Empathy at Neighborly Scale with Mike Davis

**SPEAKER_1** (0:04)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:18)
Welcome back to the show everyone. I'm Stephen Sakach. We got a special guest today. We're going to enjoy this conversation immensely. Yeah, I know. So we're going to dive into home services. And home services can be deeply personal. When someone invites a professional into the home, they're placing trust in that person, that brand, all the systems behind that service. And that makes empathy more than a leadership value. Empathy becomes part of how businesses can earn trust, support franchise owners and teams, how you can create service experiences that people remember. And today we are going to dive into empathy and how that can impact things at scale.
Tullio, introduce our special guest today.

**Tullio Siragusa** (1:01)
It'll be my pleasure. Our guest today is Mike Davis. He is the Chief Executive Officer of Neighborly. Mike joined Neighborly as CEO in July 2024 Congratulations, you're two years in now. Neighborly is the world's largest home services company with more than 30 brands and 5,500 franchises collectively serving more than 14 million customers by repairing, maintaining and enhancing homes and businesses. Before joining Neighborly, Mike served as CEO of Mathnasium Learning Centers, a math-only supplement education franchise with 1,200 centers across 10 countries. He also served as CEO of Valpak where he helped transform the franchise network from a best-in-class printer into a sales and marketing organization. Mike brings more than two decades of leadership experience across franchising, business-to-business, business-to-consumer, digital platforms, media, e-commerce, and consumer services businesses.
Mike, welcome to The Bliss Business Podcast. We're excited to have you.

**Mike Davis** (2:04)
Thank you, Tullio. It's a pleasure to be here. That intro, I've had a lot of amazing experiences, but it did make me feel a little old.

**Stephen Sakach** (2:15)
Mike, can you hear me all right?

**Mike Davis** (2:17)
Yes, Stephen.

**Stephen Sakach** (2:18)
All right, great.

**Tullio Siragusa** (2:19)
Tullio is just getting wiser.

**Stephen Sakach** (2:22)
When Tullio was doing that intro, I'm all, wow, Mike's probably been with Valpak, and now the home services. He's probably been in everyone's home in one way or another. That's true.

**Mike Davis** (2:31)
Well, at least 43 million, I think was the Valpak number, so quite a few.

**Stephen Sakach** (2:39)
So Mike, so throughout this conversation, I think today we're going to try to get at ways to scale empathy. But from your perspective, why is empathy so important for leaders, especially of large franchise systems?

**Mike Davis** (2:54)
Well, most companies are obviously maniacally focused on growth. Like we are here at Neighborly, and I think true growth engines are built by a team of believers. And to build believers in that mission of growth and what has to be accomplished, you build believers with empathy, you build believers with authenticity.
Those who I think combine creates a level of trust, and trust drives care and execution for that mission of growth.

**Tullio Siragusa** (3:35)
Now, Neighborly operates across more than 30 home services brands. That's a lot of service brands on the one umbrella. So how does Empathy help leaders stay connected to what franchise owners, service professionals and customers are actually in experience? I mean, that's talking about doing that at scale.
We want to know the secret sauce, Mike.

**Mike Davis** (3:57)
Well, not easy every day, but one of the blessings and honor I have is taking over Neighborly two years ago. Many wonderful architects before me, including Don Dwyer, who was the original founder, and he created a code of values.
One thing that code of values does is creates a stitch, a piece of fabric through every one of the owners. Many of the owners, the 4,000 plus owners we have, join Neighborly and will tell me part of their decision was that code of values. Having these 15 code of values that are about respect and integrity, and how you show up in front of the customer, is helpful in creating that common top track and that common north star on how we show up, which is again, a lot of that is based on empathy and listening with intent. What I've done in my tenure is added guiding principles, which is one is how you show up and the other is what we do. We fail fast. A lot of things that tie back to empathy delivered in execution if that connects.

**Stephen Sakach** (5:17)
Thinking about that code of values, I mean, a lot of companies may have some sort of mission statement code of values, but really to make those come alive, you've got to audit your business by those.