THE MATHNASIUM METHOD™ Giving Children the power to achieve excellence-in math and in life. On today’s episode I am joined by Shant Assarian and we are talking about a franchise that has more than 1000 learning centers worldwide. This brand has been ranked on the Entrepreneur Magazine list of top franchises for over 15 years and if you haven’t figured it out yet the company is Mathnasium. Shant has been with this award-winning company for over 10 years, served as the COO and most recently as the CEO. Welcome to the show, Shant Assarian, of Mathnasium. Mathnasium is a great brand for many reasons but a few stuck out to me right away; Top units are doing over a million dollars in revenue Over 200 franchisees have more than one location Everybody involved at the franchise level has a passion for helping kids in their community So tune in this week to hear the conversation with Shant Assarian and when you are ready to learn more about Mathnasium here https://www.mathnasium.com/ This is Eye On Franchising, where we share our vision for your franchise future. Have you heard the news? We are officially on YouTube. Come check out a few videos have have and give me a follow! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwoAdrkPZmveJt5AQRDk8WA --- Lance Graulich Franchise Consulting Services from ION Franchising Eye On Franchising
Giving Children the power to achieve excellence-in math and in life.
On today’s episode I am joined by Shant Assarian and we are talking about a franchise that has more than 1000 learning centers worldwide. This brand has been ranked on the Entrepreneur Magazine list of top franchises for over 15 years and if you haven’t figured it out yet the company is Mathnasium. Shant has been with this award-winning company for over 10 years, served as the COO and most recently as the CEO. Welcome to the show, Shant Assarian, of Mathnasium.
Mathnasium is a great brand for many reasons but a few stuck out to me right away;
So tune in this week to hear the conversation with Shant Assarian and when you are ready to learn more about Mathnasium here https://www.mathnasium.com/
This is Eye On Franchising, where we share our vision for your franchise future.
Have you heard the news? We are officially on YouTube. Come check out a few videos have have and give me a follow!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwoAdrkPZmveJt5AQRDk8WA
---
Franchise Consulting Services from ION Franchising
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
franchisees, learning, work, math, children, franchise, kids, franchising, centers, people, prospective franchisees, support, instructors, location, business, teaching, pandemic, person, run, build
SPEAKERS
Shant Assarian, Lance Graulich
Lance Graulich00:00
Welcome to Eye on Franchising, where you will learn the A to Z's of franchise. Hello everyone and welcome back to another great episode of Eye on Franchising. I am Lance Graulich, your host. So today's guest with more than 1000 learning centers worldwide this brand has been ranked on the Entrepreneur Magazine list of top franchises. for over 15 years. Our next guest has been with us award winning company for over 10 years, served as the COO and most recently as the CEO. Welcome to the show, Shant Assarian, of Mathnasium.
Shant Assarian00:41
Thanks for having me, Lance. Appreciate it.
Lance Graulich00:43
so awesome to have you here. So you're not gonna make me do math, right?
Shant Assarian00:47
No, no, not not today, we'll get that
Lance Graulich00:50
perfect, well Shant. Let's, let's talk about your backstory. How did you get to Mathnasium? How did you even get into franchising in the first place?
Shant Assarian00:59
Sure, it was a it was an accident, or an accidental act of God, if you will, maybe looking at it that way. But it was it was good. And I'm glad I am at Mathnasium, I didn't plan to be I came out of public accounting back in 2010, and then joined Mathnasium as the company's controller, and we were much much smaller back then we had less than 200 locations back then. Our top franchisee our top Learning Center was doing about 300 to 400,000 in gross revenues. Now our top centers are doing more than a million dollars. So I've seen a lot and I've been with the company and helping the company grow and building out the systems that exist today. And so it's been it's been a wonderful experience.
Lance Graulich01:45
More than a million dollars at a Mathnasium franchise pretty, pretty darn impressive. So, in the world of franchising, when you first got into it, because you didn't plan on it, you have an accounting background. That's what you went to college for. Right? You were going to be an accounting as
Shant Assarian02:03
my undergrad in accounting. And then I was doing my MBA when I came over to to Mathnasium.
Lance Graulich02:09
Yeah. So so your initial thought was, was there an industry that you were looking to target? It certainly wasn't the franchise world, right?
Shant Assarian02:18
No, I really, I was in public accounting. So I wanted to have private company experience. And I really wasn't familiar familiar with franchising at the time, I thought of franchising as McDonald's, or Burger King or subway. But I really didn't know enough about it. And as I learned more about franchising, I really appreciate the the model here, it really allows a lot of people to build a business for themselves doing things that they enjoy, and having their own control over the operation and their their livelihood to an eight, what I didn't realize is how big of an impact it has on our economy, how much it contributes to GDP, how much it contributes to employments in the country. So it's, it's really a great structure. And so I'm really glad to be part of it.
Lance Graulich03:10
So in all your years with Mathnasium, what what is it? What's the secret sauce? I mean, obviously, you're in a in a kid's related franchise, the kids that you're tutoring are as young as how old?
Shant Assarian03:27
We can start as early as kindergarten.
Lance Graulich03:30
Gotcha, perfect. And how old what's the oldest kids that come in?
Shant Assarian03:35
You know, it depends on the child. If, you know, if a child can sit through at least 30 minutes of a of time with an instructor, as as early as four at the youngest ages. We can work with children that young, you know, it's really amazing working with children, I've got kids and their capability to learn. I think we really underestimate what they're able to do. And, and it doesn't have to be sit down academics the way we're used to, but just learning through life experience, and they grasp concepts and math concepts. And they really outperform what we think they could do. So we can start pretty early with kids.
Lance Graulich04:20
Yeah, it seems like kids, the younger they are the more like a sponge that they are. And then as kids become adults like us, we're more like concrete, right? Absolutely. We're we're not adaptable. We're no longer pliable. We're like stuck in our own ways, literally.
Shant Assarian04:42
Yeah, and with math in particular, kids enjoy it and they have fun with it. What happens is, when they start learning about math concepts, they start seeing it around them in their everyday life. And they pick up on things and then it with some pieces that becomes a puzzle and solving a puzzle, I'll give you an example with my eldest before he turned seven, he burst into our bedroom about 6:30am One morning, and it's like, Do you know what eight times 14 is? And remember, he's, he's not seven yet. And my wife turns, he's like, whose kid is trying to do multiplication this early in the morning, while I'm trying to pretend to still be asleep, because I don't want to put into brain power to figure it out. But the point is, is why did he do that? It's not that he's in love with math, per se, it's because it's a puzzle. And he's challenging himself to solve that puzzle. And what's happening subconsciously is he's, he's building self esteem is building confidence. But it's a game in in kids really take to it, it's when they, you know, aren't taught in a way that they understand. Or it's when they become frustrated or told that they're not, they're just not wired for math, that's when you start having these negative associations. But when when none of that noise exists in a child's mind, and they're not sitting there worried about a grade, rather, they're just learning. They really enjoy it patterns, especially, that's another thing I found with younger children is you teach them a concept of a concept of a pattern. And all of a sudden, they'll start seeing patterns in life. And they'll say, Dad, Dad, look, that's a pattern. You know, and they'll start asking you to challenge them with math questions, whether it's as simple as addition or, or whatever it might be. So they they really, you know, add hearts when the natural states the natural state is that they enjoy it. It's fun for children. Yeah,
Lance Graulich06:44
you know, the the first part of what you said, especially in that response, got me thinking, really the gamification of learning and math, making things fun making things interesting. Kids today are on our playing games, everything seems to be a game when they're forced to listen to some of the boring teachers out there. Now I come from a family of educators and school principals and elementary school. So I certainly appreciate the good quality teachers that are certainly out there. But you know, why does a typical customer come to you to come to Mathnasium? For help? Is it is it to get ahead is it's a catch up? I'm sure you have a wide variety of kids coming to you.
Shant Assarian07:32
Yep. Look, we appreciate all teachers, anyone who wants to teach the next generation, they're they're heroes in our book. Absolutely. It's math in particular is challenging, because different children will learn math and understand it in different ways. That's not to say one is more intelligent than another or more capable than another. People just take to math in different ways. Some are visual learners, some can just do just fine with whatever the teacher is explaining. But when a teacher has 20 children in their classrooms, 30 children in their classrooms, making sure that every single child understood what the explanation that they provided, maybe they gave two explanations, but maybe their explanations, as good as they were just wasn't the right one to resonate with one child or two child or two children in the classroom. So it's it's tough in parents come to Mathnasium, because they're, their children, in some cases may just have been frustrated, because they just haven't been able to understand. And they're struggling in school, and parents are looking for a solution to their children. We've built a really great reputation. We have a reputation where children attending Mathnasium really enjoy it genuinely enjoy it. And parents learn about this, and they want to try it out, especially if they've been looking for solutions. And they haven't found the one that's worked for their kids. So those are the kids that are coming to us who have challenges have been struggling. But we have a lot of children that also come to Mathnasium to to stay current with their studies. And to stay ahead too. I was talking to one of our franchisees in New York just this morning and he was talking to me about how he's got a large population of students that have been enrolled for years and ask them why why are they staying with you that long? And it's he said, they enjoy it. First and foremost, the parent, the parents value education and want to make sure that their children are keeping up. The parents feel that's coming to Mathnasium that is keeping their kids advanced. And so they want to continue that service. So it's multiple reasons and a couple years into Me being at Mathnasium, I had a parents call me one day, we had a local location that had closed, we reopened in that same location, and we're doing really well. But in that, in that time, the parent was really upset that that location had closed because their child was upset, the location had closed. And this was again and one or two years into Mathnasium. For me, I was handling our finance and accounting and some other operational areas. So still really learning the nuances and what makes us so effective. But it didn't make sense to me early on as to why is it a child would be so upset to not be able to come to Mathnasium? I mean, after all, isn't this after school? Like why is the child wanting to do more math after school, but it's, it's the realization of, oh, it's not just the math, it's not just the technical transfer of knowledge. It's the subconscious self esteem, boost the confidence boost, the true enjoyment, the feeling of, Wow, this is something that I can do. And I can be really good at. Some kids, you know, may not be the All Stars, in sports in their schools, but they can point to math and say, You know what, I'm really good at this. And they sometimes stand out in their class as as being the top person in their classroom for math. And that's a real point of pride. So that's the effect we have.
Lance Graulich11:29
I love it. So as far as your curriculum, are you offering I mean, look, we just came through a pandemic, hopefully, we're done with that. But are you doing Have you always done live and in person and online, tell me tell me about how the curriculum set up.
Shant Assarian11:47
So it's historically been live and in person, the, in recent years, even before the pandemic, we started making online delivery as an option, still live. Still face to face, though, through like we're speaking now through through the internet. And with the ability for the students to see what the instructors are doing on a digital sheet of paper, and for the instructors to see what the students are doing all live. So it's replicating to the extent that we can that in person in center experience recruiting, yeah, we've proven education to be highly effective online, just as it is in person. And with the pandemic, when our learning centers were forced to close all of our learning centers, effectively, all of them made Mathnasium available to their customers through their to their students through this online platform. And, and we kept teaching through the course of the pandemic until the Learning Centers started to reopen. The curriculum itself is not curriculum from the set in the sense of it's a set set of materials that each child gets, it's, it's actually, it's custom material for each for each child.
Lance Graulich13:10
And I apologize, that was my custom sort of lingo, or, you know, that I use for teaching related stuff.
Shant Assarian13:17
Ya know, and I'm using our own lingo, but the way our materials work is a child who will come to Mathnasium. And we'll do a thorough assessment to really understand what they need to work on, and what they already know. And then our our materials are, are compartmentalized, such that we can assign very specific material to each child to make sure that we're only working with a child on what they need. And we're not going through material that they already know. And that's one thing that's very frustrating for kids is having to work through material work on subjects or topics that they already know. Right? We don't want that.
Lance Graulich13:58
That's when kids get really bored.
Shant Assarian14:00
They do
Lance Graulich14:00
not this again,
Shant Assarian14:02
exactly like I already know it, why did that and why do I have to do it. It's also not interesting. When you're learning something new, whether it's math or whatever it is. There's a there's a level of interests that really drives you to actually learn so. So that's how our curriculum works. And then we regularly reassess and reevaluate how far has a child come and what is ahead for them for their curriculum at school? And what is it that we need to work on next, and it's a constant communication with parents to keep them informed and that's how our system works.
Lance Graulich14:41
Great. So let's talk about the call it the business so the business, what is the typical investment to get a Mathnasium open? Square footage is typically how big
Shant Assarian14:55
Yeah, learning centers range from 1200 to 1600 square feet now Are are larger learning centers who have developed over time and have larger enrollments can be larger, they could go up to 2500 square feet or so. But our franchisees usually start again in that range of 1200 to 1600 square feet.
Lance Graulich15:14
Got it, and that typical investment is how much
Shant Assarian15:18
anywhere from a 100 to about $150,000, including the franchise fee. And it depends on what the state of the build out is for the space you're taking. If it's, if the work is lights, then it could be on the lower end, if there was a concept that was there before, and there's a lot of build out to take place. It's not that our build up needs are, are much where we're actually very simple base build out. It just depends on the state of the space that the franchisee is taking, and what they can negotiate with the landlord.
Lance Graulich15:49
Ideally, you want a second generation space, I've done so many restaurants over the years, you're always looking for a second generation space, somebody else is paid for plumbing and electrical and you're just making some slight modifications.
Shant Assarian16:03
Yep, all we need in the center is an open space and a bathroom. And then the rest is carpet paint some light fixtures and not too expensive but good looking furniture.
Lance Graulich16:15
Yeah, good. Sounds great. And then, at this point with 1000 or so worldwide, you know how many? I mean, I would imagine some people are just doing a single unit. And others eventually take on more responsibilities as multi unit operators, I understand you have quite a few multi unit operators.
Shant Assarian16:38
We do we have approximately 200 franchisees Wow, have more than one location.
Lance Graulich16:44
That's fantastic. I mean, that's obviously one of my favorite indicators myself as a franchise broker. I love hearing about multi unit operators because it shows that the brand is obviously worth it. People are committing to multiple locations. And that's absolutely wonderful.
Shant Assarian17:00
Yeah, and our Franchise Business Review survey, which we do every year, one of our higher ratings is, is on the question of would you do it over again? And the answer is yes. And would you refer this to a friend? And the answer is positive?
Lance Graulich17:13
Yeah, that's awesome. Well, obviously people feel great that they're doing a great service. I mean, I would imagine, correct me if I'm wrong, but do the majority of your franchisees have kids?
Shant Assarian17:27
I, you know, it's it's, there's a lot of variation out there. In terms of our franchisee profile. We're seeing many, many people who are becoming franchisees at a young age at an age that they're too young to have children, maybe Oh, wow. You know, given today's averages in terms of when people are having kids. So we have we have people who certainly have children, we have people who have grandchildren, and we have people that are just starting that adult life and they're deciding to make franchising that profession.
Lance Graulich18:03
Yeah. So it sounds to me, like if I was going to ask you for a cross section of your most successful franchisees, your top 50 franchisees, you're going to tell me, they're all age groups, and they all had previous lives that were quite different. Yeah, because that was, Why does it always happen like that?
Shant Assarian18:25
You've heard that before, you know, it's our common denominator, if you will, is, is the passion that they have for teaching children and in many times passion for math, and in the care that they want to provide for their communities and doing well by their communities, shaping the future generation. So it's coming from from that place, and then combined with engaging in the business actively caring for the quality that they're providing, executing with discipline, these are these are the common factors that are driving success. It has nothing to do with demographics or age or where in the country people live or where in the world in fact, where where our franchisees are, it just it comes from that place of having that passion.
Lance Graulich19:18
And you just mentioned about alluding to the fact of how active they are. So do you require that the franchisee be full time in the business? Are they there are people that are hiring managers to run it that are passionate about the business? What are your rules on that?
Shant Assarian19:39
We definitely require someone who's full time running the day to day. Now that doesn't have to be the franchisee themselves. If the franchisee wants to be more of an investor type and hire somebody to run the operation, that's perfectly fine. We definitely want franchisee to be actively involved in managing and knowing the business. But many choose to be actively involved and run their locations themselves, at least in the beginning before hiring somebody else. Right? We found we found that to be great because they intimately understand the business, they start building the relationships with the with the communities. And that works really well because then they know what needs to be managed and how to manage because they did it themselves. And so it's common for our franchisees to start off themselves and then hire, as many of those decides to open additional locations and become a multi unit operator. Some decide, you know, it works for the, for their personal lifestyle to have someone run the Learning Center, and they just actively manage and oversee. We what we care about is what's in the best interest of the franchisee what what do they want to do what's going to work for them, we definitely want each of our learning centers to be successful to serve as many kids as we can in the local communities. But how the franchisee decides to do to do that really want us to be right for them.
Lance Graulich21:15
Sounds great. So let's talk about marketing. Or we could talk about technology in general, but you know, marketing, what do you do to ensure that a franchisee comes out of the gate and ramps up as quickly as possible? Because that's always the sort of the mystery as much as franchising takes a lot of the mystery out of a lot of things. With the systems and procedures and the brand being incredibly established. It always seems the lingering question is, you know, what, when do I make money? Yeah. And and nobody ever knows that answer, because some people are quicker at learning the system than others and getting off, you know, at a faster pace. So what do you what do you say to that?
Shant Assarian22:00
Yeah, obviously, the better to start, the quicker you can be making money. We strongly strongly encourage our franchisees to start the community relationships even before their centers are open. start networking with the schools start networking with complementary businesses. Just look into the community connections that our franchises have or the people that they're going to hire have in starts letting them know that Mathnasium is coming does what Mathnasium does. This is the reputation Mathnasium has based on
Lance Graulich22:37
Help is on the way Yeah,
Shant Assarian22:39
help you know we're here to serve. So how to start building those relationships. Signage is very important. So putting up a coming soon banner on your location to let the community know hey Mathnasium is getting ready to open and here we are we're literally right here in this location. Online presence starting at least with social social media online to build the awareness online. So we've we've got a pretty robust system in place and this is through two decades of experience working in collaborating with our franchisees to capture the best practices systematize those best practices, and then train to our new franchisees and then support them. So it's I gave you a sampling but it's a pretty robust system. Love it.
Lance Graulich23:36
Yeah, some people forget when it comes to support you've mentioned support quite a bit which is a an amazing blessing in the world of franchising, you're not you know, you're in business for yourself and definitely not by yourself. But you know, you have such a deep history and so many franchisees So besides the great training they get, which we'll talk about next you know, what kind of training does a franchisee go through and then you have the best practices of the you know, wonderful franchise community of Mathnasium and then obviously you have some sort of coach or business consultant that helps them ramp up appropriately and check in here and there want to talk about the training and and the ongoing support.
Shant Assarian24:24
Sure, yeah, let me start with training so once the franchisee is onboard and has become a franchisee we immediately start on on the training and started working with them on identifying their their location. On the training fronts. It's it's an initial training that is a combination of online instruction, recorded and live online instruction. And then in person training that takes place in Los Angeles to then person has components where it's, you know, in our office, and we're we're we're going through the materials together, but then we're also taking franchises to a live Learning Center, one of our own learning centers and training them in a live environment where they're getting actual real experience.
Lance Graulich25:12
And this is this kind of an episode of Are You Smarter Than the third grader at the show? And I'm just kidding does anything?
Shant Assarian25:20
Yeah. You know, it's that, that that real experience is really, really important. It's, it's one thing to do it in theory in a classroom style setting, but it's another thing to actually be in the center in front of a child. And I remember one of my experiences, I was working with a, I think she was a first grader, and I just could not get her attention. My my challenge wasn't teaching her the math that was in front of her, my challenge was getting her attention. And I and I saw that she had a Hello Kitty pencil box, they started talking about Hello Kitty to the best that I can I have no clue Hello Kitty. But boom, I caught her attention. And in catching her attention, then I was able to start working on the math, but that's something like that is very difficult to to teach in. In a theoretical classroom setting. It's, it's until you're sitting there and actually experiencing it, that's when you're gonna learn. So we do our best to do that with our franchisees is it's a lot of hand holding, we're right there with them. We're not we're not just releasing them into a learning center and saying go, No, there's there's a lot of scaffolding there to help them in that live environment. So it's robust in in franchisees are well prepared to open, you know, when they when they are about to open. And it's not while you're trained and done. No, it's there's a whole support team that is backing our franchisees and what we even have, we have specialists on our support team who specialized in that period of time before our franchisees open. So from the point that they signed their franchise agreements, to the point of opening, we have these specialized support personnel. And in an ongoing basis, you're right, they are assigned a franchise business consultants who is there to help franchisees grow the business and they're with you throughout the your time as a franchisee. There's ongoing training as well, our franchisees and their employees will always have access to the online training that we've developed. We provide webinars, we provide an annual convention, which is a great place to network and build relationships among the franchise and peers. But it's also a great training opportunity. So tremendous training, and then tremendous support started touching on the support with with the specialists, but with the FPCs in person visits, Zoom communications. And then we've got a central support team here too. So our FPCs they're primarily tasks to help our franchisees grow their businesses, our Central Support Team has here is more reactionary. And if you ran into some technical problems, you need a password reset, or you ran into some technical issue that you need just someone to immediately attend to what we've got our Central Support team that reacts very quickly, when maybe the franchise business consultant is helping someone else they wouldn't be immediately available that way. So love it. These are big investments that we've made over the years, and it's all about helping our franchisees be able to serve more kids have higher revenues and higher profitability naturally. It's a, it's a win win approach here, we will also grow as our franchisees grow.
Lance Graulich28:55
Now love it sounds wonderful. Let's talk about staffing a little bit. So, you know, the the world seems to be short people, or at least the US is I don't know how people that want to work or versus people that potentially don't. So who gets employed, who you looking for? And how have How have you been able to support the franchisees especially as times have gotten tough in the US, with these labor shortages, the great resignation, I guess it is?
Shant Assarian29:27
Yeah,that's a great question.
Lance Graulich29:28
They're all becoming franchisees.
Shant Assarian29:30
Right, and yeah, it's good for franchising in some senses, I suppose. You know, it's we're not immune to those challenges. Now, we're blessed in that. Being a Mathnasium instructors, that's the vast majority of the employees in the Mathnasium system. Being a Mathnasium instructor is great to have on your resume. It's it shows an ability to to convey knowledge, it shows an ability to work in a team and because our learning centers it is it is a team environment with instructors and other personnel running the learning centers. You're working with children and that's, that's special. In some cases, children, test your patience and you need to have that patience. In some cases, you need to really engage your sensitivity and your emotional awareness in working with children. So it's, it's a great experience, it really builds capability in oneself. And when you go to your future employer, you know, for whatever your career path is, to be able to say I was a Mathnasium. Instructor. It just, it's really valuable on a resume to have that. So we have that in our favor in terms of attracting talent.
Lance Graulich30:57
And are they are they high school kids? Are they teachers, who are these instructors, typically,
Shant Assarian31:03
a large portion are college students, or recent college students, or recent college graduates. We do have some high school seniors that franchisees hire. We do have retired teachers, there is a pretty good cross section though. Either college recent college grads or college current college students are probably a larger chunk. The important thing obviously, to know the math but also to be able to work with children to be able to relate to children. And that's a big, big important factor.
Lance Graulich31:40
Wonderful. So tell me now about your process. When you have let's say a franchise broker like myself introduces a candidate you know, from the first call all the way to the Meet the Team discovery day validation. Tell us a little bit about everything, the highlights,
Shant Assarian32:01
get the first thing we look for is one understand why would you like to become Mathnasium franchisee. We want to know that you're coming from a place where we are aligned. For example, if if someone approaches us and says, I really don't like working with children, well, probably we're probably not the right fit for you, and you're probably not the right fit for us. Right. So want to make sure that you wants to be a Mathnasium franchisee for for reasons where we are aligned. The we want to make sure that the franchisee has the needed resources. Now, we talked about our investment requirements, it's not very high, but there is still an investment that's necessary. And we need to make sure that our incoming franchisees have the financial capability to actually become a franchisee.
Lance Graulich32:54
Fair enough.
Shant Assarian32:55
Another another aspects that we take into consideration is we have standards, we have expectations, we're working with children, and it's very important to make sure that they're taking care of that it's a safe environment, it's high quality for the kids. So someone who wants to act really and do whatever they want, may not be the right fit, because our franchisees can't do everything that they want the way they want to. There are a number of aspects of the business that have to be done in specific ways for various reasons. And so I think that's, that's really important when someone is considering to becoming a franchisee in food, for example, you're going to want to cook the meal with a specific way with specific temperatures with specific ingredients with specific periods of time for cooking. And so if someone wants to be free to operate the way they want to, probably not the right fit,
Lance Graulich34:00
have to be able to trust the process and follow the recipe.
Shant Assarian34:04
Right? Now with that, in our situation, we're not totally cookie cutter, we do like allowing our franchisees to have some freedom of expression and be able to have, you know, inject some of their own personality. And we have some ways where franchisees can definitely do that and make their Mathiesen business their own. So there's a balance between making it their own and injecting their own personality versus making sure the core is done and executed at a very high level of quality. So these are all the aspects that we're looking for. And and I'm proud to say we have an amazing group of franchises, and they really do a good job. They really care about serving kids and doing well for their communities. And it's really good, good family.
Lance Graulich34:58
So tell me about do you have a meet the team day or a discovery day.
Shant Assarian35:03
We do we have a discovery day. And we're very thorough and during the discovery day and look talking about all aspects of the business and learning about our franchisees and the things we just talked about, why are you why are you doing this? And what what has you interested. So our discovery days, it's a, it's like three quarters of a day here in Los Angeles in our office, and then we'll take them our prospective franchisees to one of our learning centers, so that they see the Learning Center, and we get to explain the business to them live in the Learning Center as well, and give them that genuine, not just the feel, but experience being in one of the locations.
Lance Graulich35:47
And then, you know, I mean, from my experiences, when somebody makes the effort to go to a live discovery day, during the pandemic, quite a few brands, we're, you know, we're doing the Zoom type, virtual discovery days, like we're doing right now. Obviously, when somebody commits to visiting you, you're both hoping that this is a done deal, and it's more of a formality. But I'm sure it's to you guys. It's like the last look, to make sure this person's right to join your system, right?
Shant Assarian36:21
Yes, it's validation in both ways. They've been learning a lot about Mathnasium. Through our friendship development team through their own research. We've been learning about them through our friendships, moments team, but it's there's nothing like being together in a room, seeing each other, meeting each other face to face, and really getting to know one another. So it is validation of what they've learned about us. And it's validation of what we've learned about them. And and we do like that to be the final step. Certainly, of our franchisees have any remaining open questions, you know, we work with our prospective franchisees to get those taken care of, but that that's, you know, meant to be the last step.
Lance Graulich37:04
So what's next for Mathnasium 1000 locations worldwide? What are your, what are your hot areas in the US that you'd like to add franchisees?
Shant Assarian37:15
Yeah, we still have plenty of opportunity in the Northeast in the Pacific Northwest, but we still have lots of opportunities in in local regions. So our franchisee, our prospective franchisees who's who are interested, please definitely reach out through mathnasium.com. And we'll we'll get the conversation going?
Lance Graulich37:39
Well, for me, I'll be happy to make that introduction. Hey, intent.
Shant Assarian37:42
Yeah, we love that as well. And, you know, we have a lot of room to grow the business, even locally, we talked about some of our learning centers at a million dollars. And by the way, that's about 300 children enrolled somewhere between 200 to 300 children enrolled gets us to that level of revenue. But you know, there's there's plenty more to serve. And in the supplemental education industry is very fragmented. There's no one individual player that has some huge market share. And where we're up there, with with the biggest market share there is, and even that it's it's not much, we're only talking about a couple percentage points. But the reason I'm bringing that up is because there's tremendous opportunity, it's only growing demand as well. And we've got this proven effective way of teaching children. And there's a recent stat I ran into, but that said, 43% of tutoring is actually for math tutoring. Wow. Specifically on math, the opportunity is huge. It's only growing. Unfortunately, the pandemic effects on education were were particularly difficult. Were particularly bad for math. Yeah. Going back to our conversation earlier about what it takes for a child's to understand and really resonates in terms of the explanations provided to them. So it's tremendous opportunity. We have a lot of runway with each of our learning centers, but a lot of runway abroad as well. We're in we're in a handful of countries. But this is something that can definitely cross borders and kids are kids everywhere. And the two things we're good at teaching math and working with children that applies anywhere in the world.
Lance Graulich39:36
So I love it. Shant, any any final thoughts for today or final parting words of wisdom? just laid a lot of good stuff on us.
Shant Assarian39:48
Yeah, I you know, Mathnasium we've we've invested heavily in technology and supporting our franchisees training our franchisees tremendous runway in terms of growth that's ahead. Franchising in general, you know, provides a lot of structure allows people to have a community of supports. People don't have to figure things out on their own. So it's a great way to get into business, especially if you haven't had a business of your own before. And I think we're particularly good at what we do both in terms of teaching kids but also being a franchise concept.
Lance Graulich40:26
Awesome. Well Shant Assarian, of Mathnasium, thank you so much for being here. I look forward to meeting you live in person someday soon.
Shant Assarian40:35
That would be great. Thanks for having me, Lance. Appreciate it.
Lance Graulich40:37
My pleasure. Thank you very much for listening today. Please like follow and subscribe. This is Lance Gramlich. Until next time,