About Markarie
Built on franchise expertise. Driven by measurable results.
Shawn Goldsmith, CFE
Shawn earned both his BS and MBA degrees from Cornell University, where he served as a Franchise Visiting Lecturer and was named to Cornell's “10 Under 10 Notable Alumni.”
Since 2008, Shawn has been an active member of the International Franchise Association, where he earned the designation of Certified Franchise Executive (CFE), served as Chair of the CFE Executive Board, and currently serves as Vice Chair of the Membership Committee. He also graduated from Georgetown University's Franchise Management Program.
Today, Shawn serves as the Senior Advisor of Strategic Relations to U.S. Congressman Rich McCormick, the newest member of the Congressional Franchise Caucus.
Shawn is also a member of YPO (Young Presidents' Organization), the premier global community of chief executives, which keeps him connected to how the world's leading companies grow and adapt. It's perspective he brings to every brand and candidate Markarie serves.
A serial entrepreneur at heart, Shawn applies battlefield strategies to build and lead successful businesses. In 2025, Markarie celebrated their 10th anniversary as a franchise development and analytics agency. He is also a multi-unit franchisee of The Spice & Tea Exchange, meaning he has sat on the same side of the table as every candidate Markarie works with. Evaluating every opportunity through the franchisee's lens, the Markarie team matches candidates with brands where they can genuinely thrive.
Shawn serves on the Board of Directors of VendTech International, Inc., the longest-running, highest-rated, and most-awarded company in the vending industry, powered by its 100+ international employees and ever-growing team.
In his free time, Shawn competes in boxing matches and participates in Ancient Roman research expeditions. As a youth, he achieved the rank of Eagle Scout and earned all 121 merit badges, an extremely rare feat in the Boy Scouts of America.
Living the Long-Short Way, not the Short-Long Way.
Our Story
Our Story
Franchising tends to be most people’s plan B, C, and D. We’re making it most people’s plan A; this is where our story begins.
Years ago, our Founder and CEO, Shawn Goldsmith, was a product of IFA “Next Gen” as a recipient of the Don DeBolt Scholarship in Franchising at 17 years old. That experience put him in front of leaders like Steve Greenbaum and Dina Dwyer-Owens, people who became mentors, then friends, and even board members of Markarie.
What struck him most was that every one of them had an unorthodox path. None of them planned to be in franchising. They fell into it. And yet they’d built extraordinary things.
That question kept coming back: if franchising creates this kind of success, why isn’t it anyone’s first choice? Why isn’t it taught in top-tier universities? That question became the reason Markarie exists, and eventually the reason Shawn became a Visiting Franchise Lecturer at Cornell University’s MBA Graduate School. Because if no one was going to open that door for the next generation, we would.
The Problem
The franchise industry has a matchmaking problem.
Most candidate searches look like a flock of seagulls fighting over one french fry. Someone fills out a web form and within hours a dozen brands are calling, all competing for the same person. The system was never designed around the candidate. Pay varies by brand and by deal, so the advice a candidate gets is rarely neutral.
It’s overwhelming. It’s noisy. And for many people, it turns what should be a life-changing opportunity into a confusing, high-pressure sales experience.
For brands it is not much better. Development teams post listings, wait for leads, and spend their days sorting unqualified prospects instead of building relationships with the people who actually fit their ideal candidate profile.
Both sides deserve better.
The Mission
We treat franchise development the way matchmaking should work: one candidate at a time, one brand at a time.
Markarie runs a consortium of non-competing franchise brands, one per vertical, working toward the same goal. We don’t send fifty options and hope one sticks. We learn who the candidate is: their personality, their goals, their finances. Then we match them with the one brand that fits.
The whole journey happens in one place: candidate profiling, a vetted FDD, financing support. No noise, no overselling, no competing interests. Every brand and partner involved has agreed to play on the same team.
The Spark
For brands, we flipped the script.
Franchise development has always been reactive: post a listing, wait for a candidate, hope someone qualified shows up. We go after the candidates your brand actually wants. One-on-one matching instead of ten-on-one chaos, with candidates who arrive qualified, educated, and vetted.
For candidates, we became the filter.
You’re not being pitched by everyone with a franchise to sell. You’re being guided by a team that understands the landscape and protects you from the noise. We advise. We educate. We make sure this is right for you before anyone signs.
And because we believe franchising should be a choice, not something you stumble into, education is at the core of everything we do.
Where We’re Headed
The best of the old and in with the new.
Markarie is guided by an exceptional Leadership team and a Board of Advisors that includes three Former Chairs of the International Franchise Association and the very first Franchisee in the IFA Hall of Fame, Doc Cohen, our Chairman.
We have already built out much of the franchise value chain, from brand vetting to candidate development to financing, and we keep adding to it.
The model is working. The brands are growing. The candidates are finding their fit. And we’re just getting started.
Why Markarie Exists
Most franchise development agencies wait. They post on portals, hope the right people raise a hand, and call that a pipeline. What a development director actually gets is a calendar full of unqualified calls.
We built Markarie to work the other way around. We go out and find the candidates a brand wants, and we stay with them until Discovery Day is on the calendar. That is the Long-Short Way: slower to set up, faster to close, and a pipeline you can plan around.