Ep762: Giuseppe Grammatico – Pick the Medium That Works for You and Stick With It

Andrew Stotz 00:01
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning in our community. We know that to win an investing, you must take risk, but to win big, you've got to reduce it. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. And I want to thank all my listeners around the world, especially in New Jersey, for joining this mission today. Fellow risk takers this is your worse podcast host Andrew Stotz, from a Stotz Academy and I'm here with Youssef a grammatical. Are you set the are you ready to join the mission?

Giuseppe Grammatico 00:43
Absolutely. And you're looking forward to I love worst podcast host. I like that.

Andrew Stotz 00:50
It's hard to beat me. That's right. You know, I've tried so far. The worst? No, no, I'm the worst. No, my spot?

Giuseppe Grammatico 01:00
Well, we'll let you keep that title. So you're, you're good, you're safe.

Andrew Stotz 01:04
It's a little tip for those people that are intimidated by starting something new. Just tell everybody hey, I'm the worst. So every time I make a mistake, I'm like I told you as the worst.

Giuseppe Grammatico 01:13
We set the bar low. Exactly. Exactly. Awesome.

Andrew Stotz 01:17
So let me introduce you to the audience. You Seve is a franchising advisor, who has owned a number of master franchise licenses and has enjoyed a successful franchising career guiding over 200 individuals who business ownership, many for the first time, in addition to get decades of franchising, he also has 20 years of sales, marketing and management experience. Take a minute and tell us about the unique value you are bringing to this wonderful world.

Giuseppe Grammatico 01:46
The unique value I bring to the world is from personal experience helping people figure out if they should or should not own a business. Forget about franchise just a business in general. So getting that time and financial freedom back. So my unique talent is having gone through the same process really helping people figure that out, not what the businesses or what the franchise is, but really figuring out hey, let's get clear on the goals, the vision where I want to be, and how do I go about step by step from keeping that job to transition to transitioning to a business, how to go about that in the in a very clear and concise manner.

Andrew Stotz 02:27
I mean, if I think about a lot of executives all around the world, they want a side hustle, where they build something and all that. And what's interesting is that when you think about a franchise, you're talking about an existing business and an existing operating system, versus many people think I'm gonna start up a new company from scratch. And how do you like, consider the differences in those two things? You know, what, what is your advice to people when they start to have those questions?

Giuseppe Grammatico 02:59
Yeah, that's a valid question. It's a question I had to kind of figure out and ask and essentially, what it comes down to is, do you want in simplest terms, do you want a business built for you that you can run with a business on training wheels, a business in a box? So essentially, you sign a franchise agreement? And you're off to the races training and getting that business open? Or do you prefer figuring out from scratch may take a little bit longer, but you have say and exactly how everything looks and feels and what the process of the SOPs are. So really, it's what you were looking for. I wouldn't say one is better than the other. But I will say you have an unfair advantage, as I as I talked about in my book with the franchise, because you could be up and running with a franchise and as little as 30 to 90 days.

Andrew Stotz 03:48
Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things too, a lot of people look at franchises like, oh, it's like a job, you know, everything's laid out. Whereas with a startup, it's like, I can bring all of my creativity and all that. But having startup started up a few different companies over the years, I realized, oh, man, I mean, what's the whole thing when you get your startup working is that you're desperate to try to do set up systems and SOPs, which is just so hard to do when you're running your business, you know?

Giuseppe Grammatico 04:18
So it's, it's a lot and sometimes, does it really matter? Sometimes, in many cases, I challenge people, what the services or what you're offering, you're looking for a result, right? A side hustle a franchise, you know, real estate, these are all various vehicles to get you what, make more money, create more time. So when I got into my first few businesses, I honestly was very particular as to what it was. And then I found that it really doesn't matter if it's a executive model. I have a general manager in place. I'm not saying it happens overnight, but these were vehicles, and I created one thing and I could say this with confidence. I never missed my son's soccer game. I became a soccer coach. That was what I was looking for what the money was important, but it was more of my why my family so that was the result of the business, it allowed me to not miss the games leave work early, not have to work necessarily. I'm not saying I never worked nights and weekends, but did not have to miss any games because of work. So yeah, there's, there's a lot there. And people have to really give that some thought Are they are they willing to take that risk, a calculated risk in order to start their own business, you know,

Andrew Stotz 05:31
as an analyst, a financial analyst in the stock market, all in my career, and now, you know, doing my own business in relation to finance. I own almost half of a factory here in Thailand, we roast coffee, and my best friend runs it. And we, he, he started it, and I'm supporting him every way I can, from the beginning. And he's a great manager and operator of the business. And when we laugh together nowadays, as we got older, we, it's like, your, your job is to make coffee, my job is to make money, right? In other words, to make sure that the making of coffee makes cash. Right? And, and that, then when you've looked at so many 1000s of businesses, as I have over the years, it's like a business is just a vehicle to create a cash flow. But it's so hard for people to see that when they're in it. Because you know, you're just emotionally you know, in it.

Giuseppe Grammatico 06:31
You are and by the way I worked, you know, on the investment side for companies like JP Morgan. So I work with analysts, I work with portfolio managers, and I always say, you know, we work with different types of people. Some people are more analytical than others. But the analytical people I feel sometimes they'll dive into the numbers, and then I'll and then and then they'll say, they'll want feedback. And I said, you know, you've done half the analysis, and they say, What do you mean, I go, at the end of the day, you know, life's too short to be miserable. You know, what is your role in the business? What are you doing daily? The numbers make sense. But if that specific franchise has you going out, and doing podcast, going door to door talking with businesses, and the idea of just leaving your house, you know, scares the hell out of you, that may not be a good fit. So I always say, look at, do it in a certain order, look at things that actually you enjoy doing. Because the trickier is sustainability. You can make money the first year, but how do you make money consistently, year over year, build value in the business and sell for a multiple, so you have to look kind of at the big picture? What are you? What are you doing? And what are you good at, because that's another point here. Depending on your role in the business, you want to enjoy it. And if you're good at you know, analytics, and you know, looking at the SOPs, and maybe managing a manager, then you want that type of business that allows for that. So there are a lot of things that I think people forget to look at. That, by the way, numbers are extremely important franchise agreements. And documents are extremely important, but really understand what the average day in the life looks like in that business. Yeah,

Andrew Stotz 08:08
I always tell my students, finance adds no value. And it gets them thinking, you know, what does it mean? And it's a little bit like weighing yourself on a scale the scale gives you some feedback, right? But the fifth scale can do nothing. There is nothing that a scale can do to get you to your result. And so I always say that finance is a mirror that is a reflection of management action. And it gives us feedback to think about you know, but yes on the ground, what you're doing, those are the things that really matter. Before we go on I just you know, I know how hard it is to write books, having written some myself and struggled in my case to do it. It was a challenge I want to just highlight to everybody out there that your book you on your website, you've got it and also I can see on Amazon franchise freedom a new manifesto for your financial and time freedom. So for those people that are thinking about franchise or want more information, you know, go to either your website or Amazon right there to get it. Absolutely.

Giuseppe Grammatico 09:18
Thank you. Yeah, it was basically actually, we took four or five podcast episodes transcribed that had a copywriter, so I was able to leverage you know, back in the day, we talked about radio and the radio voice. We didn't have video we're just doing audio because I said why I have a face for radio apparently. Then we added video and that screwed things up. But the joke was why don't we why don't we just use what you're saying? So we wrote a book I read it the other day, I created an audio book. And we which is not on the site yet. We're gonna get it up there soon. But basically 30 minute read and it walks you through what a franchise is, but also how to figure out what that ideal business looks like at all. still talks about the things I didn't know about like setting up a team, financial advisors, accountants, CPAs, attorneys and things like that, and the importance of communication of everyone talking with one another. And every decision is based off of the input of these three or four people. So we go into that, and just general kind of business advice I've learned over the years.

Andrew Stotz 10:20
Fantastic. And also, for the listeners out there, I'll have a link to your podcast, which is called franchise freedom. And I see your latest one, why you should not own a franchise, well, what a great place to start for the listeners and the viewers out there. So check it out, I'll have links to that in the show notes. And now it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment thinking it will be tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to and then tell us your story.

Giuseppe Grammatico 10:48
Yeah, I've had I'm trying to think of like, which was the worst of the worst, right. I mean, I've had some, you know, I had some boring ones. And those are some stock losers. And I'm not gonna go into that one. But I think the worst investment as an entrepreneur has been, we out. So basically was looking to take some things off my plate, and I've never hired a VA or really hired a marketing company before I had them. People in the past handle certain things, like just put up the website or just do email. But I had a company years ago that we hired and it was full service marketing, you know, they, they, they basically said, tell us what you do. And we'll create the rest. And I was in awe, like, wow, that's gonna save me hours a day. And it's it basically, they did everything, website management, emails, social media posts. And what happened was, my voice got lost in this process, you know, certain things, you can outsource 100%. And I work with people that have a dozen VAs that are doing various functions. But I felt like I lost my voice. And I gave someone else control of my brand of my voice and what I do, and it got diluted. I felt like I was thrown in a box with just about every other company in their portfolio. And they were putting out I was in the same group as real estate agents are businesses not in real estate, and with dentists and things like that, and I just feel like we kind of lost control. And it was my versus worst investment, because we saw virtually zero return, it ended up causing more confusion than anything else. And then it took me a lot of time to kind of regain control of my brand and in my voice and what I was saying. And we opted to move towards a solo episode show for the entire just about all of 2023 to really gain back and answer people's questions directly, because they weren't on the phone with the individuals I work with every day and hear about their pain points and what's going on in their lives. So, you know, my advice. And what I learned was, you know, if you pick the medium that works, or if podcast works, stick with it, and then create all your content around the podcast. If it's just videos, then so be it or if you're a writer, write books and blogs, but you can repurpose and recreate content. And I think that was the part that was missing. I was the person with the ideas and questions and content, I just needed some help putting it out there, you know, breaking it up into snippets, putting it into an audio book or social media posts. So that was I would say my career was a really large investment. And one of my worst investments. And by the way, I'm not against marketing companies just in how I'm going about it just hired a company to outsource everything else, and pretty excited to what we have that what we're creating in 2024.

Andrew Stotz 13:38
Yeah, what I would take away from that is that when you're running a business, you're so desperate for marketing and sales, you've got to figure out a way to reach the market, you've got to figure out a way to get a compelling offer to get compelling communication about what you do. And, and so it is very seductive to turn to marketing company, and online ads, you know, all of these different things social selling, and what my experience is, has been somewhat similar to yours is that there's no holy grail there. You know, they are, they are if they're sincere, and they're honest, they'll do their best. And there's a small number that are amazing, I'm sure where they spend a huge amount of time for instance, interviewing you. You could imagine if they were doing it really well. They would basically say every week we're going to talk for an hour I'm going to record that and I'm going to cut that up into snippets and you know something where they're going to stay with your voice but I think most don't do that and they kind of go back to the typical things that have worked, you know, in the past and then you end up in an expensive mess and I had a similar situation in China where I had someone helped me and it very got good guy in a sense Your guy and he did a lot of work. But in the end, it's another lesson of this is that publicity doesn't necessarily mean revenue. In fact, it doesn't mean revenue. Right? awareness does not mean revenue. And so a lot of people end up paying for publicity and awareness to find out, it doesn't really drive revenue, and then you're back to sales and pounding the pavement.

Giuseppe Grammatico 15:23
That's it. I mean, likes don't pay the bills, right? Likes and subscribers. Yes, it's a nice audience to have someone made a comment, which this was actually interesting. And it got me it got me thinking, someone made the comment, and there was a into a valid argument, well, people have less their attention spans are less than less. And the person I can't remember who was on that show, it'll come to me. And they said, they challenged and said, I don't agree with that. I don't agree people have less attention. And they said, Well, you know, nowadays with all you know, with social media and the various platforms, and he's like, No, the attention span is about the same. The idea they brought up was that there's so much crap, there's so much garbage out there, that people have just diluted and just really just, you know, fill up the social channels with just anything, just just a post for the day. And so he said, it's not really the attentions, it's just filtering through all the garbage, all the noise, I should say, garbage, I should say, the noise that's out there. And it got me thinking, you know, what if you stick with your, your value proposition, and you put good, good quality content, I don't have many likes, I don't have many shares. But I get quite a few phone calls and quite a bit of book downloads and, and questions about franchising. So, you know, what I see, what I see as a result on social is has nothing to do with the calls and the quality. So something to think about, at the end of the day, just stick it out, you know, just do your thing, have a plan going forward, and it'll pay dividends down the road. So

Andrew Stotz 16:57
I mean, you got, you know, a website, podcast book, different things that you've done. And you've learned some great lessons here. Let's think about somebody that is in a similar situation, as you were when you made your decision to go with that company. They need sales they need, they need revenue, they want more they want to grow, they want to expand, they people are telling them all the time, you got to outsource, you can't do everything yourself. Come on, you know, and they know they're over there stretched. So based on what you learned from this story, and what you continue to learn what what action would you recommend our listeners take to avoid suffering the same

Giuseppe Grammatico 17:34
fate? Yeah, I mean, so social media is free, right? blog writing is free. So I would, we'll look at a calendar we're looking at 2024, right, we're coming up into a new year, 12 months in a year, get your 12 FAQs, your 12 frequently asked questions, you can record, it doesn't have to be an official podcast, it could just be a Zoom video. And you can record that video, release it on all platforms, again, for free. Create a blog post and create snippets, maybe a LinkedIn carousel, this can all be done for free with with AI nowadays, utilizing chat GPT, and you're hammering down exactly the questions you're getting, not what you think you're you know, or people's concerns, the questions that you're getting in your business, I'm afraid of losing money in a franchise Great. I'm, I'm afraid I'm not a good fit, or am I a good fit for a franchise? Great. That's a topic in and of itself. And you can repurpose that on all the platforms and mix it up LinkedIn, Instagram. And I think that is a great starting point. And from the comments, you'll start to create new content, and then you can maybe increase the frequency of the two videos every month, so 24 a year. So I think that's a great starting point. It's free, it just cost you a few hours a month.

Andrew Stotz 18:49
That's great advice. I wrote down, you know, 12, Top Questions 12 top lessons I learned in 2023. Those types of things are great. And then the idea of just creating, doing it all in one go and just talking about it, you know, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, you've got one video, or you can cut that into snippets. So yeah, write stuff. Great.

Giuseppe Grammatico 19:13
And try it and try it. And then you adapt. Then if you don't like the snippets, and you prefer carousels, or you're getting more engagement on LinkedIn with a carousel versus snippet you double down there. So I don't think I listened to all the Guru's and the algorithms are constantly changing, and it's just, it's too much it's too overwhelming. So experiment with your audience with your following and adjust accordingly.

Andrew Stotz 19:35
Great. What's the resource either of yours or any other resource that you'd suggest for our listeners

Giuseppe Grammatico 19:43
for franchising, for marketing, I'm sorry.

Andrew Stotz 19:46
Well, I guess the question is up to you, you know, I'm, it's kind of an open place, but let's say I like the marketing, but you know, whatever, whatever resource that you feel is good. I

Giuseppe Grammatico 20:00
have actually a resource that I've come across about a year ago, it's actually a book. So I went to grad school, I've owned different businesses, and no one really put together a book or a resource to help individuals track their businesses, right? They always say keep your employees happy. Keep an eye on your numbers. We all know that that's common sense. But how do we go about it? You know, what are the KPIs? How do I track this, from the frequency to exactly how to track it to various resources? Gentleman, Gino Wickman, wrote a book called traction. And he developed I think he developed the Entrepreneurial Operating System EOS. And it talks about it's almost like the spokes of a wheel, you have to keep everything balanced. If your financials are in order, your marketing is top notch via some of the things we talked about today. But you're losing employee and staff every single day and you're constantly hiring and, and retraining, that's going to take a big hit to the business and if any one of those areas is off. So it really shows you a way to manage that. They have programs where you can go to training the book is a great starting point. But I've had people in franchising, I had an individual who's buying a franchise that's a surgeon, a surgeon, implement that in his practice. And he said it was night and day. So check it out. They do have paid service, but I would start off with the book, it's a great resource. Even if you don't own a business just to learn about the intricacies and how to run and really manage your KPIs on a daily basis.

Andrew Stotz 21:29
traction, get a grip on your business, Gino Wickman. He's got 4.6 out of five, four stars with 7856 ratings on Amazon. That is impressive. And I have already added that to my cart. So excellent resource. Last question, what's your number one goal for the next 12 months.

Giuseppe Grammatico 21:53
My number one goal for the next 12 months is to work less and help more people than I did in 2023. How I'm going to do that I am now outsourcing my marketing but in a different approach, as I mentioned, and having someone basically produce, edit and share the content that I'm creating. And we just created a new website that goes live on the second that's linked to a CRM, and we're automating a lot of educational videos that I have with families I work with in between calls as a resource, you know, your your, your mind can only retain so much. So we've automated a process where videos are being sent a couple times a week talking about the various aspects of owning a business, the risks, the rewards, the due diligence, what you should look for the different aspects talking to franchisees and things like that. So by automating that I'm hoping to educate a lot more help people decide on their own if a business is the right fit. And then when they're ready, and educated on the process. They can give me a call.

Andrew Stotz 23:01
Exciting. Well listeners, there you have it another story of laws to keep you winning. Remember, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. As we conclude, I want to thank you again for joining the mission. And on behalf of a Stotz Academy, I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Giuseppe Grammatico 23:26
Go for it. You know, life's too short to be miserable. Take a chance on yourself. Do your due diligence and talk to people that own a business. Don't just talk to anyone. You know, that was one of the things I learned. Talk to people that are successful people that are doing things that you want to be doing and listen, as I mentioned, life's too short go for it.

Andrew Stotz 23:46
I got a lot of great ideas from this interview. So you said that appreciate you taking the time and that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our well fellow risk takers. Let's celebrate that today. We added one more person to our mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. This is your words podcast host Andrew Stotz saying, I'll see you on the upside.