Turning Setbacks into Success: Max Emma's Remarkable Business Story

Freddy D: 00:01:47

Hey, Freddy D. Here. Today's guest, Max Emma, has an incredible story of resilience, entrepreneurship, and reinvention.

Arriving in the US at just 18 years old from the former Soviet Union with no money, no friends, and no English, Max supported himself through college, graduating with honors in finance. After a short staying in corporate America, he pivoted to help grow his family's small landscaping business to nearly 100 employees.

But when the: 2008

That's B o o X keeping where today, he is the preferred bookkeeping provider for over 100 franchise brands and operates across all 50 states.

Inspired by the franchisors he worked with, he began franchising, bookskeeping and growing it nationally, empowering others to achieve business ownership. Max also runs a franchise brokerage, helping aspiring entrepreneurs find the right franchise fit all at no cost to them.

Outside of his businesses, Max is a world Traveler who's visited 46 countries and 26 US states.

He's a proud dad of two, a live theater fan, a fitness enthusiast, and someone who knows how to enjoy fine single malt scotch paired with a Cuban cigar.

Freddy D: 00:03:22

Welcome to the Business Superfans podcast show this afternoon. Max, how are you?

Max Emma: 00:03:27

Great to be here. Thank you for the opportunity.

Freddy D: 00:03:29

We're excited to have you and share your story. What is your story? What is the backstory? You come from Russia, I come from France. So we're both immigrants in this country.

Let me share the story of how you came here and how you ended up with bookkeepings and now a franchise with Max and other things.

Max Emma: 00:03:48

So I came into the United States about 32 years ago and my parents brought me here. We immigrated because my older brother already was in the country. We came to beautiful San Diego, California. It was a huge change.

It was Russia barely a year after Soviet Union collapsed. So it was a completely different world.

oviet Union ended, the end of: 1991

And then we came January of: 1993

So I had to come up with my own know how, how to learn English. Fast. Because I knew if I speak English and learn how to do it fast, I can get a better job.

What I was actually doing, too bad I couldn't trademark it. At a time I was just going to payphone and calling all the credit card companies. Back then all the call centers were located in the United States.

So I was speaking to them for 40, 45 minutes, talking back and forth why I cannot get a credit card from this particular company. So I was practicing English with the native speaker for 40, 45 minutes. I knew the answer right away.

I didn't have a credit history, I would not get a credit card. And I'm like, okay, great. And then I would call again to a different one and I would do that three hours every day.

And I picked up my English really fast and was able to find a good job and was able to go to college and graduate, get a job in corporate America. The rest is history.

Freddy D: 00:05:34

So how did books keeping come about?

Max Emma: 00:05:38

So bookkeeping. It wasn't the first company that I owned. When I got tired of corporate America, I just understood it wasn't for me.

I always been joking that I was really bad in kissing butts. I was always kissing the wrong one because they still made you do that. But I wasn't getting promoted. I'm like, no, something is off working.

I gave a two week notice and left a well paid job. They were paying for my MBA and I saw the promotion coming, joined a small family business and grew it from three employees to 96 employees.

great until the recession of: 0809

Had 96 employees at its best and then they just stopped building. I ended up with all the cranes, all the equipment, everything, all the loans that I had to pay and practically zero income.

So we did not have a choice but to declare bankruptcy. Because it was a construction business, it was a requirement to personally guarantee most of the stuff.

So we had to do personal bankruptcy with one baby at home and one on the way. That was pretty scary. I honestly thought this was the end of the world bankruptcy. Growing up in the Soviet Union was one of the worst.

This was like, oh my God, this is the end of your life. Being young and naive, this is it. I'm done. As person, as businessman as anybody. I gonna go and find a job.

solutely nothing available in: 0809

Freddy D: 00:07:29

I'm one of those guys that went through it as well. I was selling construction management software to home builders.

They didn't need any of the technology that the subdivisions they were running away from. So I went through the same thing. So I completely have empathy.

Max Emma: 00:07:46

Yeah. So that was my luck. It made me start business again. This time it was maintenance. This time we were more successful.

I was running the business with my co founder Elena, who was my wife at the time. She had master's in accounting, I had bachelor in finance.

e doing it for us? And that's: 0809

One person show doing bookkeeping from home. There weren't too many bookkeeping enterprises back then. So we talked about it and forgot about it.

When we opened the maintenance company we grew enough and decided, hey, we can do bookkeeping ourselves. Let's hire somebody. I went out and got 20 estimates from different people and the range was from $200 to $2,000 for exactly the same scope of work.

My finance background told me something is wrong. You cannot have a fork that large.

Freddy D: 00:08:56

Yeah, that's a big difference.

Max Emma: 00:08:57

Absolutely. For exactly the same scope of work. And that's when we said, you know what, maybe we need to come and fill this hole and do something about it.

that started in the garage in: 2011

I was running the landscape maintenance company part time bookkeeping. My wife was doing part time bookkeeping at home because she had to kids. I was more than a full time mom.

And then we were able to sell the maintenance business for profit and opened an office. Bookskeeping started as a real business where we started doing full time and hired employees and that was the beginning of bookskeeping.

But in the beginning it was just the local San Diego bookkeeping company.

Freddy D: 00:09:50

And want to ask a question? What was it that you guys did that was different than others that attracted the customers that you did to start scaling bookskeeping?

Max Emma: 00:10:04

That's a good question, Frederick. We looked at it as a business. First of all in the beginning we had a business plan. So I had businesses before consulting other.

I never had a business plan. We were told in Business school always have a business plan. Like, yeah, right. It's like, I know what I'm gonna do.

I'm just gonna grow it until I grow it. Why do I need a plan to do that for this business? We actually had a business plan from the beginning. We treated it as business.

We started hiring employees, understanding that we can do everything by ourselves, and that's what made it successful. Writing it as a business has its cons. Because if you are an executive and you not working on the client, you're the last person to get paid.

To have to pay people who actually work on the client. You have to pay everything and everybody. And then if you're lucky and there is money left in the company, then you're getting paid.

But that's how you scale, in my opinion. And that was what was successful for us.

And then also the name from day one, we're like, no, we're not gonna just call it Max's Bookkeeping or San Diego Sa's Bookkeeping. We were like, let's give it a name that actually has a trademark. And that's how bookskeeping came to how we got an idea.

We changed one letter, and we were able to trademark it and reserve the name. And now bookskeeping is our concept. And I'm having a lot of joy when people like saying, well, I've done my books keeping for last year.

So people actually makes the words bookkeeping and books keeping. That's awesome. That's exactly what I wanted to hear. Took a while.

Freddy D: 00:11:49

You've created a unique brand for yourself.

Max Emma: 00:11:52

Absolutely.

Freddy D: 00:11:53

So when you were dealing with customers, you know, I talk a lot about creating super fans of your employees, your customers.

So let's talk about, and maybe you can share a story of how you've transformed someone's financial situation to where they became the super fan of bookskeeping and told everybody else about it, that they became your biggest brand advocates. But I prefer calling them business superfans because it's a cooler name.

Max Emma: 00:12:23

Well, I believe that the most valuable thing that we as humans have besides health, is our time. Can a person do their own bookkeeping? Absolutely. QuickBooks, for example, is designed for non accountants.

But in finance, there is such thing as an opportunity cost. If it takes us three hours to do the bookkeeping, might take them six hours, and then books keeping comes in and gives them six hours a month back.

My question is always, what's the opportunity cost? What can you do with this six hours? Can you spend them with your family? Can you sleep extra six hours a month?

Or if you want to grow your business, how many calls can you make in six hours? Whatever your success rate is, how many new clients can you get? And people like we never thought about it this. We had a client, true story.

He was a partner in a law firm and former cpa. Every Sunday he was doing bookkeeping himself because how to do it. His wife was upset that he wasn't spending time with the family and the kids.

He was doing it. And that's his words, not mine. Then finally after many years, he decided to outsource it.

He found us by somebody introduced him, remember, it's been a while. We started doing it. We gave him the monthly fee. It was less than his hourly rate.

So the guy was wasting every Sunday for what he is billing for one hour. His words was like, oh my God, I wasted so much time by not letting other people doing. I got my time back.

So that's what creates super funds for books keeping because we give people their time back.

Freddy D: 00:14:18

People don't realize it, but time is the most expensive commodity in the universe. You can't buy more of it or you can't buy it back. It doesn't matter how rich you are, it's gone.

Max Emma: 00:14:32

I agree. A lot of people look at it well, I'm only gonna come for a few hours every Saturday morning or whenever and just get stuff done.

I'm like, you don't understand. It's not about you coming and doing it. More like not letting go. Which is, you know, a big deal.

You won't be able to really grow your business until you stop doing it and outsource most of the stuff and start working on the business and not in the business. But second of all, just sleep in for extra couple hours. If you work 60 hour week, your body will thank you later on for just doing that.

I know a lot of people that are still doing bookkeeping themselves and Frederik, they can afford to do it with somebody like us or somebody else.

Freddy D: 00:15:13

There's a concept in business wanting to understand economics.

If I hand it off, and I'm individual that likes things to be perfect, but I freed up my time and cost that's worth it because of the simple fact that it's okay. It may not be microscopically perfect to where you want it because there's perfectionists think that they're the only ones who can do it right.

But the reality is with those freed up hours, I can make more phone calls, I can spend time with the family and focus on other strategies to grow the business or I can just go On a vacation for the day. And that trade is, you can't buy that.

Max Emma: 00:16:01

I agree. I was on the receiving end of that as well. Trying to do everything myself and not outsourcing a lot of my functions.

When I've seen the real growth of not only the company, but my internal growth is when I started doing it for exactly the same reason you said, because I can do it better. When somebody making small mistakes, I'm like, oh my God, how hard is it to figure it out? It's so easy. Let me show you.

And then I get going and get it done, put it back in it. And I just wasted three hours of my time. So I'm learning to step away. Real growth that I've noticed took me from A to Z really fast.

When I finally hired the executive assistant and I was able to outsource most of my admin stuff, I still find stuff to do that should be outsourced. And I'm still guilty. I'm not perfect. I'm working on it, but I'm looking back, I was doing it all myself.

I remember 10pm I was watching a show and doing proposals at home and I was kidding myself saying, but I'm not really working, I'm watching Netflix. It's fun. Well, you know, I'm watching couple episodes.

Freddy D: 00:17:13

Next thing you know it's 2:00 in the morning.

Max Emma: 00:17:15

Exactly. Yes, I was watching. But ask me what was the show about? I was like, I don't know, was it even on?

I was concentrating on the proposals, but I wasn't really working. At dinner maybe I had a little bit of scotch, I got it done. But then when you look back, I work long hours and that's not right.

Now, executive assistant, we get the proposal done within 15, 20 minutes after I have a meeting with the client, which enables me to have more meetings in a shorter period of time. Exactly. I'm not the one scheduling it. I'm not the one doing the follow ups, reminding people, hey, don't forget to show up, Max is waiting.

You know, we have a meeting all done. Either automatic reminders or I have live person doing it for me.

Freddy D: 00:18:01

So how did you evolve into franchising? Bookskeeping.

Max Emma: 00:18:07

So Bookskeeping was a local bookkeeping company in San Diego. I started going to Orange County, California a little bit LA to branch out, but still it was San Diego company by accident.

Somebody introduced us to a franchisor. This franchisor gave us one of his franchisees to do bookkeeping for. So we did it. Then they gave us another one.

I Said, why don't we start exploring franchising? I didn't know anything about franchising other than McDonald's was a franchise.

Now I know McDonald's wasn't the first one and it goes back to 19th century in the United States. I honestly thought McDonald's was the first one in the U.S. i had no idea that a lot of shops been using were franchises. So that also came as a shock.

I started going to franchise exposure and we got another franchise and another franchise. Now, to make the story short, Bookskeeping is the preferred bookkeeping provider for over 100 franchise brands in all 50 states. Fastsport Clips Mrs.

Fields There are a lot of different brands that we are doing bookkeeping for and a lot of emerging ones that started small. We are doing one right now. They sold 800 locations in a year and a half. It's the oral hormone clinic for. We're doing probably close to 100 locations.

So really I would just started getting it one by one. I started going to the franchise expos and I really like it to be in the room with those franchisors.

It's absolutely normal when you see two competing franchisors that each has over 3,000 units sitting at the bar at night, at the conference, having a drink and talking to each other. Even though they actually competing for the same franchisees, same employees, they're friends.

They don't have nothing to fight about because they believe in abundance. They believe it's enough for everybody. I'm like, wow, that's great. I just came back from Las Vegas couple days ago.

The biggest franchise expo was there. About 4,000 people were in presence. I go every year, we have a booth and as a franchisor learning a lot.

And I just stopped the CEO of company that has over 6,000 units. I don't want to give a name, but I would. You definitely know the name because it's in every city.

I told him who I was Max, a franchisor with 13 units and had questions for him. We Talked for over 20 minutes. Answering my questions, gave me his cell phone number.

He said, text me and we'll schedule another call if you have more questions. That's what people do in franchise.

Freddy D: 00:20:53

Well, but see that's what they're doing is they're creating a super fan out of you because he took the time to talk to you and more importantly, connected with you personally and gave his personal information. You're talking about it right now.

So what that person did is transform you into a fan of his because he took the time of day to recognize you and acknowledge you and provide you with value. And that's the difference between good leaders and wannabe leaders.

Max Emma: 00:21:29

I agree with you 100%, Frederik. And also I think it's the concept of paying it forward, because he helped me.

Yes, I have 13 franchisees right now, but there are a lot of people at this conference that have zero, and they're just dreaming about the franchise and actually stop and talk to me. I help as much as I can because now I do have the expertise. That's what attracted me into franchising. I was in the room with these people.

I was in the room with them as a supplier, and I was always joking. I want to be like them when I grow up. I want to be in this room with these people as a franchisor as equal.

And we're not talking about the number of units. We're talking about just being a franchisor and started researching.

Long story short, we started the franchisor journey, and now we are a franchisor selling. And we are in six or seven states now looking for more good franchisees. And we are getting them.

f not more, before the end of: 2025

Freddy D: 00:22:34

Oh, what an incredible story. And it's really about building those relationships and buying back your time and leveraging your team.

You can't scale, you can't manage franchisees if you don't have a team.

Max Emma: 00:22:57

Yes. And we have growing pains. Like everybody has growing pain.

Freddy D: 00:23:01

Sure.

Max Emma: 00:23:01

We're dealing with them. We're learning from them. I strongly believe in the concept that whatever happens, happens not to me, but for me.

Freddy D: 00:23:11

Correct.

Max Emma: 00:23:12

So I'm looking back, the bankruptcy that I had, I was the end of the world at the time. Now I'm very grateful because I learned a lot looking backwards. It was a great experience.

I call it my best MBA because I learned what to do and most importantly, what not to do. It helped me a lot in life. Still helping. At the time, it seemed like a tragedy.

Freddy D: 00:23:37

Sure. What advice do you have for a business owner about their financing and things like that, especially for someone running a small business?

Because one of the things a lot of people don't understand is net income and profit margin. They're focusing more on gross sales and then find out they're negative or they're not categorizing things properly.

I'm sure you've run into hundreds of those.

Max Emma: 00:24:11

Oh, yeah, we see it all the time.

People doing it wrong or only doing the profit and loss, but not the balance sheet and don't know their cash, their assets, how much money they owe and so on. So yeah, we see that all the time. It's a cliche but the advice I can give is know your numbers at least 50%.

I meet of the small business owners do not know their numbers. They're like my CPA is looking at my financials and files my tax return. I'm like, this is not it.

Because by the time you go see your CPA in February, March or April of next year, this year is gone. There is nothing they can do. They cannot go back. You cannot buy the time back. So this is it. You pretty much missed it.

You have to have your regular financials done at least monthly for some businesses, weekly. We have some clients that we work on a daily basis but they're bigger businesses. Not everybody needs daily or weekly.

Monthly is a good start, but at least monthly.

And when you have your monthly financials, make sure they're finished books keeping to finish financials for the clients by the end of the following months. So at least it's 30 days in the rear, sometimes sooner. Are we late sometimes for different reasons?

Yes, we are working on not being late a lot of the time. It's not on us, it's on the client not getting back to us because we have questions. It's a two way street.

We can't have every answer because we are not in the business every day. If the client is ghosting us for one week and then shows up and well, here are your answers.

I need my financials by tomorrow cause I'm meeting with my banker. I'm like well good luck. Not happening.

I'm not dropping everything we're doing and working on your stuff because you were ghosting us for all this time. So it's going to go in the queue and we're going to get it to you, but you'll have to wait. But I have a meeting.

Well, should have answered to us a week ago and then we would have most likely get you your stuff by today.

Freddy D: 00:26:15

Yeah, people unfortunately think of themselves and don't think of the others that are involved in the equation. And when you're working with partners, you've got to have a partner mindset because it takes a team to accomplish the goals and scale a business.

And you've got to have the right communications bidirectional timely for it to happen. Otherwise as you just said, it can't happen. So let's talk a little bit more about the franchise stuff.

How are you guys going about attracting Franchisees to your franchise.

Max Emma: 00:27:07

Oh. Took me a while to understand what's attracting people. It's a relatively simple business. It's bookkeeping.

But then I realized it's the story retelling. It's books keeping franchise everything that happened before in my life and my co founder's life. Elena, she's a huge part of the business.

We started the business together. We were married at the time. We are no longer married, but we're still running the business together.

When people tell you divorce is the end of everything, no. We have two beautiful kids that we love and we work on the business and we're still friends even though we haven't been married for over 10 years.

They're looking at our stories and they're like, well, we want to know more. We want to understand what's going on. Until probably last year, Frederick, maybe year before, I was scared to tell people about the bankruptcy.

So I was leaving all this stuff out of the story because I was ashamed. Then I told myself why. That's part of my life. I didn't do anything illegal. I did my best. It did not work out for me.

And I legally declared bankruptcy and legally got discharged. So why I cannot talk about it. That's something in my head.

I worked through my own issues and now I'm telling people because a lot of people go, maybe not bankruptcy, but a lot of downs in their life. Hey, I haven't seen a single person who was always up, up, up, something always going on.

And some people stay there because they're just so depressed and can't snap out of it.

Freddy D: 00:28:55

They can't snap out of it and they have no support system to help them snap out of it.

Max Emma: 00:29:00

Absolutely. When they hear our stories, they're like, maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel. Books keeping culture is huge.

We are not separating business from personal because I don't believe you can come to work and snap out of your personal life. You have issues at home, you're going to be thinking about it. If, if you screwed up at work, you can not come home and forget immediately.

Or if something bad happened, you're going to be thinking about it. You can snap out of it. I always give an example. While I was going to college, I was working for Costco. Great job. I loved it.

They even gave me a scholarship to go to university. I had a great time and met a lot of people being a cashier.

But when I was going on vacation, nobody was waiting outside of Costco, waiting for Max to come back. My desk wasn't full. So I started from where I ended. When I go on vacation now I'm delegating, so it's getting a little better.

But before that, if I'm gone and I resheck my emails, I have to answer 800 emails sitting in my inbox. Okay, so yes, I'm going vacation, I'm enjoying it. But then I'm thinking about the price that I have to pay.

People need some help to see that there are other ways that there is something you can do. So I started telling people this story about the problems that I had as business person, what I learned from it, how we pivoted.

And then I can see that people like, well, maybe this is not the end of the world, but I think.

Freddy D: 00:30:39

People can relate and go, well, you're approachable, you're genuine, you're authentic. And that becomes genuinely attractive. And like you said earlier, Sir Richard Branson says it best.

There is no difference between work and personal life. It's called life. It's both. There is only one life. When you go to work, you're still living.

You're going on vacation, you're still living, you're sleeping, you're still living. But it's all part of life.

Max Emma: 00:31:11

Absolutely, I agree with that. And we are giving it to our employees and to our franchisees. And we are treating everybody as a family. And family has its issues.

Sometimes if a member of the family is not behaving, then we send them away. So it's not that everybody who starts working for bookskeeping works for us. Two of our right hand people been with us for seven and 10 years.

Accordingly, they've been with us for a long time and started as junior part time people. Everybody who started working for books keeping, I always tell them, sky is the limit. I still interview everybody who comes in.

I'm not the main part of the interview, but before somebody gets hired, everybody talks to me, even for 15, 20 minutes. And I always tell people, hey, sky is the limit. Most people are like, yeah, sure, but this too took it seriously.

And now they're my directors, they're my right hand reports.

Freddy D: 00:32:10

They're your superfans because they've been with you so long, they believe in it. And that's the thing about developing the right culture in the company.

Creating that energy where everybody's on the same mission, knows what the goals are, knows what the objectives are, they're empowered to make decisions. They don't have to run up to dad or mom and ask permission. They're going to make the right decision. Most of the time.

And it's going to free you up to do what you need to do as a business owner or as a franchisee. I'm sharing this so that your franchisees also think about empowering their team so they can scale.

Max Emma: 00:32:53

And I'm pushing them to scale because when I see a franchisee doing the work themselves, I'm like, come on, you are big enough to hire Hal. You can concentrate. You can double this business if you work on it and not in it. Well, but if I start doing that, my margins will go down.

I'm like, of course your margin is going to go down because now I have to pay somebody.

But when calculating your margins, you're not calculating your time, you're not looking at your salary because you have to pay technically for the work you're doing, you have to pay yourself salary. Not legally, but that's the right accounting way of doing. Otherwise, of course, your margins are great.

They're like, oh, I'm profiting all this money. How many hours did you work last week? 70. How many weeks in a row can you do that? Oh, I'm young, I can do it. Are you going to be young all your life?

Freddy D: 00:33:44

Right. You gotta get out of the weeds and empower people hiring somebody.

Yeah, the margin is going to go down, but your volume's going to go up and your margin is going to return because of more business you can handle. You've got systems and teams in place. One or two people can only handle so much before you capped and can't grow.

Max Emma: 00:34:02

Yes.

Freddy D: 00:34:05

So, Max, as we come close to the end here, great conversation that we've had today. Some great stories and some great insights for our listeners and some great takeaways. How can people connect up with you?

Max Emma: 00:34:19

Well, I also wanted to mention that when we started selling bookskeeping franchises, we realized that bookkeeping franchise is not for everybody. And I assumed that a lot of people, I was leaving them hanging just by telling them, nope, sorry, we're not a good match.

So not so long ago, about a year ago, maybe less, we opened a franchise brokerage where we can help people to buy a franchise. Not necessarily bookskeeping, but I have a choice of over 600 franchises and our services are completely free. We do not charge anything.

We only get paid by a franchisor if somebody ends up buying.

So we do get a good commission, but not only we not getting paid, if somebody just talks to us and then leaves and ends up not buying, we're actually sharing part of our commissions. Everybody who buys through books keeping gets a rebate from us and nine months of sales training paid by us with the live trainer.

If you buy a franchise through main entrance from a brokerage, we'll get the nine months sales training that I'm paying for.

To answer your question, the best way to get a hold of me depends if you want to do doesn't matter if you want to do books keeping franchise if you want if you need bookkeeping for your company or if you interested in a franchise is to go to franchisewithmax.com and once you go on franchisewithmax.com, you'll be able to pick the area how you want to talk to me, why you want to talk to me.

I have teams in all of the businesses so you'll talk to them first and then eventually everybody ends up talking to me and we can discuss and see if we're going to be a good match or not.

Freddy D: 00:36:03

We'll make sure to put that into the show notes for our listeners and your contact information there. Thank you so much for your time today and we look forward to having you on the show and continuing the conversation down the road.

Max Emma: 00:36:18

I would love that. Thank you for the opportunity.

Freddy D: 00:36:19

Frederick thank you Max.

Freddy D: 00:36:24

Hey Superfan superstar Freddie D Here before we wrap, here's your 3A playbook. Attract, advocate and accelerate your business power move for today. Here's this episode's top insight.

If you want to scale beyond survival mode, you must stop doing everything yourself and invest in building a true business that runs without you. So here's your business growth action step.

Hire an executive assistant or key team member this week to take critical tasks off your plate and reclaim your time to focus purely on growth. If today's conversation sparked an idea for you, share it with a fellow business leader who would benefit and grab the full breakdown in the show.

Freddy D: 00:37:08

Notes.

Freddy D: 00:37:10

Let's accelerate together and start creating business super fans who not only champion your brand, but accelerate your growth.