Innovative Strategies for Community Empowerment: The Role of Franchising and AI

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Stone Payton: [00:00:15] Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast co-founder with Groe Global, Mr. Sean Goldsmith. How are you, man?

Sean Goldsmith: [00:00:33] I’m doing well. Stone, thank you so much for having me. Uh, you know, it’s a great honor to be on your on your show.

Stone Payton: [00:00:38] It is such a delight to have you on the program. I know this has been in the planning stages for a while. I got a thousand questions. I know we’re not going to get to them all, but. But I think a great place to start would be if you could paint for for me in our listeners, a little bit of a feel for mission purpose. What are you and your team really, really out there trying to do for folks, man?

Sean Goldsmith: [00:01:02] Well, I mean, you know, it’s it’s it’s quite extensive, if I’m honest. But, uh, I’ll give you a bit of history on, on myself. And that might make a lot more sense when it comes to the mission and the vision. Um, so I grew up in a, in a very, very small and poor town, uh, in South Africa, actually, um, and, uh, at the age of 21, I packed up my kit bag and shot off to England to go and find fame and fortune, which took a little longer than I thought it would. Um, but but, um, you know, just accidentally, um, purely because I was on minimum wage, and I want to make a bit more beer money. Um, I started a little recruitment agency, which about a year and a half later and at the age of 22 was, uh, you know, had about 800, um, South Africans, Australians and New Zealanders working in all the pubs in the and the, um, you know, the race courses and all of that in, in Britain. And I was very fortunate to have won the Amazon account. So we were doing all the Amazon picking and packing and all kinds of things. But long story short, I got into franchising, um, you know, in a big way. And it’s 27. We, we, um, you know, I was part of a team. I was the general manager of a of one of the first multi multi-brand franchises in, in Britain.

Sean Goldsmith: [00:02:12] Um, and it was in home services and we took that all the way from when I joined 15 franchisees, uh, you know, to, again, about 700, uh, franchisees across, um, ten brands. Uh, and we, we floated that on the stock exchange. So at the age of 27, you know, we’d we’d taken a, a brand and, and done some incredible things with it. Now during, during my sort of education on franchising, you know, in those, those formative years, um, you know, it became very clear to me that as a franchisor or somebody who’s in charge of a franchise, you’ve got a hefty responsibility on your shoulders because you are in the palm of your hands holding somebody’s, uh, future. And, uh, you know, you are you are the reason and part of the mechanism that’s going to help somebody, um, who potentially in, you know, in a, in another life where an employee very unhappy, um, you know, what what what your job is, is to make sure that that person succeeds in business. That is your only job. Um, you know, and to make sure that they’re able to look after their family, etc.. And I and I saw when I was looking around, um, especially in the ecosystem around Britain, um, you know, where there is no regulation or anything like, like there is in, in the US and in Canada.

Sean Goldsmith: [00:03:29] Um, you know, there were some, some franchise laws that really weren’t taking that responsibility to heart. And, you know, when when a franchise goes wrong, as with any other small business, um, you know, the repercussions are way more, more severe than just losing money. You know, uh, families divorce and, you know, crazy things happen. So, you know, we we, you know, I kind of, you know, made a promise to myself that the, you know, or at least the an assertion that that my job is to make sure that people don’t fail. That’s the only reason that franchising exists. Yes. You make some money and you’ve got a great, uh, you know, system to follow, but ultimately your job is to look after humans. Anyway, fast forward to to Covid and about, uh, two weeks before Covid, we launched this, uh, this program in the UK called the Franchise Mastermind. Um, and we started inviting all the franchisees that we could find, uh, into this, this little group. And it became very evident very quickly to me that whilst franchisors and this, this, this holds true in every country I’ve worked in around the world, whilst franchisors peddle the the narrative of when you buy a franchise, you have the support, you have the infrastructure, you have the business model, you have the plan of action, you have all of these things, right? And they push this very, very, very hard on on to potential franchisees.

Sean Goldsmith: [00:04:53] They have none of those structures in place for themselves, none of them really, really interesting, if you think about it, because a franchisor statistically. Right falls into the same category as a as a small business right. Failure rates sky high where whereas whereas franchisee franchisees their success rates are very, very high. So what happened is we immediately thought, well, God, we gotta we gotta be able to put a support system in place here for franchisees doors. Um, you know, they are, you know, especially over Covid, the, the mental health, uh, challenges that they were going through and the, you know, the financial challenges and all of this kind of stuff. And, you know, in my mind, you save one franchise or you potentially saving 30, 40, 200 small businesses. So we put a lot of effort into, into these, um, into these franchise doors. And, um, you know, funny enough, we that is where the sort of the, the where grow global in its in its current format, um, you know, became formalized because we were doing that previously. But what we noticed was that franchise stores are the ones who need additional support, and ironically, the ones who need it the most are not McDonald’s. Right? Uh, they they’re pretty clued up with these kind of things.

Sean Goldsmith: [00:06:12] It’s the little guys. And, you know, those little guys when they go bust the franchise doors and this, this whole story, I think in the States, too, when they go bust, they go bust when they’ve got five franchisees, when they are tiny, when they’re insignificant, they’ve not been part of an association. They’ve not done anything like that. But they, they, they, they have great fundamental businesses that they’ve built themselves. And those businesses often don’t go bust. But the franchising element of it, right, uh, is, is very, very difficult. And it’s a completely different skill set to running a business, doing window cleaning or doing burgers or whatever it might be. So, uh, we, we set about to develop the infrastructure to support franchisees. So what we did, um, as Grow Global is, uh, we decided that what we were going to do is we were going to start fractionalizing franchise management, um, so that a small franchisor of like three, 4 or 5 franchisees, if necessary, could access a team of highly experienced franchising people and, and really focus on on the relationship part of the of franchising rather than the operational part, because really they need to grow into that. And our, our job and our mission is to become redundant for those franchise owners. So to help them to get to the point where they know which person they want to hire, they’re not just guessing and they’re not putting an ad out and thinking, oh God, I need a franchise manager, I need an ops person, I need a marketing person.

Sean Goldsmith: [00:07:42] What they do is they grow with us. And then when we get when they get to the stage where they can afford or they have the, um, you know, they have the knowledge to be able to get rid of us. Um, you know, we, we, we, you know, do that with, with a smile on our face because that was our intention in the first place. Um, so so that was the kind of nexus of, of of grow Global, um, and at the same time, um, you know, being from Africa, um, I just kept seeing these horrible stories about people in massive poverty. And, uh, during my time in franchising, I’d come across, uh, the Malaysian Franchise Association, and they sent over a delegation of about ten people to me to, uh, into to England specifically to buy franchises. Right. And this is the government wanting to buy franchises. And this was fascinating to me. I was like, well, you know, either this is a like a huge scam or, you know, there’s a politician who’s kind of using government money or, you know, to buy their own franchises. I was like, what the hell’s going on here? But no, it turned out that, um, you know, Malaysia sort of 23, 24 years ago now, um, they had a massive problem in that the actual local Malays, you know, the Malay people themselves, uh, were impoverished and they were really, really struggling to get out of, out of this the doldrums, basically.

Sean Goldsmith: [00:09:01] And, um, you know, the wealthier, um, people were of Chinese origin or of Singaporean origin, etc., but the Malay people themselves were the poorest of the poor, similar story to South Africa, you know, um, but what they did is they had a really forward thinking president and he, he basically said, look, the way to get people out of poverty is through entrepreneurship, right? There’s not a person in the world that won’t agree with that. However, he said, it’s not through just giving people money and saying, go and start a company because the failure rates of small businesses are way too high. So he looked at franchising and he was like, hold on a second, here we go. We could buy master licenses for various franchises which conform to things which people need. So window cleaning or home cleaning or, you know, burgers, but the smaller the smaller, uh, concepts, etc.. And he said, if I buy the franchises as the government and we become the master licensee, then we can fund our people to start businesses, but they’ll be franchise businesses.

Sean Goldsmith: [00:10:04] And those franchise businesses have the systems in place, they have the support structures in place. And most importantly, there is a commercial vested interest up and down the line all the way from the the US franchisor, um, down to the, to the, to the master franchisee and then the franchisee. There’s a vested interest up and down that line to make sure that the guy on the ground succeeds. So fast forward 22 years and they have completely turned around the fortunes of the whole of Malaysia. The Malay people are doing incredibly well. The proportion of entrepreneurs that are that are being spun out of franchises, if you if you know what I mean, guys that learn the trade, they learn the systems, they learn the processes of, um, you know, business through franchising are going out and they’re creating their own, uh, variations of, of, of businesses and franchises. And that became Grow Global’s mission for Africa. So we ended up on the on the stage with the president of South Africa, sir Ramaphosa. Uh, we got very involved in an organization called Wakona, which, um, is primarily there to, to, um, you know, try and help women who have been, uh, you know, suffered violence at home, which is endemic in Africa. It’s terrible. Terrible, especially in South Africa. Um, you know, so we figured, well, you know, why don’t we do this? Why don’t we why don’t we start introducing franchises? We’re going to follow the model proven model.

Sean Goldsmith: [00:11:32] Um, and we’re very pleased to say one of one of the first US brands, very big brand. Um, you know, we managed to to get, uh, master licensee into, into, um, South Africa, a company called teki um, where, you know, the most wonderful thing is happening because they specialize in tech repair. Um, you know, so what we are being able to do is we’re able to, you know, train women who otherwise would have no opportunities to start repairing phones and tablets and drones and PlayStations and, you know, all of these things. So we’re giving them a very real trade, uh, while we’re doing it. Anyway, um, you know, the third and the last very long winded part of this, um, is that, uh, about a year and a half almost now ago, um, this funny little company called OpenAI dropped us. Funny little thing called, uh, AI and ChatGPT on our laps. Um, and, um, it was, it was, uh, it was it was very, very important for us because, uh, what we immediately saw was an opportunity to be able to take all these principles of, you know, uh, eliminating franchisee failure and, you know, helping people that are impoverished. Um, and really, the redistribution or at least the smooth distribution of knowledge and experience. Um, you know, I just saw all of these things, you know, just in, in the droves in, in, um, in AI and immediately we, we set about creating small business AI, right? Um, from the ground up based on franchising principles, you know, um, so we, we, um, are sort of franchising division called Grotech.

Sean Goldsmith: [00:13:16] Um, we building operations manuals. We are building, you know, and these are live AI operations manuals that give somebody context. So, you know, if they, they come along on their phone and they say, oh, sales are low, you know, what should I do? It’ll give them context based on the fact that the franchising world is the most prolific and successful, um, you know, contributor to, to small business success in the world. So we’re taking that combined intelligence, that unified intelligence of franchisors, um, you know, and franchisees from around the world. We are building that into AI with the single minded vision that we are able to help a lady who is selling coca-colas from a mud hut in Central Africa. As long as she’s got a cell phone and she can access the internet, that this I will give her the knowledge of Elon Musk and all the other billionaires combined, along with some of the, the, the, um, you know, the franchise laws when it comes to running a business and how to make it successful. And that’s us in an incredibly large nutshell.

Stone Payton: [00:14:24] Well, no, it’s very helpful context. You must sleep incredibly well at night. The this strikes me as a very noble pursuit. Now that you’ve been at it a while, what are you finding the most rewarding about the work? What are you enjoying the most?

Sean Goldsmith: [00:14:43] Um, I think it is the, you know, the maybe just the diversification or the breaking up of centralized knowledge. I think that’s probably for me, the most, most exciting bit because, you know, when I got into this, this game called franchising, uh, you know, there were there were some guys with big mustaches and walking canes, um, you know, that that weren’t sharing any information, you know, and really, the knowledge when it came to running a business, or at least what the pitfalls are, was, was all very secretive and hidden. You know, uh, a few guys would write books, uh, you know, and I’m, I’m, I have to say, I’m probably one of the only people who’ll ever hear that says I’m skeptical about authors and business books. Um, and, and really, the reason the reason is, is because when you write a book, right, any person, you know, you tend to think about big picture stuff, right? And you, you speak, you speak philosophically and you and you, you, you, you you reach into your into your, um, you know, the knowledge that’s in the forefront of your mind. Um, and, you know, if you were talking to your friend, that same author, if they were just talking to their friend, they would speak in a very, very different way to what they write books and the knowledge and the and the precision of the knowledge that they would impart when chatting, you know, would be much more, much more relevant and much more, more interesting.

Sean Goldsmith: [00:16:06] So similar to a podcast. So I listened to a lot of podcasts because often, often the the authors will say things, uh, in the podcast, which are about 5000 times more useful than what they wrote in their own book, you know, um, because they, they speaking it. So I think the, the, the ability for me to, to know that what I’m building is something that can go into the hand of an ordinary mom and pop, or a lifetime employee that has been working in manufacturing, and the mere thought of running their own business gives them the heebie jeebies. You know, being able to put a, a, an advisor, a world class advisor that is better than a team of advisors in their hand that can talk to them any time of day. Um, that to me, um, is that’s just magic.

Stone Payton: [00:17:03] Well, it certainly sounds like magic to me. Now, you guys have something exciting and intriguing to me, cooking with an outfit called Skill Samurai. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Sean Goldsmith: [00:17:16] Absolutely. So skill summary. Um, in all my travels around, the franchising world is one of the most interesting, uh, little franchises that I’ve come across. So, um, it was originally founded by a wonderful guy called Jeff Hughes, um, who’s Canadian. I think he’s down in Florida at the moment. Oh, God. So sorry. Um, and, uh, so what we what we liked about Skill Samurai was it was part of our broader mission. So what I mean by that is skill samurai is all about education. But they but it’s an intelligence education. They do Stem education. They teach kids coding. They, uh, use the Singapore method for maths. Um, so they say they do, uh, maths training, but they do it in such a smart way, they let the kids, um, code for their favorite games. So Roblox and Minecraft, you know, and they could, they could even do, uh, create themselves a game similar to Fortnite. And I’ve got got three boys under 12. And I can tell you what a powerful sort of, uh, draw card that is. So, um, you know, we started looking at Skill Samurai in the context of the fact that, you know, we could launch it into places like Africa, um, you know, as a, as a relatively low, uh, investment franchise with a high impact. So, so, um, you know, after some discussions and, you know, some very, very amazing alignments, uh, in our thinking between Jeff and I, um, you know, we decided that we’d go ahead and, uh, you know, take 50% of the company, uh, with the mission that we want to we want to empower children.

Sean Goldsmith: [00:18:51] So we’re going to in addition to the Skill samurai curriculum, which is already better than almost any other franchise that I’ve seen out there. Um, we are adding AI training, and we’re also adding something I’m very, um, passionate about, which is an entrepreneur curriculum. So, you know, in in my view, if I look at where AI is going at the moment, I can’t honestly tell you what jobs my kids are going to end up doing. You know, that’s I can’t do. And, you know, I’m I’m developing the AI. So, you know, it’s like it’s it really is very scary to me. Um, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you, Stone, I’ve got a I’ve got an AI that we’ve deployed in the, in the US that will take an inbound call. And we’ve done tests right. And 85% of the people that this AI speaks to have no idea that it’s an AI. So what’s hoped for my children. Right. So, you know, this was a this was a big problem for me because here I am trying to trying to help, uh, people in Africa, you know, in, in South America all over the place. And this AI thing comes along and I’m just like, oh, God. What, what, like how what what’s, you know, you you’re going to have to become a plumber, my son. You know, it’s nothing wrong with that. But, um, then it just occurred to me, you know, the the one thing that is true about humanity is that the most innovative and, um, you know, uh, I guess, um, uh, sector or at least the way of thinking.

Sean Goldsmith: [00:20:22] Right. That is the most protected for the future is entrepreneurial thinking. So as far as I was concerned, you know, everything that you teach children must come with the mindset and the method of thinking of entrepreneurs, right? Where they are able to spot a gap, you know, a millimeter wide and about ten miles deep, you know, and and that, that that was the key. So with Skill Samurai, what we’re going to be doing is we’re going to be, uh, you know, teaching kids the engineering side of things with 3D printers. We can teach them coding. Uh, you know, we’re going to be teaching them, um, all kinds of things. We’ve even just, uh, you know, started discussions with, uh, you know, um, the company called techie that does electronics repair, um, to incorporate that into the kids training. So they got physical, actual engineering training along the way. And then we’re going to combine all of that. The glue behind all of that is going to be entrepreneurial thinking and entrepreneurial training, but not in the way that, you know, currently exists, where, you know, you go to, uh, you know, you have an entrepreneur class at school and they tell you to sell some soap or cookies or whatever it might be. Um, this will be this will be franchise AWS. I mean, franchise AWS are that’s their job. They train people on how to run businesses. So we’re going to be using the fundamentals of franchising to help these kids take the skills that they learning, whether it’s coding or, you know, working on Canva or whatever it might be, and find a way to make a bit of money out of it.

Sean Goldsmith: [00:21:54] Um, and we think that if we continue to do that, if we do that from a young age and we get the kids continually working in the program, what’s going to happen is one of the most beautiful things that could possibly happen to mankind, as far as I’m concerned. And that is we will be able to allow children to leave school as. Trends of entrepreneurship. Now think about the implications of that. In all my years in franchising, the vast majority of people that have come to us, you know, that are wanting to start a business for the first time, are in their mid 40s, plus first time they’ve ever done anything. They have to learn how to be an entrepreneur at that point, right? Right. Doing this, doing it this way. What we would be able to do is empower young people with the ability to, regardless of what the future is, what I can and cannot do, figure out the tiny little gap that is going to make them, you know, help them feed their kids one day. So that’s our that’s our kind of mission. And, you know, along those lines, we’ve been engaged with, again, the South African government, um, and we’re going to be trying to take this across the whole of Africa and try and see if we can, you know, find a few entrepreneurial sparks that might turn into a blazing fire.

Stone Payton: [00:23:15] Well, it sounds like it’s a it’s a marvelous marriage, if you will, because it’s allowing you to live into your mission and specifically your commitment to corporate social responsibility. But you’re going to be able to help these folks gain some reach well beyond anything they would have achieved without the discipline and rigor and methodology that Gro Global brings to the party. Huh?

Sean Goldsmith: [00:23:41] Yeah, absolutely. And you know, we very humble when it comes to these things. You know the the the fact is, you know, I grew up poor and I remember, you know, what it was like for my parents. I still have this this one little vision. I must have been I probably about six or so. And I remember we were in this big department store and I was begging my mum for, for this, uh, this little toy car. And I was begging and I was begging. I was begging. And the reason I think it got seared into my memory is, uh, because she just turned to me and she had tears coming out of her eyes, and she just said, boy, I just can’t today, right? And that that stuck with me. And, you know, the thing is that this is happening all the time. I’ve got to tell you, Stone, you know, you come to a place like Cape Town and, um, it is it is like the best that the first world has to offer. It is beautiful and it is impeccable. And, you know, the it’s it’s almost dream, like, it’s like that old 1960s American vision, you know, of the of the suburbs. Um, and then five minutes later, um, there’s people living effectively in a favela, you know, uh, dirt poor, got nothing. So, you know, those things just don’t marry up for me in my head. And, uh, as far as I’m concerned, you know, we should all be trying our very best to figure out how to help people like that. Uh, not by by handouts, but by empowerment. That’s the core.

Stone Payton: [00:25:08] So are you guys at Grow Global? Are you still taking on additional clients, or is your plate full right now?

Sean Goldsmith: [00:25:16] No, we always taking on additional clients. Um, so, you know, we are, um, pretty busy at the moment. We do franchise. Well, we work in 14 countries around the world. Wow. Um, you know, we, uh, we do a huge amount of franchise marketing, uh, you know, a lot of consulting, um, you know, just, uh, really, really fundamental, um, you know, basics of franchising. And we, we combine all the learnings we, we have from, from the global franchising community and we apply them to our clients. Um, and then, of course, we’ve got the AI that we’re working on heavily. So, you know, the beauty is that our workforce is a lot cheaper than, than the US workforce at the moment. So that’s helpful when it comes to marketing and bits and pieces for the franchise laws. Um, and because we, we kind of offer a management solution, um, you know, we manage entire franchise networks, their global networks for US based clients. So, you know, they focus on the US, we represent them as them, uh, on a white label basis, um, worldwide. And we, we build the international, uh, network and they focus on the US. It’s a marriage made in heaven.

Stone Payton: [00:26:24] Well, I’ll tell you what, if you’re up for it, we’re going to do this again and we’re going to try to follow this skill. Samurai story. I’d love to have you come back sometime and get caught up on the progress, what you what you’ve learned in that process. That would be a fun story to follow. If you’re up for that.

Sean Goldsmith: [00:26:41] We’d absolutely love it. And, uh, you know, there’s plenty more amazing entrepreneurial stories coming out of Europe and and Africa I’d be happy to share with you.

Stone Payton: [00:26:50] Oh, it sounds marvelous. All right. For now, though, let’s make sure that our listeners can tap into your work if they’d like to have a more substantive conversation with you or someone on your team, or they just want to tap into your work, uh, you know, website, LinkedIn, whatever you feel like is appropriate. I just want to make sure we make it easy to connect with you guys.

Sean Goldsmith: [00:27:08] Yeah. Great. Um, so on my LinkedIn. Absolutely. I’m very happy with that. So it’s Sean s e a n Goldsmith, uh, at, uh, well, it’s LinkedIn forward slash Sean Goldsmith. And then of course our websites, which is uh, grow globalcom which is g r o e globalcom. Uh, and uh, of course we’ve got our tech, our AI side, which is grow tech, grow tech. Com and, uh, you know, any of those ways are completely perfect to contact us on.

Stone Payton: [00:27:41] Well, Sean, it has been an absolute delight having you on the program today. Thank you so much for your insight, your perspective. Keep up the work, man. The work you’re doing is so important and we sure appreciate you.

Sean Goldsmith: [00:27:56] Thank you so much Stone. I really, really enjoyed this and thank you. Thank you for taking the time to listen to my very long winded story.

Speaker4: [00:28:04] My pleasure.

Stone Payton: [00:28:06] All right, until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Shawn Goldsmith with Grow Global and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you in the fast lane.