Mastering Franchise Collections – A Global Perspective

At 21 years old living in Brooklyn NY, Charles moved to Florida with a dream of opening his own auto accessory shop. He purchased a one-way airline flight to Fort Lauderdale, and was introduced to franchising, which provided me with a blueprint for success.

There were no auto accessory franchises, so he went with a Meineke franchise and grew to open 10 automotive franchises in South Florida. He learned how to build his staff so he could operate more franchise locations. Charles also began leveraging his franchise business success to secure funding for buying real estate and constructing buildings, so he could lease them to his franchised locations.

While operating his franchises, Charles was able to pay off  real estate mortgages and later sell his franchise businesses while holding the real estate leases, which allowed him to collect rental income forever.

In 2007 Charles decided to create a unique automotive styling and accessory franchise brand with a systemized approach to leveraging financial and lifestyle success called Tint World - America’s Largest & Fastest Growing Automotive Aftermarket Accessories & Window Tinting Franchise.

Greg Leven is the SVP, Sales for Flywire’s rapidly growing B2B vertical. He came to Flywire with 15 years of experience in the global payments and enterprise software space. His subject matter expertise in these areas has helped many global organizations unlock value from their existing payment and collection processes. Prior to Flywire, Greg was the Global Head of Coupa Pay at Coupa Software where his solution helped organizations automate the Procure to Pay function. While at Mastercard, Greg co-founded Mastercard Track, a business to business network focused on taking the friction out of business payments. Most importantly, Greg lives in Kansas City with his wife and four children.

William Edwards, CEO and Global Advisor of Edwards Global Services, Inc. (EGS), has 4+ decades of international operations, development, executive, technical, management consulting, and entrepreneurial experience. Outside the USA, he has lived in China, the Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Iran and Turkey and has worked on projects in more than 50 countries in the Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe and the Middle East.

After a 20-year technical and executive career in international oil & gas exploration, Mr. Edwards was Master Franchisee for a U.S. franchisor in China, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Turkey. He was also Senior Vice President of international operations and development for the AlphaGraphics® taking the brand into 20 new countries. Since founding EGS in 2001, he and his team based in more than 25 countries have helped 44 franchisors across many industry sectors enter 30+ countries.

Keith Gerson, CEO of Gerson Advisory Services, brings 50 years of executive level expertise as a passionate and driven consultant, franchisor, and franchisee with a proven track record in building rapid-growth, and highly profitable franchise organizations. Keith established Gerson Advisory Services in January 2024 and previously served as President of Franchise Operations for FranConnect where he was able to work closely with many Executive Boards and Leadership Teams that are part of FranConnect’s portfolio of 1500+ brands and 350,000 locations. His focus is on helping franchisors get to their desired future state in sales, operations, communications, and engagement. Recognized in franchising circles for his extensive leadership experience, and ability to drive execution, Keith is a highly regarded consultant, advisor, and keynote speaker and has had the rare opportunity to create several leading franchise systems from their very conception through launch and sustained growth taking these systems from micro-emerging status to that of successful enterprise-level brands.