Becoming a Nomad Entrepreneur: How Real-Estate Franchise Developer Karim Kerachni Made The World His Office

Josh St. Laurent: Welcome to the Wealth in Yourself Podcast, a show dedicated to helping you master the complex subject of money by simplifying it through stories and actionable advice. I'm Josh St. Laurent and this is Wealth in Yourself. Welcome to the Wealth in Yourself Podcast where we help people to design their ideal life and take control of their time and money. I'm your host, Josh St. Laurent. Today we're joined by Karim Karachni. Karim is an entrepreneur, world traveler and real estate investor. He owns steam mates, a successful cleaning business with multiple Canadian branches. He's also in charge of franchise development in Massachusetts for a real estate company disrupting the industry. His mantra is work to live, don't live to work. Karim, welcome. God you're here. Karim Kerachni: Thank you, Zyves. Very happy to be here. Thanks for the intro. Josh St. Laurent: Yes, yes, absolutely. So there's so many different directions we can go with this, right? Josh St. Laurent: Just based off the intro, I mean, I know you're coming to us today from Malaysia. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey in the world traveling and kind of the exciting things that you've been doing? Karim Kerachni: 100%. Yeah, I'd be happy to make a long story short. I grew up in France. I was born in Canada. I grew up in France and then moved to Canada in 2014 where I spent about 10 years and that's where I started my first business in 2018. That's the cleaning company that you mentioned. I grew it to a point where I was not needed anymore in the day today by design because I believe that the business should not have a bottleneck to be able to grow and flourish. And for myself, I see myself more than entrepreneur than a business owner. So I wanted to move from one project to another. Karim Kerachni: So I moved to this project, which is property guys. I've been doing that for about two years now. It's a very well-known company in Canada. It's been very successful for 25 plus years and they are expanding internationally, including in the US. And that's where I come in as an in French development for the state of my session state, but actually I'm helping with every state that has some interest. I've been able to remove myself from the day to day and from working hands-on in the business. My goal was to take this show on the road and that's what I've been doing for now. About two years I've been traveling. Not just going from one country to another, but I personally enjoy traveling, staying in a country for a certain amount of time, really getting to absorb the culture, meaning the people having some impact and bringing some value one way or another. Karim Kerachni: But also as a way to visit the neighboring country, in the case of Malaysia, we've been here for almost a year and we got to travel to Thailand and Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, etc. We here. When I say we meet my wife, so in our two cats, that has been my journey over the past couple of years. I am embarking in a new project soon, which is going to take me to Ohio. I've never been there. I've been a few months there. It's great excited about that. That's the next. Josh St. Laurent: Yeah, so many exciting things to touch upon. I definitely want to talk about the nomadic business owner, type of lifestyle. We have a lot of people who reach out about that. That's sort of the dream for a lot of folks. Maybe we can spend some time talking about the cleaning business. It sounds like six years start to exit where you're, like you said, you're no longer the bottleneck. You're no longer needed in the business. What lessons did you learn in those six years of building the cleaning company up? Maybe the other people could repeat in their own businesses. Karim Kerachni: Absolutely. That's a great question. Actually, it was a record. It actually took me only about two years to remove myself from the operation. Then I was for about a year and a half, two years I was working from home and I was starting this other business. We actually started, we launched another branch. We started in Halifax, Nova Scotia, which is on the East Coast in Canada. In 2021, that's when we opened another branch in Ottawa and I was involved with this. We tried also other things, other type of services. Then I started property guys. After only two years, I actually had successfully removed myself from the process and really my main advice is from day one to be very mindful of all your processes because any business has some system and processes. Karim Kerachni: By that, I mean the set of software that you're using and everything that you do as the business owner, even if it's on you or you and a couple of people, how are you guys doing things? What is making you successful? In the case of the cleaning company, the various types of cleaning that we were offering, you know, without cleaning, Airbnb turnover, those kind of things. What is literally the step by step process in those cleanings? Further than this, how do I do the marketing, how do I do the recruiting, or if it be the firing, how we do the invoicing? All of these being mindful of it, trying to perfect it, to perfect and making more productive more efficient and then record it. And that's really where the key success factor I would say is to record early on and to then improve over time your processes. Karim Kerachni: And the reason to do this, actually there are multiple purposes. First off, if eventually you want to sell the business or expand it in your open new branches of whatever business you have, you're going to need that operations manual. Really, your business is this set of systems and processing, where if you want to franchise your model, that's also something critical that you need. But on top of that, that really what allows you to delegate efficiently, which had multiple managers, you know, over the years, actually, we had three. The first one being the best one who really helped me in that process of growing the business. And then once she was gone, she had to move on to another project. You know, I was never worried on finding a good replacement because she was fantastic. It was actually not that hard because I hired someone who was good and he knew exactly what he had to do. Karim Kerachni: What was his day today? What was the operation and so on and so forth. And not just the manager, the assistant manager, the admin people, the cleaning staff, all of them know exactly what they have to do, even if they just came on board, you know, a few days of a few weeks prior. So for the delegating, it is critical to have your set of systems and processes recorded and perfected over time. And as I mentioned, if you want to expand or if you want to sell your business eventually, we are currently looking to sell the cleaning company. When I see a week of that, I sold half ownership a couple of years ago to a business partner. And now we're looking to sell the whole business. And you know, that's something that we do highlight to investors. The fact that it is turnkey, we're not needed in the operation, that huge value, but also it is duplicatable at larger scale. Josh St. Laurent: Wow. So it really seems like the lesson is spend that first year, year and a half, getting everything dialed in systems, processes. Maybe the first location took year, year and a half, but then really what happened next was you could open the second location and day one, be ready to go with all your systems in place. Karim Kerachni: Absolutely. Absolutely. How exactly everything was going to work. That's really, really cool. I love that lesson. And I think that's a perfect segue into talking about franchising, right? Because a lot of people want to buy a business, but don't know where to begin, whereas the franchise comes with the systems and processes. So maybe you can talk a little bit about how that transition was for you and how that came to be. Karim Kerachni: Yeah, absolutely. Great takeaway because I actually got to experience the building a business from scratch, building a brand system, process, and obviously all the challenges that come with it and the costly mistakes that come with it, which I do not regret one bit. It has been great learning experience, but discovering the franchise world has been a game changer in my mind, because now I can see the value. Because what is a franchise to pause here? What is a franchise? You're buying in an existing brand that already has good reputation, maybe a database of client and a set of systems and processes already in place. So you really don't have to invent anything. You just follow the process you're successful. Let's pray straight up and support system and resources that are shared among the franchise. Karim Kerachni: In the case of property guys, and talk about property guys in a minute, but one thing that they offer to their franchise is a resource center, so call center that does the inbound that outbound calls, lead generation, marketing, the web development, SEO, and so on and so forth. So all those things that as a new business owner, you would have to figure out and find people to do and spend a lot of money building your website, for example. When you buy in a franchise, people are like, oh, you have to invent some money to buy a franchise. Actually, saving you a ton of money from having the resources pulled together and from having not to make all those custom mistakes that you would make as a new business owner and building, it takes years to build a strong brand and reputation and reviews and so on and so forth. So that's really what now drives me in finding a franchise for property guys is to pitch this idea of you actually have to get to skip three or four years of hard work by simply investing in our case, very affordable and to get started from a very high point from Bay-Wat. If that makes sense. Josh St. Laurent: Yeah, it's no, it makes perfect sense. I mean, the three to four years for some people is conservative, right? I mean, it's a lot of work upfront starting the business, a lot of trial and error. So maybe you can tell us a little bit about what is property guys? What do they do? And, you know, if you're someone who's like, hey, I'm looking to buy into a franchise, what would that look like for property guys? Karim Kerachni: Absolutely. So property guys that's come, it's a business that's originated in Canada 25 years ago. It's not you. It's basically an alternative solution to the traditional real estate model. As you may know, most people here may know the real estate industry hasn't really changed in over 25 years, over 100 years actually. And it is rise for disruption is right for change. When people want to buy and tell real estate, they have to go through real estate regions, which is the sort of big mess to whom you have to pay large commission. Every house price has increased drastically, has more than doubled in 10 years, which is nuts. Karim Kerachni: Commission have more than doubled in 10 years, which is also nuts. And therefore, the inventory also has dropped recently. So all those issues, that's where property is comes through to bring an innovative and unique solution, where they basically allow people to sell on their own or with support and expertise. But no matter what whether they want to be handed on or they want to be fully handed off, it is for one-packed flat fee, typically in the five or six grand range. For all the services that they need, I'm not only talking about replacing the agent, but also it includes the service of a real photographer at a stage, you know, a mortgage broker and a lawyer, etc., you know, a drone shot and 3D modeling and so on and so forth. All the exposure, listing on the email list, all of that is included in a package that is about five grand on average, depending on the market. Karim Kerachni: So they get to save dozens of thousands of dollars, all that money that those homeowners have gained in equity over the years, instead of dropping down the drain in the commission, they actually get to keep it, they get to reinvest it in their next property at the down payment and so on and so forth. That's what Trapegat has been doing and you can imagine how successful they've been doing that. There is a real need, especially in the industry and that's where I come in. It's in the franchise development side of things. So Trapegat has about a hundred and they're over a hundred franchise now from close to close. I'm in charge of finding those franchises in my session set and those franchises in my session set or franchisey typically the most successful ones already come from the real state industry, real state agents, mortgage broker, real state investors, those are the best fit for this model. Karim Kerachni: If we take the example of a real state agent, it's actually pretty obvious. Not only it's an overcrowded industry, there has been I think over 600,000 new agents just in the past 10 years, which is ridiculous. It's one of the fastest growing jump. And so that means the competition get more fierce even though the inventory is dropping because people have no real incentive in selling since they have no gain in selling really. For an agent to get to do something different to stand out from the crowd to have a different offering from everyone else to be a business owner, not just a contractor, not just going from one commission to another, but actually building a business that actually generates and lots more income than most agents actually make and to be exclusive. So not have to compete with anyone in their territory, a franchisey owns an exclusive territory. Karim Kerachni: So any leads, any client in their in their territory are theirs. So those are three of the main points that really make real three agent, but not only great candidates for this model. Josh St. Laurent: Yeah, that is fascinating. So I'm curious about actually one of the last things you just said about them having an area, no competition, obviously within property guys anyway. What is the tradeoff for the investor, right? Do they pay a flat fee to property guys? Do they give up or percentage of interest in the property? I'm kind of curious about that aspect of it and I'm sure people listening are as well. Karim Kerachni: Sure. Yeah, absolutely. So in any franchise model, there is two or three components. There is the initial franchise C in the case of property guys right now in Massachusetts to be completely transparent because we want things to grow quite quickly. The franchise are around 40,000 or 35 to 40,000 depending on the other territory, the exclusive territory. And that's one time fee to own your territory for as long as you want. So it made very affordable. You know, a lot of franchise people think you know, a hundred or thousand of dollars, not in our model is. And then there is royalty. So in our case, again, it's 8%. So it's only 8% on the revenue, 92% of the revenue that the franchise generates is there. And in our case, there is a third fee, which is for all the services provided by the franchise door, which is all the marketing service, the lead generation, the website, the SEO and so on. So for all of that, it's pulled into a number that actually makes the franchise a lot of money. It's about 1800 currently for all the services. Karim Kerachni: So they don't have to hire graphic designer, web designer, marketing staff, assistant, or self-people and so on. So of course, they really can get started once they go through the trainings, they can get started right away, start making money right away. They don't get to get a store and office with very low overhead. Now, how do the appropriate guys, franchise, operate? His main focus, so they don't actually have to be involved from 8% to 8% with each listing. Because they actually work on volume on average about 100 listings a year. And if they're licensed, they also can work with buyers, typically a similar number of buyers. So it's a huge portfolio of clients. They obviously make less per client, about 5, 5, 6, grand, some time because of the night-grain, depending on the package that the client chooses. But they work with a much larger volume. Karim Kerachni: And they can actually choose to be more hands-on or more hands-off depending on who they are. Some are very business minded. They just want to increase the numbers. And to be might be over 150 listings a year or more than that 200. And others want to be more hands-on and to provide some of those services themselves. You might have some skills in photography. You might be a licensed agent. You want to do the showing yourself. Whatever it might be, you're going to keep a larger profit margin, a larger piece of the pie, maybe work with less clients. But overall, your net income will be pretty similar. And so working on this volume of clients also better set every property as professionals which are actually local professionals with home-to-franchised partners. So take the example of the real estate lawyer, the mortgage broker, the photographer. These are local professionals that are going to get the whole volume of clients going through them. Karim Kerachni: So that's going to benefit them widely. And vice versa, they're going to benefit from the French AC. So it's basically a win-win in every direction. The clients end up saving a ton of money. It basically drives the economy locally. All those property guides, professionals, those exclusive partners will benefit widely. And the French AC also usually make a very substantial return on their investment. Josh St. Laurent: Yeah, absolutely. I agree. I mean, I hear this a lot. People are underestimating what it takes to get into real estate investing. They get started. And then it's like, wow, I didn't realize I needed the website. I didn't realize I needed to source the leads. I didn't realize I needed to build a whole team out. So I do love that this is doing that for them. I'm curious about for the real estate investors who are listening. And maybe they're in a very specific niche. Josh St. Laurent: And they say, I'm looking at multi-families or I'm looking at mobile home parks or self-storage or whatever it may be. Is there a niche that property guys is really focused on and really specializes in helping with or is it really fully encompassing or can you talk a little bit about that Karim Kerachni: fully encompassing meaning we're basically a platform that helps people's further property. And I fit property because I don't want to mention it always specifically. We're heavy on the residential, but actually the fame model applies to commercial property land. And we also, I've said, help buyers and working the rental space. So we have an offering also specific for landlord and tenant. It is fully encompassing and it is going in direction of a one-stuck shop for everything real estate. That's really what procreates vision is. Josh St. Laurent: That's incredible, really intriguing. I do want to kind of bring it back to you personally. So you have worked all over the world, right? So I'm curious and I know a lot of listeners are as well. What have you learned? What can you teach us about setting yourself up for success when you're working remotely, right? So what goes into it? Do I have good Wi-Fi where I'm going to be? What time zone is this in? Are my meetings going to make sense? Or am I going to be up at 2 a.m. taking a meeting? So what have you learned along the way to really put yourself in the best position as you travel around to work? Karim Kerachni: It's funny. You mentioned that because it's actually 4.30 a.m. right now. I mean, depending on what you do, you know, there are ventures where you don't really need to be in a specific time zone. In my case, obviously wherever I am, I have to be mindful of, you know, being on Eastern Standard Time for my Thessish set. I've set up my cleaning company, which is an athletic Canada tie. So you get used to it, but you have to be mindful of the time. You're right. The Wi-Fi situation is a big deal. Again, depending on what type of travel for me, as I said, I like to settle for at least a few months in each country. So it's not that big of an issue, you know, you can get good Wi-Fi or, you know, 5G connection, whatever it might be. The key for that, in my opinion, is to create some good roots in a lot about roots in a habit. I have an example being in Malaysia, it's 12 hours from my Thessish set. And so what I do, I work in the evening from basically 8 pm until midnight, typically, which is the morning in my Thessish set. No problem. I'm usually off in your afternoon, which is my nighttime. Karim Kerachni: I work for about four hours, you know, at night. I do wake up early in general. I usually wake up at 4.30 or 5 am. Anyway, I work at couple hours in the morning and I have the rest of the day free. I have to do some ad mail to what not. I go to a coffee shop with a right view or on the beach, whatever it might be, to deal with my admin. But beside that, I have the whole, you know, the whole day available. That's my definition of success. And that's very, you know, that's very personal. I'm personally not looking to make millions and millions or take over an industry fully or whatnot. I love, you know, what I'm doing. I do expect this to grow and my other business is to grow. But my main focus, even if it's where to not grow as fast as I would like, I'm satisfied if I have the flexibility of time and space, which is the definition of success for me personally. Karim Kerachni: And I think it's up there, you know, figuring out what is your vision for yourself before your business? What are you trying to accomplish? That's a question I often ask when I talk to potential French A.V. Are you seeing this as a side hustle? Are you seeing this as an income replacement? Were you seeing this as an empire builder? It's fine either way, but you need to be really really clear with yourself and with your business. What are you trying to accomplish there? And what is success in your world? Josh St. Laurent: It's such a good point. Honestly, that's one of the things that jumped out to me about your bio and your profile was work to live, don't live to work. That's something we talk about a lot at wealth in yourself with clients, same exact thing. How do we free up more time in your life? How do we spend more time doing the things we love to do, right? It's sometimes it's about, you know, stacking money to what end, right? So I'm glad that you brought that up. Another thing that I thought about it with us reading through your bio is you are always active, right? You start a business, you build it up, you sell half of it, you move on to the next. So I wanted to ask you, what are the other new exciting projects that you're working on? What's next for a green? Karim Kerachni: First with Procreate, in message I said, it is ramping up just before this. I had a couple of calls with potential French ADV who are going to cross the finish line very soon. So that's very exciting because when you're starting something, that's something new, but it's coming to a new market. It's all about finding the first people, the early adopters and now that we found those early adopters, things are really ramping up and that's very exciting. Just as you mentioned, it's in my nature, I guess I really have my eyes on another project that's going to take about six months of my life this year with Vivent, Vivent Smart Home, which is the leading company in Smart Home system and solar energy. That's I'm going to be driving a team of in business development, basically, you know, bringing more, more client in the smart home and especially in the solar solar energy, which is really the future of energy. Everyone knows I'm sure. So I am currently, funny you mentioned, currently recruiting people all over North America, not necessarily in Ohio, people from anywhere in the US, anywhere in Canada, even Mexico. We can bring them on at the right time right now because we're going to be finishing with the recruiting soon, starting with the training, it's a very thorough training. I used to work for Vivent actually a year ago and it has been one of my best career builder because it built me as a professional, as a salesperson. I would say very personally as well that it talked me a lot on myself how to improve myself, personal development and how to be able to be routine and have it. That's where I learned that amongst other things, good communication and so on and so forth. So long story short, I won't now extend that opportunity to people, typically people within 20 to 30 years old that might be looking for for the next opportunity. So don't hesitate to reach out to me if you have some interest in learning more about it. Again, it is a process to come on board, but if you have any kind of interest, definitely reach out. Josh St. Laurent: Yeah, definitely. I was going to say go ahead and plug like where is the best place to reach out to you? Is it email? Is it linked in? Where should people be connecting with you? Karim Kerachni: Put it in the show notes to be sure. Very active and negative for each of my of my adventures. So my name, Karen Kurechni, you can find me easily. I'm the only one with this name to create. If you want more info about property guys specifically, mindful will be in the description. You can just type property guy that comes, franchise or my fescious sets on Google and you'll see a lot of materials about what we do. Not hesitate to reach out again. We're really looking for people who are richly in good fit, which relieves a lot of pressure on my end and on your end. And regarding the event, the event opportunity, same thing. Can reach out on LinkedIn or I can give my my professional number, which is 857308123454. Shoot me a text, we'll schedule something and we'll go from there. Josh St. Laurent: Perfect. So I want to bring a full circle and just ask you what else should we know when it comes to investing in real estate or building a business or maybe even a problem that property guys is solving that you see so many franchises struggling with when they come to you to start as a franchise owner. Karim Kerachni: So one thing interesting that kind of links my professional experience with the property guy's model. I mentioned, you know, goods candidate being realtors. And other great set of candidates are people in the real estate industry, real estate investors, mortgage brokers, real estate lawyers. The reason I'm mentioning this is because having this double hat, it doesn't have to be a replacement. It can be a mortgage broker, for instance, and a franchisee and actually cross pollinate, you know, refund all clients from one side to the other and really maximize profit and potential on both ends. The reason I'm mentioning this because two of the new franchises that are coming on board. So our mortgage brokers with 20 plus years experience, they're getting two territories, two franchise and another future franchise is a real estate investor who actually wants to use the franchise to find, you know, the best deal from one business to another and have this double hat. My point being, I think finding a business venture with it is something you start from scratch or a franchise that is compatible with what you're currently doing and trying to maximize your potential is the smartest way, the wisest way to go. Josh St. Laurent: Wow, that's really exciting. Thank you. So I'm going to transition a little bit to the last three questions that we try to ask everybody. They're a little more personal to you. And so the first question is what does living a wealthy life look like for you? Karim Kerachni: For me, at this point in my life, it is my freedom, our space and time. So being able, not only being able to make my own schedule and being flexible with my schedule, which is the case for a lot of entrepreneurs, but also being flexible and being able to, you know, live, you know, in any place to discover the world, why not traveling when I'm earning an income living in places where honestly the cost of living is ridiculously low in the case of Malaysia where I am and Southeast Asia. I mean, this is this is a huge comfort and peace of mind and a huge, a great experience that I'd be able to share with my children and grandchildren and put it in my autobiography. That's something. Josh St. Laurent: Yeah, it's no doubt about it. Those experiences will be with you forever. Next question is if you could give one message to someone working to gain financial freedom, who isn't there yet, what would it be? Karim Kerachni: First thing is to grow a network. So that's not something I really talked about during this show, but being surrounded with not only lack-minded people, people that are where you aim to be and people that we can bring value to and they can bring value to you, it's very important. So even though I am not in my session sets or Canada, I still networked heavily, you know, remotely now where less to be able to do that remotely. I have built an extensive network in my session sets over the past two years and that has benefited me widely with my business. It's a huge advantage. Josh St. Laurent: Yeah, I think having this support system and this set of go-to people in any industry is a great way to grow financially and in your business. Yes, it's such an important point. I mean, myself, even as an entrepreneur, I've come to realize this lesson is everything, right? It's so, so important. It's all about who you know. So I'm glad that you went there. Third and potentially hardest question of the day. If you only had a thousand dollars and you were starting over, what would be the first thing you would do with that money? Karim Kerachni: That's a very good question. My mind goes straight to my cleaning business. The reason is I actually started with about a thousand dollars. Karim Kerachni: I started it genuinely from scratch in Bootstrap. That point that you don't have a lot of money to invest and I didn't see myself raising money for finding investors or what. And actually I came to realize not just cleaning but a lot of service businesses. You actually can start with very little money. If you have specific service that you want to provide home services, I'm thinking, you know, landscaping and painting a whole bunch of home services. You can actually start from scratch, reinvest your earnings. You actually can start quite quickly if you're smart with the way you're doing things. And you can grow quickly like again, like I did and staying for my experience with a cleaning company, you know, within a year we reached 150K in revenue the second and we doubled revenue for the following two years. Started with a thousand dollars. I think this is something that anyone can start anywhere. Karim Kerachni: You know, cleaning for instance, you can open a cleaning company anywhere. But the caveat is don't see yourself as a solo printer, as an amateur or whatever it might be. But see it as a business that you're going to grow and you're going to remove yourself from the process from the one. As we talked about at the beginning of this show, because as just you, you're going to reach a ceiling. And if you see it as a business that you're growing and you're removing yourself from the process, there's pretty much virtually no ceiling and no end to it. Josh St. Laurent: Yes, I love that answer. That's spot on. I'm going to leave it there. Thank you for being here. This has been really fun. I've enjoyed the conversation. Any last parting words, anything else that we haven't talked about? Do you want to mention? Karim Kerachni: Thank you so much for having me. Karim Kerachni: I genuinely enjoyed that conversation as well. Don't hesitate to reach out to me. Whether you have any interest with any of the things that I mentioned or you just want to connect, you want some advice of the entrepreneurship business ownership. Just reach out. Let's have a chat and let's see how we can bring value to one another. Josh St. Laurent: Awesome. This has been the Wealth and Yourself Podcast, where we help people to design their ideal life and take control of their time and money. Our guest today was Kareem Karachi. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time. Josh St. Laurent: The Wealth and Yourself Podcast is hosted by me, Josh St. Loren, an edited and produced by Ray Haycraft. To learn more about how to make your money work for you, visit us at www.wealthinyourself.com and connect with us on all social media at WealthinYourself. This podcast is educational in nature and is not meant to be investment advice. Josh St. Laurent: Please do not construe anything said to be advice, and the opinions of the guests may or may not represent the opinions of Wealthin Yourself. This podcast and the information presented are separate from my employment at Golden Gate University. Still, they are part of my mission to make no-cost financial knowledge more accessible. If you like to show, please take a moment to leave us a review. We read all of your feedback, and we want to make sure we cover the topics that matter most. If you have a specific subject you'd like us to explore, or a guest you'd love to hear interviewed, don't hesitate to shoot us a direct message. And as always, thanks for listening.