Living R.I.C.H. Creates Wealth with Dina Dwyer-Owens - Genius Network Episode #39

Welcome to the Genius Network show. In this episode, you'll discover how living rich creates wealth with Dina Dwyer Evans. Dena is the co chairwoman of the Dwyer Group, board of directors, chair of the International Franchise Association, a philanthropist, and best selling author. Recorded live from the Genius Network annual event. If you would like access to the full feature video presentation, the show notes and the special resources for this episode, please visit geniusnetwork.com the that's geniusnetwork.com 39.

All of you have a copy of this book called Live Rich by Dina Dwar Owens. Okay, Living Rich. That sounds nice, doesn't it? Living rich creates wealth sounds even better, especially since it's the title of Dinah Dwyer Owens. Message for you. I met her through Vern Harnish at his Fortune summit, which is awesome. She's the executive chairwoman of a holding company that has over 1600 franchisees with with over 2 million customers. This year, they'll do over a billion in sales. So she knows a lot about riches. So Dena's message for you is about four letters that make up the wonderful word rich. So give it up for Ms. Dina Dwyer Owens.

Headquartered in Waco, Texas, the Dwyer Group is the parent company to seven franchise brands specializing in home and vehicle maintenance, including Mr. Rooter, Mr. Appliance, the Grounds Guys, and Mr. Electric. Overseeing the 10,000 employees and in charge of running this $800 million business is one woman.

My name is Dena Dwyer Owens and I'm the chairwoman and CEO of the Dwyer Group. The Dwyer Group is a collection of franchise companies that serve the homeowner and small business owner. The Dwyer Group was founded by my father, don Dwyer, in 1981 with 36 franchise locations. And today we have about 1,560 locations.

Hello, everybody. Hello.

We have an extremely special culture here. Okay, so why don't we kick off with our code of values? We live our code of values by treating others as we'd like to be treated.

We live our code of values by responding in a timely fashion.

The Dwyer Group has always had a code of values, and it started with my father's vision.

We live our code of values by asking clarifying questions if we disagree or do not understand.

Basically, it's four categories. Respect, integrity, customer focus, and one of my favorites. We live our code values by having.

Fun in the process.

Awesome. Dina Dwar Owens. Thank you.

Thank you so much for having me, Joe. And I especially want to thank you for the big name badges. I turned 51 and all of a sudden my eyes just went right So I love the badges. Thank you so much. I have a question. How many of you are living rich? I thought there'd be more hands raised by the show of the exotic cars that were out front. When I got here yesterday, I thought this was a really rich crowd. So what I mean by living rich is how many of you are really living with respect, integrity, customer focus, and having fun in the process? All right, that's better. Good. That's more important anyways than rich in dollars. So. At the Dwyer Group, we believe that living rich creates wealth, and Rich Again stands for our four core values. Respect, integrity, customer focus, and having fun in the process. We believe that wealth starts with relationships. Just as Joe has surrounded himself with amazing relationships, here it's really about relationships. When you build strong relationships with your employees, your customers, your partners, in our case, our franchisees, those relationships multiply themselves, don't they? And if you've got a great product or service, they actually translate into financial wealth at the end of the day. So our attitude is that profits are the applause you get for living rich, for living by your values. How many of you would be interested in experiencing a 59% premium on your stock price? Anybody? How about three times cash on cash in your equity investments? Anybody? You guys aren't very hungry. Okay. Well, I am committed today to share with you just how we've done that at the Dwyer Group. And it all starts with you. First, you have to understand who are you and what are you about what's important to you. So it starts with you understanding who's my best self. I can't ever be Joe Polish, although I'd love some of Joan's marketing genes. That would be awesome. But I'm not going to be Joe Polish. I've got to be the best Dino Dwyer Owens that I can be. So you've got to be clear about who you are and what's important to you, what's most important to you. And then you've got to put those values into writing. So how many of you have clearly written values? Clearly written values. All right. How many of you share those clearly written values with your team on a daily or regular basis? Look around the room. Just a few hands went up, and that's typical. Verne Harners taught me that 95% of the companies in North America do nothing with their values once they're written. Isn't that sad? You invest all this time in coming up with them, and then you do nothing with them. So it's up to us as leaders. It begins and ends with us, as it did with our founder, Don Dwyer. Don Dwyer founded the Dwyer Group in 1981 with a very clear code of values, because he was going to be his best self, and he was going to make sure everybody knew what he stood for, what was important to him. Unfortunately, he died of a sudden heart attack at the age of 60 in 1994, just after taking the company public. So if you haven't gone public yet, you might think about it. A year later, the guy dies. If he were here, he'd be laughing about that because he and I teased that going public really was a lot more painful than he thought it was going to be. But the truth is, he created a culture like no other at the Dwyer Group with his core values. And when he died, our biggest fear as a management team was, how do we keep this culture special? The founder is no longer here to hold us accountable. We knew it was all about the values, so we took his original values and we operationalized them all. This is in the book. So we took those core values and we operationalized them into 15 standards that fall below those categories of respect, integrity, customer focus, and having fun. And we knew that that was truly the foundation for our success at the Dwyer Group, the roots that really keep this business alive. 33 years later, almost 34 years later, the company's still alive. Don Dwyer died 20 years ago. And it's the values. It's because of the values and the people that we surround ourselves with that the company is still alive today. So values are key. Why are they key? Number one, they help you set your vision right. They also drive your strategy. They govern behaviors. They make for clear expectations for your employees. They guide your decision making. And at the end of the day, they help you sleep better. When you are clear about your values and you're living them, it's a better night's rest for everybody, isn't it? Because you're working hard to do what's right by the people that you're serving or that you're selling products to. So first, be your best authentic self and make sure that you have clarity about your values and that you're sharing them with your team. Now let's talk about the team. The team has to be a values based team, right? You've got to surround yourself with people that are aligned with your values, otherwise it will never work. So you've got to hire people that believe in your values, and then you can make it work. Anybody know Undercover Boss? Anybody like the Undercover Boss series? Right. I had the Privilege of being on Undercover Boss in season three, the casting director came to Waco, Texas and he said, dina, we want to know more about you personally. We get you're a boss, but what do you do before you go to work in the morning? What do you do after work? And I said, fine. Before I get out of bed, I count my blessings. I've got so much to be grateful for. Then I go down and make pancakes for my son. At that time he was 16 and loved my pancakes. He's 19 now, not so interested. Then I chat over breakfast with my wonderful husband Mike, who's sitting here with me today and go to church. The director said, you do what? I said, I go to church. He said, why would you do that? I said, why not? He said, wait, so you're telling me before you go to the office you go to church? And he really did want to know why. And I said, because I need something that's going to keep me grounded. We're all busy, aren't we? And I was getting so busy and so caught up in the day to day stuff that I was losing sight of what's really important in life. So I said, I have got to be the best me that I can be and I've got to find a place to get quiet and keep perspective. So he said, can we follow you to church? I said, let's ask. Here's what happened.

As I come to the end of my journey, I'm just happy that my had such a vision for making a positive difference in the lives of everybody we touch, whether they're on the front line or whether they're here in Waco, Texas. Every one of them is special.

I appreciate CBS and Studio Lambert really sharing the real me because that's me. I wasn't doing that to promote my religion to anybody or push my faith on anybody. It was about not being afraid to be who I am and to share with folks what's most important to me. I probably got the record for the most tears on the Undercover Boss series as well. But that's okay because that's who I am too, right? I get emotional and I let it show when I'm emotional. And I'm still here today, so I guess it's okay, right? So you've got to be willing to be the best you you can be. Have a values based team. And the next thing is once you've got those values clear, you've got to systemize and internalize those values. It's one thing to have them on a wall or on a piece of paper. But how are you going to live them every day? And as any good franchisor would do, we create systems around everything. Right? The systems are why we're successful. So we created a system. It's very. Anytime we have a meeting of three or more of our team members, we take the time to review the values. Takes a couple of minutes at most. Sometimes I'm in six meetings in a day. So we might just tell a code of value story or we might talk about the one value that we need to improve on. Because you know what? We're not a perfect company. We have lots of room for improvement. On my undercover boss journey, the very first experience I had was with a Mr. Reuter, Mr. Electric franchisee in atlanta, Georgia. And here's what was happening in his office. We do with every meeting.

Let's go ahead and get started with our code of values.

On your feet, company. A tread hump. We live our code of values by.

Never saying anything about anyone that we would not say to him or her.

We live our code of values by.

Asking clarifying questions if we disagree or do not understand.

The code of values is clearly part of what we do. But the presentation of it was new.

At ease, gentlemen.

All right. He clearly didn't see the lady in the bad wig. We don't ask our franchisees to recite the values in a military format. We just want them to recite them. They're independent business people. So you've got to systemize and internalize the values. Have something that gets you talking about them day in and day out. First lead by them, but then be talking about them regularly. And then finally, you have to measure performance. It's one thing to have values. It's another thing to try to live them. But why not ask your people how you're doing? So we ask our franchisees and our employees every year to rate us on all 15 values. So my undercover boss mission was to find out, Was our code of values Truly penetrating the front lines? We have 9 to 10,000 employees representing our brands at any one time in the country, Actually, in the world. And here's what happened when I revealed who I was to tana moreno, one of our frontline professionals.

Am I getting fired? Are you kidding me? What are we doing? You are amazing. So my goal going into cover was.

To find out how we're doing.

Are we really living up to the values that my father founded this company on? Because that's my goal, is to live his dream. And you are the epitome of what Dawn Dwyer would have looked for in.

One of our team members.

Thank you.

You know, what we heard from the viewers was thank you. Thank you for being so transparent. Thank you for living with core values, because you don't find that today in our world, not just in the United States of America. So when you live rich, when you live your values, you'll create wealth and profit's the applause you'll get for doing that. Well, I wonder what kind of applause you'll be getting. Thank you very much and God bless you all. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Genius Network with Dina Dwyer Evans. If you would like access to the full feature video presentation, the special resources and show notes for this episode, please visit geniusnetwork.com 39 that's geniusnetwork.com 39 if you would like to learn more about the Genius Network annual event, go to geniusnetworkevents.com that's geniusnetworkevents dot com don't miss out on more insights, strategies and wisdom like this on Genius Network. Subscribe to Genius Network today by visiting geniusnetwork. Com. Subscribe. That's geniusnetwork. Com. Subscribe.