn profiles, job search, strategy, interviewing. So scaling those out, we have amazing team of Fortune 500 recruiters, hiring managers, professionals who are helping us with that. So that’s one of the things of the future. Number two, working article 20, which is our program, we take 20 jobseekers and help them land jobs. So that’s been really good. It was about to launch our next cohort in the next few months. So we’re trying to scale that out. And then another piece as well as the partnership side, because we have a lot of followers, we’ve been doing a lot of influencer marketing. So how do we partner with more companies to grow that branding of their own companies?
Patti Dobrowolski 21:41
Yeah, fantastic. Those things? And then are you sleeping in at all? Is that happening? I mean, I saw you in Vancouver, so you must be having a little vacation here and there for a little bit.
Jonathan Javier 21:52
I’m taking some vacation. But yeah, I mean, yes. Morning, I should have bought my alarm didn’t turn off. So I need more sleep. Sure.
Patti Dobrowolski 22:01
Yeah, I can relate to that. Well, you’re fantastic. Everything that you’re doing is really just an indicator of the core values that you have. And that you embody, which is about service, you know, helping other people to take the next step, I think in making change, and there’s one thing I’d love to it’s just sort of my signature ask of people at the end of the podcast, what do you think would be something you would say to someone? What’s a tip on how to pivot? Or how to create change for yourself? What would you encourage people to think about or do
Jonathan Javier 22:37
Manifest it and go to Patti’s workshops! Oh, yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, I would totally recommend making a vision board. I want to have like the vision board set, Patti has have drawn your future. I think that’s extremely important. Because..
Patti Dobrowolski 22:51
He’s not a shill. I didn’t like, this is not a show game. We’re not moving the shells around. I didn’t seed the audience with him. Of his own accord. Just, yeah, I listened to him. It’s my hair. Yeah,
Jonathan Javier 23:01
I was gonna say, cuz I think what happens a lot, Patti is we always talk about our goals, I can tell you, Patti, my goal is to do X, Y, Z. But the thing is, it’s all talking to action. And the thing is, with anybody who’s trying to attain any goal, you have to have some action steps behind those goals. So the reason why I say draw those goals or write those goals, is because when you write those goals and draw those goals, then you see whatever that goal is, and then you work backwards from it. So for example, let’s say that I want to grow to 500k followers on Instagram, I’m 220k. Right? Now, let’s just say I want to go to 500k. Then I think about how am I going to grow to 500k in a year? Or if I’m saying how do I want to lose weight, I want to lose 20 pounds. Alright, so I want to lose 20 pounds? How am I going to lose 20 pounds in six months, right? So you have to be sure you have those goals, make it realistic, but then have steps to achieve those goals? Because if you don’t, then you’re never going to achieve it.
Patti Dobrowolski 23:56
Yeah, I love it. I love it. Everything you say I would just say it even more. And the second thing is just dream it. Have A dream big enough that you can step into it. Because I think this is what we see out in the world a lot is people don’t feel confident. They don’t believe in themselves. And that stuff that’s just been loaded on you from your environment, or the people you’re hanging out with or maybe even your parents and you have to step up and realize you’re here for a reason. So figure out what the reason is that you’re alive in the world and go out and do it. Find your purpose and go drill it because that’s what you’ve been doing. And it’s just so amazing to watch. I can’t wait to see what else happens for you because you’re so amazing. It’s just like incredible all the things you’re doing to help other people and I thank you for all that service because you’re so cool. Anyway, so this is Jonathan Javier follow him at Wonsulting.com You can find him there. You can find him on Instagram, under @Jonathanwordsofwisdom. Yeah, Jonathan words of wisdom on Instagram. Follow him there. And I’ll also put some more information about him in the show notes. So I can’t thank you enough Jonathan for taking time to talk to me today. You’re amazing. Let’s go do this. Let’s go out and change the world make it better, shall we?
Jonathan Javier 25:18
Of course. Thank you, Patti for having me. I appreciate you always.
Patti Dobrowolski 25:21
You’re so welcome. Let’s do this. Come on people. Let’s go. Thanks so much for listening today. Be sure to DM me on instagram your feedback or takeaways from today’s episode on up your creative genius. Then join me next week for more rocket fuel. Remember, you are the superstar of your universe and the world needs what you have to bring. So get busy. Get out and up your creative genius. And no matter where you are in the universe, here’s some big love from yours truly, Patti Dobrowolski and the Up Your Creative Genius podcast. That’s a wrap
