IAM378- Special Episode

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 Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast powered by blue 16 media CB nation. And this is gonna be a little bit of a different type of I AM CEO podcast. As you know, if you haven't listening, these podcasts are definitely more laser focus, in the sense that we will go down the line and ask about six separate questions. And the goal is really to learn about the guests background, their business, what led them to get started, what makes them unique, but also get some actionable things that people can do to be effective and efficient. So in this same exact realm, I'm actually going to put together a week's worth of solo podcasts on the I AM CEO podcast, to really give an opportunity to learn about things that I feel that you should use and maybe look into to be effective and efficient. But also things that you may not know about CB nation, myself and things that I do to be effective and efficient, and kind of how I got my start. So this is the very first one, it's going to be more of a general overview. But if you don't and aren't familiar with CB nation, we basically have a new mission, which is basically to increase the overall success rate for entrepreneurs and business owners are real tagline is increasing the business success rate. We try to focus on that and basically two different ways. It's really to increase the visibility of entrepreneurs and business owners and the ventures and things that they're working on. But then also to learn about resources and things that people use to be effective and efficient. That also you can learn about as well. And as I usually start out each podcast with what I call a CEO story, this community of blogs really started out as the very first blog call Hearpreneur years ago. And the goal for that podcast was simply to just hear from entrepreneurs and business owners why it's called Hearpreneur. And I used to go to businesses in the Lake Ridge Aqua in northern Virginia area. And I would interview entrepreneurs and business owners find out why they started the business advice that they would have for aspiring entrepreneurs and business owners things that they wish they would have done differently. And I would freelance right for that pop that publication called patch and richly that led into me having a actual entrepreneurial spotlight column. And then it just kind of blossomed from there. So I ended up actually tearing my Achilles tendon while trying to play basketball while I was doing that, right after I left a job that I didn't feel was a great fit in probably 45 days after I left that job, and it kind of put me in a frustrating place but I really used the blog and the Hearpreneur blog specifically as a way of therapy for lack of a better term. So I started to really drill down on interviewing entrepreneurs and business owners that did it specifically from the computer and in really drill down to do that. And it had some really awesome interviews and really awesome guests I had on the show like John Lee Dumas was featured on the podcast and like all featured on the blog, I should say and just all these different types of entrepreneurs and business owners and that's really what laid the foundation for CB nation as we know it today has definitely blossomed into a lot more different mediums. But our goal is really streamline and in that we're trying to increase the business success rate, it's not just me doing it, have a team of people that help out with everything from the video, in video interviews, the editing, helps out with that as far as the podcast interview he also helps out podcasts editing, he also helps out with that, mercy also helps out with the scheduling of posts. So it's definitely a team of us and Seaman and myself and we really also do a lot of the website actual updates that you'll see in the evolutions of the site as a whole. So definitely a team effort. And that's one of the biggest things that we try to keep in mind. And the goal for what we do is really to increase the business success rate, like I said, So across the different blog sites, you're gonna see everything from book reviews to email interviews. We do featured posts of people, entrepreneurs or business owners that you might want to know about. The goal was also to do event coverage, obviously, podcasts, video interviews, just a lot of different kinds it really with the whole sole focus of increasing that business success rate. So definitely, you enjoy these seven podcasts. Understand that our secret sauce is just that we are basically taking a niche focus to a very broad category where we're talking about entrepreneur, entrepreneurship and business. But each of the different sites has its own kind of niche, feel niche focus. So if you're talking about the DMV CEO site is just focused on the DC, Maryland and Virginia area, whereas the enterpreneurs site has a lot more stories and motivational posts and profiles of business owners where the teacher CEO site is a lot more catered towards people that want to learn how to be a better entrepreneur, more of a pedantic approach and really want to read different infographics and understand the statistics behind creating or are starting a business in a specific industry. So there's a lot really there. It's all read together or merged together through the CB nation, that CO site. But the idea is that you can take in different types of contents for different reasons. And that's really kind of like the secret sauce or what makes CV nation unique. So definitely make sure that you enjoy this podcast and everything that we're creating. And, as promised, I wanted to switch gears and I want to go into the actual things that you can do to be effective and efficient. This one I what I think is one of the the unique parts about this podcast is really get to drill down in to hear about specific things that you can do, are leveraged to be effective and efficient as a business owner. So here,what I'm going to start out with, the CEO hack is actually going to be CB nation Natco. And the reason that I'm gonna break that down is because we have a lot of value that's within these different sites, not only as I mentioned, could you read numerous resources, you can also access our premium content by signing up for CB nation plus, which has a seven day free trial. But in addition to those two things, just in and of itself, you also have the opportunity to really create a directory listen, you can become a supporter of our site, you can sign up to, to be featured on the site, or you can recommend that there's somebody else to be featured on the site. So there's just loads of opportunities for you to leverage as an entrepreneur business owner, to be featured. You can also use and leverage a tool that will come up in a future episode call hero to actually submit to our site to be featured on our site as well to through that platform based off the round up questions that will ask and get different entrepreneurs and business owners to provide their insight and perspective on some make sure to definitely check out CB nation, there's a loads and loads of content there. So I definitely think that's one of the CEO hacks that you definitely want to keep in mind. So the next thing that I wanted to talk about is the CEO nugget. The CEO nugget is basically a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. And sometimes I'll say if you can happen to a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self, what I would basically tell my younger business self is to leverage the blogs in the content I was creating, to basically position the products and services that I'm providing to a larger audience. What I mean by that is we have I have a digital marketing company called Blue 16 media so everything's literally powered by blue 16 media. But the thing that I did in the very beginning stages, I wouldn't say the first probably three or four years was I had each of these different entities as two separate entities. And it really journalistic approach to the CB nation and CEO blog nation and Hearpreneur, as it all came to be one, the focus was purely looking at it from a journalistic standpoint, and the whole loose 16 media was a separate company. So I provided web design CEO at that time, a lot more social media, but now we've kind of drilled down to doing just web design and CEO services. But what I would have done is adopt this mindset that I actually have as a philosophy which is the your media company mindset. The whole idea is that you should really strategically look at creating your overall marketing plan and strategy around creating a dish. I usually always use sweet potato pie as the example but the idea is that just like you have a sweet potato pie or whatever your favourite dessert might be, you create that dish, but it doesn't just start From there, it starts from a methodical process that it takes for you to get to that end result. And that's the exact same way you should approach your marketing. So what I would tell my younger ms itself is really to adopt that mindset to doubt that you are a media company mindset so that you can position Blue 16 media services that I'm providing the web design and CEO strategy that you can reach and connect with your target market provide them tremendous value to provide them tremendous opportunity. And if you're able to do that, then you're going to be way ahead of your peers way ahead of the curve and in the industry as a whole. Because I think embedded within that is a answer in a potential solution to the journalism, the digital journalism issue that's going on where a lot of people are creating journalistic ventures are not able to monetize that and create that business model. But if you have a solid service that you're able to pay people to provide, that's going to help you to basically position your company in that way. So thing is one of the biggest things, I'm going to actually break down each of the different aspects in the future I am CEO podcast, there's an actual acronym I came up with in that acronym is recipe that's three E's at the end, and each of them actually stand for something. But I'm gonna go through each of those different things. But again, it's that methodical process of understanding, how exactly you want to create your content, create that, that marketing strategy around everything that you're doing. So definitely make sure to listen to these future podcasts. So you can hear a little bit more about that. And you can actually go back to the CEO chat podcast where I broke down last year and 2018, I broke down each of the different aspects of that plan so that you can kind of understand exactly how you can strategically do that for your your business or organisation. So make sure again, to rewind and go back to previous episodes to listen and hear more about that. And last but not least, I ask everybody, what does being a CEO mean to you. And what I wanted to do was really talk about the reason for this podcast, which is really to look at entrepreneurship and business and what it means to be a CEO. And the goal of this podcast really is to hear exactly what some of the most popular answers to that have been. Granted, everybody has their own unique perspective. But there's been certain ones that have come up and really resonated with me, which I wanted to share with you. So in these next seven episodes, I'm also going to drill down deep so that you can understand and understand and keep in mind that my job is to make sure that I have different types of quote, unquote, CEOs on the show. So that's solopreneurs. That's people that have been in business for five years as people who have been in business for five minutes, that's traditional CEOs that have and you can buy their stock ticker price. So we've had different types of CEOs, people that don't even own their own businesses, people that are maybe chief marketing officers or chief operating officers within the business. But again, the big thing to kind of keep in mind is that SEO is just a term. And I think that everybody gets to define it for themselves, whether it resonates with them, or it doesn't. So I'm going to touch on some of the most popular ones that I feel like I've heard, and I want to make sure to share those with you today. But as always, you can always catch me on social media sites my handle is at progression. And that's a funky spelling progression. That means check out the site progression.com Of course Blue 16 media.com And last but not least, CB nation.co to get all the content that I'm talking about, in all of the things that we're working on, but this is Gresh signing out. I appreciate your time and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Outro 13:54

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.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai