The Billion Dollar Woman!

Hey everybody, this is John Assaraf. I hope you're having an amazing day and this is your opportunity to learn from an amazingly successful CEO who started from the ground up and now she is the executive chairwoman of the Dwyer group that includes seven franchise brands and more than 1600 locations around the world that do direct franchising and master licensing. And they serve or they have under their operations Airserv Glass, Dr. Mr. Appliance, Mr. Electric, Mr. Rooter, Rainbow International and the Grounds Guy. And under her leadership they serve over 2 million customers a year and do over $800 million a year in system wide sales. And she's just an amazing powerhouse. And you may have seen her and you may remember her from her amazing participation in the CBS Emmy award winning hit reality show called Undercover Boss. And she was also in the first ever special episode, Undercover Boss, the Epic Bosses. And I can tell you it was an amazing show. So if you haven't seen, you've got to see that. And she's also a winner of the 20002012 Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year award. So she's an absolute dynamo. And she was recently at one of our live events and the audience was just blown away by her depth, her love, her compassion and her genius. So I thought what better than to bring her to you and to talk to you about how do you build a great company. And more importantly, if you're looking to invest in a company, either in a franchise or a licensing agreement, this is one woman that you want to follow and possibly even consider being under her guidance with her franchise operations. So Dina, thanks for doing this and let's invest some time learning some of your amazing secrets to your success. And we can talk a bit about your franchises and their successes as well around the world because I think you serve over 1600 franchises under your guidance or 1800 somewhere in that range. And so welcome and thank you.

Thank you, John. It is my privilege to be here talking to all of your wonderful guests. And I've got two quick updates. We are approaching 1700 franchises which really represents about 3000 locations. When we talk about our number of franchises, it's really number of actual franchisees. But if you multiply that out, how many locations do they own? It's about 3,000. And what's really exciting is that. And we'll talk about this. Living Rich has created wealth for our franchisees. And one of the coolest things is we are knocking on 1 billion in system wide sales. When you got my last buy, it was 800 million but we are just at 1 billion in system wide sales. So fun times at Dwyer Group.

It's amazing. I just spoke to you a few months ago. It's already up by 200 million. So you're doing some amazing things. Maybe we can start off with how did you get to be where you're at today? I know the answer to that because we've invested some time together and shared some wonderful time together. But let's share with our audience how you got to be where you're at today.

Well, I was born into a family. My father was very entrepreneurial. Six kids in my family, two sisters and three brothers. And my father said he had something to teach us. So at the age of 12 and 13, guess what? We went to work. So we were put into whether working at the car washes or the restaurants that he owned, we were all put to work. I didn't go to slumber parties on weekends with my girlfriends. I was getting up early and going to the car wash. But the beautiful thing about my father was is he knew that by putting good things into our minds, including a good, strong work ethic, great results would come one day. Because I didn't like him so much when I was young and he was making me do that, but he enforced exactly what it is you enforce, and that is making sure that we're putting the right things into our minds. So he had me listening to motivational tape programs at the age of 12 and 13. He would actually pay me an allowance to listen to programs that were by the greats Napoleon Hill and Dr. Robert Schuller, all these great leaders that again, John, you have become a success because you filled your mind with those great leaders. And then he would quiz me at the end of the week. So I had to have the repetition of listening to those programs. Back then, it was audio cassettes six times. I'd have to listen to them, right? The mother of repetition, mother of skill is repetition. And then if I passed the test, he would just ask me a few questions. I'd get an extra five bucks for allowance. So that was pretty motivating, right, 35 years ago to get that kind of an additional allowance. But the beautiful thing was is that he taught me that I could win anything that I put my mind to. But the most important thing was how we treated people. And that's really where it all began. He was in the business of helping people have a better quality of life. He just happened to use franchising as his vehicle to do that. As a young person, I stood beside him one day, and a franchisee came up to him and said, don, I want to thank you. Without you giving me this opportunity to own my own business. It was a rainbow international restoration company at the time. Basically carpet cleaning at the time. He said, you have changed my life. Not only is my family living our dreams, but my employees are now living their dreams. And I thought, what a wonderful business to be in. And so I bought into his mission, and. And today, it's what I do every day.

Isn't that great? I love it. And you recently spoke at one of our events, and you just blew people's minds. If you can share with us just a little bit about why your core values that you live and your company lives and your franchisees live is such an integral part of success.

Well, Don Dwyer was a great student of leadership, so he studied all the great leaders. And in studying leadership before he founded the Dwyer Group in 1981, he said, I've got to have a set of core values. I've got to be very clear about who I am and what kind of business I want to build here. So no matter who he touched, franchisees, employees, prospective employees, bankers, whoever he was doing business with, he made sure that he reviewed his core values with them. Unfortunately, after taking the company public in 1993, a year later, in 1994, he died of a sudden heart attack at the age of 60. And as an organization, we had a lot to fear. He had just taken the company public. People bought him, John, because they trusted him, just like they trust you and the value you bring to them. And we said, the one thing we know we have to get right is continuing to build this culture on the foundation of the values that he started it with. But Don Dwyer wasn't here anymore to hold us accountable. So we took his original values and we operationalized them. So we put them into a set of behaviors or standards that each and every one of us could hold ourselves accountable to hold one another accountable to. Today, we call it living rich. It's living with respect. So the R is respect, the I is integrity, the C is customer focus, and the H. One of my favorites is having fun in the process. When we left Rich at the Dwyer Group, it's really all about treating people with respect and dignity. And as my friend Ken Blanchard says, profit is simply the applause we get when we do right by the people. We have to have good systems in place. We have to work hard and smart, but it's really about how we treat one another.

I love it. And one of the things that we discussed briefly as well is, you know, franchising. You know, I got into franchise when I was 26, so I got a great education on systems, processes. You know, I call it my paint by number. It's like, it's pretty impossible to mess it up. If you. If you have your chart and you have your borders, and this is blue and this is red and this is yellow. Oh, my God. You all of a sudden got a picture. And when we met, I was just blown away by your discipline to your system, your process. And you showed us some videos and you also shared with us a bit about your systems and process for your own life that keeps you really grounded, living your own values. Can you talk a bit about the importance of having your rituals and your practices to keep you moving and afford momentum, whether it's a business or in your personal life?

I would love to, because our mission statement at the Dwyer Group is still to teach our principles and systems of both personal and business success so that all people we touch live happier, more successful lives. So on the personal side of success, it starts with me being the best Dina Dwyer Owens that I can be. I can never be John. Boy, would I love to be John, but I could never be John. I've got to be the best Dina that I can be. And I know that I have to understand my core values as a person and for my family. So faith is my number one value. We talked about that. I can't be afraid to be honest about what is my foundation for success. And my faith is my foundation. It all starts there for me. And if I'm doing right in that area of my life, and believe me, I got lots of opportunity for growth there, it's never ending. But if I do that right, yeah, everything else seems to work, and then it's about surrounding yourself with the right team. So for my personal life, I've got to have the right team around me and my family and my friends, those people who are going to bring me up and keep me up instead of pushing me down. And then it's measuring my performance. It's being honest about when I've had an opportunity to be a better Dina than I am today, and then seeking out people like you who can help me be better than I am today. On the business side, it's really all about our systems starting again, first with the values. Every franchisee, in fact, most franchisees have made the decision to become part of the Dwyer Group because we're very clear about our values. And it's not Just on a piece of paper or up on the wall. It's who we are. We work hard to live up to these very high standards at the Dwyer Group. And we're not perfect, John. You know, we make mistakes every day. We're. We're human beings running an organization that's become very large. But the bottom line is we have to work hard to live up to that standard. And if we get close to reaching it, every day, we're doing much better than most companies out there, and that's our goal. But then it's also having those systems in place in franchising. Like you said, it's paid by numbers. The system works if you work this system. So we believe if you follow the system, you'll find success. That also means you've got to surround yourselves with the right people that are aligned with your values but are also willing to follow the systems on your core team and then measure performance. You know, it's. How do you know if you can get better if you don't really know where you are? So it's all about measuring your performance and facing. Facing it when you're not living up to some of the things that you need to be. You know, it's franchisee feedback or it's employee feedback. How can you improve upon that? So it's so much fun because it's so similar, whether it's personal life or business life, it's about those core things. Values. Having the right team around you and having that clarity of where it is we're going and then measuring whether or not you're living up to those strategies.

I love that. And do you apply that in your personal life as well, that you have your values, your goals, you set it up to measure? Where are you? Where would you like to be? What's working, what's not working? What are some of your thoughts around that, if we can go there?

Well, specifically, I spoke about faith being my number one value in my personal life. And it wasn't always that way, by the way, about 30 years ago, when I was in college, the social area of my life was much more important than the faith area of my life. What I know with my faith is I have certain rules and rituals that I need to live out in order to know that I'm doing my best in that area. One, of course, is praying night and day. And I find that I don't just pray in the morning and evening. I pray all day long. Right. And I pray for others because that provides me with a lot of satisfaction. Because that's what the world's about. Loving one another and doing our best to help one another. It's about attending for me, attending mass on a regular basis. I don't just attend Mass on Sundays. I try to attend Mass every single day. Now, do I make it every day? No. But I am there almost five days a week religiously. It's about proactively growing in that area of my life. So I have a challenge that every 30 days I do something proactive to grow in that spiritual area of my life. And it could be attending a marriage retreat with my husband, for example. Right. Every marriage could use a retreat now and then. Or it could be listening to an audiobook that focuses on how do I get better in this particular area of my life, that maybe I'm not as strong as I'd like to be. So it's constant and never ending improvement in that area of my life.

Awesome. So you're not just talking to your franchisees about personal development and growth and living your values. You're actually being your values. You're doing things every day, every week, every month. So you're putting yourself through a process as well that keeps you growing and forging forward and moving ahead. Which is one of the things I loved about connecting with you, is you are walking the talk versus just talking the talk. And I love that. And so when people are looking to get ahead in their lives, where do you think that following their passion fits into becoming successful?

In my mind, you've got to do it. Provide you energy, you know, why on earth go into a field career path where it just drains you every day? It's clear that you love what you do, John. You have so much energy, and it's because you're doing what you're best at doing. Your unique ability, and you love it. And you're making a difference in so many lives because of it. And so I think people need to follow what it is that provides them with energy. And that can be so many different things to different people. Some people love sitting behind a computer working on numbers. Right. I've got a wonderful staff at Dwyer that works in our finance department, God bless them, because they love playing with the numbers and working on the numbers. I would die sitting behind a computer all day long and just working on numbers. So I think it's having clarity about what it is that provides you energy and then searching out that career path or that business opportunity that fits that need. And what's interesting about franchising is that I say that we're in the business of helping people have a better quality of life, we just happen to use franchising as our vehicle to do that. Because whether you're a Mr. Rooter or a Mr. Electric franchisee or any of our franchisees, if you love helping people, every one of those businesses helps people. When you go into a customer's home and you fix something that's not working, you've given them a better quality of life.

Yeah, I love that. And that's the one thing that's really important is your franchises are geared towards helping people around their home and around their quality of life at home and taking the mystery away from what's happening. It's interesting. Just yesterday I was actually on a trip with my sister and my brother in Catalina island and I got a call from my mother in law who was at our house and the roof or the ceiling in the kitchen just started pouring water and she discovered that there was a broken seal up in my son's bathroom. And we called our contractor and on a Sunday he came over and he got it all fixed. He was back there this morning and he was just making my life a lot better. And that's what just about every one of your franchises is around, helping people around their home, is that correct?

Exactly. So in the home or their businesses? Because a lot of our franchises actually serve the commercial customer as well. Whether it's the grounds guys and we're out doing very large commercial properties, or we're coming to your home and we're keeping care of your lawn. And the whole beauty of how you feel when you come home, you want it to look beautiful. So it is. It's those things that most people don't have time today to do or they don't know how. I mean, how many people are brought up in a trade today that understand how to fix things? They don't. So they need the convenience of a reliable service professional who can come in and do it for you and create an experience far better than you ever expected. So our goal with our franchisee is to provide you an experience. We're not just there to fix that leak in your ceiling. We want to fix the customer too. We want John to go, wow, what a great experience. I never expected a plumber to come out and make me feel so good. Right. Because who really likes spending money on plumbing repairs? It's kind of like getting your car fixed. But if you have a great experience with a contractor, your life is in fact improved.

Yeah, totally agree. I love the way how your whole life embodies that philosophy. You know, when I met with you and your husband and heard a little about, you know, your background, and I see how you live your life, it seems to be the fabric by which you exist. And so that's why I wanted to introduce you and your franchisees to our audience around the world. And if anybody wants an opportunity to, you know, to either invest in a business or to start your own franchise, I can't highly recommend, you know, working with Dina's group enough. It's just amazing the way that she builds her business and builds her life and builds other people's lives up, which is really what I want for each one of you. And so let me ask you. I'm going to shift for just a moment, because a lot of times people, you know, meet me or meet you, and they think that everything's always just perfect for us, that, you know, we're always healthy and always happy and we're making tons of money. We don't have ups, and we don't have downs, and it seems to them like it's always sunny and that there are never clouds in our life. And what I always tell people, from my perspective, is we definitely have clouds in our lives, but it's what we do about it, and it's our ability to focus. Just above the clouds is the sun. And what I'd love from you is when things aren't going your way, whether it's with your business or. Or, you know, your personal life and any of the personal, you know, issues that come up for all of us, how do you handle the challenges?

Yeah, first of all, I pray. I'm very prayerful.

And how do you. How do you pray, specifically? So when you pray. Yeah. Do you. What do you say? You know, God, take this problem away from me, you know, because some people give me.

Give me wisdom, you know, give me. Give me some guidance. And what I find is what I usually end up doing, because most of the time, when there's challenges in my business or in my personal life, it has to do with another person. Right. It's usually about relationships. And what I find is if I'm up against a tough situation, I'm dealing with a tough customer. For example, many times when I get prayerful about it, what I see is that that customer is experiencing something that I am not experiencing, and I try to put myself in their shoes, and all of a sudden, it's like that breath of fresh air. Like, wait a second, Dina. They are really dealing with something that's difficult for them, and that's why they're behaving the way they're behaving, which may feel like it's an attack on me, when really it's not. It's a cry for help. So I end up kind of just turning it around and saying, this person really needs my help. I've got to do what I can do to make the situation better for them, and in return, it makes it better for me. So I just. I've been trained, as you have, just to think more optimistically about the challenges of my life, knowing that we'll get through them. Right. We get through every one of these challenges, and before we know, we're looking back on, what did I make such a big deal out of that for? But it's just about the way you process and you think about it. And in my mind, it's always about how do I make it better for that person? If I can make it better for that person? Every single time, it makes the situation better for me. So it's really all about your outlook on how you look at it. I'm never a victim. I have never saw myself as a victim. And I'll say this. I don't know how many of the people in the audience are women, but when women are always talking about, it's so hard for a woman to do this, it's so hard for a woman to do that. I don't want to hear it.

John.

Work hard at your mindset. Be the best you can be in whatever that field is at your end. And with that, you'll have the confidence to make sure that you're never having to say, it's because I'm a woman that this is happening to me. Create opportunities for yourself instead of being the victim on the other end.

I love that. Yes, you become the victor, not the victim.

Exactly.

Love that. I want to take you back for just a second on the prayer part only because I was having a dialogue with somebody about this this weekend. And when I pray, which is every morning, I say, God, show me, guide me. I don't ever say, God, fix it for me. Why me? How come this is happening? I always ask for guidance, wisdom, and understanding. Is that what I heard you say just before?

Absolutely. It's about just giving me the wisdom to handle this the right way and being thoughtful enough. Sometimes we react, and when I find out, I react. I usually don't handle things in the best manner that I could. It's taking that deep breath and being prayerful about, show me, where do I go with this? And I've got to be willing to listen. John, sometimes I'm just coming up with my own answers, and that's not usually the best solution. It's about asking for the guidance and the wisdom, but then being willing to be quiet and listen. And I can't think of a time where when I did that, that the result ended up turning out to be very good for all parties involved.

Love that. I love that. I've got just a couple more questions. One is around taking time off for yourself to rejuvenate. Now, I hear everybody tells me I'm so busy I can't take time off. And I've heard the stories. I'm sure you have as well. How much time do you take off to rejuvenate, to do the other things other than grow a business and make money?

I take off at least five weeks a year. And that's not all at one time. Usually. Usually it's, you know, a couple weeks in the summer with my family, a couple of weeks around the Christmas season and the winter time, and then scattered throughout that, I'll have several long weekends. I'm typically always off on Sundays. Sunday is a very holy day for me. So unless it's a major event that they really need my help, I really don't ever do any work on Sundays. That's just kind of a practice we have in my household. But I take time off. I call those free days. So I really take the time off. I'm not reading trades journals, I'm not checking emails. I'm not even reading a business book. I am getting away from all of that. And as you said, rejuvenating. Whether that's out playing on the beach with my family, whether it's a massage day right at the spa, it's doing something that really rejuvenates me wholly. And when I get back to work, I am so much more productive and my team really appreciates it.

I love that. Now, one of the things that you don't know, because I didn't tell you this, but it really touched my heart. My wife and I are very into philanthropy of our time and money. And I was really, really touched when you shared with me how much of your income you give away to charities. I'm not going to share that with everybody that's personal to you. Why is philanthropy so important to you as well in giving back of your time and income?

My father taught me at a very young age that it's important to give back. And, you know, there's that law of reciprocation and you don't give to get back. But what I find is that giving is so satisfying. I'll give you just one example. My husband and I set a financial independence goal as a couple back in 1995, and it was a very, very big goal. So the bottom line was, is we wanted to be able to have enough money invested that if we didn't want to go to work the next day, we wouldn't have to, because that passive income was producing the quality of life that we hoped for. It took us eight years to get there, and we worked very hard, and we were very smart about it. We got there. And you know what my husband did, because our goal, and I'll share our goal was to give 25% of our gross income back to the charities and to the community that we have special things that we care about. So it's not everything that people come and ask us, could you get to this? We're very specific about are getting. But the biggest accomplishment, my husband would probably say in his life, other than marrying me, hopefully, and having two wonderful children, is he helped build a homeless shelter. He basically left his job at the Dwyer Group, recruited the best guy he could find to run Mr. Appliance. And that's a hard thing to do, right. For your ego and your self image. Left the Dwyer Group and became the head volunteer on building a homeless shelter in Waco, Texas. He had dreamt of that for years, to provide three square meals a day to chronically homeless at that time, men. And I'll Never forget, on December 18, 2004, my brother's keeper, the homeless shelter opened in Waco, Texas, and housed 18 chronically homeless men, mostly veterans. That day was a beautiful day. And so making money is a good thing when you're doing wonderful things with that money that you make to give back. So philanthropy is just, I do what I do today to take care of the franchisees and the employees and the customers and my family. But I'm also thinking about the future. How can I take care of a bigger part of our world?

Yeah, I love that. That's why I want to bring that, because that touched my heart when you talked a bit about it. And that's what we're in the growing and giving years of our lives. And it's such a joy for that. I want to ask you one final question then. I want you to share with people how they can find out more about your company, maybe finding out more about a franchise or license. When somebody looks at you or at me, and they go, oh, great. You know, she's running a billion dollar company. Sixteen, seventeen hundred franchises, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That could never happen for me. So there's a lot of people that, you know, see us at the mountaintop, and they don't realize that we've climbed, you know, every step of the way up. And sure, maybe somebody handed us an arm and a hand to lift us up once in a while. When somebody is in the. In the victim mentality and they're, you know, they're having a challenging time, what's your advice for them?

Yeah, I think you have to have clarity about where you want to go in your life. So I was blessed to be taught goal setting at a very early age. And so what is it that you want to do with your life? Regardless of where you are today, where is it you really want to be? Write that down. Specifically. Right. Crystallize your thinking, and then write down the action steps you must take in order to get there and own them. You have to own those action steps because nobody else is going to do it for us. I teach a class to all new franchisees and all new employees called Design youn Life. And if you don't take control of designing your life, who's going to do it for you? Somebody else might, but it's not going to be the design you want. So no matter where you are in your life today, if you're at a place where you're very down, write that goal out. Where is it you really want to be, and then write those small action steps that you have to take together. And it may not happen in the next 12 months. Maybe it's going to take you three years to get there, but if you don't get started, it's never going to happen. And believe me, I have been in a place where I didn't have enough money to even put gas in my car when I was a young person, because my dad didn't hand money to me. I had to earn everything, every dollar, to buy the vehicle, to pay for the entrance of my vehicle, to put the gas in my vehicle. I had to earn that. It was not given to me. And yet the beautiful thing is, as we go through life and we hit those bumps, I wasn't going to be the permanent CEO of the Dwyer Group. I was invited to be the Acting President CEO of the Dwyer Group in 1998. I had franchisees who said, she's not the right person to run this company. She's not a Plumber, she's not an electrician. And I had to accept the fact that you're right. I'm not a plumber. I'm not an electrician. But I want the opportunity to leave this company because it's important to me to continue this legacy that my father started. So I said to those franchisees that were against me, I said, give me a chance. Just give me six months to prove myself. And of course, I had to surround myself with an amazing team, John. And I had to work hard to prove to them that I could do this. But six months later, some of the biggest naysayers became my greatest cheerleader. So believe me, John and I, we face obstacles every day. Every day we face them. But it's our attitude about how we're going to overcome them. And most of the time, we can never do that alone. It takes a greater God. In my case, a wonderful team around you.

I love it. I love it. Dean, I could do this with you for many, many days, let alone hours, and learn from your wisdom and share your wisdom with the people that I surround myself with around the world. And so let me ask you a question. If somebody wants to find out more about your company, about the Dwyer Group, the different franchisees, where would you like me to send them? Let's give them either an email address, a phone number to call, whatever you would like so that people can find out more about your amazing company so they can surround themselves with a killer business opportunity.

Thank you, John. I would direct them to the Dwyer Group's website. So it's www.dwyergroup. that's D W Y E R group dot com. And I would also like to make a special offer to your audience. We didn't talk about this, but if anybody is interested in a complimentary book, I actually have one on my desk here called Live Rich. If they would just email me directly, they could email me directly@ddoiregroup.com so my initials, ddoiregroup.com. we'd be happy to send them a copywriter copy. It's a very short read, John, much like your books. They're awesome, awesome books with great information. We'd be happy to share that with your. Your audience as well. It'll tell you more about who Dwyer is, especially about the importance of living by your core values.

I love it. I'll make sure that that's in the. In the email. Whatever other means of communication will give people access to this amazing, short, concise, and just precise, you know, little interview with my friend, executive chairwoman of the Dwyer Group. Dina Dwyer Owens, you're amazing. I'll give you a big virtual hug and a big high five right there. Thank you so much. I know you're extremely busy running your amazing company, and thanks for sharing your pearls of wisdom with the individuals who are watching this. Dina, big hugs to you, my dear.

My pleasure. John, thanks for all you're doing.

Thanks, you, too. Bye, everyone. Remember, it's your choice, everybody, to create an amazing life. Pay it forward, give your love, give some of your money, and give your heart to the people that are around you. Bye. Bye now.