IAM300- Special Episode: 300 Episodes!!!

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:29

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresham from the I AM CEO Podcast, CB Nation, and of course, Blue 16 Media. And you are now listening to a special episode, which is episode number 300. If you haven't listened to this podcast, we basically have about six or seven set questions in about 60 minutes or so that we drill down and we learn about entrepreneurs, you know, business, their background, what got them started.

And then also learn some actionable things that you can learn as an entrepreneur or business owner to be effective and efficient, as well. So the reason that, you know this is a special episode is because of episode number 300.

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And now this is ramped up to be a daily podcast and have it down to a very, super efficient process for myself, but also for the guests that are on the show. But what I wanted to do for this episode was not do anything tremendously different follow the exact same process that you already know about, where I'll go in and talk about, you know, the story of why and how, you know, blue 16 media and CV nation got started.

I'll talk about you know exactly what we do to support the clients that we work with, what is our secret sauce, and what definitely makes us unique and a little bit into like, why exactly I've, you know, built it this way. And what I'm hoping to definitely achieve with the organization and all the awesome people that we have on the team, hacks, of course, nuggets, and then what is the overall theme and thesis of this podcast, which is to really look at what it even means to be a CEO, what it even means to be an entrepreneur, what it even means to be a business owner in this day and age.

So to get everything started, if you haven't listened to this or her voice or read anything on the sites, you know, feel free to go over to CEO blog nation or CbNation. But I really started this just because I used to do a lot of freelance writing, as an entrepreneur and business owner.

And even prior to that, I was kind of interested in entrepreneurship, not really sure exactly what that meant. But I knew that I absolutely love writing, I love creating content. Right? At that time, you know, pretty much content was just writing. So I enjoyed really doing that I started a family newspaper when my dad went TDY when I was about 10 years old. And the goal was really just to have a way to connect with him while he was overseas and let him know about some of the family things that were going on pre-Skype, pre-FaceTime, pre all these technological advances that we have.

So it was that that really was a thing and a story that I always go back to whenever I have to make quote-unquote, tough decisions. Whenever I'm trying to figure out what is, you know, the essence of who I am as an individual, the essence of you know, what I'm able to do.

And I always went back to that. So for me, as I fast forward, I became an English major, largely because I loved writing. And I went back to that story. And I know that was one of the things that I felt came naturally was something that I was able to do, you know, fairly easily as well too.

As far as creating content just because I enjoyed doing it so much I love you know, the creative aspects. So fast forward a lot of years, and I started to do some freelance writing. After I while I was with the job, and then eventually when I left that job, and then I was going around and had this entrepreneurial spotlight column. And I would write a lot you know, because I read I wrote a lot of different types of articles, everything from sports to business, and even did food reviews and things like that. But I was playing basketball or trying to play basketball one day, and I tore my Achilles Tendon.

And when I tore my Achilles tendon, I was not very happy, you know, and I couldn't get around to doing the interviews as I had done before, so I was pretty much stuck in bed, rehabbing an enteric completely luckily, but I still it's still kind of like a wake-up call. So that was really what laid the foundation for what we know now as CEO Blog Nation and I AM CEO Podcast and CEO Chat and all these different properties that we have. But the idea was literally just for me to interview entrepreneurs and business owners and as I mentioned and touched on before, I didn't really know exactly what that meant.

And I think that it still is something that's a little bit more abstract to some degree about what is an entrepreneur, and what's not an entrepreneur, I think we can always go by the dictionary definitions. But you know, that was kind of like the thesis and the theme of everything that I started to do.

And me wanting to Whoo, in feeling that I had shown entrepreneurial tendencies when I was younger, I wanted to kind of explore that a little bit more. So I started interviewing these business owners and I felt, you know, exactly at home, I felt like I really could see myself in them when they spoke and some of the things that they were working on and some of the things they were passionate about.

So I decided to vote my time and energy to that. And I felt like it wasn't necessarily that I selected that as much as it selected me. So I started to work on all these different properties, it started out with the here printer pod here printers site, heareprenuer.com, if you have not been to ideas, hear from entrepreneurs, and it just kind of blossomed from there, when I started to see that entrepreneurs wanted, you know, more than just to have the opportunity to tell their stories, it was, you know, so much more than that. And that kind of segues right into like, what exactly we do to support our clients and in the new mission that we've come to kind of terms about in simplices.

And through, you know, really working to make our mission. And what we do simplistic, was really to increase the business success rate. So essentially, what we're trying to do to increase that success rate. And that's from a CEO blog nation standpoint, that's from an I AM CEO Podcast standpoint, that's from a CB Nation TV standpoint, all these are focused on increasing the business success rate.

That's what we're all about in the way that we do that is really twofold. And the goal is really to provide visibility for entrepreneurs and business owners. As you know, blue 16 Media is a website design and SEO company, you could check everything out at blue16media.com. And the real big focus of that is to increase the visibility. So we're definitely you know, digital marketing firms. So the idea is that we're increasing the opportunities that a lot of business owners have because I always say the name of the game is being found. So that's one of the central parts of what we're trying to do.

The other big aspect that we do from a CB Nation standpoint is we basically interview entrepreneurs and business owners on a platform in order to increase their visibility. So that ties right into the mission that we have. The other big part is we support entrepreneurs and business owners.

And the way that we definitely tried to do that is sometimes by providing visibility to resources that you may not have available to you. But it's also in terms of how we try to tap into the knowledge and information that the guests have on the show or people that are interviewed. But the idea is that we want to increase that success rate by providing resources as well.

So that as a visibility about events as visible visibility, about resources that you may not know about, it's tapping into these entrepreneurs and business owners and figuring out how they've been able to be successful or things that they wish they did not do. But it's all tapping into that and providing that for the small to medium-sized business and kind of everything on up and in between.

So that's really, the big goal is providing visibility and support and resources for business owners. So basically a two-part mission we're extremely focused on every piece of content. Here's one of both parts of the mission and like I use the mission, you know, for this specifically, I AM CEO podcast, this was kind of created with that mission in line.

And that's why it's built around those six questions and what we're trying to do, and I think one of the big things about our secret sauce is the visible actual business model itself. The reason that I mentioned that is, I was like I talked about, and my story is that I really was infatuated with the journalism industry, but the journalism industry is going through a lot of changes and is still going through changes just because a solid business model has not necessarily been produced.

So that's where I really went into exploring different ways that business owners can potentially leverage some of the resources that they needed that were available to them. So I landed on, you know, starting a digital marketing firm. And, you know, it's not the chicken or the egg conversation or anything like that. The blog was when I first worked on and it was through working on the blog that I you know, met people in a networking group and started to work on WordPress websites and do those things and saw that there was a need for that.

So that's where that kind of exploded from there. And that's really where I look at the journalism industry going. It's not necessarily that you are always solely on advertising. How would you even gather to say that advertising is not necessarily the best business model to focus on us on providing resources for these business owners?

So that's really what the focus was going into in building this is really to create a new business model for not just, you know, Blue 16 Media and CB nation, but for the journalism industry as a whole, because I think that one of the things I started to see is that a lot of local online publications and news publications, what they would do is provide, you know, social media services on the side, or they'll provide, you know, website support services to these business owners.

So I started to basically extrapolate that and say, Hey, why don't I create something that's specifically for these entrepreneurs and business owners, that helps them to be successful, but at the same time, provide certain resources in and things that they need available to, to them.

So definitely, you know, working on the digital marketing still, and that's still an essential part of it. But you can also get a lot of other resources that are available everything from if you're looking for insurance or incorporation. If you're trying to build an app, or you know, any number of resources we have them on our hex page as well. So you can definitely, you know, check that out as well. So that's essentially what our secret sauce is what makes us unique, it's not necessarily in a lot of the forward-facing things.

It's the compilation and kind of the way that everything is streamlined. From a business standpoint, the understanding is that we're providing free resources for entrepreneurs and business owners, but at the same time, we have services and products that we also think would help them out as well. So if you're listening to this, definitely make sure to check out our sites have tons of resources that are available to you. And then I wanted to switch gears and segue into what I call the CEO hack.

And the reason that I wanted to focus on this was just because the hack itself is something that we've been working on. And I've been kind of brainstorming on the best way to do this, we have a lot of different resources and hacks that are available across our different sites.

And you can access them in numerous ways depending on whatever it is that you're looking for. However, one of the things that we recently launched and wanted to focus on was the CB Nation Plus, and CB Nation Plus is essentially a premium resource for entrepreneurs and business owners.

So a lot of the behind-the-scenes, advice and information and sometimes even videos or audio that we provide for these entrepreneurs and business owners is available through CB Nation Plus, so this is kind of like a members-only site that we're starting to build and grow. But the idea is that everything from a list of the hacks that we have to if you're in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia area, we have a directory that specifically focused on providing and updating resources that are available to this area.

And also, probably I think, maybe the biggest piece that you can get the most from is the I AM CEO Tribe. And the reason that I think the I AM CEO Tribe is something that is of great importance is because I noticed that a lot of people will submit through Haro.

And I actually had someone on the show, who mentioned that she just wanted to basically make submissions for our site. And rather than having to go through your inbox each time to figure out what Rhys what, you know, stories we're working on what things we're working on, I decided to create it as part of the CB Nation Plus, where you can go to a site, you can literally see all the questions that we asked, and you can pretty much respond to all of them a month in advance. So I thought that was pretty, you know, big and pretty important, just because it will consolidate and save time for those people that actually wanted to get that premium content.

So I thought that was pretty big. So that's one of the big hacks that we have. And of course, the also the nuggets as well, too, because a lot of the advice that we get from the people that are on the show come in will be available directly to that. So with that being said, you know, definitely you know, for my hack in my nugget, definitely check out the CB Nation Plus, it's premium content that's available.

We're planning on doing, you know, loads of, you know, members-only events and things like that as well, that I think will be really strong and really be able to help further the mission that we have as a whole. So last but not least, if you don't really know, kind of like the reason for this podcast is to look at what it means to be a CEO and entrepreneur, and business owner.

The I AM CEO idea is something that I think is very abstract, and may be hard to really define I think so I think that I've had people on the show that say they don't see themselves as a CEO and I've had people on the show that say they do see themselves as a CEO and they're a solopreneur I've had somebody on the show that had you know 1000s of employees And they see themselves obviously, as a CEO. So it just kind of depends.

And my goal for this show was really just to spark a conversation around entrepreneurship and business and what it means to be a CEO, to have people's eyes open to the different ways by which they can generate revenue, and generate opportunity because I've always felt like entrepreneurship equals hope. And I've always, you know, use the phrase that I was a hope dealer largely because of that.

So you can definitely, you know, check out you know, all our different resources, there's tons of information there, I've been doing it for, who knows how many years and been interviewing tremendous, you know, entrepreneurs and business owners and be sure to check out the site, be sure to leverage a lot of the resources that we have available to us and as always, if you need anything, you feel free to reach out to me you can go to greshamharkless.com, and that literally has links to all the different projects that I'm working on, and also a lot of ways that you can contact me as well too. But if you want to check out you know, any certain resources, we're going to have the FAQ and all that information also in the show notes as well.

So be sure to check that out. And this is Gresh signing off. Thank you for your time and I'm happy to be at number 300 am looking forward to number 400 speak to you again. But as always take care and definitely you know do great things.

Outro 16:18

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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