# From Bankruptcy to Building Bookkeeping: Franchising, AI and Small-Business Operations
Guest: Max Emma — CEO · Building Bookkeeping
Published: 2026-04-08
Series: Business AI Explained
Canonical: https://www.elementsagents.com/podcast/bookkeeping

SPEAKER_02 0:00
We use AI to um automate like some day-to-day stuff, you know, outside of just the accounting, but uh sending emails, you know, communicating with each other and doing it. Like, for example, I use AI on all of my Zoom calls, and after that, this uh AI note just goes to my team and my assistants reading those notes, listening, and then they do estimates based on that. I don't have to send a follow-up email, I don't have to, you know, tell them what to do. So I'm just showing up for all the calls, but everything else is done by my assistant franchise or one of the questions people come up with is hey, I want to buy you know territory in Atlanta. Before we had to go and do it with zip codes and check the chat the population and then add it all up, and it would just was taking a lot of a lot of time. Even a year ago, the technology wasn't available to do it. Now with Chat GPT, it just you know going back and forth, asking the questions, you know. Before I know, I get you know all the zip codes, all the territories divided, you know, the advantages of each territory, the names, the exact zip codes, the exact population, and boom, we just give it to our candidates and then they choose which one they want to buy.

SPEAKER_00 1:18
Hi everyone, today I'm joined by Max Emma, who's the founder of three different companies in the bookkeeping space. He started off with uh Bookskeeping, which is an outsourced uh bookkeeping partner for SMEs in the U.S. But he's also basically developing a whole network of franchisees and he's also teaching aspiring entrepreneurs to become franchisees themselves. So a lot of businesses and a lot of concepts to unpack in this episode. I think this conversation is very exciting because uh outsourcing and productizing services is everything that people are talking about today with AI. But Max has been focusing on that without using the AI terms for pretty much forever, or I would say 15 years. So in this episode, I want to unpack those concepts with Max on how he's running his different businesses and how AI is helping him in running that. So thanks so much, Max, for being here. Looking forward to this conversation.

SPEAKER_02 2:10
Thank you, Vlad. Thank you for the opportunity. I'm looking forward to our discussion.

SPEAKER_00 2:13
Yeah, amazing. Maybe just first question. When you first started into the bookkeeping business, you basically came up with this idea of packaging a service that you could to some extent automate. So can you maybe tell us a bit more about how you thought about packaging this in the early days, you know, about bookkeeping and why this was helpful to other SMEs?

SPEAKER_02 2:35
So, bookkeeping, uh, we started it with my co-founder when we were running a landscaping business and construction business. Back in 08-09, there was a huge recession worldwide, especially in the United States. And uh we were doing landscape construction, and then they stopped building homes. And then uh, but we had a lot of equipment that we had to pay for, and a lot of employees, and that was pretty bad times, and we didn't have a choice but close the company and declare it a bankruptcy. And because of the personally guaranteeing uh construction business, that's how it's being done in the US. Uh, we also had to do the personal bankruptcy as well. So with one baby at home and one on the way, uh, that was pretty scary to say the least. And back then we were talking about it would be nice if we had a bookkeeping company who would uh who would take care of our books and we would know that we are getting closer to the catastrophe sooner. You know, I'm a village idiot with bachelor in finance. My co-founder of bookskeeping, who was my wife at a time, she had masters in accounting. So we understood the accounting. We're just so busy growing the business, we did not have time to uh concentrate on the books. And we were saying, well, we wish there was a company that does that. And back then, there were no companies, not that many as it is now, that were like, you know, really packaging. And so we talked about it, and then we actually opened another business, started growing that because we had to feed the family, and then we're more successful, sold it. And then during this uh venture, we actually realized the need and we couldn't find a good provider. So that's when bookskeeping started. So we always looked at the bookskeeping as a factory that producing financial statements. So, and that's the package. So the end product is your financial statement, your profit and loss, your balance sheet, boom, here is the package next. Here's the package next. That's why we don't do consulting and bookkeeping, that's why we don't do anything else. And we just decided fixed pricing, you know, no hourly, no guesswork for the clients, how much it's gonna cost me. And that was the idea originally. And then by accident, we actually ran into franchising and started doing bookkeeping for franchise brands. One, two, three, four. And after a while, going to the conferences and meeting all those franchise and there is this. I'm like, you know what? When I grow up, I want to be like one of them. And I guess I've grown up and you know, franchise bookskeeping. So we're now the only bookkeeping franchise in the United States, just the Entrepreneur 500 list, which is it's like Fortune 500 for franchises. So it's awesome. I'm so grateful uh to the team to getting us there. So uh packages are great, and I'm always looking at it as you know, a product. Boom. You know, you have to have that to file your taxes, to make business decisions, to do analysis, to have a KPI. We don't do that. Our job is just to get you the financial statements and move to the next client.

SPEAKER_00 5:32
Yeah, I think that's uh first of all, congrats on uh being on that ranking. Uh what you touched on is really key to everything around what we're gonna be talking about next is how do you package products and where does AI fit into that? And because you have a very clear starting point and ending point, I think this is really where you can package a service and where AI can become helpful. In bookkeeping business, there's this idea of doing a lot of manual entry. How has AI helped you in automating a lot of that manual process in bookkeeping? And yes, could you tell us a little bit more about how you're using AI in delivering that service today?

SPEAKER_02 6:07
Sure. Um, I'll be honest with you. I had bigger hopes for AI, but you know, took me time and took the team a lot of experimenting to realize that AI is not messiah that can help you with everything. So we actually hired an AI company that built like a robot on top of QuickBooks that was supposed to be, you know, automating a lot of processes. But what we found that this particular robot would be good for bigger clients. But because majority of our clients are small, it did not work. It had a limitation how many it could process, you know, at any given point of time. And then we found out that humans actually were more productive and it would cost us less than have this robot, okay? Because after a robot had hit this capacity, we had to build another one and we had to pay per robot for all the use. So it just did not make sense for us. However, in the United States, into it, QuickBooks Online, it's pretty much a legal monopoly. So they own 90 plus percent of the small business market in terms of bookkeeping. So they are doing the job for us, they're actually adding AI into the picture, and now what was taking us five hours a month, now it might take us two hours. So the way we're packaging it and the way we're doing it, we're passing on this savings to our clients. A lot of the competition, they you know, let's call it, they charge uh$300. They don't see, well, uh how am I gonna cut my fees into half? I mean, come on, it's$300, so now it's a you know inflation, so I'm gonna increase it by 10%. We are going the other way around. We're actually decreasing the prices, but now we can do three clients in five hours instead of one client. So we're still making more money uh in total, but you know, per client, of course, it's less, but it takes less time. And we see the value, I see how it's supposed to be working, and then the clients appreciate it. Okay, we're gonna use AI to um automate like some day-to-day stuff, you know, outside of just the accounting, but sending emails, you know, communicating with each other and doing it. Like, for example, I use AI on all of my Zoom calls, and after that, this AI note just goes to my team and my assistants reading those notes, listening, and then they do estimates based on that. I don't have to send a follow-up email, I don't have to, you know, tell them what to do. So I'm just showing up for all the calls, but everything else is done by my assistants.

SPEAKER_00 8:50
Amazing. Yeah, so it sounds you're very deep into the weeds of everything. So you actually hired a company, an AI company, to build a robot uh to parse invoices and receipts and stuff. You were not happy with it, turned out to be cheaper to run it yourself manually. And then you closely monitored what QuickBooks was offering and you embedded the AI functionality as as soon as you understood how to incorporate it. Now you're telling me that you're also using AI uh in like non-core processes like that, like everything around basically, like your own bike office essentially.

SPEAKER_02 9:20
Well, that, and then also like, for example, being a franchise, one of the questions people come up with is hey, I want to buy you know territory in Atlanta. I mean, what territory do we have available? Atlanta is, I don't know, six, seven million people, and our territory is half a million people. So technically we can sell, call it 12 or 14. I just don't remember how many people live in Atlanta. But about that, like we're probably not gonna sell all of them, but before we had to go and do it with zip codes and check the check the population and then add it all up. And it would just, it was taking a lot of a lot of time. Even a year ago, the technology wasn't available to do it. Now with Chat GPT, it's just you know, going back and forth, asking the questions, you know, before I know I get, you know, all the zip codes, all the territories divided, you know, the advantages of each territory, the names, the exact zip codes, the exact population, and boom, we just give it to our candidates and then they choose which one they want to buy. And once they buy this territory is out, the other ones are available. So it takes minutes and probably would take even less, but I'm questioning it and I'm not just taking the first answer. I mean, I want to know deeper and hey, what else can we do? Can we do some deep thinking? So it does take time, but again, it's minutes, not hours.

SPEAKER_00 10:39
Yeah, I think that's uh I mean, we haven't even touched yet on how you're growing your own business uh with AI. And I think from what I understand and from what I hear is that you have a lot of inbound interests, and basically for you, the bottleneck is to answer all of these inquiries and just reply with uh basically like accurate quotes on like you know the price of a territory. So, how do you actually get so much traffic? I understand podcasts is one channel for you. You do webinars. How do you actually get more clients today?

SPEAKER_02 11:05
I mean, the SEO people find us, but now we understand that all people also find us not only on Google, but Perplexity, ChatGPT. So our marketing team is actually working on getting us to these channels as well. They have to, you know. Google was the answer two years ago, a year ago now. It's not just uh Google. I mean, a lot of people find, you know, whoever they were looking for in Chat GPT and stuff. So we are definitely using that. I mean, we use brokers, we use referral partners, we do a lot of conferences and conventions. Um, so it just plus we've been around for a while.

SPEAKER_00 11:45
Yeah, coming back to the marketing team, whenever I see a photo section with find a bookkeeper near you, I immediately I immediately know that you have someone working to like improve your organic reach because this is kind of best practice to have at least those on your sitemap uh to show up in results. And you did show up in perplexity when I looked you up. So yeah, you can uh congratulate your marketing team for doing a great job. If we just like switch uh gears like just a little bit and come back to maybe the AI part of like your operations, what are the tools that you are using today? You said custom tools are a bit difficult because they're expensive and they don't work as expected. Do you have any solutions that you are using that you've had a good experience with that you would recommend?

SPEAKER_02 12:28
I mean, perplexity, I use a lot of it for the research. Before I meet with uh somebody, I just put their name in perplexity. Perplexity tells me everything about them, including their podcasts, their, you know, whatever articles if they have any. So when I talk to them, I really know everything about this person. I mean, everything that I need to know. Like I'm not spending three hours and take it. It takes one minute for perplexity to run it and for me to read it. And then we already can talk about, like I can see that they love traveling and I love traveling. So we can connect on that, you know, right away. So I don't have to go and find different articles in Google and then read them all. I do get the summary, and that this is awesome. Like, I'm not gonna spend three hours to talk, uh, you know, to research somebody that we're gonna have a 30-minute conversation, but I will spend a minute or two to see it. So for me, it helps a lot to get it done. I mean, one of my business is uh franchise broker. So if somebody is not a good match for bookskeeping, uh help people to find one of 600 franchises that we work with. And by the way, my service is completely free. We only get paid. If somebody buys a franchise, we get commission from franchise or which I'm sharing with my candidates. And I'm also paying for nine months of their franchise, uh, of their franchise sales training, not franchise, sales training. So they get nine months of you know, with life coach to learn how to sell better because people still prefer human uh um communication. So right now we are um we are really using the AI to do the research for, like, let's say I'm talking to somebody that wants to buy a franchise, and they tell me everything about themselves and what industry they're looking for, and I just put it in chat GPT or Claude and asking, hey, you know, if this is a profile person, what industry would you recommend? And it just gives me a good start. Doesn't mean that I'm only gonna offer them that, but it gives me a good start because 600 plus franchises, 25, 30 different categories. I mean, a lot of people have no clue what they want to do. And somebody comes and says, I want to buy a pizza joint, it's easy just to find which pizza they want to, which one they want to buy. But anyway, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:39
Uh no, no, that's great. And it ties back to my next question, which is the human aspect. Um, I know that you talk about uh uh in your past uh podcast and interviews about how you know AI or automation or labor can help you like automate, let's say 85% or 80%. I don't remember the exact percentage, and then the rest is around that vendor relationship. What's the most important thing that you know bookkeepers or your franchisees need to maintain? Like what's the kind of relationship they need to maintain, and you know, what's the human factor that still remains uh critical in your opinion?

SPEAKER_02 15:13
Look, nothing replaced the human factor. I mean, people still want to talk to a human. I mean, first of all, some stuff are not automated yet, you still have to do it. And second, um, when my team talks to the client at the end of the month, a lot of the time they talk about business, family, and everything else. Like right now, I don't want to talk to a bot. And you know, because I know I'm talking to a bot. They really, you know, value the relationship. But before this review team had to actually spend time looking through the files, and it was taking them, let's call it an hour, and now it might take them 20-30 minutes. So, again, this is the savings that being passed to the clients. So now they can do, you know, spend more time talking to them if need be, or just work on additional clients. So I would say right now it's still 60-40. It's 60% probably automated, but 40% has to be done by by human. Yeah, it's changing, but I don't see it being 100%. Yes, absolutely. You can just have Chat GPT to do or other software, do your bookkeeping for you, but still it's not human. Still, it does not understand some nuances that you want to talk to the person. And then from that point, you are doing taxes, and if you don't get the right bookkeeping, you're not your taxes not gonna be right.

SPEAKER_00 16:32
Yeah, for me, it's uh I always think about you know, people talk about when is AGI coming, you know, general or artificial intelligence. And I'm always for me, the threshold is would I ever let Chudge PT handle my like file my taxes? And as long as the answer is no, we haven't reached that point.

SPEAKER_02 16:49
I feel it's like the most sensitive thing that you would never hand over to AI unless you're absolutely because you know, I mean, taxes is how legally, you know, pay less taxes. So when I talk to my CPA, I've been with the same CPA company for 20 plus years, you know, they moved to a different city. Now we do it by by Zoom, but you know, we still do it, and it's still like we're talking, hey, what are the strategy? I mean, how especially when you have multi-multiple businesses, it makes a lot of sense. Like if you only have one job and you know, uh house deduction, that's an easy taxes. Yes, you probably can automate it, but there are a lot of softwares where you can do it for$20,$30. But you know, if you have more complicated than that, I want a human being to look at it.

SPEAKER_00 17:33
Yeah. No, that's true. In terms of the profiles, uh, so you mentioned that you have this smart way of doing deep research and letting people discover what they're interested in, given your set of possible options out of the 600 franchisers uh for sale. Do you you know, as the skills are evolving and there are different levels of automation, are you looking for like different profiles? Like what's the ideal franchisee profile nowadays, uh, considering that more and more things can be automated and the relationship is evolving?

SPEAKER_02 18:01
Well, for bookkeeping, yes, of course I do that. When we were creating avatars, I was using a lot of AI just to formulate it in my head who I'm going after. We're going after so-called corporate refugees, somebody who's living, you know, the corporate world, either voluntarily or involuntarily, and somebody who has existing bookkeeping business and just has like uh hit the ceiling on gross and want uh help from the big company. Like, look, lot, I'm know the importance of AI. I do not have time to necessarily devote as much time as I want to and learning new tools. So, like, I'm learning about new tools. I'm oh, that's cool, but you know, I haven't played with it, I haven't done it. So in two weeks, we actually bring in all the social media in-house for all our franchisees. We just made a hire, and the part of the job for this person is gonna be the AI. I mean, he will be responsible to actually see what tools are available. He has a carte blanche, he can play with this tool, and if he finds it useful, he's gonna write the proposal to me explaining how it's gonna automate. I'm gonna look at it and then let him run with it if I think that that makes sense. I mean, yeah, I've played with AI to do my presentations, and yes, I can see the value. Honestly, I'm still using the old PowerPoint. Am I happy with the way it looks? No, I know Canvas and other ones can do it better. I just don't have time to research it and you know work on it. That this is just my time limitation. So it works for what I need, but once I have somebody who's dedicated to AI, I'm just gonna tell you, hey, you know, here's my presentation. That's what I want to say. Go find the AI tool that's gonna make it better. I mean, make you know, pictures, make it fun, whatever, whatever it is. Okay, so this is just a question of there's only so many hours a day that you know you you can you can work. And but I absolutely believe in like I'm doing the summaries, like the articles that I spend less time reading, but yet I get more information, you know, into into my head. So that that's awesome to understand what's going on in the world.

SPEAKER_00 20:15
Yeah. And uh I forgot to ask you at the beginning, but how many people are you at bookskeeping?

SPEAKER_02 20:22
So between all the businesses, because not just the bookskeeping and the franchisees and then corporate employees, and then everything, we're probably at about uh uh 40 people right now, um, between again, everything. So it's 40 people, they're not all report to me. I mean, again, franchisees or bookskeeping brand, they don't really report to corporate. We are there to help them uh to grow their businesses, but nevertheless, we are communicating with them because they have questions and they come to us. So I'd say about 40 people right now. I mean, I have I have uh four, five, maybe like more like six direct reports, but uh everything is I mean, but the organization is pretty large.

SPEAKER_00 21:05
Yeah, I think uh I think best practice is not uh is below eight, if I'm not mistaken.

SPEAKER_02 21:11
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So no, no, I'm not gonna go above eight for sure. So this is just you know perfect. And then like every Monday I have uh meeting with all of my direct reports just to see what's going on. And then yeah, I could send my clone to have a meeting with them. It's gonna be different. I'm not gonna do that. I don't care how sophisticated AI is. I mean, they'll know it's a clone. There is no way I can fake it. I mean, and I want to communicate with them. So that's something that I'm not planning to replace. Like I when I f travel to international offices to see all my my employees, I want to have uh meetings with them. I want to go have a drink or have dinner with them. I don't want my bot to talk to their bot. That's not, you know, this is not life. Like when I have a relationship with somebody, I want to have a relationship with a real woman, not you know. Like an AI bot, you know? So that's just my personal choice. I'm not saying that it's for everybody, but you know, I'm going with the human being before I go with the bot.

SPEAKER_00 22:10
Yeah, no. No, I think I think this is what the main reason why there is so much backlash about AI. People think that it's about creating avatars and getting into this dead internet where we just have agents talking with one another another. But based on my conversations with other CEOs and you know who are running businesses on this podcast, what seems to be the most recurrent pattern is more instead of having five people that you can manage, you can actually fetch more information and digest more information and be on top of more topics. Whereas in the past, there are maybe like certain topics where you can really contribute because you lacked context or you don't have enough information to have an informed opinion. Whereas now you can gather more info, you can manage better people, you can manage better, provide more personalized feedback. Is this something that you've also experienced at bookskeeping?

SPEAKER_02 22:59
Yeah, I mean, again, I use it to help me to successful, well, I don't know, hopefully it's successful run running three businesses, but you know, it definitely let me give you an example. Like right now, we are opening an office in Guatemala because you know, we are looking to have to add another country where we're gonna hire bookkeepers for our franchisees and for our corporate clients. I've never been to Guatemala City, I've never been to Guatemala before. So I am doing a research uh using AI about the culture, about everything, because every culture is different. Because my employees in the Philippines are different from my employees in Barcelona, Spain, and they're different from my employees in Bogota, Colombia, because again, of the cultural differences. So, I mean, I've been to all other places already multiple times. So, and of course, different from American employees, but uh um, you know, I've never been to Guatemala yet. I'm probably gonna go in a few months, but um I'm doing the research. So when I start working with them, I understand their cultural, you know, background, what they're looking for, because every culture is different. What is custom to do in one culture, you don't do in another culture.

SPEAKER_00 24:12
Yeah. Yeah, I think you're picking your countries wisely. Uh I heard great things about uh Guatemala. I was I was actually supposed to move there uh when COVID hit um to work in the coffee business. Uh but then unfortunately, yeah, I got stuck in in the US and that and then eventually got kicked out. So I yeah, I didn't get lucky. Perfect. Uh in terms of your consulting, um what what's your what's the thing that you're most the most excited about now? You know, in the next couple of years, there's so much going on. You have all these businesses and you're you know valuing your personal time, but you also want to grow. I know that you want to have 50 franchisees by the age of 50. So I don't know if you've reached 50 already or not.

SPEAKER_02 24:53
I did reach 50, I did not get 50 franchisees. Uh um, but you know what, it's not bringing me down and not letting it to, because you know, and that's one of the things that I'm really big on this so-called gap and gain uh um process. So if I compare myself to where I wanted to be, what my plan was, and I didn't hit it, I would be in a gap. Oh shoot, you know, I wanted to have 50 franchisees by the time I'm 50, and I'm 51 now, so I did not get it. So that will bring me down. I'm gonna be in a gap. But if I compare myself where I am today versus where I was a year ago, we doubled the number of franchisees. So I'm in the game, the same me, same results. It didn't change the number of franchisees, but it's how you look at it. So this is super important, and you know, I'm very big on self-development in terms of like it just helps me to live a healthier life and have a healthier relationship with employees, with my family, with friends, loved ones. So it is super important. So my goal is to grow wisely, and I'll get where I want to get. Yes, I do have goals, but if I don't meet these goals, but I've done everything I could and you know I'm growing and it goes in the right direction, I'll be I'll be happy and I'm not gonna go like, well, I could have, I should have. I mean, I I could have bought you know uh cryptocurrency when it was a dollar and now it's what$65,000, and then we would not have this conversation. Yeah, it would be like laying on a butt, but you know, I didn't because uh um for whatever reason, I mean, in my particular case, speaking of that, uh, I just didn't believe that it's gonna go anywhere because I actually remember somebody explaining to me and like all the crypto wallet that was like 13, 14, 2014. I that was like, I'm like, what are you talking about? Like that didn't make any sense with my finance background. And of course, you know, later it hit, but it took it took a while. But you know, some people, way smarter than me, did not believe in it. So my point is, but again, I'm not going back and like, well, see, I lost. I mean, that no, no, because I would not be where I am right now, I would not know what I know now. Like the bankruptcy, I'm grateful for that I had bankruptcy because it led me to where I'm today. I strongly believe what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

SPEAKER_00 27:18
Yeah, and uh, I think you touched on because you're into personal development, I'm sure you're familiar with the term misoji, misogi, which is a Japanese term uh where you essentially set super ambitious goals where you have a 50% chance of failing. But it's it doesn't really matter, you know, whenever you fail, it's the fact that you've set this ambitious goal and the whole journey driving you there just brought you to a level that you would have never reached without setting it as a super high goal.

SPEAKER_02 27:44
Yeah, so it's the same like shoot shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you're gonna land in the stars, you know, around the stars.

SPEAKER_00 27:51
Yeah, no, exactly. And that brings me to my maybe la not last question, but I know that you enjoy smoking cigars to think about business. Or at least that's what I have come across online. If that's true, what's your perception on having to you know taking you know, slowing down to make good decisions? You know, do you have any other recommendations for founders and entrepreneurs today who are overwhelmed with information on you know how to think about growing their business?

SPEAKER_02 28:18
Yes, I mean schedule your strategy time. Like I'm lucky I live in uh San Diego, right on the bay. So like I would go and walk uh 10K at the bay, just either listening to music or maybe listening to some podcast or not listening to anything. Uh, and that just you know makes my brain to refresh and you know, think about it. And also I would say schedule your free time and your strategy time because I like I was making a mistake, I was scheduling my strategy time the end of the day on Monday, but by the end of the day, I spoke to everybody on my team. I mean, I put up a couple of fires, I you know, sent a bunch of emails, and then my brain is not operating, so I'm sitting to work on the strategy and nothing. So now I just put time in and I do my strategy walk for two hours first thing in the morning. So I wake up, I go for a walk, I work on a strategy, I come back with a bunch of ideas, and then I schedule meetings. So you have to schedule, you can't just do it. Well, I'm gonna work on a strategy when I have time. No, if it's not in your calendar, it's probably not gonna happen. You can't just train your brain, okay, it's 3 p.m., you are now gonna be in a creative mode. I mean, at least I cannot do it. If you know how to do it, please teach me. I would love to know. But you know, so uh you have to pick your battles, and then one day you have a buffer day, which is you preparing for your best day, so your focus day. Focus day is when you're making the revenue, so you're meeting with the clients, or you're meeting with partners, or you're meeting with, you know, uh some decision makers, but you're also supposed to have three days, and three days is when uh you don't do anything work-related. And then I have three days, I just you know, spend time with friends, go to see a show, you know, go have a drink, I mean, go out to dinner, like whatever it is. And then again, remember work is not everything. This is just, you know, because our parents, our grandparents used to work 18-hour days doesn't mean you have to. It's like I think Steve Jobs said that you have to work smart, not hard. So it is just you can get stuff done in less number of hours if you go smart about it.

SPEAKER_00 30:33
Yes, uh, I just wanted to uh share this thing, which I'm sure you're also familiar with. The Eisenhower decision metrics where you just plan when it's urgent and important, you just book it in your calendar. So your strategy sessions, you kind of marking them down.

SPEAKER_02 30:49
I've seen it. I mean, I became a part of a great organization for me called Strategic Coach. So I joined it, I don't know, four or five years ago. They changed my life. So they have similar things. I mean, there are a lot of things like that, and they uh I just call it differently. But yes, you absolutely you have to, you know, look at the stuff and you have to delegate as much as possible. I can tell you my personal growth started when I started delegating because I was a huge micromanager. It was horrible. I mean, now I'm looking back, I'm like, how did I live my life? I had to make a decision on everything, I had to be involved in everything, and I had to know a lot of information, my head was about to explode, and then I was just doing uh um stuff that I'm not supposed to be doing. There are other people who are way better at it than me. And then when I started delegating, then when I saw, okay, I actually have I can now can add more businesses and I have more free time, and you know, I like what I'm doing because I'm not bugged into like stuff that I don't like doing.

SPEAKER_00 31:49
Yeah, that's uh that's amazing. I think just as a as a last comment or last question, where can people maybe find you to learn more about how you grow? Because I did come across a lot of that content about you online. So I'm I know that people can do the same to learn about how you're growing and running your business. So, what's the best place to find you and connect with you?

SPEAKER_02 32:07
The best way is to go to my site's uh website franchisevismax.com. It's franchisevismax.com, and then people can decide if they want to talk about bookkeeping for their business, if they want to consider buying a bookkeeping franchise, which by the way, for some people it's a mechanism to legally immigrate to the United States, because we are part of you know uh the program where people can get an E2 visa, which is you know relatively easy to get to come to the United States and it does not require a million of dollars, and then uh uh, or they can decide if they want to talk about possibly buying a franchise business, okay? Uh not bookskeeping. So at franchisevismax.com, they can just choose and eventually they'll get to my team, different teams, and then they'll question them, find out more, and then I promise everybody eventually will get to me and I'll have a conversation with everybody. That's how bookskeeping is set. Right now, I talk to every potential client. I mean, large or small, they all come to me.

SPEAKER_00 33:09
So I will be sharing all the links. Thank you so much, uh Max. And yes, any final thoughts or comments that you'd like to share for our viewers and listeners?

SPEAKER_02 33:18
You know, just quick thing. AI is great, but remember it's not replacing us as humans. So I don't care how many movies and TV shows you're watching and what you know books you're reading. AI is just a tool that's gonna make our life easier. AI is not replacing the human factor, at least not for me. I don't know what's gonna happen two generations from now, but I'm not you know willing to spend the rest of my life with robots. You know, I want to spend it with humans because I appreciate that. So AI is super important. You have to learn, you have to become better, but just don't think that this is gonna replace everything. It won't. The animations happened before, and yet, you know, uh society survived, became better. And I strongly believe that, you know, at least I'm looking at all the AI tools, it's just it's there to help me, to give me more free time, not the other way around.

SPEAKER_00 34:15
Yeah. No, it's true. And to be honest, this is the whole point of the of this podcast. Uh, I used to do a bunch of demos on YouTube teaching people how to build. But then once I started building for clients, I realized that the picture is very different. It's a tool, people need to use it, people need to like it and trust it. And we need people like you to give us like an honest uh opinion and a firm stance on you know how helpful it is to make to reassure people a little bit on how to deal with it.

SPEAKER_02 34:41
Awesome. Vlad, thank you very much for the opportunity. I really enjoyed that conversation.

SPEAKER_00 34:45
So much for listening to this podcast. This is Business AI Explained, and I am Vlad. I am the founder of Elements Agents, and we build custom AI applications. If you do need support to implement custom AI solutions, you can book a session with me below. Or otherwise, if you want to hear for more AI experts and execs implementing AI in their companies, come back on next Tuesday for a new episode. Ciao.