June 2, 2026 – Remote Leverage Abbas Mohammed and Franchise Guru Giuseppe Grammatico

Intro 1 0:04
Broadcasting from AM and FM stations around the country.

Jim Beach 0:07
We are too busy for the introduction today. We have a fantastic show. First up, we have Abbas Mohammed talking about overseas workers and overseas employees. He has an amazing outsourcing agency. You will want to talk to them, and then we’re going to talk about franchises with Giuseppe Gramatico. Amazing story, what he has done in the franchise space, and I’m excited to introduce him to you. Plus, he plays the quick 10, so we’ve got a fantastic cram-packed show. We need to go ahead and get started right now, because it’s that busy, that fun, that excited. Let’s get started right now. Here we go. Very excited to introduce my first guest today. He is doing a business model that I love, and I can’t wait to see his spin on it. Please welcome Abbas Mohammed to the show. He is the founder of a company called Remote Leverage, which is a global recruiting agency that helps hire English-speaking virtual assistants and remote team members from Latin America and the Philippines. You save so much money doing this, and if you’re not doing it, you’ve got to start. I’ve told you, this is one of the keys to my success, is getting a great virtual assistant at a huge savings. He has built the company from zero, obviously, to 1.5 million in monthly revenue in under two years, and has a team of already 120 people. He is a three-time founder and started his first business at the age of 18 with under $5,000 He also plays in the real estate space, and if we have time, we will talk to him about that as well. Abbas, damn well done. Welcome to the show. Very impressed.

Abbas Mohammed 1:51
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. It’s exciting.

Jim Beach 1:53
All right, so let’s start off at the very beginning. What’d you do when you’re 18? Tell us that story.

Abbas Mohammed 1:59
Yeah, so I dropped out of college, probably wasn’t the smartest idea at the time, but I dropped out of college, and I got my real estate license, and you know, when I started, I had no clue what I was doing, but about a year later I finally figured out how to make money in real estate, and you know, I was working about 16 hours a day, I remember when I was 1819, years old, just cold calling and going on listing appointments and that sort of thing, and then eventually I wanted to grow the business further, but I couldn’t work more hours, I was literally doing seven seven days a week, 16 hours a day, and one of my friends at the time said, “You know what, you should look into hiring a virtual assistant to help with these cold calls that you do, and all the documents, and whatever, and so I did that, and my business just doubled year over year over year, and then by the time I was 21 I became top 50 in the country at the time with Remax. I was making about a million and a half dollars a year in profit, and then I took all of that and I just started investing in real estate, and then a few years later decided, you know what, I got to help other business owners do the same thing, and so we started remote leverage.

Jim Beach 3:01
Excellent, one of the amazing story. All right, let’s go back and figure out some of the pieces, though. So, with the real estate business, not only did you get the virtual assistant, but did you also learn the business and get, get, you know, get good at it, and develop some connections and skills, right? What do you think the doubling your productivity with a virtual assistant? What ratio is that compared to you’re in your third year and you were, you know, building up a network, and you know you were going to kick in a third year anyway.

Abbas Mohammed 3:35
Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I think what’s important whenever you hire someone, whether it’s a virtual assistant or not, is that you have to figure out first what are you going to have them do that will increase your business revenue, because ultimately that’s that’s what it’s all about, you know. We work with hundreds of clients every month, and what’s interesting is sometimes clients hire, in my opinion, for the wrong positions. They would come in and hire for all, as they would if they hired the right person. So, like when I was in real estate, my biggest focus was, what is the reason I’m not doubling my business, you know, month over month, and whatever that reason is, I would just go and hire more people to fill that gap, and then I would move on to the next reason, and then it just kind of kept doing that over and over again, and I took that same approach to remote leverage, you know, when I started remote leverage two years ago, it’s that my first problem was I didn’t have enough leads, so I hired a marketing virtual assistant. She built up our advertising campaigns. Then I was like, you know what, I don’t have enough time to do sales and manage a sales team. So then I hired our head of sales, and I hired a bunch of sales reps to take all the sales calls, and I was like, you know what, now the next problem is we have too many clients, I don’t have enough time to fulfill them myself. So then I hired more people in customer support and fulfillment, and hired head of customer success, and that’s kind of the way I build, you know, whether you use virtual assistants or not, for that, that’s the right way, in my opinion, to hire in order to continue to continually unlock the next, you know, phase that’s stopping you from growing revenue,

Jim Beach 4:57
I love that, the way you said that, and the way you. You told the story through the VAs that you were hiring, and how do you know how do you find all of those niches when you’re shopping for a VA?

Abbas Mohammed 5:12
You know, so, so the first thing is you have to understand what is the role that you’re hiring for, right? That’s very important. And then afterwards, what would a good candidate look like? Right, so like for example, let’s say, let’s say you are running a business and your business has a bottleneck because you don’t have enough leads, right? So the first thing is obviously it’s a marketing, it’s a marketing position, but then within marketing, what type of marketing person would you need that would be able to take you to the next level, and so for some businesses, you know, you might be already running Facebook ads, and so you want to find a Facebook ads expert, right, which we could help you find, right, that’s what we do as a business, maybe it’s you need a Google ads person, maybe you need a social media specialist, an email campaign, what you know, advertiser, and so whatever it is, you want to find someone who’s already done the thing that you want them to do, and so then when you hire them, you don’t have to start from scratch and have to teach them every step of the way. They can just come in and they already have systems in place that they can bring with them into your business, and that will significantly increase the speed of solving problems. Like I remember when I hired, for example, my first key hire was our head of Facebook ads, you know. She, I hired her from a company that was doing a million, million and a half dollars a month in revenue. So, when she came in, we were only doing like 30,000 40,000 50,000 and so she was able to build much better advertising systems on Facebook for us than what I could have done, because I’ve never spent that much money on Facebook, fired her, right? And so you want to take that same approach into every single area of hiring, so that when you hire someone, they come in and they build things out for you, and you don’t have to teach them how to do things from scratch. I remember prior to starting remote leverage, when I used to hire, I would go through these staffing agencies or recruiting agencies to hire offshore talent, and the problem that I had at the time is that every candidate I would hire, they would always come in and they had little to no prior knowledge, and I had to teach them every step of the way, every single task I had to master first, and then teach them how to do it, and the problem with that is it’s not scalable, because you only know so many things, and there’s so many more things that you don’t know that will benefit the business, and so our focus at Remote Leverage is to not only find you high-quality talent that could, you know, learn new things and whatever, but also be able to come in with enough experience that could transform the business that you’re already running.

Jim Beach 7:36
That’s a great distinction, Abbas. Thank you for that. What about your said you stole from someone doing a million in ads, and you brought them in to do 50,000 in ads. I need someone to manage my 500 in ads, that’s good. Yeah, is that possible? I don’t need someone full time, I need two hours a week or something. Talk to me about that.

Abbas Mohammed 8:00
Yeah, yeah, so you know the way we hire is we focus on part time and full time, full time talent, in my opinion. When you’re hired, like internally, when I hire at remote leverage people that work for us directly, I only hire full time because if, if they’re not going to be full time, they’re usually not, in my opinion, if they’re not focused full time, they’re not going to be as good as someone who might just be working two or three hours or whatever, so my recommendation is, if someone needs a specialist for skill and it’s less than 20 hours a week, I highly would recommend you go through a platform like Upwork or Five, or whatever, and we use Upwork, like sometimes we just have projects that we, I don’t need a full-time person to finish a one-off project, so I’ll go on Upwork, and we’ll hire for four positions like that. However, if it’s going to be a continuous thing, then you definitely want to hire, in my opinion, at least a part-time person, but ideally a full-time. Now, let’s say, let’s say, so all where you think right now, for example, it’s advertising, I only need, you know, and we hear this all the time, like, hey, they’re just going to run my ads, I might only need 10 hours or 15 hours. It’s not a big deal in my head. If you hire the right person, they can help you significantly grow your ad spend profitably. And if they were to spend 40 hours a week in your business, you could spend significantly more money on ads, because then the ads would be more profitable, because you have the right person in the seat. And this doesn’t apply just to ads. I know we’re using marketing as an example, but this applies to every position: sales, customer success, executive assistants. If you have the right person, they can help grow the business, where then their job becomes a lot more important to the operation of the business.

Jim Beach 9:37
Are you still doing Facebook ads, really, or is that an example? Isn’t Facebook just dead in? Wouldn’t there be somewhere like LinkedIn that would be more business focused than Facebook? Or was that just an example?

Abbas Mohammed 9:52
I mean, it’s an example, but we definitely spend a lot of money on Facebook. We also spend a lot of money on Google. Right now, our marketing spends about. Half a million dollars a month, it primarily goes to Facebook and Google, and we’re spending a little bit on Bing and other platforms, you know. LinkedIn is great. Problem with LinkedIn is that the cost per click is way too high, and so unfortunately it just doesn’t make sense for us at the moment.

Jim Beach 10:20
What do you say? Way too high, 100.

Abbas Mohammed 10:22
Yeah, I mean, last time, last time I ran ads on LinkedIn, we spent like $1,000 for, for a single visitor and appointment, I should say. And that was, that was way too much.

Jim Beach 10:32
Okay, that is ridiculous. But on the other hand, why do you have success on Facebook again? Isn’t it dead? It’s second, isn’t

Abbas Mohammed 10:42
it? Yeah,

Jim Beach 10:42
business people there, and

Abbas Mohammed 10:44
yeah,

Jim Beach 10:44
if I don’t want my Facebook time, which is almost zero, interrupted with business ads, I’m there to see my cousin’s baby.

Abbas Mohammed 10:52
Yeah, you know, I mean, there are all types of people on these platforms, like I spend time on Facebook, and honestly, I, a lot of the content I interact with are usually business owners and other businesses, not so much friends and family. I would say I use probably Instagram for that more than anything. But having said that, you know, the main thing is what we do on ads, at least, is we primarily focus on the benefit, like a lot of times the people that are coming to us from Facebook or Instagram, for example, are not actively thinking about hiring, but then they see our ads where we talk about how they can scale their businesses by hiring talent from Latin America that speak perfect English Latino accent, they’re skilled in whatever position you want to hire for that can be done remotely, and they’re only six to $10 per hour, and so then people are like, wait, hold on, I have xyz position, are you guys able to fill this type of position? So then they go on our website, they learn a lot more about how it works, and the fact that they can hire directly, right, so they don’t have to pay a middleman every single month, and so then they book calls, and a lot of times a lot of the people we work with weren’t actively thinking about hiring, but then they see how it works, they see the type of talent they can get and the type of positions they can fill, and then all of a sudden you know there’s a lot more interest, and they end up moving forward with hiring and you know growing their businesses through these talents that they hire through us.

Jim Beach 12:14
That’s a good point. I hadn’t thought about that. You’re also educating in the market, and so exactly,

Abbas Mohammed 12:18
exactly,

Jim Beach 12:20
you know, go through the education process, that makes a lot of sense,

Abbas Mohammed 12:23
and to, and to your point, a lot of times, you know, if a lot of business owners in the past have hired virtual assistants, and commonly when you think about virtual assistants, you’re thinking about, you know, people from, say, the Philippines or India, and a lot of times it was for executive assistant or administrative type of roles, however, when you’re hiring from Latin America, we can get you positions, we can get you people for literally any position that can be done remotely, and so a lot of times it’s just help these ads help break those types of beliefs, where previously you might have thought it’s just an admin, but now you can see, hey, you know what, I can hire really high-quality sales reps, I can hire accountants, I can hire paralegal, I can hire medical virtual assistants, I can hire, you know, construction estimators, architects, you can hire literally any position, and so then that unlocks a whole new thought process, and in terms of hiring virtual assistants,

Jim Beach 13:16
that does change everything. Yes.

Abbas Mohammed 13:18
Yeah.

Jim Beach 13:20
Are you still in the real estate?

Abbas Mohammed 13:22
You not really know. I mean, I used to invest a lot more into real estate, but now the market is not doing so well. So, I primarily just focus on growing remote leverage more than, more than anything else. I mean, the business is growing very rapidly, and so investing in real estate to me, it’s just no longer worth the time and the hassle of doing, I mean, as you know, I mean, if you’re investing in real estate, you’re dealing with a bunch of tenants and things breaking down, and mortgages, and that sort of thing, and you know, like I said, remote leverage, we’ve gone now to about one and a half million a month in less than two years, and the targets to continue to grow that, so any, any time outside of that, to me, it’s just not a good use of my time,

Jim Beach 14:01
and you have 120 full-time employees that work for you,

Abbas Mohammed 14:05
correct? For remote leverage, yeah, not our clients. Yeah, the way the way it works with our clients is that we, we don’t, we’re not like a staffing firm, so if somebody comes to us and says, hey, I want to hire for xyz position, right, we go out, we find them four to six applicants that are a good fit, and then we help them negotiate the hourly rate, and all of that, and then we just get paid a one-time fee, and then they work for the client directly. They don’t work for us anymore, and they actually never work for us, so they work for the client directly, and so they never count as remote leverage employees or contractors,

Jim Beach 14:39
and that the pricing in that model is fairly standardized, right? In

Abbas Mohammed 14:45
correct, yeah,

Abbas Mohammed 14:46
it’s

Jim Beach 14:46
heard of the contract of the first year salary, or

Abbas Mohammed 14:51
exactly, yeah, about so, yeah, so it’s a percentage, it’s a percentage of their, of their annual salary, that’s one way to, if you’re just hiring one, that’s one. Way to do it, my favorite way is we created these bundles where essentially instead of paying whatever percentage you pay a bundle where it’s like you’re paying for three vas at a time or five vas at a time because if you’re planning on growing your business over the next year or two years you’re eventually going to need maybe at first a marketer and then you might need a sales rep in about two or three months, and then you’re going to need probably people to help with customer success, and that sort of thing, right? So we created these bundles where you can get really heavily discounted prices because you’re hiring more in volume, and and then you have like two years to fill these positions and whatnot, so that that really helps people lower the cost of hiring even further now. I will tell you, back before remote leverage, I was an unhappy customer of VA staffing agencies. I just hated the whole concept, because they’re charging you a monthly fee, and then the actual VA gets a small slice of that, and so they’re incentivized to find you the cheapest people they can find, because if they find you a good person who requires a higher salary, you know that cuts into their margins, right, because they’re charging you a flat fee with our model, because it’s dependent on the VA hour rate, we really, we just try to get you the best possible people, because that’s in our best interest and in your best interest that we find you the right person, so that you, you could move forward with the higher,

Jim Beach 16:20
oh, are some of the distinctions between the various markets that you work in, Latin America versus the Philippines versus India? What do you think their strengths and weaknesses are?

Abbas Mohammed 16:35
Yeah, good question. So, we, we cover a lot of regions, obviously, out of America is one of them, the Philippines, Europeans. We actually hire quite a few Europeans now as well, and also Egypt and South Africa. I primarily, and when I hire for remote leverage directly, we primarily hire out of flat in America, because number one, the time zone alignment makes our lives a lot easier. I

Jim Beach 16:59
just layer

Abbas Mohammed 17:00
flat in America, so Colombia, Argentina, yeah, Colombia, Argentina, but all these different countries that my number one thing about that is that number one, they have the same time zone as the US, so we don’t have to deal with people working night shifts, night shifts are fine, but the problem is I’ve noticed long term it causes high turnover because people just get tired of working every single night, and not, you know, not being able to do things during daytime as much, or whatever. So, so to me, the time zone difference is huge, and that’s why I prefer, personally, Latin America. Number two is the cost is like, said six to $10 per hour. If I go to the Philippines, I could probably find people at five, $6 per hour, but in my opinion, it’s just, it’s not worth it. I’d rather have someone in Latin America, and then also in Latin America. What I find is that you usually can find a lot more experienced people than you would in other regions, because a lot of big companies hire in Mexico, higher in Argentina, and Brazil, and all these countries. And so you can, you can hire people from much larger companies that are professionals that have done remote work for a long time, and then bring those types of people into the business. So, I personally prefer, honestly, all roles in Latin America. Now, if you want more basic roles that don’t require as much experience, then I would then recommend Egypt and the Philippines. Those are great for more basic positions, and then for sales and accounting positions, I also really like South Africa. South Africa is great in that aspect. However, for just about every other role, we usually tell our clients to prioritize Latin America, because they can. We can get them really good people.

Jim Beach 18:36
Yeah, one of the cool things about owning this business, Abbas, is that no matter where you go in the world, you can write it off as a business expense,

Abbas Mohammed 18:45
100%

Jim Beach 18:46
If you go to Russia, I’m thinking about starting a Russia office, starting a Hawaii. So everywhere you go becomes 100% deduction.

Abbas Mohammed 19:01
You know, I don’t want to tell my wife that, because otherwise we’ve gone a lot more vacations,

Jim Beach 19:08
and you’ve bootstrapped this whole puppy, right?

Abbas Mohammed 19:12
Yeah, 100% yeah. I don’t, I don’t like PC money, I don’t want to raise money, so we just did it ourselves.

Jim Beach 19:18
Well, you know, if you’re doing a million or a million and a half a month or something, y’all are sitting on a gold mine there, that’s going to be brilliant.

Abbas Mohammed 19:30
It’s pretty, it’s pretty profitable, and you know we invest a lot of that money back into the business, which is what helps it grow so rapidly.

Jim Beach 19:38
Well, good to hear. Tell us some bootstrapping tricks. How do you bootstrap so effectively? How’d you do

Abbas Mohammed 19:45
it? Yeah, you know, I would say the most important thing is you have to figure out how much your customers are going to cost you in terms of acquisition, like advertising, and that sort of thing, sales, and also how much they’re going to cost to fill. Bill, and then whatever that cost is, you want to figure out a business model, change your financial model in a way where you could recoup that cost within the first month, and then have profits afterwards, or if you could take on the whole, the whole, you know, revenue in the first month, that would be even better, but whatever it is, you don’t want a model, in my, in my opinion, where you’re having to wait six seven months to recoup the cost of a client, because then it slows down your growth significantly.

Jim Beach 20:30
What percent are you growing a year? Is it going down? It was like 1,000% and now it’s 800% or something.

Abbas Mohammed 20:40
Yeah, I mean, it’s.. I haven’t looked at it that way, but if I look at it from last year up until this year, same like month, month over month, we’ve grown by 475%

Jim Beach 20:53
Okay, got to get the Ink magazine,

Abbas Mohammed 20:56
but we’re, you know, what the market is big, and there’s a lot more room to grow, so in my head we’re, we’re not any more close to our potential,

Jim Beach 21:05
but still you need to go ahead and start putting your getting in Ink magazine, the fastest growing companies in the country. You know that’s always very impressive to add to your resume.

Abbas Mohammed 21:17
So that is true. I have, I have not looked into that.

Jim Beach 21:20
You should do that. You need to hire a V-Day VA that does nothing but find you a

Abbas Mohammed 21:25
yeah, like, like a PR type of person that would help us look good online.

Jim Beach 21:31
Yes, but no, only awards, not, you know, PR, just an award specialist. So that I was, so my son was sort of getting a new bed in his room and kind of upgrading his bedroom as he gets a little older, and he put all of his trophies in a box, and I was so glad to see that, you know, we’re past the trophy, you know, acquisition things where you try to display every single one of those things, you know.

Abbas Mohammed 22:03
Yeah, he’s over it.

Jim Beach 22:05
Yeah, so that was good. And what else? What else have we not talked about? I think we’ve gone through.. oh, I got a couple ideas. How do you manage 120 people remotely well, as you’re 120 all remote as well, you don’t have,

Abbas Mohammed 22:21
yeah.

Jim Beach 22:21
Okay, how do you manage 120 people remotely?

Abbas Mohammed 22:24
Yeah, so good question. I will tell you, it’s it’s tough if you have the wrong people on the team, because you have to then micromanage them and make sure they’re working, and that sort of thing. And so, to me, the number one thing is you have to have the right people, and then, besides that, you know, we, I’m a big fan of using, you know, time, the screen monitoring type of services, and the idea behind that is, you’re not going to, you don’t want to micromanage people. However, if someone is just not productive, you want to look into it and see, hey, are they actually working or not, right? So, to me, that’s what one of the things we recommend all our clients do is install time screen monitoring type of services, hire the right people. Obviously,

Jim Beach 23:05
just put a bolt on the keyboard, right? And make it look like they’re doing something that they’re signing.

Abbas Mohammed 23:10
Well, the nowadays you can actually, these softwares will also be able to tell you that they’re doing that, because it’s called a mouse or a keyboard jiggler, and so they alert you immediately if somebody’s doing that sort of thing. Yeah, no, there’s a, there’s a counter software to it nowadays, but yeah, so I mean, besides that, obviously hiring the right people, giving them enough tasks so that they stay busy and explaining what they need to do, but also I’m really big on setting incentives in a way that, where I don’t have to motivate people because they want to get the incentive, so like everyone that works for remote leverage gets an hour grade or a salary, but then on top of that we set up commissions that are tied to revenue, and so there everyone’s trying to move revenue forward on an individual level because they want to get a percentage of that, and so every role will have different percentages depending on the impact that they drive to that revenue.

Jim Beach 24:05
What about culture? How do you build a culture?

Abbas Mohammed 24:08
Yeah, good question. I mean, we, we have a very high, I have a very high standard of who stays in the company. To be honest with you, I primarily think of, think of employees in like three different buckets, we have people are just not doing as well that need to get fired as quickly as possible and replace. Then you have the core members, right, these are people that are reliable people that will show up over and over again, they’ll hit their KPIs and they’ll help the business, you know, move forward. And then you have your superstars, right, in the business, those are my favorites, those are the people that we want to move up in the company as much as possible, and so my one of my focuses all the time is identifying in which bucket does everybody fit, and if they’re in the lowest bucket, they need to get removed as quickly as possible, so that we can open up a job for someone who’s an A star player or a core member, because I don’t want. The business to be bottlenecked by the low performers.

Jim Beach 25:03
Very well said, Abbas. A plus is all around, my friend. You have done it exactly right. I’m very impressed. And you are a model for others to emulate everyone.

Abbas Mohammed 25:15
I appreciate that.

Jim Beach 25:16
How do we find out more? Follow you online, learn about you on LinkedIn, come to your house for dinner,

Abbas Mohammed 25:23
you know, I’m not as active as I should be on social media, to be honest with you. My, my team is trying to figure out a way to get me active, I’m just super busy. However, the best way to connect

Jim Beach 25:33
is tie it to incentives, Abbas,

Abbas Mohammed 25:37
they need to show me how much revenue I could generate on Facebook and Instagram, and I’ll do it.

Jim Beach 25:45
Well played, well played. All right,

Abbas Mohammed 25:48
yeah. But the best way is to go to the website Remote leverage.com There you can, you know, you can learn all about how this works, how we can help your business, and what type of positions you can hire for, what the hourly rates are, how the whole model works, and it’s Revolt leverage.com and you know we’re on Instagram, on Facebook, on Twitter, we’re all over the place, and LinkedIn.

Jim Beach 26:08
We’d love to have you back in a year.

Abbas Mohammed 26:10
I appreciate that, man. Hopefully, the business will be a lot larger in a year, and I’ll tell you what happened since then.

Jim Beach 26:16
And we will be right back, you. We are back, and again, thank you so very much for being with us. Very excited to introduce another amazing entrepreneur to the show. Please welcome a man who has perhaps one of the coolest names ever, Giuseppe Grammatico. He is a franchise veteran for the last two decades has devoted to getting franchises in front of people who need to make that life transition, a lot of corporate leaders, other entrepreneurs, and people who just realize that there is a different way. I love franchises because it comes with a book, comes with a manual that’s been proven to work. He is the founder of GG, the Franchise Franchise Guide, and is author of a new book called Franchise Freedom, and host the very highly ranked show Franchise Freedom Podcast. Giuseppe, welcome to the show. How you doing today?

Giuseppe Grammatico 27:16
Awesome, Jim. No, I appreciate, I appreciate the intro. Really, really excited for the show today,

Jim Beach 27:21
so with all of the things going on in the macro economy and the war and gas prices going up, does all of that stuff make it better to have a franchise now a good time, or does it hurt the franchise? What kind of impact does the macro have?

Giuseppe Grammatico 27:39
The macro has a major impact. Number one, a lot of people are losing their jobs, they’re being replaced by AI, companies are downsizing, so we’ve seen a massive surge in the franchise space, both in interest. Just let me learn more about it, simply because they have really, you know, at a major advantage, the a lot of the franchise companies out there, as you mentioned, have the playbook, but not only do they have the playbook, they have economies of scale. They’ve really invested a ton of money in AI, so that they’re taking advantage, for example, a drain cleaning franchise. They’ve taken advantage of the AI, they’ve automated the CRM, and they have AI agents booking phone calls and routing the technician, so that it really reduces the cost and increases the efficiency of the other franchisees. So we’ve seen a major surge, and we see major growth in the franchise space over the next five to 10 years.

Jim Beach 28:34
That’s one that you would never have thought of. Drain cleaning, I actually had to hire that for my house about a couple years ago, and they have a lot of specialized equipment, but the guy was only there for about three minutes and blew the drain out, and it worked, and I was like, what happens, you know, if it gets clogged next week? He’s like, I’ll be back, but there’s no guarantees in that industry. So interesting industry, they guarantee absolutely none of their work, which I thought was very interesting. So, are we getting a switch in the type of franchises the people are looking at? Do they, do they realize that not all of them are food?

Giuseppe Grammatico 29:14
Yes. So, big misconception is most people think of food, including myself, two decades ago, and yeah, you’re seeing a lot of people now that they’re realizing that there are 4000 franchise companies in the US alone, and it’s not just food, it says we mentioned drain cleaning, business coaching, dog waste removal, expense reduction for small business, there’s literally a franchise in every space, so now that they’re realizing, hey, you know, I don’t have to invest the big money in a brick and mortar location. I can invest something, be open relatively quickly, and be able to run it from home. Yeah, we’ve seen a massive shift, so a lot of people looking at the trades, I call it almost like the dirty job types of businesses. So, as I mentioned, drain cleaning water. Are in smoke mitigation and removal, removal of mold, replacing of your roof, that kind of stuff, you know, the stuff that’s a necessity, it’s not something you want, you really need to get that, that those services fix. So, so we’ve seen a massive kind of change in interest towards those types of businesses,

Jim Beach 30:19
right? That makes sense. How did you get started in this space? Go back in time and tell us your history a couple decades ago.

Giuseppe Grammatico 30:27
Yeah, so I grew up in the Italian restaurant business with my family at a very early age, bussing tables, you know. We was there forever, from the eighth and fourth grade, so was I about nine or 10 years old up until my early 20s, and realized, you know, that wasn’t the business I wanted to be in, simply because of the hours, the nights, weekends, the holidays, and things like that. So, went to school, first person in my family to go to college, went back, got my MBA from Ryder University, and said, you know, did the Wall Street thing, did well, and realized I kept going back to entrepreneurship. I always had a, you know, we had the restaurant, which I enjoyed. The business I didn’t enjoy it long term, but always had something on the side, specifically auto detailing on the side, and said, you know what, a job isn’t for me. There was, there were just too many managers. I didn’t, I didn’t like the hierarchy, and my future was in the hands of my, of my manager, basically, depending on the day she had, so he or she had, so I said, “Let’s take a step back, let’s maybe look at franchising, because I had this misconception, it was all about food, and realized there was a lot more out there, you know, I wanted something really recession resistant back in 2006 about 20 years ago, so I got into building services, we maintained buildings and cleaning and janitorial and, you know, painting, all that kind of stuff, and just really, you know, really loved the idea that the the franchisor created the playbook, so you know, I literally signed a franchise agreement, and it was generating revenue within 30 days, not a profit, but generating revenue simply because everything was set up, I could just run with the playbook, so I, for me, that was the perfect fit. Business on training wheels, some people like to create from scratch, they both work, depending on what you’re looking for.

Jim Beach 32:15
Excellent. And then, how did you transition into helping others?

Giuseppe Grammatico 32:20
So, I’ve always helped others, so as you know, kind of going into the business as a master franchise, we were always assisting people, you know, to get into business ownership for themselves. I went 100% back in 2018 where I sold my last business to focus specifically on helping people throughout the US and Canada. The itch, or the interest, actually, you know, I guess if I go way back in time was working with my franchise coach, which is what I do today, and after helping me through the process, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and said, How do I become a coach? and he looked at me and said, you know, why don’t you launch your franchise, and then maybe we can talk about it later on, so it was pretty funny having that conversation, because I, it’s funny you kind of stumble across things and going through the process. I enjoyed it so much, and said, you know what, I could do this, I feel like I could do this better, a little bit more thorough, but not only that, I’m helping people, you know, make one of the biggest financial decisions, whether that’s to move forward with the franchise or not, it’s really to educate people, become really their advocate, and helping them select kind of the next next phase in life.

Jim Beach 33:29
So, say I’m running a successful business and think that it should be a franchise, walk me through that thought process and let me know how I qualify or not,

Giuseppe Grammatico 33:42
yeah, you know, the biggest takeaway, or the biggest change, mindset change, I should say, is going to be your business, your business model is going to change completely. So, if you own what we’ll call it, I’m in New Jersey, right, a plumbing business, and you want to franchise that because you felt like you kind of created that system that could be replicated across the country. The biggest thing is proof of concept, you know, having a couple locations to make sure it’s not just the owner running it, you know, have another maybe employee run location to see how that goes, so that you can kind of test the system, but the mindset shift is once you do become a franchise and do expand across the United States. Why the heck would anyone want to buy this franchise? There are plenty of plumbing franchise, drain cleaning franchises out there. So, what is the true differentiator? And although you may be offering the same service to the end user, to your, to your customer, right, the homeowner, the property manager, what is so different, and that can come from, you know, turnkey marketing, where your digital marketing is done for you, and then those leads get funneled to a call center, bookkeeping services, coaching in the field, you know, when you’re, when you’re stuck or having issues actually coming down to your office and traveling with you, so you know you’re essentially. Becoming a coach for other business owners in the same space, so you’re not necessarily going to be focusing just on plumbing, but How do I help every franchisee across the country that has different backgrounds and you know different ways of going about things, helping them become successful across the country, and franchising as far as the vehicle does a great job in helping you expand across the United States, while having other people’s capital invested in that business, so it becomes more of a kind of a coaching, mentoring business with whatever franchise you end up deciding to business you end up deciding to franchise.

Jim Beach 35:37
So, if I wanted to build a franchising network, do I have to do legal stuff in every state. Is every state different?

Giuseppe Grammatico 35:48
Yes, there is. There is a.. there’s definitely an investment spend, depending on the state you’re in. Each state will have different requirements, for example, needing a contractor’s license or not, insurance requirements, and things like that, so you will, I recommend, and there’s companies we partner with, where they’re able to create your franchise disclosure document from scratch, review the policies, procedures, and the growth plan, and then going kind of a plan of attack. Do we want to go national? Do we just want to stay, you know, like an In-N-Out Burger, they’re just on on the west coast, they’re not on the east coast, they’re they’re more regional, we call that, so kind of deciding the growth plan, but yes, having a team in place, whether that’s an outside company, in-house counsel to get you registered, but certain, certain states out there, there’s 13 of them, they’re registration states, they have some additional moving parts, additional language that needs to be included in the agreement, so yeah, there’s definitely a lot of work, but once it’s set up, it’s pretty much the same. It gets updated your documents once a year, so there’s a lot of upfront work to get the system up and running, and then once it’s up and running, it’s just.. it’s just continuing to renew everything.

Jim Beach 36:59
Are there any hot spaces right now, any franchises, or any sectors that are just really hot?

Giuseppe Grammatico 37:08
I don’t know if they’re necessarily hot, but you know, when I started my

Jim Beach 37:11
search eyes yet,

Giuseppe Grammatico 37:14
AI, we’re hearing there’s definitely rumors, there are some possibilities there, so that’s to be determined. There are a lot of franchises utilizing their own AI. That’s definitely been there’s been an uptick in a trend there. So, for example, there’s companies around expense reduction, where they’ll help you reduce your for small to medium sized businesses, helping you reduce your expense. They’re utilizing AI to find some of those expenses, and also using AI to replace some potential vendors, because AI was able to automate certain, you know, certain parts of the business. So, not necessarily AI yet, but a lot of the companies we have it in window coverings, drain cleaning, water and smoke mitigation and restoration business coaching, all utilizing AI to minimize costs on a call center. We have one brand that has two people and physical people in the call center and 25 agents. They can take up to a couple 100 calls per agent all at the same time, where they’re able to answer the phone, answer basic questions, schedule, take payment, the basic stuff, and if they need additional service, it gets elevated to someone in house, so they are definitely utilizing to cut the expense and increase the efficiency.

Jim Beach 38:37
All right, so let’s go to the other side of the table now. I want to buy a franchise, I have no clue. I’m a ex-Coca Cola executive, and I are.. this is so cool. I already have my logo and a shirt. I’m gonna send you a shirt. It’s got my new logo on it. It’s awesome. I got office space and a secretary already. I love these people who think that because they were Coca Cola executive they also have to have a secretary now that they’re startup, so anyway, I’m kind of teasing there, but what do we, how do we start the process of willowing down where this executive should send his money?

Giuseppe Grammatico 39:18
Yeah, so you know, we look at basically it comes down to characteristics, so we talk high level, there’s a franchise and every investment level, every industry, so we like to kind of level the playing field there, it’s not all about food. And then we spent a lot of time, number one, you know, why do you want to own a franchise, what do you, what are you looking to create, is it a quick five year exit you’re looking to flip this, or is this a legacy that you’re looking to potentially, you know, give to your to your family or the kids, you know, having the kids or family members take over, but where we spend a lot of time is instead of picking the brand, we look at what the ideal business looks like, so number one, you know what. What’s the investment range? So we look at all the financials. A lot of people don’t realize you can utilize retirement assets penalty free, tax free to fund this business, as long as they’re qualified. So we look at the full financial picture to look at, okay, you know what type of cash injection, what type of investment that we want to look at, so that way we know, should we, should we entertain a brick and mortar location, or you know, is this going to be something more home based, you know, that you’re going to keep the expenses much lower. We’re going to look at, you know, your transferable skill sets, your soft skills. Are you good at sales? Are you not good with people? Is it management that you’re really good at? That’s also going to make a big difference, because a lot of the franchise companies have a franchise avatar, someone that does really well in the business. So, maybe something around cleaning, where there’s lots of staff, they’re going to look for someone that has management experience, versus expense reduction, where you’re going to need sales and networking, because you’re going to be going out and talking with small businesses in your market, you know, we’re going to look at preferences from, hey, How quickly do you want to be open? If it’s a two to three months, we’re going to have to look at home-based. If you have up to a year, we could definitely look at brick and mortar retail, like a gym or a massage, or even yogurt franchises, and things along those lines around food, we’ll look at staff number of staff, you want to keep it lower, some industries tend to have higher staff, so we’re going to go down this full list of what this ideal business looks like, including the market you would like to service, so that we can go to the market to say, hey, what are two or three brands that check off all these boxes of these wants and characteristics, and that has availability in your market, so that we can, you know, introduce you to the brand, so that you can learn more about the brand specifically from them, and get the agreements, go through the financials, and things like that. So it’s a, it’s, it reduces the anxiety, because there are so many brands, and people don’t know where to start. So we always start, why do you want to start this business, and then look at what’s this ideal business look like, and then kind of funnel in, okay, what are the brands that match specifically what you are looking for,

Jim Beach 42:12
and you given quite a range in the length of the process, anywhere from a couple of weeks to three months, four months, six months, is that about right?

Giuseppe Grammatico 42:23
Yeah, it definitely varies. You know, our process is we talk, we talk weekly. We usually have about three calls. Our third call is to our third call will introduce you to franchise brands, so we’ve had people, you know, make a decision, a final decision, complete their due diligence funding in a couple months, to you know, two to four months is probably the average, but it really depends on your availability when you’re able to have the calls, if they’re weekly or every other week, but two to four weeks is is an average, we’ve seen people make decisions before then and after, so but that’s kind of the average length of time.

Jim Beach 43:03
Okay, what about the cost? What should I expect to spend on this?

Giuseppe Grammatico 43:10
You know, you’re anywhere from, yeah, 100,000 into two to 3 million. The range is based off of the type of business, so if I had to chunk it down into two categories. Category one is something that could be run from home, no office needed, that ranges between 103 100,000 I would say is the average. What’s included, and again, these are just averages, but these are roofing franchises, cleaning franchises, coaching franchises, something that doesn’t really need an office, and it includes a franchise fee of, we’ll call it 30 to 50k It’s going to include all the expenses to travel to the franchise, or training, kick off, you know, your initial marketing, and your first 90 days of operation. So it’s all itemized, it’s all listed in the franchise disclosure documents, called the item seven, and it’s going to list, you know, the variables. It’s going to say one to 300 Well, one is going to be something that doesn’t have a lot of equipment, you know, closer to 300 Maybe you’re dealing with a company that has box trucks, maybe they have equipment for restoration, but they’ll give you kind of those expenses. Three to 600,000 would be my next category, and that’s that’s a brick and mortar, that’s an average range. Once again, this could be a gym, a yogurt shop, you know, something along those lines. Health and wellness massages, where you’re in a brick and mortar location, but you’re more in a shopping mall, you know, kind of, you’re, you’re taking one of the, one of the spots in the shopping mall, again, three to 600 it could be less, it could be more, but that’s just a general agent, and again, the same thing, first 90 days of operation marketing are all included in there, and then once you get into standalone, which takes much longer to get open, you’re looking at seven figures, your trampoline parks, your salon suites, I. Um, your, you know, along those lines, your big, you know, fast food types of businesses, you can easily be in seven figures if it is a standalone building.

Jim Beach 45:11
I’ve forgotten about the trampoline parks. I’m got a kid, yeah, right this second

Giuseppe Grammatico 45:17
mine was there a couple days ago.

Jim Beach 45:19
Those seem like good businesses. I’m afraid of the liability issue, though. But

Giuseppe Grammatico 45:26
you got a lot of staff, you got to, you got a major build out, so they can take several, a year to two to get up and running. You got a lot of staff and overhead, and there’s definitely, like any business, you got insurance, and you know, you have all that stuff like you have with any other business, but there’s definitely going to be some larger break evens in those types of businesses, given the expense to run the day to day, but they all work, you know, comes down to how involved you want to be. What’s the investment? But one, if there’s one major takeaway here, and a misconception, if I could just throw this one in really quick, there is no correlation between your investment and your return, and I’ll repeat that there’s no correlation between the investment and the return. It doesn’t matter if you invest a million bucks or 100 bucks, $100,000 in the business, as long as the business aligns with what you are looking to create, and that the business is sustainable, which means exceeding, you know, getting past that first year. You will do well. You don’t have to invest a million bucks. You’re not going to make more money in that business. For me, it’s, it’s, it’s the match. It’s, it’s how sustainable the businesses, you know? If you burn out after the first year, well, you’re going to undo everything you created that first year. So, sustainability, I think, is the, is the, the secret sauce, the secret part of finding the right franchise.

Jim Beach 46:45
Giuseppe, I heard that you were willing to play our little game, the quick 10.

Giuseppe Grammatico 46:49
Let’s do it. I’m excited.

Jim Beach 46:52
I am required by state law to ask, are you currently sober? Are you currently sober?

Giuseppe Grammatico 46:57
My currently sober. Yes, yes, I am.

Jim Beach 47:00
You don’t have to be. We just need to know. Do you want to pause and change that?

Giuseppe Grammatico 47:04
It’s a little, it’s a little early, but if it was later in the day, I would have had a drink. But yeah, I’m good. I’m on my second cup of coffee, so I’m good.

Jim Beach 47:12
All right, number one, your favorite creativity hack.

Giuseppe Grammatico 47:16
My favorite creativity tack is using what’s already working, you know, I do a lot of repurposing content that has worked in the past. Maybe it’s a podcast I convert into a blog, or a great, a couple conversations I’ve had throughout the week. So, not recreating the wheel, but just using what’s working, you know? Questions top of mind, and that’s that’s my creativity tack to give me endless content.

Jim Beach 47:42
Number two, favorite bootstrapping trick,

Giuseppe Grammatico 47:45
you know, use what’s already working, and I go back and ask people for help. You know, who do you know that could benefit from my services, and instead of having to pay for more ads or for leads or marketing and things like that, so keeps the cost really low, it’s an excuse to contact someone that I haven’t spoken with for a while, and it’s worked really well, and they reciprocate.

Jim Beach 48:10
Number three, name your top passions.

Giuseppe Grammatico 48:14
Top five passions, it’s been, you know, it comes down to family, I guess, is going to be my biggest passion. I just traveled to Japan, and I said this trip would have been meaningless if it was just me. So, you know, travel was big, trying new foods, pizzerias are big in our family, you know, helping people in entrepreneurship, those are all great, but if I don’t have someone to experience it with, I say they’re almost meaningless. So, health and wellness has been my fourth. I like to, unfortunately, study more and follow and read more than actually doing, so I am working on that. And what is that, four and five? I will put travel twice, because I’ve been doing a lot of traveling, but with the family, and I absolutely love

Jim Beach 48:57
it. Number four, the first three steps in starting a business, are

Giuseppe Grammatico 49:03
why do you want to own a business? That’s number one. You know, you’re not satisfied, you know, writing it down. Number two, getting your financials in order. A lot of people like to get in business and have no, no idea where they stand financially. And then number three, figuring out not what that business is, but what your ideal life looks like from waking up in the morning, understanding the first year is the builder year, and takes a lot of time, but what does it look like? Are you going to a location? What’s the venue? Are you working from home? You know, what does that business look like? If you can kind of envision the business, then you can figure out what the actual business is later.

Jim Beach 49:42
Number five, the best way to get your first real customer

Giuseppe Grammatico 49:46
is letting everyone know what you’re doing and asking, hey, who is one person you know that could benefit from our from our business, and just being open, honest, and asking for help, kind of going back to one of the first answers.

Jim Beach 49:58
Number six, your dream. Technology is,

Giuseppe Grammatico 50:03
we’ve been using AI lately. I’ve been, I’ve been experimenting with Claude, and it’s absolutely amazing, and really extracting the content that’s been working. You know what you know the competitors are talking about in the market, so that I can get up to speed in a one-page summary every Monday, which is something I utilize right now, and I’m learning more and more every day.

Jim Beach 50:24
Number seven, best entrepreneurial advice.

Giuseppe Grammatico 50:28
This one I had to think about. You know, I would say, do not chase someone else’s version of success. Everyone has different versions of success. Some people like to sit in front of their Ferraris and big homes, and that success, that to me is not success, you know, for me success, for me, what was important in my why was was my family, and I can say to date, my my son is 18 years old, never missed a soccer game, my daughter’s 16, never missed a girl scout event, daddy daughter dance, or music recital, so that to me is, you know finding out what success is to you, don’t look at what is out there, defining it, writing it down, and sticking to that.

Jim Beach 51:08
Number eight, worst entrepreneurial mistake,

Giuseppe Grammatico 51:12
you know, thinking more leads automatically solve problems. I need more leads, and it’s like, well, you know, it’s really taking a step back and looking at your process, what’s working, what’s not working. Do I have to tweak things? Are people not showing? Is there not enough follow up? So, sometimes you have to go back and not necessarily keep spending money. I utilize profit first, and I’m very fixated on what I’m spending every month and paying myself first. So, getting really specific on what’s working, looking at your numbers, and not just thinking, okay, more leads is going to cure everything, maybe it’s just shifting the marketing, going after a different market or demographic. So, yeah, I think that would be the biggest mistake.

Jim Beach 51:51
Number nine, favorite entrepreneur, and why?

Giuseppe Grammatico 51:55
Favorite entrepreneur, I’m a huge, huge fan of Warren Buffett, back when I worked on Wall Street, my financial days, I think his advice is boring, it’s overly simplified, and it works. I think in this day and age, whether you’re investing financially, running business, I think we tend to over complicate things. His number one principle: if you don’t understand something, you don’t invest in it, you don’t have to invest in everything that exists as Uncle Warren is a good, never met him, but a great mentor. I follow him, and he’s definitely someone to keep someone to watch.

Jim Beach 52:31
And finally, number 10, favorite superhero,

Giuseppe Grammatico 52:35
favorite superhero. I’m gonna go Batman. Batman, although was born rich, right? His family was rich and killed at a very early, you know, was orphaned at very early age. Batman was, I call him almost the underdog, that wasn’t born with any type of magical advantages and superpowers and things like that. He got creative, utilized technology with Alfred, you know, figuring things out, and I think you know you can’t just rely, you’re not just born an entrepreneur, you got to work at it. So I guess my point in all that is it took work, it took technology, it took grit, and I think you know, I think a lot of people say, well, I’m not, wasn’t born an entrepreneur, I wasn’t born a natural born salesperson, I think that’s, I think you, if you’re really interested and you want to learn about it, you should give yourself a fighting chance and not labor yourself as non-entrepreneurial or non-salesy.

Jim Beach 53:31
Great advice. While we calculate the score, find out the winner, how do we get in touch with you? Find out more, get a copy of the book, listen to your podcast.

Giuseppe Grammatico 53:40
Absolutely, so we kept it simple. You go right to the website, my initials, GG the Franchise Guide, G U I D E, so G G The Franchise guide.com

Jim Beach 53:50
Awesome. Well, thank you so very much. We are out of time for today, but you know what, we do that’s right. We come back tomorrow. Be safe, take care, and go make a million dollars by now,