On his first day in real estate, John Dugan walked out the door in a suit that didn’t fit him. He had started over twice before, once in the Marine Corps and again in professional kitchens, and this move became the one he ranks above the rest.
“It was the best thing I ever did,” Dugan told Inman. He said he went into real estate the way he went into boot camp, expecting the work to be hard.
“I do whatever it takes to make it work,” he said.
Dugan enlisted after the Sept. 11 attacks and fought in the 2004 assault on Fallujah, Iraq, as a Marine infantryman. After leaving the service, he rose to chef de cuisine at the Michelin-starred Oceana restaurant in Manhattan.
More than a decade after that first day, Dugan co-leads The Skyline Advisory Team at Brown Harris Stevens with Mick DiStasio. The team has done more than $400 million in sales, according to Brown Harris Stevens CEO Bess Freedman, who interviewed Dugan on her podcast, The Lead.
Dugan said the discipline he built in the Marines shapes how he guides clients through stressful deals, and he believes veterans bring the same commitment to the industry.
Going home tonight, and maintaining perspective
John Dugan
Dugan said tough negotiations and difficult conversations with clients can bring back a feeling he knows from combat.
But his time in the Marines gives him a way to put stress into context.
“It can feel like life or death, but … that’s where the equanimity comes from,” Dugan told Inman. “We’re all going home tonight, regardless of what the outcome is. We’re all going to be with our families.”
He said that perspective keeps him steady and helps clients handle bad news when a deal hits trouble.
Dugan and DiStasio, a former professional basketball player, run the team on systems Dugan compares to a standard operating procedure. They prepare clients for each stage of a transaction before it begins, he said.
“Prepare them for the bumps in the road that will no doubt come,” Dugan said. “Never overpromise.”
That includes telling buyers when he thinks a property has too many problems to justify the purchase.
“The trust takes forever to build, and it can be lost in a split second,” he said.
What veterans bring to the industry
Dugan said real estate leaders should consider the commitment a veteran has already made, including those who served during peacetime.
“I think veterans have incredibly unique raw materials that only someone who has been selfless to that limit could have,” he told Inman. “If applied correctly, all the discipline, work ethic and things that they learned in the service can put them heads and shoulders above the masses.”
He said being called a hero or thanked for his service makes him uncomfortable. “You did your job, you signed up for it,” Dugan said.
Asked what people could do to show appreciation, instead, he pointed to the poverty he saw on deployments in Thailand and the Philippines.
“We live such a privileged, abundant life that I wish people would just be more grateful and humble,” he said.
Where the discipline started
Dugan grew up between Manhattan and Long Island and worked in pizzerias and construction after high school. He said he had considered enlisting but kept putting off the decision until the Sept. 11 attacks.
“I knew immediately, I need to join the service, and I need to go and fight for the country, for my family,” he told Inman.
“I had to lose weight, get in shape, clean my act up, all the things, and I did it like overnight,” he said. He shipped to boot camp on his 21st birthday. He served as an enlisted infantry Marine from 2002 to 2006 and deployed three times.
Dugan said his battalion was among the first to enter Fallujah when U.S. forces launched the operation to retake the city on Nov. 7, 2004. He said the fighting lasted about three months.
Early in the assault, the armored vehicle he was riding in was hit, and Dugan suffered a burn to his eye. His lieutenant told him to go to the medical vehicle, but Dugan said he looked at the wounded Marines around him and stayed.
“I just knew at that second nothing would take me out of this,” he said.
The months of fighting that followed required him to summon that resolve again and again, he said.
The kitchen years
After leaving the Marines in 2006, Dugan attended John Jay College with his GI Bill while waiting tables, then toured the French Culinary Institute the day he graduated and started classes weeks later. He worked his way from grill cook to chef de cuisine at Oceana, a Michelin-starred restaurant on 49th Street and Sixth Avenue, where he said he ran the kitchen day to day under the executive chef.
He said the decision to leave came during a shift when the owner berated the chef over a VIP’s pasta. He decided he did not want to spend the rest of his career in kitchens.
He and his wife wanted children, and the restaurant hours left little room for family, he said. A family friend six weeks into a real estate career told Dugan he could match his chef’s salary if he worked hard. Dugan kept the kitchen as a fallback he never intended to use.
He spent about five years at Anchor Associates, where he and DiStasio worked side by side under the same mentor, and five years at Elegran. The two formed a partnership about three years ago so neither would have to work through every vacation, and Brown Harris Stevens recruited the team in 2025.
A day set aside
Nearly 20 years after leaving the Marines, Dugan said he does not think about his service every day. He has had help processing it, he said, and carrying it all the time can become crippling.
Veterans Day gives that part of his life a set place. Dugan called it a forced day of remembrance, one he considers important, when he sets the present aside and goes back.
“You do cry. You do look at your pictures. You do have reverence. You do think about the times with the guys who are gone,” he said.
He said he thinks about the marriage, children and career he has had since coming home and about the Marines who died before they ever had a homecoming.
“Work and every other thing can just chill for a minute,” Dugan said. “I need to just kind of have some time with this.”
The day keeps the memory in its place, he said, without letting it take over the rest of the year.
“You should never forget it,” Dugan said. “It’s a part of you, so it’s important that it has its place. Not too much, not too little, but just the right amount.”
