About Dee

You need a guide who
has run the store.

Not someone who studied culture from the outside. Someone who built it from inside a real business, with real people, after asking the wrong questions for years — and discovering what actually works.

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The turning point
Lead with Compassion
The origin

The wrong question
cost me years.

For years running a Specsavers franchise, I asked the same question. "Why don't they care the way I do?" I said it to myself at closing time when I was still working and the team had gone home. I said it after a customer complained. I said it when standards slipped and I could not understand why.

The question felt reasonable. It felt justified. But it was the wrong question entirely. Because it put the problem in the team — when the real problem was that I had not yet built the conditions for them to care. The fog was mine to lift. I just did not know it yet.

The right question turned out to be this: "Why haven't I designed the conditions for them to care?" That shift changed everything. Not the team. Not the business model. The question.

"The fog was not in the team. It was in the distance between the standard in my head and the clarity I had given them."

Within three months of working on that answer — building standards, creating clarity, designing the conditions — the business reached break-even for the first time in over seven years. Within 14 months net profit had increased by $30,000 per month. The team that had been the source of the question became the proof of the answer. They were capable all along. They just needed the conditions.

That experience — the frustration, the wrong turns, the moment of realisation, and the results that followed — became SOAR, ORCAA, and everything in the Care by Design system. Built from the inside of a real business. Tested with real people. Refined through years of working with franchise networks and business owners who were asking the same wrong question I once did.

The moment that changed everything
"Lead with
Compassion."

The insight that reframed everything

At a seminar I approached a man named Grace. There was something in the way he carried himself — a calm, a confidence, an ease with his team that I had been searching for. I asked him the question I had been asking everyone for years.

How do you create a great team culture? How do you approach your interactions with your team?

He said two words. Lead with Love. In that moment it landed as something profound. But over time it evolved into something more precise — Lead with Compassion. Because compassion is not softness. It is the most demanding form of leadership there is. It tells the truth. It holds the standard. And it does both in a way that preserves the human relationship.

That distinction between compassion and empathy — why getting it wrong costs you trust, and how getting it right changes everything — is the heart of Book 3 and the foundation of how Dee coaches today.

What drives everything

The beliefs behind
Care by Design

01
Fog breeds fear

When people cannot see where they stand, fear fills the gap. Fear of feedback. Fear of the one to one. Fear of getting it wrong. Clarity is the antidote — and it is the leader's job to provide it.

02
Clarity equals progress

You cannot grow toward something you cannot see. When every person knows what great looks like at their level, they can move toward it. That movement is progress. Clarity makes it possible.

03
Care by design

You cannot demand that people care. But you can build the conditions for it. Culture does not form by accident. It forms by design — through standards, conversations, and systems that make caring the default.

04
The hot stove principle

Having a tool and knowing how to use it compassionately are two different things. Every framework in this system was built with implementation in mind — because the how matters as much as the what.

05
Lead with compassion

Honest, firm, fair, and always from a place of genuine care for the person. Compassion is not the absence of accountability. It is the delivery mechanism that makes accountability land without destroying trust.

06
Lived experience

Everything taught here came from doing it, getting it wrong, and figuring out what actually works inside a real business with real people. That is not something a textbook can replicate.

The proof

Results that speak
for themselves

$30K
Net profit increase per month — within 14 months of implementing Care by Design
Top 4%
Specsavers ANZ network ranking — from a store that had not profited in seven years
2×
Doug Perkins Prize finalist, two consecutive years
3.5→4.7
Google rating improvement through culture and leadership work
22→47
Bridgestone franchise score in 3 months through financial foundations coaching
5+
Franchise networks — Specsavers, Bridgestone, Snooze, Fireaway Pizza, Busy Bees
Ready?

Stop asking the wrong question.
Start designing the answer.

45 minutes. No pitch. A peer level conversation about what is happening in your network and what becomes possible when you ask the right question.

Book a Franchise Performance Conversation

The conversation I wish someone had offered me in the early years. Honest, clear, and completely focused on what actually moves the needle in your business.

Book your conversation

Or email dee@deemakadia.com