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Header art for Meet Donald Jones with DMJ Insurance

After finding his way back to his hometown in Camarillo, California, Don Jones is trailblazing an evolutionary path in the insurance industry.

Out of college with a major is business accounting and a natural conversationalist, Don Jones kicked off his career as a “stockbroker”. Just few years later, he started his own investment advisory company and has been forging his own path ever since.  Now an insurance expert, Don Jones breaks down everything there is to know about health insurance and explains the vital role technology plays in it. Besides his love for insurance, his greatest passion is spending time on his boat, fishing and cooking what he catches.

How often does he take out his boat and fish? How did growing up in Camarillo influence his life? How can DMJ Insurance Services save clients time and money?

CLICK HERE for more information about Donald Jones.

CLICK HERE for more information about DMJ Insurance Services, Inc.

Listen to Don’s story here.

 

 

Click here to read the transcript

Brian Hemsworth 0:00
From Los Angeles, this is the Echelon Radio Network.

Hi, everybody, and welcome back to the Echelon podcast. And today we’ve got Don Jones of DMJ Insurance Services. Don, thanks for coming by today.

Don Jones 0:21
Thanks so much for having me.

Brian Hemsworth 0:22
So Don, you know, you and I have talked on many occasions, and I have a pretty good idea of what you do. And I want to get into that in a few minutes. But what I realized is, I don’t have a lot of background on you. Where are you from? Where’d you grow up?

Don Jones 0:37
Boy, I didn’t go that far. So I was born in Oxnard. Okay, I lived in Camarillo, which is 11 miles away. But in the 67 years, I’ve gone to, I’ve lived in Hawaii, I lived in Northern California, I graduated from Loma Linda University, in Riverside area, but kind of came back to where I started, was born, interesting place to grow up, I guess, an interesting place now to live in.

Brian Hemsworth 1:04
And I assume, for those that are from that area, it is, it’s got to be very different now than it was

Don Jones 1:12
you know, when I grew up in that area, Oxnard is really an agricultural town. And then during the World War II, it became somewhat of a military town with a Navy base, a CB base, the missile test range and Point Mugu. And then after World War II, they had the Oxnard Air Force Base, which is now Camarillo airport, used to be an

Brian Hemsworth 1:34
I didn’t know that

Don Jones 1:35
Air Force Base.

Brian Hemsworth 1:36
Oh, my goodness.

Don Jones 1:37
So growing up there, it was like The Wonder Years on TV where every house had two to five kids, a lot of parents worked or were connected to the military in some fashion or agriculture. So it was a rather conservative place. We came in second, I think, in the World Series, one year, we got that far at number two back in Indiana, I think in 1972. It’s the interesting town to grow up a lot of fun. So a lot different than it is today.

Brian Hemsworth 2:12
Gotcha. I gotta ask, most people that grow up inland, whether it’s 20 miles inland, or 1000 miles inland, tried to get out to the coast to go to college. You grew up with a coast and you went inland.

Don Jones 2:26
I went inland we went inland, yeah, well, there was no college. So there was there was no Cal State Channel Islands wasn’t there. There was a junior college, there was Ventura. And then there later opened Oxnard. So you either went to junior college, which I did go to junior college in Ventura, but then you had a graduate somewhere else, which created an issue for people that grew up in that Oxnard, Ventura Camarillo area was you had to go away to go to school. And then usually when you graduate, you get a job close by where you went to school, ’cause that’s where the recruiters were. So people didn’t come back. So my parents had several businesses, so I came back to help them retire. And I moved back to the area in 1983. And it was interesting, it was interesting dynamics, because people that I went to school with had went to Santa Barbara or San Diego or Chico. And they never came back.

Brian Hemsworth 3:22
Yeah.

Don Jones 3:22
Interesting

Brian Hemsworth 3:23
One way ticket out. So when you mentioned college and came back in 83, so you were probably in college late 70s? Is that,

Don Jones 3:32
Late 70s. Yeah.

Brian Hemsworth 3:33
And what just study and what was called,

Speaker 1 3:34
I’m a business accounting major. My first job out of college, they called them stockbrokers then. You were a stockbroker. I was for PaineWebber Jackson and Curtis 1980. I think the Dow Jones was 920. Interest rates were about 14 to 15%. If you have 14% in a money market account, it was it was not a good 15 16 years in the market. So they were they were hiring anybody. And so looking for a job, that’s where I started.

Brian Hemsworth 4:07
Gotcha. So, so take us a little bit on the journey of how you eventually got to DMJ Insurance Services.

Speaker 1 4:16
So I, like I said started as a stockbroket, started at Paine Webber migrated to Merrill Lynch. Transferred up here to Oxnard area. In ’83, my parents wanted to retire, so when someone to kind of help out, you know, kind of ease them out. They had a couple of businesses. Left Merrill Lynch and started my own investment advisory company.

Brian Hemsworth 4:40
Oh, really?

Don Jones 4:42
And that worked out okay. The NASD is not kind to small brokers. It makes it, it’s very difficult, make it very difficult and but I was also selling retirement plans and then I got involved with selling group health insurance along with a retirement plans. And it just got to be a point where you have to go one way or the other. And I had a couple of partners, they took over the investment side and I left and I went on the health side. So that was, it was probably 1988

Brian Hemsworth 5:14
And this still was Oxnard, Camarillo,

Speaker 1 5:16
Camarillo, Ventura area. And so I just said, you know, this, this seems people want to buy health insurance, they want to they want to talk to you, they wanted a broker, their business owner felt comfortable, I felt comfortable talking to them. They felt comfortable talking to me. So the group the group space seemed like this, it seemed like a very easy space

Brian Hemsworth 5:37
and it would seem like you know, your local so it’s comfortable, you know, the people you know, the area, and I’m guessing during those years, was when a lot of new small to mid sized business was coming into the area. The AG is still there, but it’s, we’ve seen other stuff come in and Conejo Valley has grown and north of there has grown and east of there has grown,

Speaker 1 5:59
What changed, what changed more than than the businesses was the industry. So you know, this is prior to HMOs. This is prior to PPO and this is this is when you went you got an insurance contract, and you went and you saw any doctor you wanted to. It may, it didn’t cover preventative services. Some of them didn’t cover RX, some of them didn’t cover maternity. It was it was an interesting dynamic. And as as it grew, as the industry started to change to slow down the growth and premiums, they started with these networks, the PPO network, well, what’s that? What’s the preferred provider, organization network, and then some doctors would sign up, some hospitals would sign up. And so you go the PPO network, you get a better reimbursement than that out of network, that out of that came the HMOs, which are basically founded by Kaiser here in California. And they’ve kind of grown with that. So the HMOs came, and then as managed care grew, things just started to change, migrate, and California was on the forefront of legislation for years.

Brian Hemsworth 5:59
So that’s an important point. I want to just stop you there for a minute. I’ve heard people say that California is sort of ground zero for the the health care system as we know it now. Is that correct?

Don Jones 7:17
Thatis correct. I, well, I’m gonna say it’s correct, and I think I can stand on a lot of things that happened in California got pushed back to Washington, DC. So a lot of things that we do here are very much different than any other state. So and we’ll go right to the HMO equation, because that’s kind of where people fall. It kind of started here grew here. It’s a little different and that HMOs really aren’t insurance contracts. They’re they’re contracts with a provider. And so, every state some states don’t have HMOs. You know, some, most states have a PPO, which is a preferred provider, but they don’t have an HMO. And the way they’re paid the capitated system of how doctors are reimbursed, is different in California, but it keeps the premiums lower. In some areas, you have a big penetration of providers on an HMO and some areas you do not. So California was one of the I think the only state that started with the HMO PPO we get have one or the other. And as things grew, you had point of service plans. EPO, which is an exclusive Preferred Provider Organization, they all kind of grew. But California grew legislation in California, which changed the dynamic of the growth of the cost of care was then pushed across from the left coast to the right coast to the Left Coast, even though we are the Left Coast politically.

Brian Hemsworth 8:45
Yeah. Gotcha. So so how, have you been very involved in that legislation and all that stuff that’s, that did transpire over the last 20 30 years?

Don Jones 8:56
Very involved, in the late 80s, I became involved with what’s called the Health underwriter group. We had a local chapter, call it Ventura Health Underwriters Association, I was, became president and I think 90 or 91, was on the board there for several years, became the State President sometime later, and did that and very active and legislation regarding guarantee issue preexisting conditions, getting maternity covered, making sure that plans has RX covered. A lot of these things that were done in California later swept across the country, and became part of policies that we see today.

Brian Hemsworth 9:43
So if we go back when when did DMJ insurance services begin as an insurance service business?

Don Jones 9:51
So this agency, I’ve had three, I’ve sold a couple of them, this agency, which is just health insurance, I’ve been involved with some property and casualty insurances over my career, started in 2016. We had another agency that was a partner of that wanted to sell to a publicly traded company. I started off at Paine Webber, I went to Merrill Lynch, I knew how publicly traded companies work. And it just didn’t seem like something I wanted to go down to, in my career with basically. So we split the sheets, or ripped the sheets, whatever you call it, pulled the sheets. And I went my way and they went theirs.

Brian Hemsworth 10:32
So tell us now about the company about your clientele. You said the health benefits, that’s your specialty, you’re, you’re not diversified in a lot of different you really focus on that. Tell us about the company now, tell us about your clientele, and who it is that you’re catering to.

Don Jones 10:52
So we have a very diverse clientele, because we specialize in primarily health, dental, vision, benefits, for small to medium size, employers, we’ve have groups higher than larger than 1000 employees, groups with less than five employees. So it really depends on on what the client looking for many of our clients are multi state, so it’d be of employees in California, Nevada, New York, Tennessee, Texas, we’re very good with working with those kinds of programs where we can have different programs or slightly different benefits in each state. That makes a little more sense for the employees in that state.

Brian Hemsworth 11:36
Okay, so you sort of tailor them to…

Don Jones 11:39
We try to tailor the benefits to what what the employees need in that area. The trend now is with employer groups, is everyone seems to be pushing towards what they call a single point of entry. Where if I put the information in my payroll system can it migrate to my benefit system, to my employees, and then when my employee makes an election, will that automatically go back to my payroll system, so we don’t have to key all this in. And there are several programs out there that do that, where you could make it easier for the employer to administrate the plan, and easier for the employee to understand and get information about their plans.

Brian Hemsworth 12:23
And you’ve told me and I want to make sure I understand this correctly, and you’ve invested a lot in technology in your business, which was something I wasn’t really aware there was a lot of technology because I kind of thought you sign up for you know, as a business owner, you sign up, excuse me, you get some paperwork, you some onboarding process happens. But it sounds to me like a little bit of what you’re just saying is that some of that technology is working on in the background. So when you do have a client who’s got employees in different states, and they want that more seamless approach to the data coming out of their payroll going out and coming back in, is that technology driven now?

Don Jones 13:08
That is, and so let’s just start with the kind of the box that we’re in now. So in most situations, a broker would get 5% commission on a policy on health policy. So as a broker, you say, Okay, I got X amount of dollars to work with, and I want to provide this certain level of service. How do I do that, from a business standpoint, in a way that makes sense for me, but it’s very attractive to the employer and the employees. So they want to use me as our broker versus somebody else. So we’re all getting the same bucket of money, the prices, from Anthem from an Aetna from a Kaiser from one broker to the next, you’re going to be the same. So it’s you’re selling roughly the same product at the same price to the same customer.

Brian Hemsworth 13:59
So I want to make sure that everybody listening has a good handle on that. I want to make sure I do too. So if I understand this correctly, if I go to you and I say I’m interested in an Anthem plan for my company, and I call you and you give me some pricing, and I call somebody else, and I say, I want to look at Anthem. I think a lot of us think there’s money to be squeezed out here in there and can I grind them a bit, but what you’re saying is Anthem’s Anthem, right? So the anthem itself, I’m looking at the exact same policy from two people, it’s the same price.

Don Jones 14:37
Yeah, and let me break that down a little more. So in California small group is one to 100 employees. So So those policies are filed in advance. The benefits are filed in advance the rates are filed in advance. You can pull a rate sheet, and everyone uses the same rate sheet.

Brian Hemsworth 14:54
Gotcha.

Don Jones 14:54
It’s illegal for you to charge more and you cannot discount it.

Brian Hemsworth 15:00
So it’s locked.

Don Jones 15:01
So it’s locked. So from a business standpoint, you’re trying to figure okay, how do I, how do I tweak this? And what can I do to offer a better benefit at the same price because it’s coming out of my pocket?

Brian Hemsworth 15:12
So tell me about, okay. So for if we’re basically paying the same thing, why does it matter what broker I choose?

Speaker 1 15:21
So the difference becomes, number one, you there are certain things that the employer has to do when he offers a health plan that he probably doesn’t know he has to do, because no one tells you, the Department of Labor can give you this book saying, oh, by the way, you’re an employer now, and you offer to help plan, and you have to know about HIPAA and Cobra privacy rights, and oh, by the way, all these other notices that you have to give out every year, Medicare Part D, etc. There’s no like handbook that goes out. This says you have to do this. Someone’s got to talk to you about Cobra, if your groups over 20 employees. If your group’s over 50 employees, someone has to talk to you about the ACA filings, that you have to do every year. So yes, the plans are the same in California one to 100, over 100, 101 and over, the plans can be tweaked and changed. But for the most part, every broker has access to the same plan. So if you’re a 200 life group, and you want this specific Anthem plan that’s for sale on the California marketplace, you go to six brokers, and you ask for the same co pays deductibles and RX, you’re gonna get the same quote.

Brian Hemsworth 16:34
Gotcha.

Don Jones 16:34
Now sometimes in those larger quotes, they can discount say, well, I’ll take a 4% commission versus a 5%. But everyone, everyone’s transparent on what it is, you have to lay it all out in front, there’s no there’s no large, huge change in numbers between the Anthem from this guy is going to be 100, and the anthem, this other brokers to be 90.

Brian Hemsworth 16:55
So it’s not, it’s not a car dealer, where you go to one and they tell you this is how much for this new car, but you go to the other end, it’s at the end of the month, and some guy really needs to meet his quota, and he’s willing to darn near give, it’s not like that at all

Don Jones 17:07
It’s a different, it’s for medical insurance, that’s kind of how it’s set.

Brian Hemsworth 17:11
So so I know you’ve done this technology and done a lot of infrastructure, and you’re providing these, I’ll just call them additional services for your clientele. Tell us about some of those things you do.

Don Jones 17:25
So some of the things that you have to do as an employer that we use, use all the newest latest technology, you know, Salesforce like it’s everyone’s familiar with that you can get Salesforce for specific industries now, whether there are companies that tweak it say hey, I want Salesforce for car dealers, or Salesforce for health insurance agents where they’ve kind of tweaked the profile so it works for your business. There’s companies that will provide you with all the documentation, I need a HIPAA notice of privacy notice a cobra notice my Medicare Part D notices all my notices. Oh, and by the way, you’re supposed to provide all your employees with the summary plan description. And on all your benefits and plans, which is separate from those given to your employees from the insurance companies. Most people don’t know that. So if you buy the technology, it’s cheaper to just give it to everybody in your book, rather than saying I need to do one off for it gets really expensive to him that way. So we just decided to invest in the technology to do that. And then for our clients, those are automatically, they automatically happen. In fact, we’ve had people that say, Hey, someone says I need this, I need this form. It says you’ve had it for three years. It’s on your portal. And I guess it’s my fault for not telling you that you’ve had it. Or you just didn’t understand what you had. So there’s issues about enrollments. Now most people now want to do enrollments online. Younger employees gravitate to us, they say like, you know, why don’t you have that? The older folks are said, Do I have to do it? Because they don’t, they want to use paper, much easier to track and digitize documents than something that’s scanned and handwritten. That’s, that’s, that’s a big issue. And if all that stuff is online, with with through our system, it’s easier for us to say giveaways. Oh, by the way, you know, we can do your ACA filings for you, if we have all this information. Now, what does that cost? Well, if you went out and did that on your own, this year, you have to file digitally you have to file electronically, you cannot send in paper this year, it’s gotta be electronic. We’re seeing anywhere from 2000 to 5000 in extra cost for the employer to do that. So that’s something you wouldn’t have to pay extra for. Cobra services are done electronically. You don’t have to pay for that extra. All your documentations, you don’t have to pay extra for, your enrollments are all done online. So that makes it a lot easier. Another thing that happened which is really important, staff is trained. You’re an employer and you get a wage garnishment notice from the county on one of your employees and it goes to your payroll department, and she may get two a year, and she didn’t know what to do with it, what I do with this form, it asks about payroll and it asks about benefit costs. I don’t know what these costs are. So we do that for them too, so they send it to our office, we go, okay, here’s the cost, here’s what you have to do fill this out. And when we send it to you send it back to the county, then usually the second one is, the county then sends you another form that says, now you have to put these people on this plan, because it’s affordable. So there’s all these extra things we can do with no extra cost to the employer, because we’ve kind of streamline this whole, this whole process of enrollment and administering the health plan.

Brian Hemsworth 18:11
So as you administrate these health plans, if I’m understanding correctly, you’re taking a lot of things off their shoulders, and having worked at a lot of companies having owned a couple of companies, HR departments are usually not, you know, really fat, there’s not a ton of extra people, there’s a handful of people that are doing a million different things. And they gotta try to be an expert in those things. And it’s almost impossible. They’re hiring, they’re firing, they’re working with people on hiring, they’re doing record keeping, they’re accessing things, they’re concerned about somebody asking somebody’s age, or gender questions that are gonna get the company. So they’re focused on a lot of different things. They’re not experts, A in technology, B, they’re not experts, and the thing that scares me as a business owner, things like compliance, right, missing that deadline. So this automation, and the service that you do that not everybody does not everybody has the same automation, not everybody provides the services, this is actually going to save them personnel time.

Don Jones 21:45
And that’s that’s a big issue, because the the owner probably doesn’t know how this works in his payroll/HR department. He knows that it gets done. But he doesn’t know who started it, who’s doing it, and how long did it take to get it done. That’s just an expense. And unfortunately, most companies look at HR as an expense, that’s an expense department doesn’t bring us any revenue, it’s just something I have to do to stay in compliance. And oh, by the way, be in California, every year that gets more yeah, there’s more lovely stuff that they give the employer to do. And that usually gets pushed off to the HR Payroll department. So if someone comes into the HR department, because they have a problem with a claim, like getting a referral, on an ID card, that employee instead of working, is now talking to that payroll person, the HR person, so now you have two people who are not making you any money that you’re paying by the hour, usually for, and you’re going to spend an hour or two hours, and you got to zero, in fact, you cost you money, it cost you money. So we had the system set up, so those we have trained, tried training employees, call us directly send it to us, the HR person sends it to us, so we can assist in those. So there’s a lot of,

Brian Hemsworth 23:03
Excuse me, they send them directly to you?

Don Jones 23:05
Yeah, we have some that just send it directly beacuse we’ve enrolled these people in an online portal, some of them just get it right away, and say there’s, here’s an email address, I’m gonna send it to these guys, or I’m just gonna give these people a call, and they can handle it. And we’ve kind of bypassed the HR system on that on that point, but the employer is not paying two people to do something that doesn’t bring him any money. So in the HR department it’s just overwhelmed with new things to do. You know, this year, for example, sick days went up to five days. So there’s there’s a new report, they have to figure out for that, there’s always something new every year that comes out that says this is something we now have to offer. And they push it off to HR and we’re trying to make that plate not as full, regarding the benefit administration, so they can kick it over to us.

Brian Hemsworth 23:53
So when a company, an employer, comes to you, and signs on for their benefit plan, and they begin to get these administrative services that you’re providing, they’re not saving the money by shopping the Anthem, because you can’t save money that way, but they’re saving money in terms of their employees, their output can be devoted to the other things and not to these administrative services. And that has to be a fair amount of hours over the course of a year.

Don Jones 24:28
That’s quite a few hours you know, your your HR department, you know, people think of it as an expense. But if your HR department has the time to hire the right people at the right time, and then fire the people that need to be fired. That’s how an HR department really makes makes you money. So taking those things off their plate that really are administrative tasks. They’re not tasks that anyone at that, at that employment and really has any expertise doing. You’re just outsourcing it to us to get it done.

Brian Hemsworth 24:56
So there, so there’s, they are saving time, they are, because they’re saving time, they’re saving money. And then, as a business owner, I would say one of the things that really hits me is that idea of I wouldn’t even know what to file with cobra or ACA. But you’re able to do those filings on behalf of the employer, and you’re doing those electronically. So that there’s a peace of mind there, that really matters to me. And I would assume a lot of people in that C suite, they want the problems to go away, they don’t want to have to deal with them. And that gives them the ability to get that done. Without putting that on the shoulders of their HR.

Don Jones 25:36
Right, and the best thing about filing, electronically is, you have a track, you have a record. Here’s my record. Here’s my documentation. This was done. It was timely, it’s time stamped. So we know everything’s compliant, and we’re good to go. So it is it is a savings. Now yes, we do do shop the plans. You say this year you have Anthem next year, you want Cigna, year after that you want Health Net, or UnitedHealthcare, or whomever that’s part of the process, you’re changing. Most of the systems you see now that we use that other brokers are also using their setup is really a hub, and you can change vendors. And the the new focus that employers and brokers are trying to go to is you want to you want a platform where you may have 15 different payroll companies that you could use, all your known medical plan, dental plans, vision plans, Cobra administrations and, so if I was to key in a new hire in my, my payroll company, I want that information to go right over to the benefit portal and the broker to make sure my new employee logs in and sees his benefit offerings which are all now online, his SBCs are online that he has to have his COBRA Notice, all those notices are online, he can make his elections, those elections go directly to the carrier. And those amounts from the paycheck go right back into payroll. That means someone in his office didn’t have to key in those things five times.

Brian Hemsworth 27:07
And this is happening fast. It’s it’s very quick, very efficient. And again, saving that time saving that money and ultimately better for the employee better

Don Jones 27:17
Better for employees better tracking system, they felt like okay, I got a copy, I see it on online. Most of you can log in from your phone, your smartphone, and you can see all your benefit offerings, you can make changes online, whether it’s your phone, and it’s tracked, and there’s a record, and I’m older, so I was always a little skeptical because you know, you’re not really trusting not having paper. I’ve just grown up in the paper system. But for you know, a lot of employees, they feel more comfortable, because they have a record on their phone or record on their iPad or somewhere. I can see my stuff.

Brian Hemsworth 27:55
So I’m assuming as as employees age, and you’ve got these new waves of younger employees, they’ve got it like this, it’s online, it’s easy to access, easy to see.

Don Jones 28:03
So let’s say for example, you’re an employer you got, I’m gonna pick a company. Say you got Anthem, you know, alongside Kaiser, and you have Humana for dental, you have VSP vision, and you have Guardian for disability, right. So you get five plans. So if you’re using the paper system, you the employee, you have to fill out five apps,

Brian Hemsworth 28:21
My head hurts already.

Don Jones 28:23
Name, address, social security number, all that kind of stuff. You do an online system, you put it in once and you just check a box. And you are you have the ability to offer your employees, a variety of plans from a variety of carriers. Okay, that really may meet their needs more than just saying I have to use this one carrier because it uses one form. They go online, they click the box sign once on their iPad or phone, and that signature gets transported to all those applications. And then off you go.

Brian Hemsworth 28:55
So I have to believe that when you have a company, switch over to you that a year later, you get a lot of HR people that are gonna say, Don, thank you. Thank you made my job easier.

Don Jones 29:08
They usually say that in the enrollment because they don’t have to do it.

Brian Hemsworth 29:12
So it hits them right away.

Don Jones 29:13
Right away. They see okay, this, I don’t have to do that anymore. No, this is done. This is done. And this is done. So it is a change. They don’t want to do it. It’s not fun for anybody.

Brian Hemsworth 29:26
Yeah

Don Jones 29:27
Yeah, doing the administrative work is not fun thing to do for HR people. They’d rather hire people. You know, the HR department is the cheerleading section of a company, right? This is our great company. This is our great benefit plan. This is how great it is work here. They’re like the up-people that are always trying to be up always wanting to get to the team up, team players, they want to get the most benefit for their employees. So they kind of like this idea. And the platforms are set up and there’s several competing platforms where you can, you have a variety of options. So you’re not saying, to do this you’re stuck with this benefit.

You might even be opening the door.

You’re opening the doors, because usually if they didn’t do it before, they were limited on what they could offer because no one wanted to fill out six forms.

Brian Hemsworth 30:13
Okay, so I’m going to switch gears but I’m going to use a word that you just spoke a moment ago, fun. What do you do when you’re not doing this? I mean, I’m sure this takes a lot and you’re very focused on it. And a lot of time investment into all that technology. What do you do when you’re not doing this?

Don Jones 30:28
You know, so honestly, I haven’t been doing a lot lately but I do have a boat so, well my wife wants to know why that boat is still in the yard. I love the ocean growing up obviously in the Oxnard area. Love boating, when I was younger, I worked on several boats, fishing boats.

Brian Hemsworth 30:50
Commercial or fishing boats?

Don Jones 30:51
Well, you know, for offshore fishing and diving as a cook. So I got to go on those and cook and fish and that was always always a lot of fun. Love the ocean. So that’s a big passion. Haven’t done as much of it as I want to lately, but that’s probably my number one thing is to get more on the water and living living in Oxnard, Ventura, Camarillo. It’s a beautiful coast. In the coastline, between that area and the Channel Islands is just lovely. People have not been out to the Channel Islands and we’ve gone out behind Anacapa or Santa Cruz and see how lovely it is back there. It’s just gorgeous. So that’s that’s kind of my number one passion. I tried playing golf. I’m honest to say some people should play golf, some people should watch people play golf. I think it takes a certain, you have to be able to relax to play golf. And right now we’re very busy. It’s very hard to relax. So, it’s something that I would wish I could I could do better. And then of course, you know, we have got a couple grandkids and we got stuff to do.

Brian Hemsworth 32:00
Are they local?

Don Jones 32:01
Yes.

Brian Hemsworth 32:02
Oh, so you get to see them.

Don Jones 32:04
It’s great.

Brian Hemsworth 32:05
Hey, Don, thanks so much for coming in. Really appreciate you sharing some about your business with us. And I hope you come in again soon.

Don Jones 32:11
Thank you.

Announcer 32:19
Presented by Echelon business development, more than just networking. Way more

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Donald Jones is knowledgeable in many areas of national employee benefits, including: Interpreting complex legislation & regulations; Training HR people how to implement plans; Providing assistance to get employee benefits paid at a higher level; Working with insurance companies to get previously denied claims paid; and negotiating extremely favorable group rates for over 100 employees. DMJ Insurance Services offers a comprehensive Benefits Outsource Program that eases the burden of HR departments compliance. It also saves HR employee time and money. Visit DMJ Insurance Services.

As CEO and Creative Director at Newman Grace, Jerri leads one of Los Angeles’ most respected marketing firm and brand communication firms. Newman Grace has been providing marketing, brand and advertising consulting, graphic design, and social media services to growing companies since 1996. Newman Grace serves the professional services, manufacturing, sports, publishing and non-profit markets. Jerri is an adjunct professor in the School of Media, Culture and Design at Woodbury University. She is also a co-founder of Echelon Business Development Network. Learn more about Jerri here at Newman Grace.