GoKawiilKey Takeaways Max and Elena Emma got divorced in 2014, three years after starting their bookkeeping business, BooXkeeping.
They designed their divorce to be as low-conflict as possible: no lawyers and a peaceful filing.
Since their divorce, BooXkeeping has grown into a franchise with 16 locations and $1.4 million in annual revenue.
When Max and Elena Emma, the cofounders of BooXkeeping, a bookkeeping franchise, decided to get divorced in 2014, the story could easily have gone the way so many others do: lawyers, custody battles, staff forced to pick sides, a once-promising business gutted by a personal split.
But Max, BooXkeeping’s CEO, and Elena, the company’s CPO, had already decided that, for all the emotion between them, this wasn’t going to be that story. “We decided that we’re not going to get lawyers, we’re not going to get anything,” Elena tells Entrepreneur in a new interview. “It’s going to be a very peaceful divorce. We file papers, and everything else is just a verbal agreement.”
Max Emma. Credit: BooXkeeping
Elena Emma. Credit: BooXkeeping
BooXkeeping’s beginnings
Max and Elena were both immigrants to the U.S. Max arrived in 1993 from Russia, and Elena came in 1999 from Ukraine. They met in San Diego at a mutual friend’s birthday party, three weeks after Elena arrived in the U.S., started dating two years later and got married two years after that.
Max marks July 3, 2002 as the last day he ever worked for someone.
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