When He Immigrated, Math Was the Only Language He Understood. Now He's Built That Knowledge Into a Franchise Making $30 Million a Year. Mo Khalil now owns 70 Mathnasium locations.
By Kim Kavin Edited by Frances Dodds
This story appears in the July 2024 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe »
Mo Khalil worked in sales, but he had the entrepreneurial bug. In 2003, he moved to Florida and opened a Verizon Wireless franchise, which he grew to multiple locations. But when his son was born, he says, "I started thinking about legacy and how much I loved kids." And he thought back to his own childhood — when, at age 11, he and his parents immigrated from Egypt to the Bronx. "Math was honestly the only bright point in the day until I learned English," he says. That passion for math remained.
Khalil sold his Verizon stores and opened his first Mathnasium in January 2011. Today, he owns 70 in seven states, and has been Mathnasium's top franchisee for 10 years, with an annual revenue of more than $30 million. Here, he shares his strategy for success.
1. Location is everything.
"A brand-new franchise owner may go after the lower [lease] investment," Khalil says. "I do the opposite. I look for the highest rent. I'm serving the upper middle class, so you have to be where they are. At traffic lights, people are sitting for three or four minutes staring at your sign. You can't buy that many impressions for so little money."
2. Get in the room with your customers.
"A lot of people join the Chamber of Commerce, as if doing only that will make a difference. But you have to also go where your client is. Mine are at schools, so I'm going to PTA meetings to understand what each school needs, and provide it. They each typically have three fundraisers a year, and I'm involved with all of them."
3. Hire staff based on core values.
"We're looking for somebody who sees family as a core value. Those people are going to stay with you longer, and they're more trainable. In interviews, ask for multiples: Tell me about three or four of your core values. What guides you every day? We leave that open-ended and then drill in from there."
Related: 10 Traits of the Most Successful Franchise Owners
Bonus Tip
Mathnasium CEO Mike Davis says that one of Khalil's greatest strengths is how fast his sales funnel is. "A lot of times, parents are calling us in distress," Davis says. "The kid just got a bad grade. The parents just had a fight at the kitchen table about how to do algebra. When they call, [Khalil] is excellent about getting them into the center to get an assessment, and then getting them help quickly. That's because of his architecture. He has his own call center. He always has availability for assessments. The delta between good and great here is that Mo does it in a matter of three or four days, while the average is five to six days."
