BOSTON to ORLANDO,: TDG REUNION, SURFING, & DISNEY WORLD! // EFRT

Welcome to another episode of the Epic Family Road Trip. This week we were in sunny Orlando, Florida at the Dwyer Group reunion. Now if you don't know who the Dwyer Group is, they're a values-led world leader of franchise brands focused on repairing, maintaining, and enhancing customers' homes and businesses. And the Grounds Guys, our brand, has the privilege and distinct honor of being one of those brands. The reunion is three days of intense learning, and fellowship, and sharing of best practices, and meeting new people, and meeting old friends. It's just one of the best times, and we have a lot of fun while we're there. On the first day of the conference, the CEO, Mike Bidwell, gets up and shares his vision for the company. And then all the executives talk about the various initiatives that are coming out for the new year, and all of the things that have gone on last year. It's really exciting. We also always have an incredible keynote speaker. This year was Stephen M. R. Covey. Now, I've always been a huge fan of his father, Dr. Stephen Covey, and I've read Mr. Covey Jr.'s book, The Speed of Trust, and that's what he spoke about this time, The Speed of Trust. It was an incredible talk. In the evening, we have the gala awards dinner where we all get dressed up, and get together, and have a huge awards banquet celebrating the best and the brightest, and each brand has a franchise of the year. This year, it was extremely exciting that the franchisee of the year was David and Shannon Kennedy from Collingwood, Ontario. Congratulations, guys. That's well deserved, and it's a huge honor to stand in front of more than 2,000 franchisees and accept that award on behalf of the Grounds guys, so good job. A fun time was had by all, and it's really one of the highlights of the conference. You get to hear from so many successful people and the things that helped them, so if you're a new franchisee sitting in the crowd, those are the people you need to listen to. The Grounds guys franchisee of the year, Pete and Shannon. Also, this time, Pete and Dan had the opportunity to wear our mascot and represent the brand, and great new people coming in. Our mascot is called Too Tall Tim, and he's famous for his big smile. It's nearly impossible to stop smiling while you're high-fiving, propping, greeting a whole bunch of amazing people while you're Too Tall Tim. The next day is Breakaway by Brand, where we do a lot of training, and we learn about new systems, and it's just an incredible time, but we always try to have fun in the process while we're at it, so at night, we did what's called the first ever block party, where all the brands got together, and there's food, and there's music, and fireworks, and people learning from each other, and meeting new friends, and meeting other brands from their area, so if you're in a city, and you have, say, the Grounds guys, there's likely going to be a Mr. Rooter, Mr. Electric, and all these other service brands around, so it's a chance for everyone to get together, and become friends with their local brands. Can you imagine what synergies they're going to be able to find, and what sharing of not only knowledge, but of customers, and it's just going to be an incredible thing that all comes out of this block party that we had. Our values on the Epic Family Road Trip are work, play, care, and that's our website, workplaycare.com, make sure you visit us there. We like to work hard, we like to play hard, and we care. We care by leaving the people we meet, and the places we visit, a little better than when we found them. Well, this whole weekend was an awesome opportunity to combine all three values. Yes, we work hard at the conference, but we also took time to play, and we also put an effort, and a focus on care, and the way the Grounds guys did this was by having our annual charity auction. The Grounds guys all are caring people, and we had a record-breaking auction, and raised tons of money for some valuable charities, and amazing causes out there, so that was an incredible show of care, and genuine support, so thank you to all the Grounds guys that were involved, it was awesome. Give it up for Ryan Dethridge. Good morning everybody, how are we doing this morning, you ready to rock and roll, you ready to go, here we go. All right, let's do a little exercise, get your hands waving. You forgot one part, you got to reach in your wallet. Any of you have been watching our videos, you know that we like to play, and we like to play hard, and that's why at the end of the conference, we got together with our best friend in the whole world, Dina Dwyer-Owen, she's also the co-chair of the Dwyer Group, she's also the daughter of the founder Don Dwyer, and her daughter Dani, and our good friends Jessica, and her little son Liam, who is now my best buddy, we got together, and we went to Disney World, why wouldn't you, we're in Orlando, you got to go there, we went to the Magic Kingdom, and had just an awesome afternoon doing the rides, and just hanging out, and having fun, so I hope you enjoy these videos from the Magic Kingdom, Walt Disney World, Orlando, Florida. So guys, what was your favorite thing, or ride, or whatever about Disney? I liked Space Mountain. So all in all, it was a great time there, we stayed till late, the fireworks are incredible. That blew me away. Those are impressive. Right now, we're heading to Asheville, North Carolina, to the Overlanding Expo. You're not going to want to miss next week's video, because we're going to showcase all kinds of incredible overlanding equipment, we're going to finish part two of our Jeep video, and show you the gear that we have on it. If you're interested in this kind of lifestyle, and camping out of your vehicle, overlanding, all that, you're really not going to want to miss this video, it's going to be a lot of fun. Asheville, North Carolina, here we come, and in the meantime, we'll see you down the road.