The Route into Growing a Successful Franchise Business, with Love Tutoring Festival 3 Speaker and Founder of Groe Global, Sean Goldsmith: Podcast Transcript

Ludo Millar
Hello, and welcome to the Qualified Tutor Podcast, the podcast that brings you the latest in the world of tutoring EdTech and education and hopefully inspires in us a big change that each and every one of us is capable of.

Qualified Tutor is an industry-leading tutor training organisation and an online tutoring community for 1000s of tutors around the world. This podcast is the voice of this community, where we aim to hear from tutors, teachers, entrepreneurs, coaches, business experts, students, tutor printers, and more from the world of tutoring about what inspires them every day, how they can help tutors like you and what they’ve learned about tutoring along the way.

The question is, what will you learn today?

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Ludo Millar 1:46
Hello, and welcome, dear listeners, to the 117th episode of this, the Qualified Tutor Podcast. My name is Ludo Millar, the host of this podcast. Welcome back to our regular listeners. Welcome to any of you for whom this is your first time listening to the Qualified Tutor Podcast. And, of course, a huge welcome to the man who’s going to make this podcast, this episode happen, Sean Goldsmith, Welcome Sean.

Sean Goldsmith 3:03
Thank you for all the pressure you’ve just placed on me. [LAUGHS]

Ludo Millar 3:08
It’s going to be a wonderful conversation about franchising, Sean, you are a true expert in this field. So, listeners, sit back relax, Sean is going to take you through how franchising works but just as a little intro so that you know where Sean’s coming from, Sean is the Co-Founder of Groe Global who, if you haven’t heard of Groe Global before, are an international franchising consultancy, 360º development service for your business and truly they do everything that you as a business need to innovate to build your brand. Now, franchising is a huge part of education and Groe Global work in this sector, as well as fashion, retail finance and social media. Perhaps we can learn a little bit from stories and anecdotes from those industries today. Now, Sean, you have a great deal of knowledge to add to our audience of small tutoring business owners and those looking to grow their brand through partnerships and collaboration and as we were just talking about before, we’re lucky to announce that Sean will also be joining a rocket-powered roundtable session on Tuesday 28th of June at the Love Tutoring Festival 3 and you can hear him for free by heading to the link to grab your tickets. So that’s an important thing to say first. But without further ado, Sean, welcome to the podcast. What’s giving you reason to smile today, Sean?

Sean Goldsmith 4:38
Oh, so many different things, the sun shining finally in Winchester, you know, so that’s step number one, but no. Actually, this is perfect timing because this morning, we got our official documentation. We’ve just set up a charity in South Africa, which is a Pan-African charity called the Foundation of Franchising in Africa and its sole purpose is to use the mechanism and the strategies behind franchising to be able to help the poorest of the poor. So, many NGOs in the past and, you know, World Banks and guys like that have gone into Africa, started some amazing initiatives where they effectively gave money, you know, to local communities to start these initiatives. The unfortunate thing is, quite often what happens is the minute the charity or the UN or whoever it is that set it up, step back, because they’re moving onto the next project, these projects really frequently fail.

Now, what franchising does, in the best possible way, is it creates a cyclical vested interest in the success of a project, right, so, at the moment, we are really working on, you know, a franchise model for sanitary products for ladies in Africa. There are some herbal teas, incredible herbal teas, I don’t know if any of you guys have heard of Rooibos, redbush. There are some better ones in Africa. So we’re working on that; vertical farming, you know, all of them are all to do with helping out humans, you know, in as far as we can. So that, honestly, is the thing making me smile today to be fair.

Ludo Millar 6:26
I think that is going to continue to make you smile for the rest of the year. There are some incredibly worthwhile meaningful projects, Sean. Now, just to take listeners, just to take you back a few years, that’s obviously a little background to what Sean does today, and what he has been building to in his career. But as you know, we’d like to start this podcast from the beginning. Now, Sean, I gather, actual school reports may still be stored away in boxes in South Africa, but you have a strong feeling of what those reports were trying to get to way back in your school days. Do you mind telling us a little bit about that?

Sean Goldsmith 7:06
Yeah, they were pretty universal, you know, the feedback was frequent. And the same, from my earliest year. So it’s worth saying that I grew up in a- my parents are from Britain. And my granddad was an engineer. And we ended up in a very, very small community alongside the factory that my granddad started, built. But the consequence was, we were in the middle of nowhere. And in a very, very, very small town, and at that time, was also very anti-British, because of old Boer War sentiments. And in fact, I played rugby with the great, great grandson of a guy called General de la Ray, who was the main general against the British in the Boer War. So that gives you a bit of a feeling. But in my whole school career, my whole school career, we only ever had one English-speaking, first language English-speaking teacher. So all of our other teachers were Afrikaans, and they weren’t massively keen on anyone of English descent. So as an example, almost every year, we would, as we entered into our new classroom, we would just automatically go and sit at the back, because that’s where we- that was our place. And, you know, the classes in South Africa worked with, you know, it was ranked. So, you know, if you were the smart kids, you were in A class, you know, and then it went to the B class, the C class, you know, and that was usually the thing. The English kids were always put in the D class, just by definition. So, my feedback on the reports was always, you know, ‘talks too much’, right, ‘gets distracted easily’, and, you know, ‘has massive potential, but never never quite focuses’, you know, that has never changed to this day.

Ludo Millar 9:03
Do you think then, that, that has led you to why you do what you do today?

Sean Goldsmith 9:11
Very much. So, you know, I speak to many franchisors. In fact, I’ve got one of the largest mastermind groups for franchising in Britain. We’ve got about 400 franchisors in there now. But, you know, the one thing I often say to people is there are all kinds of gurus [who] have PhD and things behind their name. You know, they’ve all got the reasons the why, you know, the why people do it and you know, it’s become quite a weird thing now because everyone feels like they need to create or imagine this big why, when actually sometimes the why is a very, very simple thing. So a lot of people start businesses because they’ve got no choice. That’s a why, you know, they need to make money for their family. But my why was because consistently throughout school, you know, we were told as Englishmen, we were gonna get nowhere, you know, we were never ever going to achieve things and I still remember my headma ster, Mr. Krueger saying to me, “Englishman, you are going to be nothing”, right. Those words, those exact words, they just stuck in my brain. And, you know, my why is actually a little bit of a ‘screw you’, you know. And it’s more of a chip on the shoulder than anything else. And I say to people frequently, and I don’t think people understand how often what’s perceived as a negative is actually a very, very strong positive, you know, so, a chip on the shoulder, it’s not something to drag you down, a chip on the shoulder is the thing to drive you forward.

I’m a big fan of working with people who have a chip on their shoulder because they really are motivated, you know, to go for things. So my motivation, and my why, is just basically be the chip on the shoulder.

Ludo Millar 10:57
I hope that Mr. Krueger, you know, is living a very fulfilling life, but I hope he’s not listening to this. [LAUGHS]

Sean Goldsmith 11:08
It was a very different world back then, you know, we had amazing teachers, but, you know, it was just a culture that we grew up in, you know, and to be fair, I actually sent him an email a few years ago. And it’s weird, because, you know, some people might be really put down or angry at somebody doing something like that, right. And, you know, the way I’ve lived my life, and as I got older, I just realised, actually, that that guy did more for me than anybody else I would ever know. Because sometimes, sometimes, what you need is somebody to say to you that you can’t do something in order for you to fulfil your potential.

And I do that in franchising often. And I say to franchise owners, you know, you get people that need a cuddle, and you get people that need a kick, you get people who need to be motivated. And then you get people who need to be challenged. And I was one of the challenged ones, right, I needed Mr. Krueger, to say to me, I was never gonna get anywhere, in order for me to say, well, hold my beer. Watch this, buddy. You know? That’s brilliant.

Ludo Millar 12:20
That is, Sean. Thank you. So for our listeners out there who have heard the word ‘franchising’, but perhaps don’t know how it applies to what they do, or what you do, what does franchising really mean to you, Sean?

Sean Goldsmith 12:37
So franchising is very, very important to me. I started my life in Britain, you know, arrived here with £100, literally, and a British passport. And I started a business very early on. And I was very lucky because I was probably that distracted kid that just took chances. There were no way other people didn’t see a chance I went for it. And very early on at the age of 21, I managed to win the Amazon accounts in Britain, right. And within about a year and a half, I had 800 people working for me, across Britain, in Milton Keynes, in Glasgow, Reading, Middlesbrough, I mean, everywhere, Stoke-on-Trent. And all of that was just purely because I was young, and I didn’t know how to say no, and I didn’t know what my own limitations were etc. Anyway, it went really, really, really well.

But then one day, you know, I had not yet learned the power of good contracts. So most of what we did with Amazon was a little bit of, you know, gentlemen’s agreement type thing, it was going very, very well. But at that stage, it was before Eastern Europe had opened up, so there were no Polish workers, etc. It was only South Africans, Kiwis, right. We were all over here on working holiday visas. And there was a real, real need for workers in places like warehouses and things like that. I mean, we did all the prep jobs, you know, the stadium jobs, you know, we pulled the pints everywhere. So what happened is a lot of the people that I gathered, were also Afrikaans, Aussies and Kiwis. So what I said to Amazon was, listen, you know, please, if you could just give us some notice, because these guys are moving here because you are Amazon, like everyone wants to work for you. So a lot of people relocating specifically to Milton Keynes and to Glasgow etc, to get jobs. And then on the 24th December one year, they just said to us, listen, sorry, the US thinks there’s gonna be a slowdown. And all of these guys- I remember firing about 400 people, the day before Christmas, at the tender age of 23 at that point, and that really messed my head up.

So, long story coming to a point, after that, I got out of the recruitment side of things and when I bumped into franchising, my wife was working in a franchise. I spoke to the founder, he liked me and he said, ‘Hey, listen, I’ll come, I’ll teach you everything’. Anyway, fast forwarding to today, if I were to say to you why franchising is very, very important, it’s because I made huge mistakes. When I was starting my first business, right, I had no mentoring, I had no people, I could have made four or 5, 6, 7 times the amount of money if I just had a support group around me, if I’d known that there was a support around me and access to knowledge, right. I then suddenly realised when I got into franchising that I was speaking to a great many people who were very successful in their corporate careers. But the minute they started a small business, they were just failing, you know, because corporates and small business are very, very, very different beasts. So franchising became a thing that I realised was incredibly successful, the single most successful business format in Britain and the world really.

So just to back that up with statistics. So 93.7% of all franchisees are not only still in business after three years, but they’re profitable. Right now if you take that in comparison with any other small business, that is in stark contrast to the success levels of a DIY business, a ‘do it yourself’ business. That said, franchising has got a dodgy name. So there have been franchisors, you know, in the past who have been dodgy, and you know, they’ve done things the wrong way. But again, it’s the single rotten apple that kind of messes everybody around. But in general, what I know about franchising is that if you as a franchisee starts, right, I know that there’s a really good likelihood that you are going to feed your family for a long time, and you’re going to feed them well. The other thing I know is statistically, every franchise, on average hires 13 people. So every franchisee we place out in the field through whichever franchise it is, right, I know that I’m feeding a single family plus 13. And that’s not even the supply chain, you know, so you actually are, one franchisee at a time, you’re actually making quite a big positive impact on the communities. So that for me is very important.

Ludo Millar 17:22
Yeah, and just to make it very clear, for those who don’t know, franchising means, you know, a single brand with a new, you say you’re sending franchisees out into the field, that is people who are taking the franchisor’s brand, and making their own local market.

Sean Goldsmith 17:43
Yeah, what they’re doing is they’re fast forwarding their own knowledge. So, you know, I may have started a tutoring company, right, and been very successful in my own right, and along comes some other people and they say, wow, you know, it actually, you’ve done a great job, right. So this is called growth tutoring. You know, ‘I love what you’re doing’. And often, these are people who have been clients, you know, quite frequently, ‘I love what you’re doing, I’ve always wanted to open my own business, I just don’t have the confidence’. So I then say, ‘Well, listen, you know, I help you open up that business, I will mentor you, I will help you through the whole process. You don’t have to go through all the aches and pains of trying to come up with a clever name, and how to do marketing and all of that. I’ve done it all, I’ve figured it all out, right? So all you need to do is you just need to follow my system, do exactly what I did, right. And what that’s going to do is, you know, my 10 years that I’ve spent building up this great tutoring company, you’re going to be able to get to wher e I’m at in two years, or in one year’. It’s just an acceleration of learning, right? The thing is, whether you know, for the franchisees, it’s a no brainer, really.

Where the big challenge comes in is people who are wanting to franchise their business, right? Because franchising itself, if you have decided to franchise and help other people open under your brand, what most people don’t realise is the minute they become a franchisor right, they stop becoming a tutor because you take on the responsibility of feeding other people’s families not as an employee, but you take on the responsibility from somebody who’s paid you money for your knowledge. So you’ve got that responsibility and there is that requirement from the franchisee for you to fulfil your obligations in supporting and helping etc. And often what happens is when people first franchise their businesses, they underestimate the emotional challenge that that brings.

Because if your franchisee, as an example is having a bit of a tough time, maybe two competitors open at the same time or whatever, and predictable things happen, the franchisee will be very frustrated and quite often and in fact, this is almost a guarantee at some point, a franchisee will turn around and say, ‘I’m not stupid, this model is broken, you know, this was never gonna work. You know, this was a bit of a scam and you just did it for the money’ and all of that kind of stuff. I can categorically tell you, I know almost all the franchisors in Britain, I actually know these people, they are genuinely good people. And they genuinely want to help. I’ve probably only met a couple that I think, well, you know, you’re dodgy. But what happens is the emotional turmoil on the franchisor is a real thing. They take it very personally, there’s no separating their business or, you know, that comment when people say, ‘Well, it’s just business, don’t take it personally’. You can’t do that when it’s your own brand. When it’s your baby, you know, and somebody else is building it up. It is a very, very personal thing. So that’s one of the big challenges that franchisors have.

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Julia Silver
Okay, let’s go …

Ludo Millar
Welcome everyone to this, the 11am event on Monday 24th January at the Love Tutoring Festival.

[QT MUSIC]

Okay, here we go.

Jack Simmonds
So, the first prize that we are going to give away today is … number nine! I need an extra monitor. That’s what I need …

[QT MUSIC]

Ludo Millar
So welcome to the 2pm keynote at the Love Tutoring Festival Day 2, Tuesday 25th of January, 2pm UK time where many of us here are based. Our speaker today is Michael Bungay Stanier, who is a, as you can see here, Wall Street Journal bestselling author on coaching.

Michael Bungay Stanier
Maybe I hand it back to Ludo as a kind of ‘what needs to be said’ to wrap us up here.

Ludo Millar
Well, Michael, you’ve made my job very simple. There doesn’t really need to be much more said, that was world class.

Yes. For those of you wondering, those were just a few highlights from the incredible Love Tutoring Festival 2 that took place at the end of January of this year 2022. The big news from Qualified Tutor and the Love Tutoring Festival team is that … we’re BACK!

From Monday 27th June to Friday 1st July, the Love Tutoring Festival 3 will return. The focus of this festival is on alignment and new beginnings. The festival will have a slightly different feel to it but all of the main tenets will still be there. A host of amazing speakers, including world renowned leaders in education, such as Craig Barton, will be joining us for a festival of fanfare, of training and of connection. Those are the values which hold the Love Tutoring Festival together and those are the values that we want you to come and take part in over the week of the festival.

Head to qualifiedtutor.org/love-tutoring-festival to find out more and book your ticket today.

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Ludo Millar 23:40
So from a franchisee’s point of view, how do you take advantage of good franchisor opportunities?

Sean Goldsmith 23:53
So let me start off this way, if you have spoken to somebody who has a decent business, right, a franchisor, who has a decent business, they’ve built up a decent operation, you already know a little bit about what your potential is, right? Because you need to duplicate things. The one thing that you must always understand and must realise is that yes, there are better tutoring companies, and there are some that are still finding their feet. But still 90% of the workload, right, is up to you. So the common conception is that if you buy into a franchise, it’s like buying a car; you turn the key in, you drive, it works just like that. But it’s not, it’s much more like buying a bicycle. You get the framework, you get the tools, you get everything but you’ve got to do the pedalling. And if you pedal fast, you’ll go fast, right? If you pedal slow, you’ll go slow.

So when you buy into a franchise, you must obviously look at the business, you understand the model, look at the money overheads. Most importantly, understand who is going to be your support person. The salespeople are irrelevant to you. Remember, the salespeople are just there for the first part of the journey. This is a long-term relationship, probably five years at least. So if there’s one thing that you need to do is you need to actually build up or get to know the support people before actually signing up, right? But still, you get the method, the methodology, you’ve got the bicycle, right, but nobody’s going to pedal for you. And that’s the one thing that I think that people really do need to realise before they buy a franchise.

Ludo Millar 25:36
Yeah. So in your experience, then, how do you overcome then the potential problems in the relationship between franchisor and franchisee? What are some of the ways that a good franchisor will manage their franchisees?

Sean Goldsmith 25:55
Yeah, so, as I said, I think that all starts right at the beginning. So I frequently say to people that franchising is an ecosystem, it’s not a system, right. And going back to my days, when I was a game ranger in South Africa, everything affects everything. So the very first moment that you speak to the franchisor, that relationship that you set up over there, the expectation that is set from the franchisor to you, in terms of how difficult it’s going to be and what the challenges are etc. Sometimes franchisors don’t want to tell people that it looks, it’s actually quite tough. They don’t want to say that because they think well, actually, that’s not what people want to hear. But in fact, that is what people want to hear. They want to know that it’s gonna be hard work, so that they can mentally prepare themselves for that. If that piece is done, automatically, everything else starts working much better.

However, what I would say, you know, just in terms of process from a franchisor’s point of view, and regular contacts, and bearing in mind, this is a partnership, right. So, it’s not a given that the franchisor must contact you once a week, right? You’ve contacted each other, you know, friendly stuff, you know, so make sure that there is some form of regular contact with your franchisor. Remember, the relationship you have with your franchisor is going to, also just from a normal human point of view, dictate how much attention you get, so work with them, when challenges come up, and they will 100% all the time come up, and it’s very un predictable for the franchisor. Understand as a franchisee, when you ask a franchisor for help, or advice or anything like that, the franchisor feels in their head that they must be all-knowing. So they put on this all-knowing face, like, ‘Yes, I know exactly what to do here’, and then they panic, and go and try and figure it out. But I think if you’ve got a good relationship with a franchisor, a very open relationship, you will thrive and as long as you also put in the effort, you know, so follow the system.

I can tell you this. It’s a bit of a, you know, phrasing that you always hear in franchising, and there’s a reason for it. Because almost always what happens is people who come up with their own cool ideas, they then really suffer for a little while, sometimes it works out. But often what happens is the business suddenly does a bit of a nosedive. Until they come back and follow the system. They’ve forgotten that the guy who started the franchise probably thought about that and tried it 15 different ways and lost £20,000 in the process. You know, so if you just follow this system, how likely it is that you’re going to do really well.

Ludo Millar 28:40
Yeah. So, Sean, knowing all that you do about franchising, I was going to ask, would you encourage anyone to become a franchisor? But actually, I prefer to ask, would you encourage your own kids, for example, to become a franchisor?

Sean Goldsmith 29:00
They are, well, look, I’ve already had this conversation with them when they were three. And by the way, they actually started their own markets. So I’m gonna answer the question again, in a roundabout way. So when I first had my eldest, you know, I was looking at- during that time when there were lots of conversations and arguments between people about university or apprenticeships, right. And there was one camp like, ‘Oh my God, you’ve got to go to university’ and one camp that said, ‘Oh, university is rubbish, just go do an apprenticeship and, you know, get industry knowledge’ and there was a gaping hole in the middle. It’s called ‘start your own thing, my son’, you know, and I remember when I left school at 18, and I had no idea what to do. I went to my granddad, ex Royal Navy man from north Essex, right. And I say to him, ‘Granddad, there are no jobs’ and then, ‘No, life’s awful’ and he just poked me, he was 5′ 7″ and he just poked me straight in the chest like this, I can still feel it, I’ve got PTSD from it. Bang, he poked me like this in the chest and he said, ‘Boy, if you don’t have a job, make a job’. You know, it’s as simple as that.

But anyway, so my kids actually they started at the age of five, going to village fetes, you know, they started with balloon shops, you know, like with loud balloons because I was trying to teach them promotion, bang the balloons a lot and the kids will come, you know, advertising lesson. My middle child Jack has got Jack’s Jams. So he makes Jack’s Jams, he’s learned that he can go to Aldi and spend £4 on some frozen fruit and some sugar. And he can then make £30 out of that by selling it to the local shop. So yes, my children have been told that they will not be receiving a call or anything of the sort. They will get a franchise however, well, they’ll get some money to start a business. And I don’t know if I want them or you know, if it’s right for them to become franchise owners, because it’s not right for everybody. You know, you’ve got to be a pretty tough, resilient person to be a franchisor. Because it is a tough thing to do. But once you crack it, once you nail it, it is genuinely one of the most fulfilling things when you see- people come to you afterwards and just say, ‘Oh, my God, look at this. I’ve just managed to buy my house’. Or ‘look at this, my kids are going there’. You know, it’s amazing.

Ludo Millar 31:35
Rewarding. So Sean, it feels like you’re equating, you know, franchising with entrepreneurialism. Do you see the two are similar? I mean, yes, it’s maybe obvious that the two go together but what do you think?

Sean Goldsmith 31:51
I’ve got a theory, or at least a definition, right. I believe that an entrepreneur is a crazy thing. What I mean by that is I don’t think that what we generally refer to as ‘entrepreneurs’ are entrepreneurs. Most people, I’d say probably 98% of people who start businesses are enterprising. They’re enterprising individuals, right, who spot a gap, see something, make a calculated decision and go for it. Entrepreneurs are painful, they have no ability not to go for something. They are, and I’m speaking about myself here, right, I am constantly looking at different things, different angles. If I didn’t have a team behind me, nothing would get done ever. So I think that you get entrepreneurs, they are the crazies, they’re the jet setters, they’re the guys who are going to try the maddest things.

But those are the guys that are, you know, the Livingstones of the world, preparing the ground for everybody else, or at least showing everybody else what doesn’t work. But as enterprising individuals, I think that if you feel like your business is good, you’ve got a good tutoring business, and you feel like you want to expand it. But a branch network is not the way to go. Because hiring people and, you know, getting them motivated, managing loads of people is a tough thing in any environment, but you’ve got something special about you, then franchising is a very good vehicle for rapidly rolling out your idea, your methodology, and your systems.

The beautiful thing about franchising, is that again, you know, franchisees are generally enterprising people, not entrepreneurs. So, entrepreneurs, they’d be you [the franchisor], so what happens is you then get these incredibly enterprising people who have the greatest vested interest in the success of their own business, which is your business. So you don’t have what you might have with a manager, that’s like, ‘Okay, 5 o’clock, gone’. You’ve got somebody with their business and they are pushing it in their local area, they are walking around with a T-shirt, you know, on a Sunday on holiday, you know, that kind of thing. So it can be magnificent if you do it right.

Ludo Millar 34:28
Sean, I think that’s such a powerful message to leave listeners with. I am so pleased that we brought you to the podcast because your energy is infectious and your experience is hugely valuable. And it’s not every day that you get to speak to someone who’s launched an international franchising brand. You’ve talked there about how difficult it can be to be a franchisor and there are so many pitfalls to it and places that if you’re not dedicated and willing to learn from others, you’ll fall, you’ll fail. And so I think for many of our listeners, that will be a huge boost to hear that and that may even encourage them to jump into franchising themselves whether as a franchisor or franchisee.

***

Ludo Millar
And now, a brief word from last week’s guest, Steven Berryman.

Steven Berryman 35:26
It was great to join the Qualified Tutor Podcast and really dig into important issues in teaching. Ludo is really easy to talk to. And I think actually, his questions are really incisive too. So it really propels the conversation on. If you’re a future guest to the podcast, be ready to think, be ready to be challenged. And just be yourself and enjoy the conversation.

***

Ludo Millar 35:53
Just to kind of wrap up here, because we’re just coming to the end of this episode, I’d like to as, you’re a man full of ideas, what’s next for Sean Goldsmith?

Sean Goldsmith 36:05
You know, honestly, I think, you know, we’ve been doing pretty well in the franchising world. I think that, you know, going back to the beginning, my why is to try and make an impact on the world, I’d quite like to go to heaven one day [LAUGHS]. So, you know, I think the separation and actually we had this talk yesterday in th e IFA, International Franchise Association, there was a suppliers’ chat and they were like, ‘How do you retain staff?’ and everyone was talking about, you know, well, what we do is we incentivise them with cash, or we give them shares, we give them all this kind of stuff. And I said, you know, ‘What I do is I tell my my people that we’re going to have a day job, and then we’re going to have a human job. And we separate, we get everybody involved in social impact businesses and causes, where we can actually properly help other humans’. And I’ll tell you, you know, especially in this modern day and age, that’s the cause for a lot, you know, to be able to leave a legacy and genuinely help people who otherwise would not get help.

So, I think the future is basically going to be we’re going to continue growing up, we’re growing our client base, our commercial client base, but we will be selecting those clients based on whether or not we can use their business to make a social impact somewhere in the world.

Ludo Millar 37:31
No more meaningful a mission I can imagine, Sean, so thank you for laying that out. If you’d like to hear more about Sean, if you’d like to find out more about Groe Global then groeglobal.com is the place to head. If you want to hear Sean speak a little more about franchising, of course, grabbing your ticket to the Love Tutoring Festival 3, you’ll get to hear Sean live. If you can’t wait til then, you can hear Sean on the Future Fit Fridays podcast with Zanele Njapha. But Sean, if they want to contact you right after this, what is the best place to go to?

Sean Goldsmith 38:18
Yeah, so, I just firstly want to apologise to all the English teachers out there for the spelling of the name. The reason was because I wanted to be cool like the kids and nobody else spelt ‘grow’ this way. It was a branding exercise. But no so literally just sean@groeglobal.com. I’m always available, you know, we’re not one of those companies who charge for chats or advice or anything like that. So if you ever need any advice or you just want some insights into a particular franchise if you’re going to be a franchisee, you know, give me a shout. I know most of them. So more than happy to give some advice.

Ludo Millar 38:58
Thank you so much, Sean, that was rocket-powered, really. Next time we have the wonderful AJ Harper, who is an expert on authorship. She’s an author coach for our own Julia Silver. She’ll be talking to us about business in authorship and authorship in business. So that’s what we have to look forward to in next week’s episode, but for one final time, Sean, thank you very much for joining us here on the Qualified Tutor Podcast.

Sean Goldsmith 39:24
That’s a great pleasure. Thanks for having me. Cheers.

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Ludo Millar

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