245 - Leading with Heart: A Vision for Empathy and Growth with 911 Restoration' Miri Offir

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started.

Muriel Ferrer, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the CEO of a company called 911restoration.com based in the Southern California area, and you have an amazing story which I am really excited to hear about. Thanks for being here.

Thank you for having me.

Backstory. Let me tell you a little bit about what I know, and then I want you to fill in the details. You're originally from Israel. You're Israeli and you grew up there as do all young Israeli people. You went into the IDF, the Israeli Defense Force, where you were military police for 2 years, emigrated to the United States. And was it your first job as an office manager or receptionist for 911 Restoration? Is that how it started?

That was my second job in the US.

Okay. And let's take it from there.

Awesome. Sure. Yeah.

You've become the CEO from starting out at the bottom of the food chain, becoming now the top dog.

Yeah. Well, uh, thanks again for having me. Um, if you would ask me, I came to the US back in 2003. I'm the youngest out of 4. You can only imagine, very spoiled. Didn't really want to come to the US. Back then I got married. It was my husband's dream to come and money grows on the trees and all this crazy stuff that we hear. And so I said, fine, got married, just move along and we're going to come to the US. Hated every minute of it. I always joke about it. If you would tell me, if someone would have told me back then in 2003 that 20 years after I'll be the CEO of a nationwide franchise. I would say, wow, this is a crazy joke. But yeah, here I am today. So one day we went to a barbecue and I was back then very quiet. I think I can say I'm an introvert and I was sitting in the corner of that place and then I saw the founder and kind of saw me sitting there and I saw him approaching me and he was like, hey, what's your name? And I said, Miriam. And he goes, are you looking for a job? And I said, yes. He said, okay, great. You're hired. That's, that's pretty much what it was. It was back then. It was just a small restoration business and we pretty much did everything, carpet cleaning, handyman, you name it, we did it. And he needed someone to manage the office and do marketing and payroll and take calls and pretty much everything that falls under operating a business. And I said, yeah, because that's what I did back in Israel before. And that's pretty much how we started.

So it started, it start, 9-1-1 Restoration started in the San Fernando Valley as just a small business, and now it's this national franchise operation.

Yeah. So back in—

How many franchisees do you have now?

So we have 300 units right now that are broken down by 111 owners.

Wow.

Yeah. In the US and we have in Canada. So yeah, pretty exciting.

That is very exciting and big. So you've been doing this now for 20 years. I know you left the company and then came back in 2008. I saw a little bit of the interview that the founder did with you back in 2022, '23, I guess, when you became CEO.

You looked a little shell-shocked in that video.

Tell us a little bit about the story about how you grew into becoming—

Yeah, absolutely. Again, started as the office manager and pretty much whatever he needed, I did. Uh, and then in 2007, we started franchising. Back then, unfortunately, I found myself divorced, uh, and I had two babies, two and four, and I just needed the job. I came back. And then one of the things that the founder needed back then, he saw a lot of opportunities in the digital marketing. World, and he was like, this is where I want you to focus. And I said, great, super, I love it. Always was passionate about it. So I started just educating myself, right? With Google, 2007, that was the year that we established a partnership with Google, started with all the paid ads campaign. And from there, from website development and SEO and social media, that was really my passion. I think also one of the things I mentioned in the video, he kept asking me for things and I was like, yeah, absolutely, I can do it. And I was clueless. How I'm going to make it happen, but I always found a way. And from there I was able to collaborate. I got the opportunity and the pleasure to collaborate with hundreds of franchisees. And you probably know how that is with business owners. The first thing when something goes wrong, they go to the marketing, right? Because the campaigns are not working. So I got to speak with a lot of them and you sometimes you have some challenging conversations. Sometimes it's the last dollars and they invest that in marketing and the outcome is not really what they expected. So from there, it's the sense of accountability. I could have just said, hey, I just did my job. You invested $3,000, for example, here are all the leads that I generated. I'm done. But it's that sense of accountability and seeing there's actually a person. It's not a business. It's a person and he has a wife and kids and he needs to support them and I need to help them. So from there, that sense of accountability, I started to explore different aspects of the business, right? Okay. When I had a conversation with the franchisee, you think that it's the marketing, but let's explore everything. So I would create these KPI reports. Let's see how many leads that you got and did you close all of them? What's your conversion ratio and what's your average per ticket and are you selling them and all that? Technical stuff that they don't really look into. As a result of that, I found myself in the customer service department and then as a franchise consultant, right? And then in national accounts, how do I bring them more business? And also the accounting, like every department you can possibly think of. And then today, here I am, very grateful and honored to oversee the whole operation.

What happened to the founder?

He's still here. We work very closely. We have great relationship. He helps with whatever I need him. He doesn't have an active role in the day to day. He used to be the CEO before and I replaced him.

So you've been doing this stuff for 20 years now. What is it that gets you up in the morning and gets you excited to go to work?

The people.

Really?

Definitely the people. Yeah, absolutely the people. It's a job and people ask me that all the time. Can be very stressful, like very stressful, especially when I'm in the marketing and I'm investing. You're talking about millions of dollars on an annual basis. In some occasion it's their retirement, or some of them didn't have as much. So there's a lot of responsibility there. I remember I had days that I would come home and I would barely have air to breathe just because of the stress. This campaign is not working. How do I make it work? But at the end of the day, it's these moments where I saw my impact. So when working with someone and he got this great job or he had this great month, or I would see them at the annual conference, how great they feel and Usually in the annual conference, we give them awards, the $1 million club and $2 million club. And I was like, oh, I got— I had something to do with it. I was part of their journey and that means the world to me. So that's really where I get my energy.

What is it? What is it, Mary, that you think that you bring to the table that makes you successful, has made you successful in the past and makes you successful today as a CEO?

I think it's my, the way that I communicate with people and the fact that I'm able to see them.

That is big.

Yeah.

I wanna stop right there. I wanna tell you that I'm an introvert and I would say that 99.9% of the people that I've interviewed on this show as executive level people are introverts too. I just thought you'd like to know that.

Yeah. That's interesting.

Because you see people, I, there's a phrase I use. When I'm training people, I say you learn how to listen other people into existence. Sounds similar to what you do. Tell us what you do.

Exactly. That's exactly it, right? Is to see the other person, is to actually listen. It's not just to wait for your turn to speak. It's to actually actively listening to see what they have to say, to try to the best of my ability to put myself in their shoes, even for a couple of moments, to understand their perception, to understand their point of view. And that's huge. I think for me, that's—

How do you do that?

What's the exact skill that you use when you're trying to put yourself in somebody else's shoes?

How do I do that? I just do it, right?

It's an intuitive skill that you picked up.

Yeah.

What I teach is how to listen to emotions. So what I teach people is how to listen to emotions and then reflect back the emotions. Of another person, similar to what you're saying. But instead of it being intuitive, it's a very explicit, teachable skill that people can manage. But you figured out how to listen to people just by experience. How do you think you developed that?

So it's, for me, it's all about really observing the person. Like I told you, like at that barbecue, like I observed first. I'm not a talker. Like I would go into a party or whatever room full of people, I'll observe first. And what I do, I try to understand their language. What is their language? Each person has different keywords that you use or different tone of voice, right? So that's what I really do too when I try and see them. I observe and I study them. And when I speak with them, I'm very aware of how they respond to me, like their body language. If I said something, was he mad based on his face impression or body language? Do I see his hands going like this or like scratching? You know, his throat. That's really what I'm looking for. And I really notice that when I say different keywords, when they're comfortable or uncomfortable, and then I know, okay, now you stepped your boundaries or now you're within boundaries. I had a lot of situations where after the conversation I was running the conversation through my head because I didn't feel it went properly. And then I would schedule another one and I would find a different way based on my observation, how I studied the person, how I should approach him.

You've touched on some really important points. One is that you really take the time to observe people and pay attention to them. How did you make that a priority when there, most people don't have the patience for observation?

Yeah.

That's your secret sauce. How'd you make that happen?

Yeah, I think that a big part of this is I'm all about, if you'd ask me, is making a difference, right? Because I have two kids, seven 17 and 19, and with all this craziness in the world, I always think, what can I do to leave the world even a slightly better place? So it comes about caring, right? It's something like natural that I have within me. I'm a big believer that in order to make a difference, you don't, you don't have to be like super smart or super talented. All you have to do is genuinely care about the people that are around you. It's, some people can try and fake it, but I think it shows if they do.

You see a lot of that, haven't you?

Yeah, and people pick it up very quickly. So you— I think that a big thing for me is to ensure that I'm always in the right place, that I'm really passionate about, that I love what I do. I think it's a big part of it because I notice in scenarios that I wasn't, then people really quickly saw that the, that the relationship are not the same, right? So that was a big thing for me. I would never stay 20 years in one place unless I was extremely passionate about it. I just love what I do. And then you just welcome everything with open arms and you just want to know more and you just want to help more.

You've written or you've been interviewed and talked about the importance of leadership empathy. Tell us a little bit more about that.

So I think that's with people in general and what I learned based on my engagement with so many different people that it's first is the appreciation. People want to be appreciated. They want to be acknowledged and they want to be seen. Something that I've seen over and over again and in a lot of different interviews of executive level. That in many occasions people are numbers. Usually CEOs, a lot of people don't get to even speak with their CEOs. They just see a picture on the website and that's where it starts with, that's where it ends. Maybe at an annual conference, maybe at a meeting once a year. And for me, it's all about the people. How do I make them feel seen? And again, for me, it comes from that sense of I want to help them. Right? I do— how do I help them from get to point A to point B, right? In their life. So in order to do that, I really need to get to know them, right? That's my mission. I need to get to know them, which means I need to listen to them and see what's their struggles, what their challenges, what are they looking forward to, what are they motivated by, right? So that's how I do things and how I approach things. Wow.

I can't tell you how rare and special it is to hear you talk like this. You're one in 10,000 that, of leaders that I talk to that have figured out that your role as a leader and as a CEO is to make sure that other people feel heard and that you literally listen them into existence because when you do that, they all of a sudden are engaged and become loyal and motivated, and they want to work hard and they want to collaborate because they feel like they're not invisible.

Exactly.

And that's the secret to great leadership.

Agreed, agreed 100%.

Yeah, it's what I teach, and remarkably, there are so few people who really get it. Uh, so Where do you go from here? I, I figure you're probably in your forties. You've been doing this for 20 years. Your kids are about ready to go off to college. You've been the CEO for a couple of years. Where, where do you see yourself in 5 years?

So my big mission, and you've probably picked it up by now, is to spread more goodness in the world. And I utilize the stage that I have with 911 Restoration to start that spark, right? We have thousands of people that work in this organization, and I collaborate with all of them to be part of this big and so important mission. So that's really— but my main thing right now is to have many communities out there that are established based on full collaboration and transparency and empathy, and inspire each other to listen to each other. And I think in the business world, especially in the home business sector, and we get to deal with a lot of homeowners, and that's moms and dads, or even the commercial sector, right? It's like business owners. We get to engage and touch so many different people. This is really my biggest mission, is to spread that goodness there. And how do we do that? We support people when they need us the most, when they go through water damage or mold. And we're there for them. If you were to ask me what is the real damage, it's the emotional damage that they're going through. So that's really my biggest mission.

How are you taking these enormous, enormously important values that you have and infusing them in your organization?

I think that has to start by leading by example, right? Because if I wouldn't behave like that, that no one else would. And it's just constant conversation with everyone, right? It's just keep repeating it and get and lead by example and listen to people and have you show them.

Have you ever tried any formal training to help people in your organization be, be more like you?

We try to do that all the time, right? But what I learned that, um, Each and every person has its own magic and its own personal skills. That's something that I also learned the hard way. There's so many mentors out there and they're like, oh, you want to be successful, you want to be like this person, this is what you need to do. I also started, I'm big in the spiritual world as well, like numerology and astrology and digging more into the people and personality and what I learned and really stood out for me. And the older I get, I, I understand it more that each person in this world has unique skills that is way different than someone else. And this is the beauty of it. All we have to do is discover what is our skills, and then we complement each other versus compete with each other. So that's really my work with everyone, right? With each individual, how do I discover this, the, the gifts that God gave you when you came to this world, right? And let's see how your weakness is my gift and my strength. And that's how we work together. So there's a lot of personal conversation, a lot of coaching that I do with the team, also with the franchisees. I studied NLP as well. So I got some tools under my belt as well, but that's really what it is. It's like, how do I find that talent? That each person has. And then you have a group of people with different talents and that's how the magic happens.

So you see one of your chief functions as the leader is to coach people.

Yes, definitely.

Coach them to excellence.

Coach them to listen to themselves because very frequently you would find people that either they're in a certain role, but when you get to know them more, that's not really what they want to do.

Right. They're not happy. Right.

They have different dreams. Like they do it because maybe the pay is good. Maybe the benefits are good, but it's a job. It's not what they're passionate about. And what I do, it's really help them discover what it is that they're passionate about. What is that gift that they got and acknowledge it, embrace it. And how do we grow and develop it?

Wow.

You are a very special CEO.

Thank you.

I think out of 250 episodes, I've never heard anybody talk like you are.

Wow.

And I totally endorse everything that you're talking about because it's what I teach. And of course, you always love to hear what you teach, right? Mary, one more question, I'll let you go. What's one thing about yourself that we wouldn't know about unless you revealed it to us?

One thing about myself that you wouldn't know. It's a good one. I don't know. I never thought about it. I think the one thing people— I'm very sensitive, very sensitive to my surrounding. And a lot of people don't see that, right, in me, just because I don't tend to show my emotions. So a lot of people would sometimes joke at me and they're like, are you real? Like you never yell, you never raise your voice. Do you have emotions? What's up with you? So I can say that I'm very sensitive to the people around me, and that's something that people rarely can read.

You're highly empathic.

Yes.

You feel a lot of other people's emotions.

Yeah.

Have you ever heard the term HSP?

No.

Highly sensitive person.

Okay, got it.

Yeah, that's probably where you're at.

Yeah.

Well, you are doing amazing work, and this has been a, a really phenomenal and inspiring conversation for me, and I know that my audience will really enjoy it too. So I just want to thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy day to spend time with us.

My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. It was lots of fun. You're welcome.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media, just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up Your ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.