EQ and Empathy: The New Standard for Franchise Success with Roxanne Conrad

**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)
Well, welcome back to the show, everyone. I'm Stephen Sakach here with my co-host Tullio Siragusa, and we have a special guest today who we'll introduce in a moment. So leadership is changing. For a long time, business success was often measured by speed, scale, efficiency, and financial performance, and those things, of course, still matter. But today's leaders are also being measured by something a little deeper, how they communicate, how they listen, how they build trust, and how they support people through complexity and growth. And really, this is what I like to say is capitalism maturing.
So we're heading in the right direction, I think. A lot of kicking and screaming from folks along the way, but emotional intelligence and empathy are becoming core leadership capabilities, and especially in franchise systems and service-based businesses where success depends on people, relationships, consistency, and trust. And today, we are exploring how emotional intelligence and empathy are the new standard for success. And we're going to talk about operations, franchise leadership, culture, communication, customer care, and how empathy can become a strength inside scalable systems. Tullio, introduce our special guest today.

**Tullio Siragusa** (1:36)
It'll be my pleasure. Our guest today is...
I lost my line.

**Stephen Sakach** (1:46)
That's a dramatic pause.

**Tullio Siragusa** (1:49)
Roxanne Conrad. She's the chief...

**Stephen Sakach** (1:51)
I thought you were building up some emotion there, Tullio.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:54)
Wait a minute.

**Tullio Siragusa** (1:56)
Another name. Okay, I guess today is Roxanne Conrad. She's the chief operating officer of Premium Service Brands as COO. Roxanne oversees the day-to-day operations of the entire franchise system, helping ensure consistency, efficiency, and support across multi-locations. She plays a key role in growth strategy, process improvement, innovation, and collaboration across the entire organization. Before joining Premium Service Brands, Roxanne helped leadership roles across operations management, business development, marketing, and public relations. Today, she helps drive the growth and prosperity of Premium Service Brands while supporting a franchise system built around home services, customer experience, and franchise ownership success.
Roxanne, welcome to The Bliss Business Podcast.

**Roxanne Conrad** (2:50)
Thank you for having me.

**Stephen Sakach** (2:53)
Roxanne, so today the topics emotional intelligence and empathy, and how they're the new standard for success. From your perspective as COO, why are these qualities so important in modern leadership?

**Roxanne Conrad** (3:06)
Yeah.
I think emotional intelligence gets misunderstood a lot actually. Because people hear the word emotion in there, and they assume it means soft leadership or avoiding accountability. But to me, it's actually the opposite. Emotional intelligence is understanding people well enough to hold the right accountability for them. The best leaders understand who someone is at their core, not like surface level personal stuff, right? Not like dogs and log mocks on the beach, but just how they naturally operate. What's their social battery? Are they energized people or are they drained by constant interaction with people? Are they highly detailed? Are they more vision-oriented? Are they patient, like kindergarten teacher kind of patient, or should we keep them away from training the new hires? How do they solve problems? So that matters because leadership isn't about forcing everyone into the same mold. It's about putting people in the right positions so that they can succeed naturally while still driving performance. And I'll be honest, perfectly honest, no one in this organization would describe me as a touchy-feely kind of leader. In fact, most would probably say I stay very far away from feelings.
But empathy and sympathy are not the same thing. So sympathy changes the standards that we hold people accountable to because of how we feel about them. But empathy and having emotional intelligence helps you understand where someone is coming from so that you can lead them more effectively without lowering the expectations for them or your organization.

**Tullio Siragusa** (4:56)
So for a lot of people, especially in the role of a COO, the role of operations can sometimes be viewed as systems and processes, logistics, metrics, efficiency, and all that is true. But how does empathy and emotional intelligence show up in day-to-day operational leadership in a practical way? How does that show up?

**Roxanne Conrad** (5:19)
Yeah. So I think operations is ultimately about people executing consistently.
So I think that empathy and emotional intelligence show up a lot more than people realize. Yes, to your point, there are systems, there's KPIs, there's processes, there's an accountability. But behind all of the operational metrics is still a human being that's making decisions and communicating and hopefully solving problems and also interacting with customers or franchisees. And emotional intelligence shows up in understanding how those different people operate best. So some people need very, very direct communication style, right? I'm like, hit me between the eyes with it. But some need some more context. This is why we do it this way. Some people are highly detailed and then, you know, some people just really want to have kind of the overall big picture.