Max Emma's Journey From Bankruptcy to Building a Franchise Empire

In this episode of "Nice to Meet You," host Rob Pene interviews Max Emma, a successful business owner and franchise expert. Max shares his journey from corporate accounting at Qualcomm to becoming the CEO of three franchise-related companies.

Key highlights from the episode:

• Max's background: Originally from the former Soviet Union, he came to the US 32 years ago. After working at Qualcomm, he left corporate life in 2002 to start his own businesses.
• Business evolution: He experienced both success and failure, including a construction business that went bankrupt during the 2008-09 housing crisis. This setback led him to start a bookkeeping business with his wife.

Current ventures:

1. A bookkeeping services company serving 100+ franchise brands nationwide
2. A bookkeeping franchise business (recently sold their 13th franchise)
3. A franchise brokerage helping people find and invest in franchises

Franchise insights:

• Max emphasizes the importance of persistence and consistency in business growth
• He discusses the advantages of franchising over starting from scratch (proven models, established systems)
• Current hot franchise sectors include pet services, senior care, and children's services
• Investment requirements vary widely ($35,000 to $1.5+ million)

Business philosophy:

• Believes in persistent follow-up until explicitly told to stop
• Emphasizes the importance of in-person connections
• Views past failures as stepping stones to future success

The episode provides valuable insights for anyone interested in franchising or business ownership. Max can be reached through his website https://franchisewithmax.com, which offers information about his three business verticals: franchise brokerage, bookkeeping franchise opportunities, and bookkeeping services.

Transcript

 Hello, and welcome to Alofa Lava.  I'm grateful to be here. This is  nice to meet you. The behind the scene stories of busy professionals. I am your host,  Fale'ulu Ropati Nikolau but yo, you can call me Rob. I am from an island in the South Pacific, American Samoa, so that whole thing is part of who I am and my identity.

And I like to call the show. Nice to meet you because I truly am curious coming from an Island, less than 60, 000 people on the Island coming to the States and just learning everything and knowing different people. I'm very curious and I'm so excited to have our guests today. But before we get started, I want to let you know that this episode is brought to you by get ghosted.

It's a LinkedIn ghost writing and a profile management service. A lot of people have. Profiles on Instagram and YouTube and Tik TOK, but they neglect LinkedIn while knowing LinkedIn is a great place to build your business. So if you are stagnant on LinkedIn, go to getghosted. com or  thedigitalwritingfirm.

com and get your ghost writing services to help you revive your LinkedIn. Profile with that being said, this dude is a wizard in business. He started a franchise, but then became someone who's teaching others how to leverage franchise. Now, if you know anything about business, it's really about leverage.

You just don't want to do one thing you want to grow. And this guy is a wizard at that Max, I appreciate you being here. We're going to talk and go deep into what you're doing, but to get us started. I want to ask you this question in the last 12 months of your life,  if we were to turn that into a Netflix special, a movie,  what would the movie be about?

And what would be the title of your movie in the last 12 months of your life?  

The  title, I would have to think about it and I have higher off. It's great to be here and thank you for the opportunity, last 12 months I turned.  And I moved from one decade to another. So somehow the movie title will be around that from, forties to fifties under 30 seconds.

Cause it seems like  overnight, but it actually it was a journey and I'm very grateful. It was great 12 months. So definitely would include. A lot of work like for my own bookkeeping franchises that I'm sure we'll talk about. I grew it from five franchises to just today I sold number 13, so almost tripled in 12 months.

That's great. On the personal, started intermediate fasting, started working out 5 times a week feel way better. Honestly, if anything, I feel younger but not older. And also, visited 5 or 6 new countries in the last 12 months.  Had a huge birthday celebration in Georgia like I joke real Georgia the country of Georgia So my friends from six different countries came and we hang out my childhood friends who?

I've been friends for 40 years with some of them and more, and it was one of the best trips I've had, so all that would be, so it will be a really, fun Netflix special. I can tell you a lot of alcohol would be involved in this special because at least in the former Soviet Union where I'm from, original, that's how we celebrate nothing at all.

If you don't drink, obviously. I don't discriminate, but that's the way how we we do it. But it was a lot of fun and I'm really looking forward to the next 12 months. 

Nice. I like it. So I can see the dynamic decade, how to turn your fifties into the new twenties.  

You know what, honestly, I don't know if I want a twenties, cause I probably, I didn't like my thirties or forties more than twenties because twenties.

At least me, I did not appreciate what I'm appreciating now, like the cigars that I smoke now, the friends that I have with, I'm talking about childhood friends, but new people I meet hey, the women I date and the level went up, and I want, I don't want my twenties.

I'm not ashamed of what I did in my twenties, but it was completely different, 

yeah. It's a different person. Yeah, absolutely. Good. Good. Good. So I want to talk about the bookkeeping. Cause you mentioned that you just sold your 13, which is great, but how did that even start? Did you want to do that before?

So let's get into your bookkeeping. Was that the first business you started or did you have anything? It wasn't the 

first. It wasn't the first business at all. So I came from the former Soviet Union 32 years ago, went to school, got my degree and My first real job after college, even though I worked for Costco for five years, it was a great job to work at while I was going to school.

They even paid me a scholarship to go to school because, they were awesome.  But my first job out of college was corporate accounting and finance at one of the largest employers in San Diego called Qualcomm. It was a great job. I also had an offer from Wall Street, from Lehman Brothers, but I decided to stay in San Diego.

Where my family was and is at so anyway, I decided to stay here, but after  four years, I gave him a two week notice and I left. I just understood the corporate world is not for me again. I'm not judging. I'm just, telling you it was not for me. I've been joking all the time that.

I was always, bad in kissing butts because I was always kissing the wrong butt. So by the time I get a light to kiss somebody's butt, the person would change and I'm like, no, the wrong butt. Okay. So it doesn't do anything for me. But honestly, it's just not for me. July 4th, 2002 was my real freedom day.

Cause that was the first day. When I gave my last day was July 3rd. So that was like real freedom. That was the last time anybody ever gave me a paycheck. So almost 23 years ago, that's what happened. And  I was on my own. So I joined a small family business and it was construction and grew it from three to 96 employees.

It was doing great until it wasn't, and I had to declare bankruptcy and both personal and business because I had to personally guarantee a lot of the stuff trucks and all this stuff. So when we closed the business, I had 20 plus trucks, cranes, all this equipment and zero income because they stopped building houses was 08 or 09 housing crisis and recession.

It was not fun to do. To say the least, especially, I had one baby at home and one on the way. Yeah that, that was what it was, but now looking back, one of the best things that happened to me, just, cause what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but you don't see it at the time.

Anytime you're like, oh my gosh, this is it, at least how I saw it. I'm a failure, I had to close it. So maybe I'm not good, maybe I should go to  and work for somebody like I tried it. No, not for me. I'm glad that at a time, and I'm grateful, no jobs were available. It was that bad because they just, nobody was hiring.

And I'm like I guess I don't have a choice. I have to create, another business. And we did. That's, this time it was more successful. We sold it. And while doing this business and remembering the construction business I did it with my wife my co founder of bookkeeping. And she had a master's in accounting.

I had a bachelor in finance and years of corporate experience. And we're like if we had knew our financials before we had time to pay attention to it. We would not probably get hurt that, that bad. And then when the second business was operational, we tried to get a  bookkeeper for it because we didn't have time to do it again.

And we got 20 quotes ranging from 200 to 2, 000 for exactly the same scope of work. And I can tell you from finance standpoint, it's not healthy. You can't have such a big fork. So it's 200 to 300, 400, I get it, but 200 to 2, 000, no way. And we're like probably that's an opportunity for us to take.

And that's how bookskeeping started. So starting as a small local bookkeeping company out of San Diego, working out of the garage. I was doing it part time while running the other business, which eventually we sold. And from that point, we opened an office. Hired the first employee and then, by accident, ran into franchising and that's when, we started doing bookkeeping for our franchise brands, one, then two, and now we're doing it for 100 franchise brands in the United States.

HoldClips, FastSign, Sayonarama, they're the clients nationwide for bookkeeping. And doing that, that gave me an idea that maybe we can franchise our own business. So now bookkeeping is a franchise.  So really, that's how it's all started. So it's not just one simple answer. And I'm sorry, you probably were looking for a simple one.

No, but it wasn't. And then that in turn led for me to open a franchise brokerage. So now if somebody is not a good match for bookkeeping, because let's be honest, accounting business is not for everybody. Then I have over 600 franchises I can choose from and help these people to be a business owner anywhere in the United States and doesn't have to be an accounting business.

So really, I'm a CEO of three companies now, all somehow related to franchising. I do have teams in all three because no way I will be able to do it by myself. So I do have. People in every business, ultimately I'm the CEO of all three of them and they're all, like it's own ecosystem, one is feeding another and they're all interrelated. 

So you were doing bookkeeping for multiple franchises. Yes. So different brands and they would have all their franchisees underneath. So then you would do that. So that's one business. And then you, now you turned and took that bookkeeping business and franchised 

that, right? Yes. So now we're selling our own bookkeeping franchisees.

Yeah. 

And the franchisees of bookkeeping now go in. And actually offer the services to their local markets, including services to franchises. And services to, stand alone businesses because we don't discriminate. Bookkeeping is bookkeeping. Debit is always on the left, credit is always on the right.

It doesn't matter if it's a franchise or not. 

Yeah.  That's interesting. How did, for the, your actual service of bookkeeping, how did they find you? Or did you go and find those businesses to, to offer your services to?  

Are you talking about bookkeeping for franchises? 

And then we started going to conferences. And I remember the first year I spent a lot of money sponsoring it. And we've got zero clients and I'm like I probably should stop. But then something told me, no, keep going. And then second year, a year later, people stop by. We remember you last time, we're glad you're still here.

Let's talk. And then we probably got two or three clients. And now it just literally just more and more people are stopping by and talking to us because I can tell you. In the last I've been sponsoring it and we had a booth at the largest franchise conference and expo in the United States since two thousand 17.

Okay. And then except one year break doing all of it when they had it virtual. And I don't remember if we did it or not. We didn't skip a single year. Okay. And most of my competition, they go for a year or two. See, there are no results. They stop.  

I like it. So consistency in the sponsorship. 

Persistence and consistency helps, if you ask me, in any business. It doesn't matter which business you're in. People want to make sure, subconsciously, that you are there to stay.  Cause it's easy, you show up and then you're like, you disappear. But now I see people stopping by and we'd go back 10 years and now they're successful franchisors  that I'm looking up to, to ask questions as the emerging franchise or with 13 franchises, 

Is that the same way that you're growing the bookkeeping franchise? Or are you approaching those people differently? 

It's the same thing. It's just, in the beginning, brokers that sell our bookkeeping franchise when they don't know you, they're like, okay, whatever, or that it's them and 600 more franchises to choose from.

But then when they see that we are there to stay. They take us seriously. So again, it's persistence. It's just, in my life, I do not take no for an answer.  

Until somebody 

tells me to F off, I'll continue calling you and emailing you. You have to specifically tell me, hey, go away before I do.

And now, of course, a lot of this stuff is automated and I have, executive assistants for helping me with that. But nevertheless, if they want to meet, they ultimately meet with Max, not with Max AI. So it's still talking to them. It's just, I try to automate a lot of processes to get me there.

Yeah. So who's the ideal person that typically purchases a bookkeeping franchise? Would that obviously be a CPA and then their team members or is it a different type of person? 

So it's everything. I have we have some CPAs who bought franchise, bookkeeping franchise and hired general managers.

I have somebody who is literally today when we recorded this episode, I'm taking the last CPA exam and I'm sure she'll pass. She's a very capable and smart woman. And then she's going to have that business while she's still running her tax business. I have somebody who are IT consultants who never done accounting before, but they were finance.

Because we do educate, we do provide.  We do provide staff, we do provide full training, we do provide support, we even provide clients. You obviously have to like numbers to be around. 

If 

you absolutely hate numbers, you don't have to be an accountant. If you hate numbers, probably it's not the best franchise for you, but that's why I became a broker.

So there are other ones. Do you want to talk about the restaurant? Do you want to talk about the insurance business? Do you want to talk about painting company, whatever it is? 600 plus choices.  

So that would be business. Number three is franchise brokering. 

Yes.  

Gotcha. Okay. Okay. What about for someone that is just interested in starting business, no experience, but they have the drive.

Obviously have the discretionary capital to put into something. Why would they start a franchise versus trying to Start like a YouTube channel or something. 

Look, YouTube channel is great if you can monetize it. Let's be honest. It's like a lot of businesses that don't make it. A lot of YouTube channels that are made, but those who making it are golden.

But, you have to like what you're doing. You have to pay me a lot of money to start my own YouTube channel. It's just not for me. This is not something because I'm actually. Looking for life communication. So even if it's by zoom, it's still life for me, life enough.

Let's put it this way. When we actually go back and forth, on YouTube, it's just me talking. I have zero interest in doing it. And I do have webinars, but I'm having way more fun when it's communication and we can ask each other and we. Exchange the energy. So at least again, for me that's way better.

So first so that's why I don't know how, if we can compare the business to having a YouTube channel, but in the right scenario, YouTube channel is also a business because if you look at it as a hobby, it probably going to stay as a hobby. I can have my own YouTube channel, just record something and it's awesome.

It's for me and my friends, but. If I want to monetize it, I have to treat it as such. There are books on that, which I happen to, and articles I happen to read, and I've read that people did not become successful till they hired editors and till they hired, professionals to promote it when they're trying to do everything themselves.

It didn't go anywhere. You have to invest money before you start making money.  

Yeah. Yeah. But 

to answer your question, Rob, by franchising versus let's say, yes, I guess brand new business. Yeah. That's a little bit different. I can talk about that because again, franchising has been part of my life for years now.

And most importantly, you have a proven model. So you have other people who've been there before you who followed the rules, who followed the manual, the brand manual. So pretty much the instructions how to do everything. And it's, I don't want to say it's easier, but you already have a playbook versus when you start the business, you start from scratch.

Can somebody open a pizza restaurant and start doing pizza? Absolutely. But how many Pies are they going to go through and burn until they figure out the right temperature, the right ingredients. And, in, in pizza franchise using as an example, they tell you exactly how many pieces of pepperoni you have to put in, what temperature, how equipment should look so it's more convenient, so you can get 100 pies done in an hour. 

Same goes with people making a mistake like I'm a great cook, and so I'm going to open a restaurant. Hold on. This has nothing to do with how good of a cook you are. You can have the best pizza that I've ever tried in my life, but doing that versus doing hundreds of the same looking pizza, same tasting pizza in an hour, is completely different skill.

Yeah. 

You can be successful. Restaurant owner without knowing how to  end the other way around.  

Do you think franchising is location specific in terms of where it'll succeed? Or is it, doesn't really matter where you live? You can 

make it depends what kind of franchising. You probably Don't want to put the most expensive steakhouse in the area where people, income is not that high.

So you have to do the research, but you put like a fast food shop in this area and you're going to have a line outside because people looking what to eat, market research, real estate research, it's a huge deal. So it is related to the area, but you want to know. I don't know where to put I don't think somebody going to put a ski shop in the middle of downtown Miami, probably, but then doing it in Colorado and you're going to get a lot of clients.

So obviously you have to use your brain. This is not just, so location, I agree, but bookkeeping and couple hundred other businesses that I offer. I don't have to have an office. You can do it from home. But again, everybody, it doesn't matter if you are in San Diego, Colorado, or, New York small businesses need bookkeeping, but this is more how to do it correctly, how to do it more efficiently.

How to market, so it's about marketing. So it's not so much about location. So if they really got a lot of things going into decision, what, which business to start, which business to buy. And that's why I tell people where they use me or use somebody else, take advantage of brokers because our services are free.

If you use main entrance, that's the name of my brokerage. My service is completely free until you end up buying a franchise. If you never buy a franchise, then I don't make a single penny. So this is one of those things then. It's just my, that's what I did, hopefully helping somebody and then paid forward.

But, until somebody buys, we get commission from franchisors. We don't charge anything hours. 

Yeah. Wow. That's cool. So walk me through the economics of the books, keeping franchise profitable year one, profitable year three. What does that look like?  

Here's the thing about franchising.

Franchising is very regulated in the United States. We have to be very careful what we can say and cannot say. There is a franchise Bible for each of the brand called FTD. This FTD  Franchise disclosure documents we  can show as a franchise or whatever we want to show, but we have to stick with that.

I don't, I haven't seen any franchises that tell you when you're going to become profitable. Because look, if you buy a franchise and then lay on your sofa watching, soap opera it's not going to grow by itself. But then you're going to say but Max said we're going to be profitable in the first six months.

I'm here removing my, going through the channels, where's my money? So it doesn't work like that. We show the historical data, how the other people did, but it doesn't mean that you're going to do that. You can do way better than that. Or you can suck, if you don't put any effort It's not gonna grow by itself.

A lot of people call me as a broker and Hey, I want a business where it's a passive, where I'm just gonna be making money and doing nothing. I'm like, dude, if you find a business like that, please tell me. I'll invest. And by 10 of them,  

yeah. Yeah.  

I've never seen a business that grows by itself unless it's a passive investment and you buy stock, so you buy Bitcoin, and then from that point on, it's beyond your control.

Any business, it's on you, the box stops there.  Does that make sense? So I won't be able to tell you if you're going to be making money on year one or year three. But you can look at the historical data. You can call the existing franchisees. That's part of the discovery process. And you can ask them and they'll tell you how they did.



And then you can decide if that's for you or not. But I can tell you that we show the average profit. And I believe as of 2024, which it will change in 2025.  It's about 500, 000 and change sales a year with 260, 000 gross profit. But this is average. So again, everything consists of different businesses.

So you have to take that into consideration. Some unions have been open for longer, some Just open. So that takes time. That's why you do the research. And again, when it's bookkeeping, franchise bookkeeping, I'm partial because I'm a franchise. I'll be very passionate about it when I'm a broker.

I'm impartial and I'll tell you, help you to look at the numbers and say, look, this numbers look better, but they have, 300 units and this numbers look maybe not as good, but they have, 20 units, which means that Franchiseur will pay more attention to you is 300. They have a system to support it, but you will not have access to the C level people because they just simply cannot do it.

But when I sell bookkeeping franchise right now, I tell my franchisees guys, right now I'm giving you my cell phone number. So I am on their speed dial. So I'm talking to all of them at all time, but there'll be a time when we get to the level where I simply won't be able to talk to everybody. It's not because I'm too cool and it's not that.

It just, it's going to be physically impossible. So today with the 13 franchisees, yes, I'm available. I know everybody by name. I know, about their families. We meet just last week and I flew to Bay Area to meet my franchisees. Who just went live a few weeks ago, but I've never met like a great lunch and we spend a lot of time talking about everything, mostly about life and getting to know each other.

And then every time I'm going to be in the area, because I have friends there, I know we're going to be getting together. Okay. But when you get to a certain level. You have to just say, okay, now I'm going to have people that be responsible for certain areas and they'll get to know you, 

right? 

I'm here if you need me, but you really have to schedule it because you know There's only so many hours per day that I can  

yeah How long does it take to launch a books keeping franchise?

From start to okay. We're open to the public accepting clients 

well from Like again, I have no idea how long it takes for everybody For me, it was literally I woke up with an idea. Hey, what about if we franchise our business? That was like literally it Practically a year to today, you know from the moment I because just going through the legal preparation and everything, Probably takes three four five months you can speed it up, but I don't think it can be lower than It's less than six to eight months.

It's impossible because, if you want to do it right, doing all the legal documents, we were going back and forth with my attorney. And I remember I actually had an attorney in Los Angeles and I was in San Diego. So I was taking a train to downtown LA. And then meet with her for three, four, five hours and then we'll take train back and she would give me homework, like the questions I had to answer for our next meeting.

And by the time the train would arrive two and a half hours later, my homework was done. So it was like really cool. I would send it to her and then, I would go like almost on a weekly basis, but it, the routine worked for me. I got everything done. And I insisted, that was pre COVID, I insisted on meeting in person.

Okay, remember, Zoom hardly existed. I didn't want to do it on the phone. Because for me, I have to see the person again. That's about the energy, how I look.  

This is very interesting. How do you know,  are there any green flags?  that's interested in taking a franchise can you tell they're going to be successful?

Is it an intellect thing? Is it a creativity thing? Is it a grit, hard work thing? They just have that DNA or you just okay, let's figure it out as we go kind of thing.  

I think it. God's feeling, a lot of things are beyond  anybody's control. You have to remember that. I remember really well can they believe that we're going to five years university of COVID?

This is like crazy five years, dude. It's hard for me to realize, but I remember. The franchise conference that I was talking about that year, about one month before shut down, literally it was in Orlando, Florida. Okay. So usually it's like now four or 5, 000 people that year was probably 2, 500 people.

A lot of people canceled, still no active cases in the United States, but people were talking about it. The biggest trend in the whole conference was fitness.  Everybody was opening a gym, left that type of gym, this type of gym, like the best investment. They were literally opening, people were giving money for that.

It was, and then COVID happened, and guess what? Now, not that many new gym franchises opening every year. There are still obviously opening and there are still older ones that are successful, but  it's not as hot as it was. So again, I could have a gut feeling saying, yeah, it's going to be good.  But then, stuff happened beyond anybody's control and the industry, I don't want to say it died, but it paused really hard.

Okay. So now there are different industries that are hot. Okay. But what's going to happen in five years?  It's not going to be as hot like right now services, dog hotels,  grooming whatever it is, pet supplies, really hot. But once they have a pet grooming on each corner and eventually that will happen.

Will the new ones going to be successful? How many will you need on each corner? You know each Block, does that make sense? So it's not because the business all of a sudden is not needed It's just going to be oversaturated So, now if you come to me as a broker and say I probably would not look into that and then the technology and the stuff that's happening Oh,  dry cleaning used to be a very hot  thing, but now from what I understand, I could be wrong, but I only know of one that is still a franchising.

Okay. And I don't even know how successful they are because people obviously don't use as much dry cleaning as they used to because a lot of people still working from home. I can tell you that my dry cleaning bill went down because, I don't go to as many live meetings as I used to before.

I know this is, this could be biased aside from your books, keeping franchise, what would be your top three industries or services that? People should look into in 2025 and moving forward for franchising.  

Would not even know for bookkeeping to everybody. Again, I want to make sure that somebody likes numbers or somebody is right before we would even discuss it.

But outside of that I would say the hottest, in my opinion, right now, as I said, pet services.  Okay. Not in that order, bed services for sure senior care. So like going into somebody's home and taking care of the senior, like providing, bathing  them, cooking for them, that type of stuff, that, that's really hard because obviously, we are in this point of the United States where we have a population that is getting older.

So the services are needed. Which again, back to my point, at some point it will not be as, needed because it will be over a century, but today it's very hot. And then, the third one, I'd say Kids services. It's whatever it is, like from daycares to math sections to judo to whatever people are doing so that's also pretty hot.

There are other ones, but again, you have to take a look if you always wanted to have a jiu jitsu school. And you look at a franchise for example that does exist if in your area where you're planning to open there are five other Jiu jitsu schools maybe you need to go to a different area or maybe you need to look at something else because again Market research is huge. 

There is a reason why McDonald's is not opening on every corner. They just have a region and, you have to travel to the next one. They're not gonna let you open one in each corner. Remember a long time ago in Starbucks, majority of Starbucks is not a franchise, only the ones that are not located in a single long store.

Their franchise is like the airports and hotels, but the other ones are all company owned.  I would say majority of them remember there was a time they literally open, I remember one corner in San Diego, I can think of,  there were five of them, including one in bookstore, one in the shopping like a supermarket and then three standing on fire.

And then since then they close some of them day because it was too much. It was just literally everywhere. So you have to be So really careful of how many you're going to open, what the demand is going to be.  

Yeah. How much should someone have in the bank in order to start a franchise and then keep it running afloat for a little bit? 

So it depends on the franchise. There are some franchises that  all you need is about 35, 000, including the first six months of the capital. It could be one business, but if you want to buy. Restaurant. It's not even what you invest. Now. You have to buy the equipment. You have to do the real estate.

You can guarantee for five years. And there are some like upscale restaurants. I don't know your listeners realize, but some of the fancy restaurants that you go to Fleming's and that type of stuff, you have Chang. They are a franchise, but to open the restaurant. Yeah. They have company owned, but a lot of them are franchises.

But to open one like that, to put if you go into PF Chang, all the sculptures and everything inside, that costs a lot of money. That's going to be very well north of 1 million,  okay? Probably. I don't even want to guess, but I would say close to, especially if you're building your own building. But if you're renting, that's it, when you're building, then, maybe over 1.

5 billion, plus 1. 5. million dollars and then the cost of land. So you have to see what it is. Businesses like mine, bookkeeping or any similar ones tax business, payroll business, you don't really need to have an office. You can work from home.  So that saves a lot of money.

So again, Rob, there is no one amount that I tell you. And that's the question that I start with somebody. Hey, what's How much are you ready to invest? And if you're ready to invest X, how much are you willing to get a loan for? Okay, maybe if you get a loan, you get, you can get a bigger business.

Or you can buy, multiple territories. That's also an option. So that's part of the conversations people having with me as a broker. Does that make sense? 

Yeah, so that, that's helpful because now anybody can have any amount and then you can guide them and direct them on options that they have.

Absolutely. And the question is, do you want to work in your business full time or do you want to do part time and hire a general manager? That's also majority of what I do, people are like, what do brokers do? We ask questions, we just, like really, I want to know more about them.

Most of my meetings, I let my candidates talk. I want to hear what they want to do, where they see themselves, what they think about family. Certain situation in their life.  And then after that, I just started offering them options, but I'm not just coming in and giving choice of 600 franchises. Here is the list.

Pick one you like. They have no idea that when I get lost, I want to like, I believe in karma. I want to sleep well. I want to make sure that I did my best. To offer the best, in my opinion business for this people.  

Yeah, I love it. I love it. So if people want to find out about your brokering services as a broker, where would they go? 

So I actually, that was a funny enough, that's, you always grow as. As a person, as a business, I had a hard time figuring out  what website to, to promote because, it's one for bookkeeping business, one for bookkeeping franchise, one for brokerage. So I decided to have my virtual business card and it's called franchisewithmax. 

com. So you just go to franchisewithmax. com.  And it's going to give you a choice. You want to talk about, a franchise brokerage that is free, are you looking for a French bookkeeping franchise or do you need bookkeeping for your business? So it actually has three sections. And eventually people are still going to get to me, but they'll go through my team first.

They're going to ask a lot of questions, do a lot of homework with them, and then eventually it's still me that people want to talk to. But Franchise with Max is definitely where people can find me.  

And then on social media, is it franchised with Max on social media too? Franchised 

with Max on social media We are not as active with that.

We're very active with bookkeeping on social media. We're starting to do more and more with franchised with Max. But, it'll be there soon. But, the website and then post LinkedIn.  And Facebook, we already, they're working on Instagram and Tiktok.  

Nice. So bookkeeping is a little more active.

Bookkeeping is way older. Bookkeeping been around since 2011. So bookkeeping is a mature brand right now. Bookkeeping. Organically, if you put bookkeeping in the United States, we're in a lot of markets organically on page one of Google. So yes, I'm going to tell you, Rob, that takes time. It takes, it didn't happen overnight.

There are 120, 000 bookkeeping businesses. In the United States. So again, it would be on page one. That's awesome. And I know main entrance, the name of my brokerage we'll get there, but give it some time. 

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm only 

50. I have the whole life in front of me. Yeah.  

Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Very good, man. Good. I appreciate you. Again, everybody franchise with max.com. Visit it and you'll be able to ask max questions on the three different verticals, whether it's bookkeeping or bookkeeping for your business or learning how to franchise. I think franchising is a smart way to go because there's a proven model, right? 

Absolutely. And you have choices. You don't have to go with one. You always have choices, which I always like giving people a choice. 

Yeah. Any last words, encouragement for the audience from you, Max?  

Whatever it's worth don't give up. Just keep at your dream because what seems like a tragedy today can be the best thing that happened to you.

Like I, I still come back to the bankruptcy at the time. It seemed like a failure and the end of the world, but that was actually the beginning of the next step. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger. So that was huge. And so just keep at it and, talk to the people around you.

A lot of people are willing to share their experiences and share their wisdom. You're still the one that needs to make your own decisions, but at least listen to what other people  have to say. 

Yeah, and you've been on other podcasts too, right? So if they googled you, they'd be able to hear you or find you on YouTube and hear your interviews, because I'm sure you were dropping knowledge there.

I'm still working on improving my accent. So that's why I do as many podcasts as possible. I'm just, 

yeah, no, it was great.  

I've been on a few and yeah, absolutely. But again, if people are the child of franchise with Max, they'll eventually get to me and if I can help, great. If not, then, I look at it as investment of time. 

Very good. Okay. There you go. God bless you guys. Appreciate you joining us and make sure to go to franchise with max. com.