The Undercover Boss Dina Dwyer-Owens Interview - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #155

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish.

And this is the I love marketing podcast.

Hey everybody, it's Dean Jackson and Joe Polish.

And we have a very special guest by the name of Dina Dwar Owens on the line with us. So Dina, can you hear us?

I'm very excited today.

I can hear you. Hi guys.

Hey. So you're kind of a big deal, so let me read your bio here. Dean. She does not like profanity, so do not say anything profane during this. I'll have to watch it.

I might beep you, Dean. Watch it.

Exactly. So who is Deena Dwyer Owens? She is the executive chairwoman of the Dwyer Group America. Also known for her participation in CBS's Emmy winning hit reality show Undercover Boss and the first ever special episode Undercover Boss Epic Bosses. Dina is a certified franchise executive at more than 30 years of industry experience. She grew up in the Dwyer Group. That business now includes seven franchise brands in more than 1,600 locations around the world. Through direct franchising and master license agreements operating as these different franchises. Airserve Glass, Dr. Mr. Appliance, Mr. Electric, Mr. Rooter, Rainbow International and the Grounds Guys. Collectively, these service brands make more than 2 million customer calls a year and account for more than 800 million in system wide sales. In 2005, Deana launched the Live Rich campaign to promote the Dwyer Group code of values and the themes of respect, integrity, customer focus and having fun in the process to a growing company. She also released her book Live how to Build Success in youn Company and you'd Life with a Proven Code of Values. And Dina is a regular speaker for how to Live Rich within her company and to audiences around the world. And she credits ethics in business and in life as a foundation to true happiness. They're headquartered in Waco, Texas. The Dwyer Group has been named to the best companies to work for in Texas list for the last five consecutive years. And Dina is married to Mike Owens and they have two wonderful children. And Dina, that's the only part of this episode that I'm actually going to read anything. So what else do people need to know about you before we jump in and start asking you a bunch of questions about you, your company and business?

Yeah, well, one thing I'd like to update since you got that bio from us is we are almost at 1 billion in system wide sales now, which makes me very happy. Yeah. I'll never forget when my father was building this company, he wanted to have 10,000 franchises doing a billion in system wide sales. And unfortunately he died of a heart attack in 1994. And one of the first things we did as a management team is we said, we don't need to have 10,000 franchises to do that billion. Let's do it with less than 2000 franchises. And here we are, we've got about 1600 franchisees, which means every one of them is more successful individually than certainly if we would have had 10,000 achieving that level. So that's a lot of fun. But I love life. So I guess if you want to know more about me, I love people, I love life, and my goal is to always make somebody smile. And as long as I do that, I feel like I've done my job for the day.

Yeah. Yeah. I want to recommend that everyone listening to this. After you've listened to it, go watch the episode of Undercover Boss. I actually watched it for the second time right before doing this, just to put it fresh in my mind after I read your book Live Rich. And it gives a completely different context of your company and your organization and you and your code of ethics and how you think about things. And it's really interesting, all of the different sort of philosophies that you've merged together and you have perpetuated through the organization to obviously have the success that you have. And so I do want to say that I met you in person through our buddy Vern Harnish at one of his Fortune summits, where you were a speaker, and I thought you were fantastic. And we have a lot of friends in common. I mean, you know Dan Kennedy, the curmudgeonous marketing brilliant guy. We've interviewed Dan on I love marketing, of course, And Dan used to write a lot of my sales copy the first nine years of my marketing company. And of course, we have a lot of probably similarities, considering how much marketing work I've done for service industries and that your whole world is that world. And then Dan Sullivan. I mean, all of us are in strategic coach, which I think is kind of cool.

It really works.

Yeah. Yeah. So you know Don Dwyer, your father. Let's talk about the history of the Dwyer Group and a little bit about your dad and what started it all and what you still apply and what you have created on as a result of running the company.

Yeah, well, there were three things Don Dwyer loved to do. And, you know, Joe, you were such a young man, you know, when he was around. And your reputation has just continued to grow since then. I mean, anybody asking the restoration business about Joe Polish, they all know who Joe Polish is. And so it's kind of fun to talk to somebody who was around when my father was out there building a big business in Rainbow. But he's a guy who loved to build businesses, build buildings, and build people. But the thing he got the most pleasure out of was building people. In fact, today I was working with a new group of franchisees in basic training. I teach the very first class of basic training, and it's kind of the first half of Don's original mission, and that was to teach his principles and systems of both personal and business success so that all people he touched would live happier, more successful lives. So the thing he got the most pleasure out of was helping people achieve their dreams. So this morning I taught a class called Design youn Life. And it was really all about, what is it you really want to achieve out of your life? And how is this franchise or this career, in some cases, I had franchisees employees here or my own employees here. You know, how is this career going to be the vehicle to help you get where you really want in life? And, you know, most people have never thought about that. They don't have clarity about what is. Where is it I want to go with my life. Everybody's just kind of living day to day and busy, being busy, which doesn't make any sense to me. But most of the world lives that way. So Don's vision was to help people by teaching them how to be avid goal setters, or he calls them target setters. So that's one of the beautiful things dawn left. A legacy for us is that we teach people how to have personal success. And then on the business side, we teach them the principles and systems of business success as it relates to the franchise systems in particular. And then the foundation for all this success Don started was with something he coined his code of values. And that really is what set the culture here at Dwyer. Very family oriented, very respectful culture. And yet dawn was a guy who had to hold us accountable to those original values. There were things like loyalty adds meaning to our lives. We believe our Creator put us on this earth to succeed. We'll accept our daily successes humbly, knowing that a higher power is guiding us. And the one that I never forget as I walk to my office every morning, I've got a picture of my father up on the wall. And then the list of the original values and the one that screams at me as I enter my day is, we must re earn our positions every day, in every way. So even though I was a child of his, six kids in our family, all grew up in the business. We were worked harder than anybody else because he didn't care what we did yesterday. You know, congratulations. You're on Undercover Boss. Dina. But what are you going to do today? You know, that's history. Let's move forward. What are you going to do today to make a difference in the lives of the franchisees, the employees, and the customers that you're responsible for? So that's a little bit about dawn, and I don't know, Joe, if you want to pause there, but I can tell you what we did with that code of values once he passed away, because that was the biggest gap that we saw going forward as an organization.

No, no, I mean, I will just say this, that he obviously was a great catalyst, and with, you know, when it was passed to you and you took this over and you described kind of the transition, which I'm sure was. There's a ton of lessons in that. You probably talk for a week just on the things you learned and you taking over this, you know, this organization is, you know, how. How did you decide to hold on to what your father created? And how did you go about deciding what to change or what to add to?

Yeah, you know, we learn great things from our parents, both the things that we want to do and the things that we don't want to do, because even. Even they would say themselves they made those mistakes and not to repeat those. Those mistakes. So the biggest thing we wanted to do, and I'm just a part of this incredible team here at Dwyer that's continued this legacy that dawn started, but it was keeping the culture special. And we knew that the only way to really keep the culture special without dawn being here and holding us accountable to those values was to make sure that we had very clear values that we could hold ourselves accountable to and one another. So we didn't have all the answers. Many times we have to reach out to consultants. I mean, you guys are here helping the viewers or the listeners with marketing, and thank God for people like you, because we can only be good at a few things, and we need people like you to teach us things about marketing that we don't know ourselves. So we reached out to consulting firm and we said, how do we keep this culture special now that Don's not here? Because he really did. He'd let you know if he felt you weren't living up to the values or felt you were. They were just a little subjective. So we got the coaching from a consulting group, and they said, why don't you operationalize the values. Take those beliefs that Don Dwyer created this culture on and put them into an operational format so that any one of you can pretty much say, yes, I've lived up to this value, or I haven't lived up to it, or we could say that to one another. And that's exactly what we did. And it's kind of a fun story. This was back in late 95, early 96. And by the way, Don had just taken the company public in 93, and we were traded on Nasdaq, and he dies of a heart attack a year later. We tease that going public killed him because many of those very strong entrepreneurs don't like giving up some control. He and I were best friends, and he said, man, I'm not so sure I did the right thing there. Then he died. The thing that we knew is that we had to maintain that culture. That's what was going to carry us forward. We brought our employees together once we created this new operationalized code of values, and we said, look, we think we have the solution, but we need your help. Six of us on the management team at the time, we said, we haven't demonstrated our commitment to you to live up to these values, so we know we've got to do that first. So we played a game. You know, we're from Waco, guys, so we do things a little goofy sometimes. We played a game, and we said, look, we want you to study these. We gave them all a laminated card that had the original code of values on one side and the operationalized version on the opposite side. And we said, study these new operationalized values. And anytime you catch a management team member violating a value or we want your feedback. And the feedback came in the form of a simple beep. So all any associate would have to do if they walked by, a management team member was in a meeting with one of us, and we violated the value was just to go beep. And that would be the signal to us that we just messed up on the values. Well, I want to tell you, I got a picture of Roadrunner when I talk about this in presentations, because the beeping was that bad. Everywhere we went, you know, we were being beeped. So as a management team, you know, we at first were thinking, man, this is depressing. We thought we were a pretty good company, but we're being beeped for right and left. But the good news was the employees were taking it seriously. I mean, how many bosses tell their employees to catch them doing something wrong? And here we said, we need you to Help us. And they took it seriously. They studied those values until they got down to a T. And we were being beeped right and left for 90 days. We were being beeped. And after that period, we got back together and we said to the team, what do you think? Do you think this is the solution to keeping this culture special? And unanimously, I think we had 125 associates at that point in our history. They unanimously said, absolutely, but there's one value missing. And they actually added one that I think is the hardest one to live with today. But one quick story about that beef game. We had a mailroom clerk back in the days, right in the mid-90s. We were still delivering a lot of old snail mail. So she's delivering mail, walks by an executive who's talking to another team member, and the executive used profanity. So the mailroom clerk beeped her. Well, she flipped her off. This executive flipped off the mailroom clerk. You know, how did that go over? Well, this mailroom clerk was so committed to these values that she frankly chased us down. Robert ten Meier and I, Robert was the CEO at the time and said, okay, you won't believe what just happened, but you guys asked for feedback, and this is what just happened. So we counseled that executive. We're all going to make mistakes. We are far from being a perfect company. We're going to make mistakes. But that was going a little too far. And yet this lady decided to leave our organization a couple months later because she couldn't play by the rules. The new rules just didn't fit who she was. She was very traditional, very much a professional that didn't expect anybody below her to have the right to give her feedback. And that's okay. She and I are still friends today, but she was no longer a fit for organization.

Wow. There's a great lesson in that. If you have a swear jar in.

The office, that could be a big.

Way to big money maker.

If Joe was working for you especially.

Yeah, but isn't it funny, Joe, how you can clean up around me? It's funny how people know what the expectations are, how they clean up.

I just have to behave really well. I love how at the very beginning.

He tried to paint me as the.

Guy with the bad guy. Funny, I do that all the time. I mean, I don't hide from any of that, Dean. You know that. I know I kind of wear my how I feel on my sleeve. So go through the code of values. I think it would be useful for at least the ones that you think would.

I think, as she's doing this, it's really important to note, too, that not, you know, all franchise operations are based on, you know, kind of systemizing approaches, operational things. But this is the first that I've ever heard of a franchise actually operationalizing a, you know, a culture. It's very impressive, Dina. I mean, really.

Well, thank you, Dean. And I think that you'll. You'll find that not just in franchising, but in North America. And I think Verne Harnish is the one who taught me this lesson that 95% of the companies in North America that have written values do nothing with them on a regular basis once they're written. And you know what?

I put them up on the wall.

Yeah, exactly. Or on the, you know, the brochure or on the website, but nobody's executing them on a regular basis. So the thing that we said to ourselves when we came up with this new version is we said, we don't want to be guilty of being one of those companies. We want to be one of the 5% of those companies that's living their values day in and day out. And the only way we could think of to do it was to do what a good franchisor does, and that's create a system out of it, just as you stated. So we said, let's not make this hard. Anytime we have a meeting of three or more of our team members, let's review the values. And we have 15 values. And some people, like my friend Ken Blanchard would say, tina, that's a little much. But when I spend a little more time with Ken and say, now wait a second, Ken, it's really not. It's in the categories of respect, integrity, customer focus, and having fun in the process. So that spells rich. So at the Dwyer Group, we say, we live rich, and it's not about money. We don't start with money being the idea. We start with people being the idea. If we treat people with respect and dignity, guess what? Profit. Simply the applause we get for doing that. Well, so I told Ken, Ken, look below each one of those core areas. We have to have very specific standards. I call them values. He might call them standards. That explains, what do we mean by respect? Because you know what, Joe? You might have a different definition of respect than Dean does, and that I do. So if you leave your employees up to coming up with their own definition of respect or integrity, we're not going to create the same experience for the people we're doing business with. So we decided to be very clear about it. So under respect, for example, we have the golden rule, treating others as we'd like to be treated next. We have listening with the intent to understand what is being said and acknowledging that what is said is important to the speaker. You know, so many times we're half listening. We're so busy thinking about what we want to say next that we're really not giving the courtesy of listening to the speaker. And when it comes to, you know, communication being mostly body language, you know, people have forgotten that when you've got something important to discuss with somebody, don't do that over the phone or over email or texting, get face to face, because their body language is going to tell you more about what's really going on with them than what's coming out of their mouth. So that's another one under respect. Speaking calmly, respectfully, without profanity or sarcasm is another one under respect. And I'll tell you, I've studied this, Joe, you would know this from the Restoration World is even though a customer might use profanity, they don't want your carpet cleaner or your restorer coming in and using profanity in their home or their small business. The last thing they want to hear. And sarcasm is another piece of that. That's really tricky. I never thought I was a sarcastic person until we bought a huge company, one larger than ours, back in 2004, and I was out doing town hall meetings with about 65 people at a time. There were 1200 new employees that we basically added to our family overnight. And the goal was to franchise these Harmon Glass locations out that were currently company owned. So I wanted to just help people understand who the Dwyer Group was, what the plan was. So I told them the story about the Code of Values. And at the end of the discussion, I opened up for Q and A, and a guy at the back of the room who was probably fearful about whether he'd have a job going forward or not, asked a really sarcastic question. And I responded in a way that I thought was very firm and frank. And within seconds, two people in the audience beeped me. Now, remember, this was a 45 minute session. I just gave them the overview of the Code of Values, just like I gave you about the Beep game. And they said I was sarcastic. And I said, why? I want to apologize. And so I apologize to the young man. He said, ma', am, you don't owe me an apology. I should have never asked the question the way I asked it. So I had no idea that I was sarcastic until that happened. So some of us don't realize that we have a tendency to be sarcastic and have a sharp tone to our voice that comes across the wrong way with others. So just when you think maybe you don't have these problems, let somebody else give you feedback, because sometimes we do, and we don't even realize it. So that's the area of respecting. You're asking me to kind of walk through the values, and then you get to integrity. And integrity starts with making only agreements we're willing, able, and intend to keep. And yet with time moving as fast as it moves. I think I learned this from Tony Robbins, is the rate of. The rate of change is changing. And, you know, one of the things that you have to. Yeah, I mean, take that one down. You have to think about it. But the bottom line is we make agreements we intend to keep, but sometimes things change, and you have to cancel that agreement. So our big thing is the next value. Communicating any potentially broken agreement at the first appropriate opportunity to all the parties concerned, not just to Joe. But if Dean's involved in this, I better let Joe and Dean know I can't live up to my agreement. So we have things like that under integrity. Acknowledging everyone is right from their own perspective. You know, it's just things that we think make it more specific for our employees. This is what we really mean by this. And then customer focus, of course, is pretty clear to us, but it's continuously striving to maximize internal and external customer loyalty. And we think about internal customers. We actually think about our employees as internal customers. And I do need to make a slight correction. We should have corrected the bio for you, Joe, but we achieved best companies to work for five years in a row. That's true, but it wasn't the last five years. Actually, the last two years. I'm sad to say, we didn't make best company to work for. And the beautiful thing about that survey is we get the results from the best companies to work for. Surveying company that works with the Texas Human Resource association and Texas Small Business Association. And the beautiful thing about it is we can see where we failed. And our employees are so honest. So it gives us that opportunity to get better, Just like we want customers that are honest. And what we discovered was under benefits, especially healthcare, we got terrible ratings. And even though every year we work harder and harder and harder to do more for our employees in the area of healthcare, you know, the challenges we're all faced with, it's not enough. And so we got dinked on that. Otherwise, we would have made. We just missed top 100 best companies the last two years. And we just missed because of benefits, mostly healthcare. And so, you know, we're scrambling, doing everything we can to do more for our employees in that area. But you know what? It's a reality of where we're living today in the world we live in. So, anyways, I can go on and on about that, but I won't. Another one under. Under Customer focus is making our best effort to understand and appreciate the customer's needs in every situation. So it's the, you know, put the customer's eyeglasses on and see it from their point of view, not just our own. And then finally, the fourth value is pretty simple, but most people don't take advantage of it, is having fun in the process. I know you guys don't have a problem with that, but, you know, many people in business, you know, they forget that they should be loving what they're doing. They shouldn't be in business if they don't love what they're doing. And at the Dwyer Group, we love what we do. We're making a positive difference in people's lives. And how could that not be fun?

I even refer to money as fun tickets at times, too, because it's all the perspective of how you kind of look at it. I remember years ago, I created a whole program built on having an elf business, which is easy, lucrative, and fun, or a half business, which is hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating. And in order to have an elf business, you're going to put some work in there. You got to set it up right, because it just doesn't instantly appear that way because you want it. I mean, you have to put systems into place. And, you know, one of the things that's apparent about you, and that's why I encourage people to watch the Undercover Boss episode. And you can get it on itunes, you can find it on the Internet, and watch it, is that you really care about the company. You cry pretty easily. I mean, how would we get you to cry on this interview? Is that possible?

I don't know, but it's not very hard. You know, I am who I am, you know, and I talk about the fact that, you know, we all need to be, as leaders, the best version of ourselves and be authentic. And, you know, for me not to cry when I feel like crying is just not authentic. And there are certainly times where I have to work very hard to hold back the tears when it's. It doesn't seem like an Appropriate place for me to have tears. But, man, it's. It's tough. And. And yet the feedback I got from the Undercover Boss episode because they. They did capture every tear I shed on that, the journey of filming, you know, which lasts more than a week, and then they, you know, they cram the best of the best in the 45 minutes. So they did. They did, in fact, show you every tear I shed. But I do cry a lot. I probably got the most. Most tears voted in in all the 72 under cover boss episodes. And that wasn't on purpose. It's just the way I am. But why go through life pretending to be somebody you're not?

And I'm not saying any of that in a bad way. I think it's like, oh, I know.

Oh, no, I know.

Yeah. Well, it's neat.

I was gonna say it's kind of neat to read the book after having seen the episode, and then you really understand what was going on there, too.

A lot of stuff. Yeah. We've had a lot of adversity in this company. So, you know, to people viewing the Undercover Boss episode, it might look, oh, this is wonderful company. It looks like they've had great success always. Well, we haven't. We've had our ups and downs like every other company's had their ups and downs.

Well, let's. Let's. Let's talk about. Let me say this before I forget. One of the. One of the things after I. When I first met you in person, that was a decision where I was like, yeah, I really would like to, you know, do an interview with you and get to know you more, is when I walked into the gym, and here you are working out in the middle of a very busy conference. One of these conferences that doesn't give you, like, an ounce of real free time if you try to make all of it and go to all the receptions and everything. And out of, I don't know, maybe 600 people that were there, if there's anyone that could have a good excuse for not being committed to exercising is someone who's actually speaking at the event, and that's you. And here you are in the gym, and there's. It's always funny when you're at a conference in Vegas. I mean, they always have these. In most cases, you know, not very good gyms. Vegas are drinking and smoking and partying. They're not exercising. And you're at a conference, and you're exercising. And that speaks volumes about how you actually live your life and how you think about your family and how you think about your company, how you think about people. Because if you don't take good care of your body, you're probably not going to. You know, it says a lot about other things. I'm not saying. In all cases, it's. There's a lot that can be learned from that. And so I think you're a person who has not only brought an incredible amount of intention to what you want your company to be and how you think about the clients, the customers, your team members, but your ability to leverage that and parlay it and train it to other people. So those behavioral changes actually happen in the lives of thousands, tens of thousands of people. And that's a big undertaking. I mean, that's. That is like a huge accomplishment and a huge impact. And so my question for you is, I mean, does this require a certain level of big picture thinking? I mean, what are some of the ingredients? I mean, I know there's no instantaneous answer. You can. Well, here's the secret sauce, and here's how you put it together. I mean, just what are some of the elements that have allowed you to become that way?

Yeah, that's a great question. Especially that I just taught this Design youn Life class this morning to a group of new franchisees and some also that were returning for what we call the encore training. So some franchisees that maybe been out there for a year or five years or 10 years, who want to come back and get refreshed. But in that class, and this is new to some people, but not new to a lot of people that are very successful, is this whole idea of clarity, of personal values. So we have the Dwyer Group's code of values. And that, to me, is the foundation for success for our corporation. And those benefit me in all areas of my life, and they benefit the employees who practice them in all areas of their life as well, and our franchisees. But when you think about yourself. So if you look at Joe inside or you look at Dean inside, there are certain things that you guys value in your personal lives. And when I take the franchisees through this exercise, we actually have Dr. Robert Cooper, who's been a speaker of ours. I know he's a friend of yours, too, had provided me one time the best values worksheet I'd ever seen. And it's really quite simple. But you identify all your. All the values that mean something to you today in your life, and then you take the top five. And then what we do at the Dwyer Group is we take those top Five values. And we say, now apply your rules or rituals to those values. What is it you do in your life that demonstrates your commitment to that value? For example, faith is my number one value today. That wasn't always the case. When I was in my early 20s and I was attending Baylor University and working full time for my father, my number one value was social. And it wasn't giving back to the community. You know, it was social and having fun with my friends. And today it's very different. You know, we all mature and grow. And so faith is my number one value. And with that value comes certain rules and rituals. One of my rules and rituals is to pray in the morning and evening, but I find that I pray all day long and I'm praying for people. That's what prayers are all about. I'm always praying for people, our franchisees, our employees, my friends, my family. You know, it's just being prayerful. Then I have attending math while on Sundays, and then I have attending mass while traveling on Sundays. So those are some of my rules and rituals. And then there's this column called Change to the Rules. So there are times in life when you've got to make a change to the rules. And some of these changes are very serious changes. Some of them are just lightening up, you know, and sometimes we create rules on ourselves that make life much more complex than it needs to be. So it can go either way. But in the case of my value of faith that I share with the franchisees today is I was in Kingston, Jamaica, doing a speaking engagement. And it was over a weekend, so I was looking for a church to go to on Sunday. And I couldn't find a Catholic church in all of Kingston. There were lots of churches. But I failed to attend a service that Sunday, came home the following week, taught this class again to a group of franchisees, and realized I got to make a change to my rule. And the change was to attend church while traveling on a Sunday versus attending a Catholic church while traveling. So it's a slight little change. But you know what? I left unseen because I didn't go to a service. And I thought to myself, I'm never going to do that again because I didn't feel good about myself. So now when I travel, if I cannot find a Catholic church, I go to a church that I feel like I'd be welcomed in. And it has been one of the most amazing experiences because the people I meet, just incredible. And then some of my other roles, when we did this big, this acquisition in 2004. My life was way out of balance. We had eight project teams, eight hour conference calls. You guys have been through that before. It's a lot of work. I was letting the activity control me, and I was starting to get very stressed out and not my normal happy self. And I said, something's got to give here. Something's got to change. And what I found was going to mass three times a week put me in a place where I could get quiet. And so I'd go into church before I'd come to work and I'd get quiet and be fed again, as I call it. And that just allowed me to be grounded and not get caught up in the activity of these big project lists, because I knew sooner or later we'd get through those. But while you're living them, it's overwhelming sometimes. Well, that calmed me down and kept me very grounded. And now I go to mass five times a week almost always, but especially during the seasons of Lent and Advent, like in the season we're in right now, it's Holy Week, and I'll be at church every day this week. And it's just something I need to do to keep myself balanced. And that's the other piece of what I teach in this design your life class is what does your will of life look like? You know, if you look at these six areas of life, you guys know them, spiritual, financial, physical, social, mental, and family. You know, what does it will look like when you, when you mark up your spokes, you know, is your wheel in balance? Are you moving nicely down the road or you have all kinds of flats, and when you got flats, lights not good. When you're balanced, of course, there's a sense of peace. And I think, Joe, hopefully that's what you saw in me, because I practiced this for so many years and always have an opportunity to get better. But what I've learned is that there's some things we have to say no to in life. There's some things we have to say yes to. And when you say yes to the right things, you get that, that balance.

Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, it's. It's totally clear and apparent. And you talk about this, you're very open about it, about your, about your faith and about your, you know, what, what, what my interpretation is the importance of it and how you categorize your life. And I, I believe that you're the person who. The business is the vehicle to design the life. It's not about business. And I think what you saw in your father Although very successful and taught you enormous lessons, there's also a price in terms of time with family. And you talk about how your mother was the rock in that department. And I think you had the intelligence, the intention and the commitment to, you know, improving upon something while at the same time not diminishing the history of your father and all the great things. So, you know, like they say in 12 step programs, you know, take what you like and leave the rest sort of thing, I think you have a really good ability, you know, to do that and to transfer that to other people and to their companies. And also the whole time, you know, hey, we're going to be successful. We've created a system here for you. But you know, this is, this is a way to get to the life that you want. And that's really critical. I mean, even the whole, the words design your life, it's really important because if you sit, I mean, we're designing our lives, every decision we make every day. And throughout your book you talk about we're not a perfect company, we make mistakes. And you talk about beeps. And at the same time it's that striving, it's that continual improvement. And you know, I mean, how could someone not design a better life if one, they make that an emphasis and a focus and then secondly, you know, creating, you know, the system on how to do it, which, you know, my question is, you know, how can someone listening, a service business especially implement this code of values and even some of your thinking into their lives and to their, their businesses? Because it would transform so many companies beyond the ones that are even in your franchise organization.

Yeah, it would transform the world, frankly. You know, when I think about people having clear values, I mean, this just can't benefit a company. It can benefit a company in a very big way, but it doesn't stop with the company. And that's the beautiful thing about transcends. I mean, because you're touching on the customer with this experience of the code of values. And we have customers that actually have our code of values up on the refrigerator. We even have customers who have written to me to say that we review the values before the dinner, at the dinner table, before dinner with our kids, because they've never seen anything like it. So it's really rewarding. But I think whether it's a for profit organization, a not for profit organization, schools, churches, government, I mean, come on, what if we really made a commitment to live by these kinds of values? What would happen in this world if.

The government would be Beeping itself quite a bit. And then hopefully it would rearrange. It would become a much better.

It would be. It would be a sad amount of beeping. I would agree with you. And it's not that there's bad people around the government. It's just that they've gotten so caught up in not being their authentic selves and speaking the truth as they see it and people appreciating each other's perspectives and then moving forward. That's a whole other talk that we could do at another time, I'm sure. Yeah, but it is the whole values thing. I'd encourage your listeners and Joe, I know you purchased a bunch of books and I appreciate that, but I'd encourage your listeners, if they'd like a book, they could even write to me directly and I'd be happy to send them a complimentary copy of Live Rich. And I'm working on a new book that I expect will be out by the end of the year, but I'd be happy to share it. And they can just take from the story and then create their own values that fit them. I mean, our values are ours and they fit us well, but everybody should have their own set of values. And if they want to use ours as a model, that's fine, but they really should create their own that they are passionate about and believe in and then build their businesses off of that. I have a really fun quick sideline story. My daughter is 23 years old, Joe. You met her briefly at the Verne Harnish's Fortune Growth summit conference. She's 23. She graduated a semester early from TCU and she had a fashion degree. But she went off to New York for a while and said, you know, I love New York. It's too expensive. I'm not going to be able to have the quality of life I'm looking for. And I love being home by my family. All my brothers and sisters and their families live in Waco, Texas. And she came back and said, you know what? There's not a yoga studio. And Wacom. She loves yoga. While she was in college, that's kind of what kept her sanity and kept her healthy is she'd go to yoga at 5:30 in the morning. So she said, mom, we really need a full on yoga studio here. So being the entrepreneurial mother that I am, of course highly encouraged it. And here she is six weeks into her business and she doesn't have a code of value. She has her own thing, she calls them her habits. So for the yoga bar it's the name of her business for your Healthy Happy Hour. She has habits. So on the back of her business card, she has habits that fall below be you, love you, radiate you. And so she took what she learned from the Dwyer Group's code of values and said, that's not for me, but this is what's for me. This is what feels right for me in my business. And she's teaching her members about her habits.

I mean, you know what's great about. I mean, even you just said it very quickly, but I'm sitting there right now. Yoga bar, Healthy Happy hour.

Your healthy happy hour. She's brilliant. She's a brilliant kid. But, of course, she's been around Dawn Dwyer's business and family for all of her life. She can't help but, through osmosis, I guess, pick up some great ideas.

Let me stop you right here real quick, Dina, because you do this throughout the book. You do it when you talk, and I think it's an interesting thing, and I'm sure you've been called out on this before, is that you do a really good job of acknowledging other people and not taking the credit that you very much could. I mean, here you are. I mean, you're, you know, you. You are in the position of executive chairwoman of the Dwyer Group, and you're. You're always talking about the talent of the team and the great people. And, you know, your daughter, she's brilliant. Because you didn't say. Because she was raised by me, because she was around the Dwyer Group. I mean, you're very good about acknowledging. And I think, you know, if anyone just improved their ability to acknowledge other people by 5%, just how not. Not, like, transfer, double it, but just like a little bit, you know, what. What would it do to their relationships? What would it do for how other people feel? So what. What's some advice on how you. I mean, do you. You consciously. Are you aware of that? Is this something you didn't used to be that way? Because you said early on, you know, your biggest value was social or, you know, where does that come from?

Probably when you were 23. Right?

Well, you know, it's. That's a good question. And, you know, maybe somebody else would have to tell you, have they. How grow in that area? Because I'm not sure, you know, if we looked back, I'm not. I'm not sure somebody would have seen the same thing that you're. You're seeing in me today. And I appreciate the. The kind feedback, but when I think about being a young person growing up, one of the greatest things my father did is he had us listen to motivational tape programs. Did you guys do that?

Of course, yeah.

Okay. So he, he was part of SMI Success Motivation Institute. That's actually why we're in Waco, Texas, because he became a distributor for SMI that had all these positive cassette tapes, goal setting cassette tapes, and he was selling those out in Westlake, California and realized pretty quickly raising six kids at that time, late 60s, early 70s in that part of the country was not the best thing for our family. And decided to get out of the entertainment business and get into this SMI business. Well, he became the top distributor within about a year, year and a half. And Paul Meyer, the founder of smi, invited him to Waco to be the vice president of Leadership Management Institute, which was lmi. But as a child growing up, all my siblings, we were raised on listening to positive motivational tape programs. Whether it was Paul Meyer stuff, Napoleon Hill stuff, zig Ziglar stuff, Dr. Schuller stuff, we were always being fed this positive information. And one of the things that I guess when I was listening to it, I didn't realize it would benefit me. But I look back and I think I'll never forget it. In particular, I think Dr. Shuler talked about the greatest leaders are those that surround themselves with people that are smarter than they are and give them the credit for the work that's being done. I mean, I'm only good at a few things here. And so I think it's being humble about what you're really good at. And I'm executive chairman today because I'm not the best person to run the day to day anymore. Mike Bidwell and my executive team and brand presidents are the best ones to run the day to day. What I am best at doing is building the culture and maintaining the culture as we go from 1 billion and system wide sales to 2 billion. People tell me it's going to get harder and harder. Well, I'm going to prove to them that even though it might get harder, we're still going to do it, we're going to achieve it. And I love the very high level strategy stuff. So I love building relationships and creating opportunities for our employees and our franchisees through those strategic relationships and then the whole public relations side, which I appreciate you giving me a chance to share who the Dwyer Group is today. I love talking about the story of Dwyer, but I know that I'm only good at those few things and I'm surrounded by people that support me at being my best version of myself, but I've got to support them at being the best version of themselves, whether it's my family members or my employees. So I, you know, I just think over the years I've just been honest with myself and I just. None of this would happen at the Dwyer Group if it weren't for a very long. A very large group of people who come together with the same alignment and values.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, Dean, I could ask Deena a million questions, but I.

You know what it reminds me of, Joe? I mean, it's like this whole. What you're saying is everybody's got to have their own definition of those. And Joe and I, we've talked a lot about this, about defining success for yourself. And that was. You're saying how when I was hearing you talk about your personal. Your personal ones that going to church and how you kind of use those as a guidepost as you're going through your day to day, that really, just from another perspective has been a big, big influence for me, too, is have I have a list of way of I know I'm being successful when. And so it's, you know, these guideposts really kind of help, you know, break ties or it helps you kind of stay on track or guide where you're going. And everybody just like you're saying your daughter had a different set, that it's just doing that thinking and really coming up with your own is the best start.

I think it is. And you know, when it comes to making tough decisions, whether it's personal decisions or business decisions, when you have those guidelines, those guideposts, as you call them, it makes it a lot easier. Doesn't make it easy, but it makes it a lot easier to make the right decisions. And if I didn't have those guidelines, whether it was the Dwyer Group's code of values or my personal values, making difficult decisions would take me a lot longer and cause me a lot more stress. And this just simplified it.

Reading yours was really kind of. I saw throughout the book how you used them to handle difficult situations, how everybody can come through to the same conclusion when they're reading. You know, when you really, if you're thinking about, does this match up with it? I'm thinking about the story where you had changed the qualifications for your top 10 program and that somebody pointed that out to you and all of you were able to kind of look at it and see, yeah, that's absolutely right. We're going to have to Make a change.

We have to own it, right? Yeah.

You know what I think of Dean with. Because, you know, Dean, I started ethical services in 1999 when I went on ABC's 2020 with Barbara Walters. And I did an undercover sort of thing to, you know, expose unethical bait switch carpet cleaners. And one of the things I said to 2020 is that I'll help you with the story of giving people what to beware of for, you know, the carpet cleaners, because makes for a much more interesting news story for them to do. Stories on how to avoid getting ripped off and beware of the service business that's going to scam you than it does on how to choose an ethical service business. And I said, well, considering I make my living at that time from the cleaning industry and helping them, I'm not going to go and make them look bad unless you are willing to give out valuable information. So they actually published one of my consumer awareness guides on how to choose a carpet cleaner on the ABC 2020 website. And you know, I created a code of ethics which is, you know, basically I won't read all of them, but they consist of, you know, not employing technicians in a manner that forces them to do high pressure selling in order to make a livable wage, 100% guaranteed your work, never using misleading or dishonest advertising, you know, giving firm price quotes, carrying proper insurance, all of that sort of stuff. And from reading your book and listening to you now, it just occurred to me that one way that I could so deepen those code of ethics for people that are ethical service members is just literally turning it into the process and taking it a lot more seriously. And one thing that I've gotten from you is that there's a lot of really important guideposts, as Dean would call them. And there's a lot of values that people can identify. But what do you do with them? How do you integrate them into the DNA of your organization and of your life? So that's been a huge insight to me. Which leads to my question of how do you define leadership? How do you think about leadership?

Well, I think a leader is anybody who has influence over another. So I think that's just about everybody, isn't it? I mean, all of us, whether we're, we're mothers or we're executive chairs, we're influencing somebody and we have to be thoughtful about that.

I mean, you know, there's a difference between having influence over someone versus, you know, being effective, being productive. You know, there's a lot of a lot of people that have influence for a period of time, and then they crash and burn. And then there's people that have sustained leadership and respect. And it seems with the dwar group, you guys are 30 years now. I mean, you've done pretty good, and you're still growing like crazy.

Yeah, we are. And I, you know, I think about some of that. I'm always studying great, great leaders. And I think about a book that Ken Blanchard wrote not long ago on Colleen, who was a former chair or CEO of Southwest Airlines. And, you know, her book's called Leadership is Love. So when you think about caring about people, even though you can be tough, you know, tough with people, and you have to be sometimes, as long as I know you care, it seems to make it all okay. And then I think of Stephen Covey. I think Stephen also spoke at that Fortune conference that you and I were at, Joe. And one of the things Steven talked about was the speed of trust and how important it is that people trust you. It's so. Takes so long to really gain people's trust, but it doesn't take long at all to lose it. And so the values for the Dwyer Group gives us that consistency of trust. Because if we are working hard to hire people that are aligned with our values, and we're working hard to select the right franchisees that are aligned with our values, then that speed of trust should continue to grow. But if we start making decisions just because we can make an extra buck off of it, we're going to start losing that quality of trust. And again, an organization that we've been working hard to build for 33 years could fall apart in a very short period of time.

So I guess, let me think. How do you decide what gets your attention and what doesn't? I mean, there has got to be so many potential demands that come to you that you have to be a very skilled air traffic controller. You know, this is going to go.

To this person, this is going to.

Go to that person.

That's a good word.

Air traffic controller or master delegator. Right.

And the fact that you've even identified, you know, going to church in your faith is calming you down. I mean, there you could very much. And we all know, I mean, some would be kidding themselves to say you haven't had nights where you could not sleep because of the sheer pressure of the organization, but part of it is your perception of it. So what's the Dina Dwyer Owens method of time management and internalizing all of the different demands? And how do you juggle it. How do you manage it?

Yeah, well, I'd say that a lot of those lessons I learned from my father, and just the whole prioritizing your time, your money and your energy, the way you make decisions on where you spend your time, money, and energy. And he didn't really have energy as part of what he would teach us. But I've over the years learned that so much of me being productive has to do with my energy and what unique abilities. You know, you guys are familiar with the term unique ability from Dan Sullivan and Strategic Coach. You know, what are your unique abilities? And the best value I can bring to the Dwyer Group, and frankly, the best value I can return to my family is if I am playing in my unique ability the majority of the time. So this recent promotion, I call it that I promoted myself to executive chair. I really promoted my company president to CEO. But at the same time, I have been working towards this for the past five years intentionally, because it forces me to just play in my unique abilities and not get caught up in those things that I don't need to be touching because I've got an amazing, deep team of people who are frankly, much better at those things than I am today. And I don't get the same energy out of those things that I used to get. You know, they're the things were excellent. We call them what excellent activities. We might be great at it, but we don't need to be the ones doing it anymore because we've brought up a team of people that are even better at it than we are. So I really just gotten good at saying no. And then I have a team that's around me. I can't claim that. I have two assistants that are mine. One of them is mine and one of them is. Is my company CEOs. But he's good to share because he doesn't delegate enough. I still have to work with him on that. And they are my traffic controllers. So they do. What do we call it? Strategic Coach. They protect my confidence. So when they know there's something that's coming across, emails, I have them actually screen my main email box. So just like they would do my hard mail coming in, they'll screen my main email box. And anything that doesn't belong on my desk or in my lap doesn't ever come to me. And, you know, so with my emails, too, if there's somebody else that's better to handle it than me, you know, they might CC me on something they forwarded to somebody else. But that's another way, because that email was overwhelming for me for years. Just overwhelming. I couldn't believe it because I would not go to bed at night until I at least responded to somebody to say, I'm sorry, I won't be able to address this today, but back to you by tomorrow at 2. You know, very responsive, almost too responsive. And people don't necessarily expect it, but that's just the approach I've taken to being responsive anyway. So it's getting people to help protect my time, money and energy and letting them do it and not getting in their way. And that's been the hard thing sometimes is going back and questioning something that you already said they had permission to handle for you. I hardly ever do that anymore, but it's taken time. So it's the entrepreneurial time system that the strategic coach talks about too. So you know what if I go to Mass at 8 in the morning and I'm not here first thing in the morning, like many executive chairs or CEOs would do, I've come to the place where it doesn't matter. I'm going to get my job done and I don't have to be the one who shows up first thing in the morning. Because the better thing for me, the better thing for the organization if I go to church first, because I'm going to be much more grounded, much more focused on the proper activities for the day if I do that first. Today, I didn't get to because I had Design youn Life to teach. So I'll actually be leaving the office here a little early and going to a 5:15 service to close my day out before I head to the yoga bar for my healthy happy hour. That's awesome.

I love it. I love it. Since we're obviously on a podcast episode for I Love Marketing, we have to ask you about the subject of marketing. You're probably not in charge of it, but you certainly are in charge of a lot of things, including whatever input you guys do, do a lot of pr, a lot of advertising, a lot of promotions. So do you love marketing? What are your thoughts about marketing?

Yeah, I'm a marketer at heart. I think if anybody had to say, what role does Deena really play in this company? I'm a marketer, constantly thinking about ways to share our story, tell our story, have people fall in love with our story. And that gives me a lot of energy. So I guess it's a unique ability. Even though I don't have it labeled as such, that marketing is one of my unique Abilities, because anything from public relations to culture in my mind touches marketing.

Yeah, absolutely. And so if you had to give someone like a secret to success, what would it be?

Oh, I've got three. Yeah. And this is funny because when I first became CEO, by the way, I was. I was asked to be the acting president and CEO in late 1998. We were a publicly traded company. I was 35 years old. And our outside board knew. They knew we had the right people in the management team, but not all in the right seats. So they wanted to give me a chance to be the CEO and president because they were a little fearful though of the shareholders, what they would say about this 35 year old young chick coming in to run this company. They made me act like I was their president, CEO, which I thought was kind of funny. And I got some negative, you know, negative pushback from folks. Okay, where was I going with that? I just got totally off track.

Oh, you're three secrets to success.

Oh, the three secrets. Okay, so my first interview. Thank you. I'm 51 now, so my mind kind of goes sometimes. Isn't that sad? My first interview was with Glamour magazine of all magazines. I mean, that's a dream come true for a woman, right? Of course, I wasn't a covergirl, doggone it. But they were doing an interview on successful CEOs, and there's so few female CEOs, which is really still sad to me. But at that time there were even fewer. You know, this is 1999. And she says, we want to know your three secrets to success. And I was being interviewed along with the gal who was running Fredericks of Hollywood. So this goes to show you the level of this, this interview.

And I said, well, you know, Hollywood and Mr. Rooter.

Yeah, isn't that funny? Yeah. I actually paused for just a moment when she asked me that. I said, you know, this may not be a secret to success, but it's my foundation for success. And comes back to my faith again. So number one is my faith. I don't know how people get through the day without having a strong faith. And that's just my perspective. I'm not here to push my faith or my religion on anybody in the listening audience. But I will tell you that given all the responsibilities I have, not just as an executive chair of the Dwyer Group, but as a mother, a wife, a community leader, a daughter, a sister, a sister in law, I mean, there's so many hats that we all wear today. I don't know how people get through the day. Without having a strong connection with God, I don't know how. I don't know how I would. So I say faith is my number one secret to success because it gives me that confidence that I need. Number two is having the team. And that's a team at work and that's a team at home that supports me. Because when times do get tough, boy, we all need that support. And I am surrounded by people who are supportive. And number three is systems. You know, this business would not be successful today had it not been for the great systems that we've implemented. And we continue to improve those systems all the time. But when things aren't going right in our business, we look to the system for correction. That keeps us healthy. Because it's not about me getting my blood pressure up and getting mad at people. Because we all know the rule of thumb, right? When something's not going right in this company, whose fault is it? The finger gets pointed three times back at me. But I try very hard not to blame people when things are not going right in our business. Instead, I look to the system for correction. Because if we don't have a good system in place that's causing people to make errors in our business, that's my fault, that's not their fault. And if we haven't trained people to those systems, that's my fault, that's not their fault. And in some cases, we just haven't created the system yet. And that's, you know, when things are breaking in our business. To me it's like, well, we need to create a system so this doesn't break again. And it just makes life so much easier when you look to the system. That's one of our values for correction proposal, possible solutions when something's not working. So Faith Team and systems.

Love it. Love it. That's great. Well, so why don't we do this? Why don't you? I'd like to hear your bigger vision for the future of the Dwara Group. And then I'd like you to. I mean, we have hundreds of thousands of people that will hear this episode over the next few weeks. And all of them have, most likely in their homes, appliances and electrical systems and glass and plumbing and landscaping and carpets and stuff. And I'm happy to have you plug all of your different organizations. If anyone wants to do business with anyone in the Dwara Group, we have many service businesses that listen to what it is me and Dean do. I'm obviously still the largest trainer in the world for the professional carpet cleaning and restoration industry in the area of marketing. And if any of those companies that are independent would ever be interested in the Dwyer Group, I'd, you know, I'd like you to give out information so they can inquire about it. So what's your bigger vision for Dwyer Group? And then let's give out some contact info, including an address. So if anyone wants a copy of your book, they can get it. But we'll start perfect with the big vision.

Well, thank you, Joe. Yeah. The vision is to really be the company that consumers think of when they need any of the services fixed in their home or small business and they want a reliable company to come out and do it. And we're not only going to fix the problem, but we're going to fix the customer. Because as you know, a lot of customers don't like spending money on fixing things in their home or business. And if they have to, they want to make sure that it's an incredible experience. So we want to be the company's that the consumers think of when it's time to get something fixed in their home or business and know that it's going to be an incredible experience. In fact, we track Net Promoter score. I don't know if you guys, I'm guessing you're familiar with Net Promoter score and your listeners may be too. So it's the ultimate question, you know, how likely are you to refer your friends or a family member to our company? And we ask our customers that. And Nordstrom's rates about an 80 on that net Promoter scale. And our franchisees average about a 74, 75. And this is for service, a service experience. And I will again say we are not a perfect company, but we work very hard to provide that excellent experience to our customers. We're looking for quality franchisees. The only way that the Dwyer Group continue to grow is if we find the right people who are aligned with our values that want to grow recession resistant businesses. And as you know, our businesses, whether the economy is good or bad, are always going to be needed. I mean our services will always be needed. Now maybe during this last recession a few of our businesses had customers who weren't maybe replacing some of their items but instead repairing. But then there's this pent up demand now that they've got to have this stuff now replaced. So we're in businesses that are never going to go away. I mean, I just don't see technology replacing any of our businesses down the road. And another vision for Dwyer is to find great companies to acquire that complement Our current menu of services, as you mentioned, we have Rainbow international, we have Mr. Rooter, we have Mr. Electric Airserv, the Glass Doctor, the Grounds Guys, and Mr. Reuter. Did I miss Mr. Reuter? I have to count on my fingers or I get messed up. Okay, so we have those seven services right now that we're offering to the residential and the commercial consumer. But we're looking for the other five that we need, whether that's pool care, pest control, roof, maid service. There's other categories, but we want to buy franchise businesses and roll them into the Dwyer Group. We also do some special things. We love helping our veterans. So if there's any veterans in the listening audience, we have something called the Vet Fran program, founded by Don Dwyer, our late founder, in the 90s during the Gulf War. And we relaunched that through the International Franchise association in 2001. And since then, more than 6,500 veterans have now become franchises of more than 300 different franchise organizations because of this vision that our founder had about giving back to our veterans to help them live the American dream that they've worked so hard to protect on the front lines for us. So God bless our veterans and thank you for the good work that they've done for us. And we're happy to bring additional veterans into the Dwyer Group. We've given close to $2 million in discounts to veterans who have become franchisees since we relaunched that program in 2002. We're also excited about bringing more women into the trades, whether those are women who are wanting to work on the front lines. So maybe you've got some listeners who are just getting started in their careers, and they really want to maybe start on the front lines and then grow into being a business owner. We have something called a hire program, so they can start by getting a scholarship by going to the Dwyer Group website. We have a women in the trades link, so any women out there can get a $1,500 scholarship if they meet the criteria. And then once they work for a franchisee for a number of years, the longer they work with a franchisee, the greater the discount towards the purchase of their own franchise territory. So that's for men and women, too. We only have the scholarships for women right now, but we have the hire program, hiring individuals, recruiting entrepreneurs for both men and women. Again, the longer they work for a franchisee, the greater discount they get towards the purchase of their own franchise territory, up to a 50% discount. So, you know, we're just looking for great people who are aligned with Our values, to become part of our organization, to serve the customer with that amazing experience.

That's awesome.

What is the main website where everyone can find everything?

Yeah, the easiest website would be dwyergroup.com and that's d w y e r group.com and if you're interested in getting a complimentary copy of my Live Rich book, if they could just email me at ddo, that's my initials. D for Dina, D for dwyer. O for OwensWyerGroup.com we'll be sure to get them a complimentary copy of that book.

Now, we have a ton of listeners that are outside of the US So I want to save you from having to ship things to Singapore and Japan and various things like that. Is the book available electronically yet?

It is not electronically. I apologize for that. But they can go to Amazon. Well, they should be able to go to Amazon and get it still. I'll. I'll verify that. Or they can just order it online atthedwyer group.com.

Cool. Cool. Yeah. Because I just. I don't want to have you get like, you know, like.

I appreciate that. I didn't know you had all those listeners from all over the world.

We got. How many different countries do we have listeners for? I love marketing. Indeed.

How many countries are there? I mean, I imagine we're in almost every country. We had Dino. We always joke because we had our. We did big live conferences and we had some people streaming from Namibia, which was pretty exciting, you know, so we always kept making a point to give a shout out to the people from Namibia.

There's countries where I don't even. I've never heard of that. I don't even know where they're at. And I have to kind of tap and try to pretend like I actually have some geographical understanding, which I don't. But. Yeah, either way. But no, it's great. And it's great to share this with people, to actually see how you have taken this great code of values and how you've transferred it to so many other people and it has developed a culture. And there's so many things that we could, you know, we could talk to you for a week about all of this stuff. So I would just encourage all of the listeners to, you know, read a copy of Liverich. You know, what's funny is even one of my brands in the cleaning industry is richcleaner.com, which is kind of. You know, I never thought of it at this level that I've had that for years. Dina, you're doing great. Work. Congratulations on all your success and we'd love to do a follow up episode with you in the future. And I'd love to have all of our listeners please share your comments. What the values meant to you, what the biggest insights you got from Dena from listening to this@ilovemarketing.com and if you happen to come across any service business, which all of you will, I mean, for the rest of your life, you're going to have people probably in your homes, in your businesses that are going to be working on stuff. And we live in a culture where, you know, blue collar work. People do not understand the importance of it. I mean, they have to maintain the infrastructure of this country and to see people that do it right is a big deal. So share this episode with any of the service businesses or vendors because I think it will just help everyone.

If I could just interrupt for one second and mention that. I failed to mention that we also do a lot of conversion franchising. So those listeners that are out there that are kind of tired and trying to get their arms around what do I need to do to really take my business to the next level? They can go out and they can get some great consulting. But if they're looking for a new brand name, 60% of our new franchises are actually folks who are already in the trades. Whether it's the restoration trades or the plumbing trades or the appliance repair trades. We actually convert 60% of our franchisees come from the trades.

Wow, that's great. Well, see, there you go. What they're doing is they just want a system and looking for one that works and that reinforces the value of the system. So I will shut up at this point. Dean or Dina, any famous last words and then we'll call it a wrap.

I'll let Dean go first.

Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you so much for sharing with us. I can't believe how fast it went. Great, great testament to using, you know, in integrating values right into the operations.

It's fantastic.

Well, I want to thank you guys for having me on and I'll just close with if you live rich, something wonderful will happen. God bless you all.

Awesome. Thank you so much.

Thanks, guys.

Thanks.