Dina Dwyer-Owens is the brand ambassador (Head Cheerleader) of the Dwyer Group. America also knows her for participating 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 with more than 35 years of industry experience, 15 years as CEO of Dwyer Group. That business, headquartered in Waco, Texas, now includes 20 service brands and supports franchise organizations under the umbrella brand Neighborly in the United States and Neighbourly in Canada. Neighborly is a community of experts who repair, maintain, and enhance properties united under one platform to better meet the needs of today’s consumer. Collectively, those service brands and more than 3,200 franchisees make over three million customer calls a year and account for more than $1.7 billion in system-wide sales. In 2010, Dina served as the chair of the International Franchise Association (IFA) in Washington D.C., the world’s largest advocacy group for franchising as a business format. She also spearheaded the reintroduction of the IFA’s VetFran program in 2001, which now includes some 645 franchisors that offer franchising financial incentives to veterans of the U.S. Armed Forces. More than 6,000 military veterans now own a franchise through the VetFran program. Dina is the author of two books: Live R.I.C.H. and Values, Inc. that both share her global message for living and leading with a proven code of values. Dina is married to Mike Owens and they have two wonderful and entrepreneurial children, an amazing daughter-in-law and son-in-law and praying for many grandchildren.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- Why Dina believes employees and franchisees leading with the business values are the foundation for success in the Dwyer Group
- How a 37 year old organization achieved a phenomenal growth rate of 125 percent over the past four years
- Dina’s belief that clarity of values and keeping those values front and center within the organization not only holds them accountable to the high standards they’ve established but promotes the culture they want within the group
- What the R.I.C.H. system is and what it stands for
- Why people are more successful when they love what they do and when they have a certain sense of clarity about what they really want out of their individual lives
- Why Dina feels that if her franchisees don’t love what they’re doing, they aren’t best for her organization, which is why she wants people to seek clarity about their goals and dreams
- How adopting the R.I.C.H. system of values transformed Dina’s business and the interesting, outside the box, way she got employees onboard for adopting these new values for her corporation
- The reason Dina believes her company hasn’t experienced the growing pains many others do, despite such impressive growth in a relatively short span of time
- Why Dina believes it is so important to keep your culture as a business and how she keeps that culture as the organization grows and the business evolves
- The biggest challenges Dina has faced while growing her business and how she responded to the challenge
- Why Dina believed she was the best person for her role in the organization despite a few doubters around her