June 26, 2026 – Franchise Matchmaking Alex Smereczniak and Building a Fractional CFO Natalia Zacharin

Intro 1 0:04
Broadcasting from AM and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration Award-winning School for Startups Radio, where we talk all things small business and entrepreneurship. Now here is your host, the guy that believes anyone can be a successful entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk, or passion. Jim Beach.

Jim Beach 0:26
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another exciting edition of School for Startups Radio. We have a fantastic show for you today, with two long interviews, both of them get into a lot of detail. First up, we have Alex Smersniak. He is welcoming back. He has been here before, and then after that, Natalia Zacharin is with us. She is going to talk about CFO and Temp World, and has a gift for us as well that will be shared on social media and stuff like that. So, anyway, great show. Let’s go and get started right now. You know, at the end of most interviews, I always say, and we’d love to have you back, and I actually mean it, because I enjoyed those conversations, and I’m excited to welcome back someone today that I said that to a year ago, and he’s actually coming back for a second visit. Please re-welcome Alec Smiersniak to the show. He is the founder of Franzi, which is a matchmaking service for franchisors and franchisees, he’s had a really impressive career before starting Francis. He started two different laundry franchise systems and grew those into venture-backed businesses. He’s raised $30 million for various projects he’s done and has built scalable systems and develop teams throughout different marketplaces. Alex, welcome back to the show. How you doing,

Alex Smereczniak 1:47
Jim? Thanks for having me. I am doing fantastic. The business is growing like crazy, which is great, but more importantly, that means we are helping hundreds of folks chase their own dreams and their own journey in becoming an entrepreneur, so things, things have been going fantastic.

Jim Beach 2:04
All right, so did I describe Franzi correctly? Matchmaking service between those who want and those who have franchises,

Alex Smereczniak 2:13
that’s exactly right. It’s a marketplace for buying and selling franchise businesses. Think of it like Zillow, but for buying and selling businesses up.

Jim Beach 2:22
Okay, I was thinking more like match.com

Alex Smereczniak 2:25
That works too. It’s a blend of the two. You can basically go online shop for, you know, businesses that fit your risk tolerance, what you’d be good at, you operationally, what you can afford, and what really aligns with kind of your, you know, your why, your goals. And our job is to help you sift through the 1000s of opportunities that are out there to make sure you find the right one that fits you,

Jim Beach 2:47
so does a franchise or McDonald’s have to put themselves into the system, or do you automatically put any franchise in that you can find?

Alex Smereczniak 2:58
Yep, so we’ve got the full universe of brands, so similar to what Zillow did with the MLS for real estate, where they pulled in all the old houses and listings and tax history. We’ve done something similar for franchise businesses. We scraped 28,000 what are called FDDs, franchise disclosure documents, that have the total investment costs, the total revenues on average that the brand will do. How many units have opened, closed, shut down? Who the operating team is? If there’s any litigation, bankruptcy, all those things that you’d care about as you’re thinking about making a huge decision, like buying a business. We’ve aggregated into one place for you to easily navigate and start to sift through and match, make with

Jim Beach 3:43
all right, so it includes even people like Chick-fil-A, who are going to be rather difficult and different from the others, right?

Alex Smereczniak 3:51
Correct. Yeah, well, at least have all of Chick-fil-A’s data now. Can you get in front of them on Franzi? Is another question. Most brands, yes. Some brands like Chick-fil-A, where it’s harder to get into than Harvard, Yale, or Stanford combined, a little bit trickier, but we’ve got at least all the data, so you can compare Chick-fil-A versus maybe a more accessible option, or another chicken concept, if that’s the category you’re bullish on.

Jim Beach 4:15
Right? I think Chick-fil-A is amazing that they’ve been able to create such interest in owning a franchise that you, as you said, it’s harder than getting into Harvard or Stanford.

Alex Smereczniak 4:27
Yeah, I mean, it’s the revenues and the performance, and it speaks for itself. The average Chick-fil-A this year is doing over $8 million in revenue out of one location selling chicken, you know? I mean, it’s, it’s unbelievable what they’ve built, and they’re kind of a franchise in disguise. They, they allow you to get in for about 10 to 15 grand, because they then buy the real estate, they build the building, and so it’s a lot less of an initial investment than your typical franchise, but they make you pay for it. They take 50% of your profit. If it’s not just, you know, 6% of your revenue, like most franchises do, as you know, as a royalty, Chick-fil-A takes a lot more of that, and they really kind of cap you at one, sometimes two locations that bird operators being able to do so. Again, there’s trade-offs. It’s an amazing, high-paying job, but you can’t really build an empire, or you know, be that kind of full-blown entrepreneur, like you might want to be in this case, but again, trade-offs.

Jim Beach 5:29
Yes, you know, you actually have to work at the franchise as the owner, correct? I mean, they don’t let you outsource that job,

Alex Smereczniak 5:35
no, you’re there, yeah, 40 plus hours a week, and so that’s where I always tell people, look, if you’re buying, if you’re looking to buy a very high paying job, you know, try to get into a Chick-fil-A franchise. If you’re looking to be an entrepreneur and have that kind of, you know, both the financial independence and the life flexibility and time of freedom, you might want to look out their concepts instead.

Jim Beach 5:58
Yes, what percent of the franchise world is food versus the other options? I think that this is one of the things that there’s a huge misconception about when I think franchise, and I think most of the people are like me, we think of food first, right?

Alex Smereczniak 6:17
You’re exactly right, and that’s.. I used to be what I would call like a franchise skeptic, you know, before I got into this world, and I used to think this is just McDonald’s and Subway, and you know, it’s not accessible to your average person, and the more I’ve gotten into it, the more I’ve realized franchising is one of the backbones of, you know, of our country, it’s 8% of our country’s GDP, it represents over a million businesses, and to answer your question, 40% of that million are food, so 400,000 locations are quick service restaurants or food related, but the other 600,000 are things like home services and hospitality, it’s hotels, it’s early childhood development, it’s health and wellness and fitness. Some of the largest brands that we all use on a weekly or monthly basis our franchise businesses, we might not even realize it, and so I’ve fallen in love with it now. I used to become a skeptic to now someone who is very much an advocate for it. You know, franchising has created more wealth in America than, you know, any other company in, you know, in history, and so I just think it’s this very overlooked path that a lot of people can start out on and do well in, and chase that American dream, and financial freedom, and work independence.

Jim Beach 7:30
Well, I love it, because it comes with a manual, you know. Normal entrepreneurship doesn’t come with a formula manual, and entrepreneurship or franchising does. So, I love that. Is Crumble Cookie, a franchise. Do you know that brand?

Alex Smereczniak 7:44
Yeah, I know Crumble Cookies. Yeah, they are a franchise brand in the sweets and snacks category, and they came out of the gate performing incredibly well. And they’re starting to decline a little bit. I think there’s just a lot more competition. It’s maybe a bit of a fad, and people are becoming more health conscious as well, but crumble is a is a good franchise system, and a good example of what’s possible, and what types of businesses get franchised.

Jim Beach 8:13
Yeah, I’m going to disagree on that one. I, the reason I brought it was one of the worst cookies I’ve ever had at the most expensive price I’ve ever seen, and I just can’t imagine that they will survive. I just dislike their model tremendously. Well, I think you’re excited for a cookie, and I was so disappointed.

Alex Smereczniak 8:35
I think your experience represents what you know what I was alluding to, too, is they’ve started to fall off a bit, and the quality is declining, and the locations are performing as well. The calories in one cookie are also shocking, and many of the cookies are over 1000 calories in one cookie. Yeah, you get this, you’ll get a kick out of this on their nutrition facts online. You can go look this up. They break a cookie up into their serving size, and they say, “Oh, you know, for one serving it’s 250 calories, but if you look closer, the serving size is a fourth of a cookie. Who’s gonna do that? You’re just one little corner of the cookie, and you have a 250 calories and a quarter of one of their cookies isn’t that crazy,

Jim Beach 9:22
that is. That’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard. Yes. So, oh well, we’re not a fan of that brand here. I heard that Pizza Hut sold today. Did you see that?

Alex Smereczniak 9:35
It did. Yeah, Pizza Hut sold, and the group, you know, buying them is trying to bring back a lot of that nostalgic of the red roofs and the free personal pan pizza, if you come in showing that you’ve read books as a kid, you know, over the summer, so we’ll see how it does. I like trying to bring some of that old nostalgia back, sometimes that does really well, but we’ll, we’ll see the quality of the pizza needs to. Probably improve the

Jim Beach 10:01
yes, definitely. I haven’t had a Pizza Hut pizza in decades, decades, but I remember loving it as a kid. They always had a Pac Man in the corner, which I think was another part of their model. So, all right, when I go on Franzy, does it do the does it ask me a bunch of questions, just like match.com does to find out things about me. What kind of questions does it ask about myself?

Alex Smereczniak 10:31
Yeah, that’s a great question, Jim. So we ask questions into four different buckets. It’s what is Jim’s risk tolerance? So we’ll ask things like, you know, if you’re with a group of friends and one jumped off a 20 foot cliff into a thing to go swimming, would you do it? We’ll try to figure out what kind of risk taker you are. So, there’s risk, we try to figure out how financially qualified you are, just to make sure that we’re showing you concepts that are within your investment range. And the thing that’s shocking again about franchising is there’s some that you can get into for 10 to 15 grand all the way up to 5 million, so there really is a concept out there for everyone. If this is something that you want to go do, business ownership, becoming an entrepreneur, et cetera. So, financial bucket, risk bucket. Then we ask you, what you’re operationally good at. Do you have experience in sales? Is it managing people? Are you ex-military? We try to figure out what would you actually be good at doing, because most of these businesses, whether it’s Chick-fil-A or not, you’re going to have to be operating in the business for at least the first year. There’s not a lot of, you know, just easy buttons or shortcuts, it’s not, it’s not mailbox money. So we try to figure out what you’re good at, so that you’re aligned there. And then lastly, we ask you questions about, you know, what are your goals, and why are you doing this? Some people assume, well, just show me the brand that makes me the most money, and the honest answer is, you might be doing this because you want to leave a legacy for your kids, you might be doing it because you’re bored, and you’re just not fulfilled, and you want a new challenge, and it’s not about the money, and so people surprisingly have pretty different reasons as to what their why is and what their goals are, and we work pretty hard to make sure that we’re understanding that and making very good recommendations based on that, and those other three buckets.

Jim Beach 12:11
Who’s a $5 million buy-in?

Alex Smereczniak 12:14
Yeah, there’s one called Big Blue Swim School, is one example of that, and then Slick City is another one. Big Blue Swim School is a children’s swim school, and they have six pools that they put in, so you can imagine those are not cheap to build out and maintain. And then Slick City is a massive indoor entertainment facility for kids, kids’ birthday parties, massive slides, and internal infrastructure. It’s like Chuck E. Cheese on steroids with lots of big, you know, big toys and kind of slides and infrastructure on the inside. Those are four to 5 million to build, but they do over 6 million a year in revenue with very high margin, because it’s again mostly that fixed cost that you build out, and the variable costs aren’t all that high.

Jim Beach 13:02
Yeah, we have a similar product here, really close to us, and the kids love it. They have a great time there. Alex,

Alex Smereczniak 13:11
one of the..

Jim Beach 13:12
go ahead. Sorry,

Alex Smereczniak 13:13
do you know the name of that one? I’m curious if I.. if it’s a franchise or not. Oh yeah, with the trampolines and whatnot. Yeah, that’s the franchise that does, does really well,

Jim Beach 13:24
and they, the kids seem to love it, and they don’t outgrow it, you know, you know, a lot of franchises like that, Chuck E Cheese, you outgrow, but this is, you know, got 40 year old men in there acting like morons,

Alex Smereczniak 13:37
I got a fun fact for you on Sky Zone, they sell more socks than Amazon does.

Jim Beach 13:44
I believe it. They have a very strict rule about that. Yes, yeah, because

Alex Smereczniak 13:48
they make you buy their, their socks that you need to use there, and they sell more socks than Amazon, which blew me away when I first heard that from the company.

Jim Beach 13:56
Yeah, that is amazing. I hope they have a good wholesale price that they get those for, I’m sure they do. So,

Alex Smereczniak 14:02
I’m sure.

Jim Beach 14:04
So, one of the bad things that we hear about your industry, Alex, the franchise matchmaking service, is that you know what franchises are going to pay you the most, and you know that’s how you get your money. The franchise e doesn’t pay you the franchise or pays you, and so I had a friend who was critical of the franchise consulting space, and as an experiment he guessed the three franchises that the person had recommended, because he knew who pays the most, and he was 100% he got the three that were recommended to a mutual friend, and they were, you know, he recommended the three highest pay payments, and so it was really, really cynical. Have you seen that? Have you heard this? And how do we counter, how do we respond to that criticism,

Alex Smereczniak 14:59
Charles? Percent, that’s why we’re starting Franzy. So, prior to building this platform, I built a large laundromat franchisor. We had over 100 locations that we had sold, 40 plus locations open today and growing, and we worked with business brokers and franchise brokers, and saw how this all worked from the inside out, and saw that they take a 60% commission, and to your point, one that’s very high commission, so there’s a lot of incentive to convince someone to make a decision that they might not actually need to be making, maybe their risk tolerance wouldn’t allow them to be successful in this, and the advice to them is actually stay in your corporate job, which we tell people all the time, you know, so there’s that issue of misaligned incentive there, but the problem with a percent-based success fee, as well as to your point, if the brand says, well, our franchise fee is 80 grand and the different brands is 40, which brand do you think that they’re going to promote more often than the other, because they make twice as much money on the $80,000 brand, and the issue with this is, you know, you’re not disclosing this as one of their clients. There’s very little to no regulation in how this happens, which is mind-boggling to me. I’m not usually a huge proponent of regulation, but this is an area where people are making a huge life decision with an individual who might have decided to be a business broker that morning, you know, and they don’t know that they don’t know how they make money, how much, how it’s set up, and so with Franzi, how we combat is, we say instead of waiting for the regulators to come in, let’s just open up and democratize access to all this data that your brokers historically kind of gatekeep today, so that every individual, whether they work with Franzi or not, at least has the information they need to make a similar decision, it’s all free on our website. And then, if they do decide to work with us, it’s free as well. But we get a flat dollar amount from the brands that we work with across every single brand, regardless of their franchise fee. We tell that to our clients up front. We say, “Hey, Jim, the way this works is the brand will pay us 20 grand if you buy one unit, another 15k if they buy a second, the 10k if they buy a third, and it’s a flat dollar across the whole thing, versus again the historical way has been non-disclosed, because there’s no legal requirement to disclose, and then if they do tell you again, it’s a large 60% fee that varies depending on the brand’s underlying franchise fees, so it’s just we’re trying to come in and let capitalism balance this out and just disrupt and displace these brokers.

Jim Beach 17:28
I love it. Good old capitalism. Let’s topics a little bit, Alex. If you don’t mind, tell me about building an extensive app like this. Whatever you’re willing to share with us, how much you cost, how much it paid, how long it took. How did you find an app builder that was qualified? Walk me through the process of building a fairly extensive app like this.

Alex Smereczniak 17:52
Yeah, it’s a good question. So, I never like doing things like this alone. So, I first find a co-founder, someone that has complimentary skill sets to me, so I’m good at sales and finance, and so I need someone technical, so my co-founder is good software product background, and so we decided to build this, like many things, we just want to see if it works. So, what’s the cheapest way to do this? It’s called an MVP, a minimum viable product. We said, what’s the cheapest we can build something that could get customers to use it and start to get feedback and see if this is even something that people want, and so we put in 30k up front. We thought we’re willing to lose 30k if this doesn’t work, that can get us a pretty good app. And then we work with different kind of offshore teams. At first, we use some AI coding at first, which is a new way that anyone, honestly listening, could start to build prototypes and get feedback very cheaply, so even the 30k we spent up front probably could do for 4k 5k in your time today, so much cheaper, much faster to get MVPs out the door, but as soon as you start to get traction, that’s where it can get expensive, because you now have something you need to really build it with higher quality and for scale with the right infrastructure, so that’s where we start to recruit full-time engineers, and across all of our tech systems, and the products that we’ve built, you know, we’ve probably spent, you know, one to two, one and a half to $2 million in total on everything that we have now, which is a lot more extensive than when we first started,

Jim Beach 19:22
very impressive. So, how much of the you say you brought in a partner? I lost the distinction there. Did you do it entirely internally, or you said you spent 10,000 You hired someone. I got,

Alex Smereczniak 19:37
yeah. So, yep. So, my partner can do some of it, but then we spent 30,000 to use other kind of offshore engineers at first, so folks in India, South America, Eastern Europe are good hotbeds to find pretty good engineering talent for relatively affordable, and then as it starts to get more and more legs and more traction, that’s when we start to. To invest more and bring more talented software engineers internally on that are typically based in the United States. At that point,

Jim Beach 20:08
well, you hear all of these horror stories of hiring someone in India and they just blow it up, you know, it doesn’t work at all, or the fee keeps going up. How do you prevent something like that from happening?

Alex Smereczniak 20:19
Yeah, that’s where I think it’s critical that internally you have someone that you can trust, so for me I can try to manage my way to it and put a very clear scope of work together and really outline things, but I’m not technical enough to know they’re actually building this this way, are they kind of duct taping and bubble gumming it together, and that’s where having someone, whether it’s a co-founder, a mentor, even just a friend that you know is tech savvy, just look under the hood a little bit, and maybe give you a couple hours a week to help manage that offshore talent to make sure they’re following the instructions and they’re building it the right way, and you know they don’t need to full blown manage it full time, but even just a couple hours to sanity check and quality check. What’s being happening? What’s being done is a must. I don’t think you can try to just do this on your own with zero technical background and not get taken advantage of. It’s just it’s too high of a risk.

Jim Beach 21:12
Yes, very true, very true. And so, what is your ultimate goal for this? What do you hope ends up happening with Franzi?

Alex Smereczniak 21:21
Yes, our goal is to help the next 1 million entrepreneurs. I think franchising is the most overlooked path to wealth creation in America. More millionaires made through franchising than there are people who have ever played in the NFL, and our goal is to shed a light on that. I think too long franchising has gotten a negative reputation, mostly because of I think the preconceived notions of, oh, this is just McDonald’s or Subway, or there’s these brokers or other bad actors that take advantage of you, and our answer is there’s actually again more wealth created here than just about any other category, or you know, of asset class created, and we want to make sure that people are doing it the most de-risked way, in the most thoughtful way possible, and to kind of solve some of those historical misconceived skepticisms and notions.

Jim Beach 22:12
How important is that my previous skill set matched the franchise? Would it be stupid for me to start a nursery franchise where I take help take care of the babies for the first three months, if I don’t have a lot of kids myself. Does it matter, or does the manual overcome those sort of barriers?

Alex Smereczniak 22:33
So, the manual gets you, let’s say, like the whole journey is a 10 step journey. I think the manual puts you on square three instead of you starting from square one, so it gets you further along in the journey faster, but it’s not a complete replacement for the work that you still need to do on a day-to-day basis, and so we do put a pretty strong emphasis on are the skills you’ve developed previously transferable and relatable enough to whatever business you’re getting into for you to be successful, so with your example of watching kids you might not have. Let’s say you don’t have a ton of experience with kids, but if you have experience managing people’s emotions, maybe you were a counselor in your past life, or you managed a lot of a chaotic environment. Let’s say maybe you were in the military, like you’d probably be pretty good at managing a kid’s daycare facility, because those skills transfer now. If your background was, you worked on a, as an individual contributor, not around a lot of people behind a computer all day, and you did sales, maybe, or you know, or some sort of accounting function that might not translate as well, and you can still do it, but you need to find a business partner that maybe has the softer skills, the people skills, the handling chaos, and the real-time skills, because if you don’t have it and it’s just you on your own, you’re fighting an uphill battle out of the gate. So it’s really important, I think, to find something that you have relatable or transferable skills to, and if you don’t, find a business partner to join you, that does

Jim Beach 24:01
great advice. Wow, we blew through 23 minutes in a heartbeat that went fast. How do we find out more? Get in touch with you, go frenzy ourselves.

Alex Smereczniak 24:11
Yep, go to www dot frenzy f r a n z y.com and then we have all sorts of podcasts and free educational content and materials on the best franchises and how to finance them and how to find them and that can be found at Alex from Franzi on Instagram, TikTok, etc. Or our podcast is called The Exit Plan, where we hire, you know, highlight stories of people that have escaped corporate America and have now started their own businesses, and how they did it, and what they’re doing, and exactly how they went about doing it. So lots of good educational stories and content there as well.

Jim Beach 24:49
Fantastic. Does Franzi have an icon, a character, a Ronald McDonald?

Alex Smereczniak 24:57
Not yet. We’ve got. It’s a large name of a

Jim Beach 25:02
character, it needs an icon.

Alex Smereczniak 25:06
What would your.. I got a question for you. What would your top two or three icons be off the top of your head for Franzi?

Jim Beach 25:14
Oh gosh, that’s a hard question. Lightning bolt jumped into my mind for some reason, though I don’t like it. Good idea, then. Then the next thing that’s jumping into my mind is the horrible mascot that the 96 Olympics had here in Atlanta, called Ozzie, I think, or something like that. Remember what it was named, but it was just horrible. It changed for each sport. Actually caught me unprepared. I’m going to have to think about that, and I’ll tell you when you come back next time. You have any ideas? You already thought of

Alex Smereczniak 25:47
one something, some amalgamation of some of the quick service restaurant mascots. They’re always people or some sort of human character. So, we’ve joked internally about something like that. We don’t have a great answer either, but I’m looking up this Izzy mascot, and Izzy,

Jim Beach 26:06
Izzy, was you’re, yeah,

Alex Smereczniak 26:08
you’re on, you’re onto the right track, I think. Something fun, our colors are purple and this kind of teal-ish color, and I think we can have some fun with it.

Jim Beach 26:18
I like that idea. All right, so you’re gonna put me in charge of that. Am I gonna be vice president of icon creation?

Alex Smereczniak 26:24
Yes. Anointed right now in this very moment.

Jim Beach 26:28
Awesome. I will send you my tax form, so I can start getting withholding and all that. Great information. I love what you’re doing. The A plus for creating this idea, and congratulations on its success. We’d love to have you back, and I mean, thank

Alex Smereczniak 26:42
you. I’d love to come back. I’d love to come back, and thank you for the platform that you’ve created and told you know wonderful stories, and for us, you know, for giving us the opportunity to share ours.

Jim Beach 26:51
Thank you so much. And we will be right back. Very much for being with us today. Very excited to introduce another great entrepreneur. This is a really heartwarming story. Please welcome Natalia Zacharin to the show. She ended up divorced with no prospects at the age of 42 and some little kid rug rats to take care of, and didn’t know what to do. Now she is running an incredibly successful consulting business. She is the CEO of Zachary and Consulting. It’s in the Inc. 5000 it’s actually number 800 or so. She specializes in helping businesses grow with improved profitability, better cash flow, and making better financial decisions. Usually works with companies from one to 30 million in annual revenue. Very impressive. Natalia, welcome to the show. How you doing?

Natalia Zacharin 27:56
Great, thank you so much for having me. Super excited to chat with you today.

Jim Beach 27:59
All right, do you want to talk about being 42 in your life sucking at that point?

Natalia Zacharin 28:05
Yeah, so that wasn’t the only time it sucked. So I wanted everybody to be very aware that just because it sucks once doesn’t mean that you’re lucky and get out necessarily. So it might suck more than once, and that’s okay, because you always have options and you can make improvements. So at 42 I think I was 2012 I was recently divorced. I actually gave up my career to be a stay at home mom. So stay at home mom for six years. I was a sales manager before that for Reynolds Wrap Aluminum Foil Company, and when I tried to go back into the workforce, no one was hiring me. All of my previous contacts, I connected with all of them, and they were like, “Nope, not looking for anybody. And I started looking for other jobs and other jobs, and kept decreasing my expectations from trying to make a salary to please just hire me, any salary or anything, and I landed at a job going into a store where I used to shop, that’s how they knew me, and they hired me at $7.10 an hour, which was less than I made in high school.

Jim Beach 29:12
Wow, so sad.

Natalia Zacharin 29:15
Yes, but I thought, you know, if I just get a job, it’ll be a stepping stone to the next job, so that was my thought process back then. I still stand by that, and I thought, um, okay, so I’m starting below where I was when I was a kid, but that’s okay, I’ll work myself back up.

Jim Beach 29:35
Great attitude. How long did you stay at that job?

Natalia Zacharin 29:38
Not very long, I think I was there for about six months. It was very hard. I’m not going to sugarcoat it. It was extremely difficult. My first paycheck was less than my electric bill, so I still had all these other bills I had to pay that I couldn’t, and it was demoralizing in a lot of ways, and very humbling. And I pulled through, and the next job I got was for $12 an hour, as I think it was a 10, yeah, it was a temp position, so I kept looking for other work, and then after that, I think I was only there for three months, and then I finally landed a job with salary that was life changing for me.

Jim Beach 30:21
Okay, congratulations, was that in your current field or something different?

Natalia Zacharin 30:26
So, not. It was my first introduction into the financial world. So, they hired me as an invoicing clerk, and I had never really worked in the financial world before. I had always been.. I’d had, like, lots of other jobs, you know, inventory clerk, and I was a sales rep, so never an invoicing clerk, so I had to learn new software and how to invoice, and it was a quite a large company, as a, you know, corporation, and that was really my first introduction into the financial department.

Jim Beach 31:01
Okay. and then how long until you started your own?

Natalia Zacharin 31:06
So I was there for also about six years, and right before two, around 2018 they had given me a huge raise, so I was making about 75 80,000 you know, with bonus sometimes there, so not changing my life, and it’s definitely, you know, not lighting up the world at that point, but definitely sustainable for a family, and mind you, I was not receiving child support, my ex stopped sending it to me years and years and years before, and people will probably be mad about that, but when you’re dealing with someone that’s not a kind person, you just want to move on and get out and not ask any questions anymore, because it was too painful. So I started realizing in 2018 that they were getting rid of my position, and by too early 2019 they actually demoted me, my original CFO, that I had worked with, my boss had left the company, and they restructured and changed a lot of the management, and my job was on the line, and I had already kind of gotten a heads up that something was happening, and in 2018 I had just met my now fiance, we just started dating, and in September I remember sitting with him and saying, I’m looking for other work, no one is even interviewing me, and I need to find something, because I’m going to end up in poverty again, and he’s the one that said, well, why don’t you start your own business, and that was the first thought ever that I had of starting my own business, and that’s where it started.

Jim Beach 32:40
Well, congratulations on being engaged, but what a great guy.

Natalia Zacharin 32:44
Yes,

Jim Beach 32:46
sounds like a great guy. You like him, he’s good looking, but plus he’s willing to take on a woman with kids and being supportive for a new business, and willing to risk that with you. I think he sounds like a great guy.

Natalia Zacharin 32:58
Yes, yes, he really wanted, like, at that point we’re just, we just started dating. He doesn’t want to have to take care of me, and he wanted to teach me, or show me an opportunity, not teach me, but show me an opportunity to be able to take care of myself, should things not work out between us, which I thought was extremely generous and kind, and just a wonderful thing to do for another human being.

Jim Beach 33:21
I agree. I think he’s worth marrying.

Natalia Zacharin 33:24
Yes, I think so too. So, I was

Jim Beach 33:26
talking with your publicist. I am.. am I walking you down the aisle, or am I.. what is my role in the wedding? I just want to.. am I a flower girl?

Natalia Zacharin 33:36
I think flower girl. I like that.

Jim Beach 33:37
Okay, you’re gonna send me a dress pattern or something for me to,

Natalia Zacharin 33:41
yes.

Jim Beach 33:41
Okay,

Natalia Zacharin 33:42
I love flowers, so it’s a very important session,

Jim Beach 33:45
girl. Okay, I’m also a licensed officiant, I can marry you as well.

Natalia Zacharin 33:52
That would be super cool. I mean, but I’m actually planning on my niece, she is also.. she officiated a few other weddings, and I thought, how cool would that be for my niece to marry me?

Jim Beach 34:02
That would be cool. Yes, I had a cousin marry me once.

Natalia Zacharin 34:07
Yes, did it work out?

Jim Beach 34:09
No.

Natalia Zacharin 34:10
Sorry,

Jim Beach 34:13
I am divorced as well, so I’ve been through that horrible experience myself. So,

Natalia Zacharin 34:19
yes, live and learn. Yes,

Jim Beach 34:21
all right. So great home support. What did you do first?

Natalia Zacharin 34:28
So he said, I said, you know, doing what? And he said, well, you know, bookkeeping, accounting, that’s a really great way to start a business. And I thought to myself, okay, bookkeeping, I can figure out bookkeeping, right? It can’t be, how hard could bookkeeping be? Little did I know, bookkeeping is not that easy, and it’s not data entry, but I figured I would just start out and get a couple extra clients as a side gig just to make extra money, and at that point I never really thought I was going to quit my job until later on in 2019 so he sent me this. This eight week program on how to start your own business. There’s tons of programs out there on how to start your own business, and they’re all like, Who’s your ideal client, and where are they, and how to reach out to them, and what should you price your services? There are a lot of programs out there. I took it pretty seriously. I worked on the program at nights and on weekends, in between when my, when my kid was sleeping, or playing or out with friends, she was really little still at the time, and I just started going through the program, and when it said reach out to people on LinkedIn with this message of, you know, do you need help with bookkeeping, someone responded, and on January, I remember this very well, it was either, I think it was January 29 2019 I closed my first client, and I had no idea how to do bookkeeping, no clue, never done it before in my life.

Jim Beach 35:46
So, you sold a service you didn’t yet have any clue how to deliver?

Natalia Zacharin 35:49
No, that’s true. Yes, and so you have to have a very high level of integrity to do that, not just take money. Yes, so I sold something I didn’t know how to do, and I had to figure it out, and I did so without charging, obviously. I charged them just a flat rate, lost a ton of money, lost a ton of time. And if, in case anybody’s wondering of what it’s like to start a business, and this is very true for most businesses, even if you have more experience, you’re going to work more than you ever have before and make less than you ever have before, probably for at least the first year, if you’re doing it right, an

Jim Beach 36:24
optimistic line to tweet out.

Natalia Zacharin 36:26
Yes, but

Jim Beach 36:27
it’s true, you’re very rarely meet expectations, so I think you’re correct.

Natalia Zacharin 36:35
Yes, and and then, of course, as soon as the tide started turning, I started closing a few clients. I left my job in August. By November, I was actually recouping what I, what I was making. By early 2020 I started making more than my job, and then COVID hit. I was like, oh no, not again. So I pivoted. I started offering other services and helping other entrepreneurs of applying for the PPP and the EIDL, and really understanding and correcting their bookkeeping, so that they could apply for these loans, and so event what originally started as an “Oh no, I’m going to be poor again, went into an entirely new opportunity where my business just started blasting through the roof.

Jim Beach 37:27
Wow, what a great story. You should be so proud of yourself.

Natalia Zacharin 37:30
It’s, you know, what I’m an entrepreneur, I guess. Now, officially, I’m always on to the next goal, and I really have a hard time sometimes looking back and being proud of myself, because I’m always, yes,

Jim Beach 37:49
you deserve it, Natalia. Thank you. Great story. So, how did you go about growing the marketing and getting all of these other names, and was it all word of mouth or did you put out ads stuff on LinkedIn. What’d you do?

Natalia Zacharin 38:03
So I did everything that I could for free until I got close to a million dollars in gross revenue, which took a couple years. So I didn’t want to spend money on ads. I was scared that I wouldn’t get a return on it. I didn’t know how to do ads, and so what I did was just reach out to people, and I would really iterate and think about which groups make sense. How you know networking is not for fun, it’s actual networking, and it’s work, and you need to get and grab names, and you know, get coffee dates, and reaching out on LinkedIn, and reaching out to entrepreneurs, and anytime I would hire someone to fix something in my house, I’d ask them, “Do you need an accountant? So the sales process never, never stops. And for me it was, “Leave no stone unturned, and ask every human being you know if they need a bookkeeper, and that’s how it started. And eventually they started, clients started referring other people to us, you know, to me, and it just started building and building and growing. And then the best part was, I think, this started actually around 2021 I went back to my still boyfriend at that time, now fiance, and said he is bookkeeper, he had an accounting firm, and his bookkeeper had left, and I said, “Well, don’t you think it’s kind of time for us to maybe become referral partners, because I’m not doing tax and you’re not doing bookkeeping? And at that point, he trusted me and my company, and I had several people working for me, and so he became one of my referral partners, and then I started searching for more referral partners, because not everybody does what I do, so that really built it up pretty quickly. So, in the beginning, I’d say it was word of mouth, networking, and referrals.

Jim Beach 39:50
Okay, and have you ever run any ads or done anything like that? Or

Natalia Zacharin 39:55
is yes. So now, now I do. I started at about, and per. Late, you can probably start a little earlier. At about a million dollars in sales, I started rolling out ads and marketing and building a sales team because I wanted to have predictable revenue. You can’t predict anything if it’s just referrals, referral-based, and also I want to build a business, just like I tell everybody else to build their businesses, is I want to build a business that is sellable, which means that the founder can’t be in anything, and can’t the business can’t be dependent on the founder. So every every opportunity I have to build something out to get myself out of it is really important, and sales and marketing and advertising and lead generation, all of that process was really important to build out without having me be the one that had to do everything. So, did it work out well? No, it did not at first. The great thing is, if you, you probably need more profit than you think in the beginning, because that profit, as you build and grow, and you’re testing things out, that profit will go down, but if you have a pretty good profit number, even if it goes down, you’re still profitable, which is really, really important, and that’s what happened to me. So, in 2024 at the end of 2024 I hired my first salesperson, I hired my ads agency, and I turned everything on, and for six months nothing happened, like literally almost no leads, nothing was going on. I probably shouldn’t have waited that long. I probably should have said, you know, I gave you 60 days and gone, because if it’s not working, it’s not working. I didn’t know any better, so live and learn as always, but I went through three agencies, and I’ve been through five or six sales people at this point, and now it’s working. Finally, yes, now it’s working. So, but it’s always data. It’s really important to look at all the data. Are you getting booked leads? What does that cost per booked call. What is there? What is the show rate? What is the close rate? What is the cash collected? So I’m looking at everything to make sure it’s still working, because as you probably know, when you’re doing ads of any kind, it’s not a smooth sale. It doesn’t mean it’s always going to work just because it worked last month, so you have to really keep an eye on it, very,

Jim Beach 42:22
very well said. I love it. Okay, have you learned any type of ads that work better for you than others? Do you only advertise on LinkedIn, or where do you run ads?

Natalia Zacharin 42:33
Yes, I run ads on Meta, Facebook, and Instagram. You won’t believe how many business owners doom scroll. Yeah, and how many very successful or very large businesses are on those platforms? I also have reels. I have a company that writes me scripts. I go record at a studio, and then they edit everything and put up reels for me, so now at this point, in, you know, we have 16 employees, we’re growing, we’re trying to get to to become an eight figure firm, and at this point we have almost all cylinders burning, so we’ve got reels on all the social media platforms, every single one, we’ve got long form content on LinkedIn, which is a write-up. I have a ghost writer that I meet with once a month, and he creates content for me. I have email campaigns going out, I’ve got ads running on Meta, and I have blogs being written on my website. What else do I have? I think that’s all of them, so I’m trying to now create this entire ecosystem, so when someone sees.. oh, and I’m on podcasts. Hello, I’m on podcasts. Also, have an agency, so I’m trying to create this entire ecosystem that if someone sees an ad, then they can go and look us up, and they see that there’s a tremendous amount of content because now that person will get to know me personally and get to know the firm, the company as well, what we do, who we work with, where we are, how we think, what our culture is like, and that makes people really familiar, and so I don’t know what is that exactly? Is working, but it’s working because we’ve, we’ve on boarded 110 I think, new clients at this point since just since October.

Jim Beach 44:30
Wow, that’s a lot. Congratulations again.

Natalia Zacharin 44:32
Thank you. How many

Jim Beach 44:34
employees are you up to total now?

Natalia Zacharin 44:36
I have my 16th starting this Thursday.

Jim Beach 44:41
Wow!

Natalia Zacharin 44:41
Yes,

Jim Beach 44:42
and are all they remote working home? Yes. Okay, all remote.

Natalia Zacharin 44:50
I do. I do have an office. So, the game plan is no one knows me locally. We’re a national firm. We’ve got. Hundreds of clients, and no one knows I exist in the town of Baltimore, the city of Baltimore. So I opened an office early, very end of last year, early this year, to start building out a local team that will probably be hybrid, will always be remote. That’s the way to go, that’s the way to find really great talent, that’s the way to not be enclosed in like one geographic location, if you don’t have to, to find talent, so I can, instead of just in a local area, I can find the best talent anywhere, anywhere, really. And, but I do want to find local talent and start building out a local presence. So now we’re going to be both,

Jim Beach 45:40
okay? Why build out a local presence? What’s the reasoning behind that? I’m not on the radio with Atlanta, my hometown. I’m on 100 stations, but not in my hometown, and I really kind of like it that way. Yes, why? There’s a lot more, especially in Baltimore.

Natalia Zacharin 45:57
Yes, there are a lot of businesses in Baltimore, a lot of great businesses, it’s a thriving area, and not just Baltimore, all in Maryland in general, locally, and I think that clients still like having a base somewhere that they know that there’s a real office, because anybody now with a computer says they’re an accountant, so it’s easier to show them we’re an established accounting firm, because we also have an office, and, and also you can just tell with all the content that we’re very established, and we have a large, a large staff, but I think it’s still helpful, and I actually want to create in person events.

Jim Beach 46:44
Okay, what would they cover? What

Natalia Zacharin 46:47
I think, yeah, I think a great, like great topics, because we focus on CFO services. That’s really where what we do, that’s, you know, we do bookkeeping, payroll, we’re getting into taxes, but, but really, fractional CFO services is what we really do and love, and where the biggest value is, and so there are so many topics that you can cover, and invite a bunch of local businesses, and, and just have, like, I don’t know, have some wine and cheese, and create, and discuss an interesting topic that would maybe change their the way they’re thinking, so that they can improve their business.

Jim Beach 47:29
Okay, I love that. That makes sense. And how long would they be? Where would they be? You gonna do it at a hotel ballroom or where? No,

Natalia Zacharin 47:36
in my office. I have a beautiful office, Water View, so that’s very nice, and it’s right in a really easy area to get to. The office is beautiful, and I think just we would probably be able to, you know, not a large, like I’m not going to, you know, invite 100 people, probably a small sampling of people, and just start there and see, even in just in the office building, there are a couple of folks that would probably show up, and I think it would be fun. People are looking for in-person events, I think more and more now, because we want that extra special human touch.

Jim Beach 48:14
Yes, we definitely miss that.

Natalia Zacharin 48:18
Yes,

Jim Beach 48:19
what service sells the best? What is your number one profit item?

Natalia Zacharin 48:23
My number one, believe it or not, is still bookkeeping, because everybody needs it, no matter what size they are, and, and even with the CFO services, we can’t help someone understand their profitability, or improve their cash, or help them scale, or or or improve their clarity without bookkeeping. Bookkeeping is still the mainstay. I would say 98% of who we work with end up using us for bookkeeping anyway, because we know it’s accurate and it’ll be timely and it’ll be done, and we can really count on it, and so we can actually do everything else that we need to do with the client, but bookkeeping, even though everybody’s like, “Oh, AI is taking over, it really, it’s not, not yet, it might, but it’s really not doing a good job right now, and it’s just, it’s such an important foundational piece that every single business really needs.

Jim Beach 49:17
Yes, I would agree with that. One of the things I really loved about you was I saw in your literature that you make a big distinction between cash on hand and profit, and all of these things that you can appear to be profitable but have zero cash on hand, and then you’re in a whale of hurt. Talk to me about that huge distinction, please.

Natalia Zacharin 49:36
Yes, absolutely. Actually, just talked to a client this morning about that. She’s been having several profitable months, but this business also has loans, and they’re, they’re also revamping an office space, and all of that, all those expenses are a project, and it’s actually going on the balance sheet, so the profit and loss is fantastic, it’s showing all of your money, your, your income, your revenue. You coming in, your cost of goods sold, and your expenses going back out, but it’s not showing you investment and investment activities and loans or distributions. So, if you have old credit card debt, if you have any principal payments on loans, if you’re doing any kind of improvements to the property, which would be, you know, project cost that would not land on the P and L. And then, if you’re taking any distributions, you can call in owner draws, dividends, whatever you want to call them, but any money that you’re taking out personally that is not coming out of your salary, your payroll, all of that is cash that’s coming out of your business, it’s not showing up on your profit and loss. So, if you don’t know where your cash is going, you could potentially be showing a $300,000 profit and only have 30 grand in the bank, and they’d be like, “Where did all my cash go? And we see that problem over and over and over again. It’s very common,

Jim Beach 51:00
and that’s just an education problem, isn’t it? You just need to be taught that how to deal with,

Natalia Zacharin 51:05
yes, it’s an education problem, and it’s a problem of not having clarity, and making, and sometimes it’s a problem of making poor decisions because you didn’t have the clarity. So, a lot of businesses will go into debt to help them to fund their cash, but don’t realize that the reason they need to fund their cash was because they weren’t profitable to begin with, so they’re not fixing the problem.

Jim Beach 51:31
That’s very true, Natalia. I am very impressed. You’ve done an amazing job, and you get A pluses. So,

Natalia Zacharin 51:40
thank you.

Jim Beach 51:40
You know, I was a university professor, so I love to grade things, and you get plus just absolutely fantastic. Let me ask a horrible question. How is your ex-husband doing? Is he now jealous as hell of you?

Speaker 3 51:55
You know what, I don’t know. So, very fun fact, and hopefully he doesn’t hear this, but he was a CPA, and I have no accounting degree. I am self-taught, and now I hire CPAs. And so the funnest thing was in 2021 I’m sitting across the table from my then boyfriend, now fiance, and he says to me, do you realize that you make more money than your ex, and because he’s like, he didn’t pay any child support, and it was just a horrible marriage, horrible divorce, and I was like, wow, and so I bought the domain Make More Money Than Your ex.com because I’m hoping at some point maybe I’ll help someone, so So, so I think the thing is just like, never give up, and if the people in your life, if anybody really did you dirty, just move on, you’ll do better moving on.

Jim Beach 52:56
Great advice, fantastic. Tanya, how do we find out more? Hire you for some bookkeeping, all that stuff. Please,

Natalia Zacharin 53:04
absolutely. So, we have a page dedicated to your audience. It’s going to be under www dot Zacharyn consulting.com/school and there you’ll find a few downloads for free. You can download seven ways to find money in your business now, and the ultimate checklist for financial success. And then there’s a calendar link there, if you want to chat with someone, and of course, a link to the podcast. And check out the website, we have a lot of great downloads, profit playbook, and cash flow forecasting, a lot of blogs with a lot of information. So check

Jim Beach 53:40
it out. Natalia, thank you so much for being with us, and we’d love to have you back. Thanks a lot.

Natalia Zacharin 53:45
Thank you so much.

Jim Beach 53:53
Bye now.