Amy Mosley Earp: Putting People First in Franchise Growth

Name: Amy Mosley Earp
Title: COO
Company: DreamMaker Bath & Kitchen
Years in Franchising: 26
Number of Units: 47

Amy Mosley Earp has been with Waco, Texas-based DreamMaker Bath & Kitchen since 2001. In her role as chief operating officer, she oversees franchise operations, marketing, technology, and business operations. During her tenure with DreamMaker, she led the marketing department and later moved into operations and franchise support. Most recently, she served as corporate vice president before being named COO. She was instrumental in bringing the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) to the company, implementing the system in 2019 and serving the company in the integrator role.

Amy has been a Certified Franchise Executive through the International Franchise Association for 12 years. She has served several terms as a board member and chair of various committees for the National Association of the Remodeling Industry and the National Kitchen and Bath Association.

Being passionate about board work and developing leaders, she has served as a board member and chairwoman for local nonprofits. She currently serves on the advisory board for her sorority’s Texas Tech University chapter.

A graduate of Baylor University, Amy recently married and makes her home with her husband, Johnny Earp, in Lubbock, Texas. She enjoys spending time with her newly expanded family of six adult children and three grandchildren.

Personal & Leadership Journey

What inspired you to pursue leadership in franchising/branding? Franchising found me! What began as a marketing role turned into a passion for serving others through opportunity that can change lives: franchisees, employees, and the clients they serve. Leadership gives me the ability to have an impact in the direction of the brand and ultimately affect others in positive ways.

Can you share a defining moment that shaped your leadership style? Early on, my boss said to me, “I know it’s difficult for you to ask for help, but let me help you.” I thought that I needed to have all the answers and be all things to all people. Up until then, I loved collaborating as a team but didn’t possess the humility to ask for help. It was a pride thing. That simple statement reshaped how I lead. It taught me that leadership isn’t about being the strongest, smartest person in the room. It is assembling a team that brings in expertise that I don’t have. It means I can be vulnerable.

How has your personal background influenced the way you lead? My faith is foundational. It drives how I treat people or aspire to treat them—I’m not perfect—as well as my approach to business. At the end of the day, the relationship is what is important. I want anyone I come into contact with to get a sense that I am authentic and trustworthy. I want them to know that I care about them as a person.

Who or what has most influenced your philosophy as a leader or changemaker? Doug Dwyer, our company president and chief stewarding officer (CSO), has been tremendously influential. I have seen him lead with a servant’s heart and have learned significantly about leadership and franchising from him. Additionally, John “Johnny Franchise” Francis has had a significant impact by coaching me regularly. And I can’t leave out my networking group of women franchise founders and executives. They are my tribe.

Driving Change & Innovation

What significant changes or innovations have you led within your brand? Recently, I have led several initiatives, including the implementation of EOS among our corporate team and a formal succession planning program for franchisees. We are currently at the implementation phase of significant technology and marketing-related upgrades. These include new websites, SEO/AEO strategy, and KPI dashboards. We are also transitioning from QuickBooks desktop provided in a hosted environment for our franchisees to QuickBooks online.

How did you implement those changes, and what results did they bring? First and foremost, we have assembled an excellent team. Our leadership team meets weekly, and I also meet one-on-one weekly with the department heads. This provides clarity of vision, which leads to clarity of strategy and scope. We also enroll our franchisees through our franchise advisory council, committees, and task forces for feedback. Change is hard. You must involve franchisees in the refinement of the initiative as well as the implementation plan. Your team must be aligned and focused. By structuring initiatives this way, our changes are better received by our franchisees.

What role have you had in adopting new technologies, including AI? We have several marketing tech initiatives rolling out to our franchisees this year, and I have been integrally involved with the teams working on these. Some were initiatives I pushed, and others were ideas brought to me by my team.

Last year, I invited Stay in Your Lane to present at our annual Reunion (conference) for our franchisees. They led a workshop with the franchisees that was well received. Internally, working with the Stay in Your Lane team, we developed an AI policy. We also had intensive training on various AI platforms. This year, we are focusing on our internal team being further trained and supported in AI adoption and implementation. We want our team, me included, to develop more AI intuition. We have formed a relationship with Stay in Your Lane to function as a fractional chief AI officer.

How do you identify when it’s time for a brand to evolve? We stay close to the client journey and listen closely to franchisees through formal research of our clientele and anecdotally with franchisees. We listen very carefully to what franchisees are experiencing with closing ratios, initial lead-to-contract timelines, and the contract price of projects. It may take us several weeks to close a sale due to the cost of full-service remodeling services (average contract value is just under $50,000). As we become aware of changes in consumer preferences, spending habits, and decision-making criteria, we evolve our systems and marketing to meet the needs of the client and franchisees.

We pay close attention to economic indicators, looking at overall conditions and those specific to the remodeling industry. Involvement in the remodeling industry has been invaluable for our brand. I currently serve on the board of the National Association of the Remodeling Industry, and that intel helps us to stay up to date. In addition, Dwyer, our president and CSO, always attends the Home Improvement Insights Summit, which provides a deep dive into economic forecasts for the remodeling industry.

These indicators, as well as keeping a close eye on the competitive landscape, guide us as we lead the brand.

How do you communicate change effectively to franchisees? I am always reminding my team that we have to market to our franchisees just as our franchisees have to market to their potential customers. Message consistency and frequency matter. We offer two in-person conferences a year, and these are well attended by our franchisees. These are held in January and June, so there are two key opportunities to meet with our franchisees in person to communicate change. Additionally, we use a three-step email communication system with a weekly Punch List of actions to take each week, a Monthly Messenger that keeps franchisees up to date on what’s coming, and a Quarterly Connection that is more of an electronic multi-page publication. We have also found that video announcements are important, and so is good, old-fashioned postcard mailing for key date reminders. Last, but certainly not least, we make sure our internal team is armed with talking points so that we all have a shared understanding of the change and deliver a consistent message.

Challenges & Resilience

What obstacles have you encountered while driving change, and how did you overcome them? There are always budget and time constraints as well as change resistance. Sometimes, change means additional financial investment by the franchisees. Other times, it’s not a financial challenge, but it has been related to technology and the challenges of changing various platforms. I cannot say enough about having a healthy relationship with your franchise advisory council. Our FAC has been a key driver of change and helps to create clarity around why the change matters. Additionally, before any significant change, I make a point to have a clear strategic communications plan in place so that we aren’t thinking about how to communicate when we are ready to kick off the initiative implementation.

How do you maintain momentum when new ideas face resistance? We have peer groups established for all franchisees, and many new ideas come from these groups. We also previously enroll our FAC members. One-on-one outreach may also be necessary. It takes quite a bit of time, but I have found one-on-one conversations to be extremely effective in managing resistance. Franchisees need to be heard, and they need to know they have been heard. Unfortunately, we can’t make every franchisee happy all the time, and we have to be sensitive to the needs of all franchisees and hear them out.

What lessons have you learned from an initiative that didn’t go as planned? Be forthcoming; don’t hide out. Trust is built through how you handle adversity. We always try to under promise and over deliver. We set clear timelines that we know we can hit. We also need to be willing to admit that something isn’t working or didn’t work as planned. Just have a plan B ready!

How do you balance short-term pressures with long-term vision? Implementing the EOS system in our company has been a game changer for us and helps us to balance the competing demands of the short term and long term. Team alignment and clarity of vision, plus quarterly planning and “rocks” (clearly defined priorities in EOS), help us to keep moving the needle today to get to our vision tomorrow.

Culture & People

How do you build and motivate high-performing teams? We have an intensive recruiting process and take the time to recruit the right people based on culture and values fit, first with skills and experience second. We have a structured onboarding process. We are a team of remote employees covering several time zones, so we are very focused and intentional in creating a team. This helps to keep everyone engaged. All of the managers in our company hold quarterly conversations with their team members, which is a time to talk about what’s working and what’s not. We also talk about goals, personally and professionally. I enjoy these conversations with my team. I always want to hear from them how I can better support them, and it’s an opportunity to take time to connect and talk about what’s meaningful to them.

What practices help you connect with employees and franchisees at every level? Consistency is key. With the internal team, we have a weekly Monday Focus meeting for all team members. Everyone shares their personal and professional best from the week prior, and this goes a long way in building a team. Managers also have regular one-on-ones with their team members, and departments have regular meetings.

For franchisees, we hold two in-person conferences per year. Our franchisees are a very connected group, so they look forward to these events not only for the training we provide, but also for the informal peer-to-peer conversation and learning.

Our franchise coaches are assigned no more than 20 to 25 franchisees, and most meet weekly with their assigned franchisees. This provides an invaluable connection and conduit for exchanging information.

We engage annually with the Franchise Business Review survey of our franchisees. In recent years, we have also participated in FBR’s employee engagement survey for both our internal team and our franchisees’ employees. On an annual basis, we also do our own survey of our internal team to see how we are living our values.

How do you build buy-in and bring others along when pushing for change? The FAC involvement is critical. Additionally, we will run ideas by other franchisees either through a formal task force or through individual conversations and surveys.

Franchisees and our internal team need to understand the “why” for the change, and I strive to lead my team to provide a clear understanding of what is causing this change, what the key benefits of change are, and what the cost to the franchisees is in both money and time.

How do you mentor or empower the next generation of leaders or changemakers? At least once a year, we host an all-employee book club. I most often select a book that has both personal and professional applications, such as Atomic Habits by James Clear and The Gap and the Gain by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy. Patrick Lencioni is often a favorite of the team as well. The team really enjoys the conversations about the selected book, and learnings from these books often show up in conversations years down the road. I’ve often heard a team member say, “I’m trying to live in the gain right now, not the gap!”

Almost our entire leadership team has their CFE, and the ones who don’t are working on theirs. Now, we are offering the opportunity for other team members to obtain their CFE. It is exciting to see how these team members have embraced education from the IFA and have shared their learnings with others on the team. This investment in the team helps to create loyalty as well as develop the next generation of leaders.

Personally, as a leader, I strive to ask better questions, listen more than I talk, and help lead the team in learning to solve their own challenges.

Future & Vision

What excites you most about the future of your brand or the industry? I continue to be amazed and motivated by the positive impact we as a franchise brand and the franchising industry can have on people’s lives. It’s all about the people. This is why we do this.

Our DreamMaker tagline is “Enhancing Lives. Improving Homes.” This is a shared commitment we have with our franchisees and their clients: Even if we don’t earn their business, we want them to have a positive interaction with us.

How do you stay true to a brand’s core while still adapting for the future? DreamMaker has a code of values that is shared among the corporate team and the franchisees. We recruit staff and franchisees who are willing to aspire to uphold our values. Our franchisees, in turn, recruit team members who will also uphold the values. The code is our filter for any change or adaptation we may consider. How does the change fit within our values? Will the change allow us to still be consistent with our values? Will the parties involved in the change, even if they are third parties, support our values? If a proposed innovation isn’t consistent with our values, we either say no to it or collaborate on how to accomplish the same goal while working within our value system.

Where do you see the greatest opportunities for women in franchising? There is huge opportunity! Within our own brand, we are seeing more women becoming owners and leading their local franchises. Franchising is all about relationships, and women can really tap into their emotional intelligence to build strong relationships. This can show up in franchise ownership, executive leadership, and management.

If you could give one piece of advice to your younger self, what would it be? Funny you should ask. At our annual leadership planning retreat, our facilitator had us write this same advice to ourselves, and he mailed it to us a couple of months later. My advice to my younger self? Don’t let your desire for perfection get in the way of having fun. Trust yourself. It’s okay not to have all the answers.

What advice would you give to leaders who want to create lasting impact? As leaders, we all have business objectives for financial stability and growth, and yes, these are critical. However, what really matters is how you go about achieving profitability and growth. It’s about the people first.