IAM381- 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 0:30

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. And this is a very special podcast because this is a solo podcast. So you're only gonna be hearing from me, which might be great if you're interested in that, it may not be great if you don't want to hear me. But obviously, this is how this pack has got to go. So I hope you enjoy this podcast. As with all these podcasts that we do the I AM CEO podcast, the goal is really to talk a little bit more about the guests, their background will let them start their business, but then also get some actionable things that you can implement as an entrepreneur and business owner to be effective and efficient. So with that being said, I start everything out with a CEO story. And the CEO story is just really a look into why somebody started their business. What I wanted to do with these episodes is really to drill down a little bit deeper. So you can hear a little bit more about the background of my story, why I started the businesses that I have, and the different ventures that I have, might be a more accurate term to say. But what I really wanted to start out with most of the time, if you've heard me on somebody else's podcast, I've talked about the first media company that I started when I was a kid, and that media company is very personal to me. And it has really directed a lot of the things that I've done in my life. Because anytime I've had or tried to make a difficult decision, a lot of the times I would go back to when I was a kid. And when I talk about difficult decisions, I mean, who the essence of who you are as a person. One of those deep questions where you're trying to figure out who am I, what makes me unique? What is my secret sauce, what makes me who I am, what makes me tick. For me, my father was in the military, he was in the Air Force and did his 20 years. And while I was probably about 10 or so, nine or 10, he had to go TDY he had gone TDY before I think I was too young, I don't really remember much. But me being 10. And growing up and becoming a man, I guess you can say I spent a lot of time with my father, especially when after we moved, there was a basketball goal outside. So anytime I would go shoot baskets, my dad would come out and chat with me one on one, he beat me sometimes I'd beat him other times. And as I got older, of course, I beat him all the time. But with that being said, when my dad went away, we didn't necessarily have a way to be connected with him. Outside of the AOL emails at that time, and the phone calls. But that wasn't nearly the amount of technology that we have at our fingertips today. So this was years ago, I want to say it was probably about at least 20 years ago, which is crazy. But that was really probably the first venture that I had, which was my very first media company. And a lot of what I talk about, and what I will talk about from our perspective is understanding exactly who your target market is, what your goals are, and what resources you have at your disposal to make sure that you create this media company. For me, I was a 10 year old kid who wanted to make a little extra money who liked writing, like creating content and using clip art and working on the computer. And at the same time, my goal was to really you know, generate some extra money, generate some some revenue, get some subscriptions under my belt, but also to have a closer relationship with my father to let him know about some of the things that were going on with the with a family when we didn't necessarily have the technology that we had at our fingertips. So I started a family MFI newspaper. And so this is the subscriptions to my family members. And I also would look for content. So a lot of times I would hear my mom talking about certain things that was going on with the family, I would put that into the newspaper I would put news that I would find in publications like The Washington Post, with full attribution of course and Sports Illustrated because I still love sports and I think I even put things from the soap opera journals or whatever I can find I can basically put into these newspapers and I would send these newspapers Oh my mom actually what's in the newspapers for me and get them printed and all of that to members of the family, people who are subscribers, but also to my father who was in the the other countries, so I would send them digitally. But I also would physically mail them as well, too. So it was my way to hit all those different aspects that I talked about, so consistently, but at the same time, there's a way for me to be closer to my father as well, too. And the reason that I brighten up that entrepreneurial venture is not because that was the very first thing I did. By no means was it the very first thing I did, but I think it was the most unique thing that I can call back to when I was a kid. So when I start to think about who the essence of who I am, as an individual, I go back to though that story. And that's really some of the things that made me and led me to start CEO blog nation are here started out with Hearpreneur in CB nation. Yes, I definitely did tear my Achilles while I was starting it, or before I started it, which led me to start it but it was also just understanding like, This is who you probably are, as a person, this is what makes you tick, this is what makes you unique. So tap into that and I think that it was that exercise that really helps you to separate yourself, but also be yourself and understand that no one can beat you at your own race, because it is your race. So it's something that I can say consistently and something I lean on tremendously. And that's what I wanted to definitely share. And as far as the secret sauce, I really think that what makes us unique is that we fuse two of these things together. I always say it's kind of like an Entrepreneur magazine with a digital marketing company. So the idea is that we're creating a tremendous amount of content by featuring the exact people we want to connect with on the on the podcast, on the blog, through the video interviews that we're starting to ramp up, we are having our target market right there, we're providing content for them to be successful to build and increase the business success rate so that their business and their organisations can really not just succeed, but thrive, it has been tremendously successful. And to be able to provide some of those services that they need or be able to point them in the direction of the services they need to be successful is even more important, which is why,the website design is website design. And SEO is such an important service and other services that we're testing out. And hopefully, we will be bringing branching out as well to potentially virtual assistant services, or connecting with other virtual assistants, maybe insurance services, things that we're kind of testing out so that we can provide value for our target market and really do some tremendous work, which I think is always important, always high importance for people that are entrepreneurs and business owners. So with that being said, I want to switch gears a little bit and actually talk about what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an app, a book or a habit that you have, but it's something that makes me more effective and efficient. So my CEO hack, where we specifically focus on WordPress web design with Blue 16 Media or the Digital Marketing Company. So we really drill down on providing in and helping with really valuable resources. So we do some website hosting but I usually say we're not doing the hosting there's two places I would go to look for hosting one of them is WP Engine. WP Engine provides really high level security WordPress hosting for people that have WordPress website. So if you have a WordPress website, you want to look into WP engine just because of the security and the speed of the site. One that's fairly new that we leaned on heavily and I think it has provided a tremendous value as far as like how we're using it to this to the title of this interview is WP. They are pretty much known for multi site so when we made CEO blog nation, we made it into a multi site. This was a site that I went to actually become a member of at that time, they did not have website hosting. Definitely not WordPress website hosting either, but now they have started to launch that so you can check out the show notes to get links for both of those. But the idea is really to make sure that you put your site and your information in the best possible light to be successful it as we talk, as I talked about in the previous episode, your website is your crust. So you want to make sure your foundation is in place if it's not in place and you're going to have some frustrations and some issues so make sure that you can So what are some of those ways that you can host your website and I wanted to provide you with a CEO nugget in the CEO nugget, for this time is going to be probably one of the more complex of CEO nuggets because it is ingredients. As I talked about, we're creating a final product, which might be your favourite dish, or might be sweet potato pie, it would be sweet potato pie for me, you're trying to figure out how you can position yourself so that you can be successful, and your definition of success is gonna be different than somebody else's. But that's why we do the work. In the very beginning, we figure out who your target market is, we figure out what your goals are, from your marketing strategy, we get really crystal clear and honest about the resources that you have at your disposal. And then you start to put your question in place, figure out where you're gonna put bring people back to, and then you figure out what ingredients you're going to use in order for you to be successful. Now, what are ingredients. Ingredients are the digital tools that you're using to help you to reach and connect with your target market. This is everything from a newsletter. This is networking groups that you're a part of this might be old school flyers that you're creating, and might be social media platforms like SEO, or I'm sorry, like Facebook, or Instagram, or Pinterest or Twitter. These are all ingredients that you're going to choose dependent upon who your target market is, what your goal is, what your resources are, it's getting really crystal clear about those things. So that you can make sure that you can execute on that strategy that you have, so that you reach the goals that you want. And I usually say imagine, you are going into a grocery store and you're figuring out what ingredients you want to put into the final product that you have. You may not necessarily want to put chilli peppers and your sweet potato pie or chilli peppers in your apple pie. You might want to that might be your thing. There's nothing wrong with that. But understanding that these three questions that you answer in the very beginning are what is going to direct everything that you do. So don't pick ingredients that are not consistent with what it is that you're hoping to accomplish. Unless you may be experimenting, if you're experimenting, or you want to be the first mover in a certain certain platform. Understand that you're doing that from a strategic standpoint. But again, the idea is to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each of these ingredients. Or these platforms are these digital marketing tools that you have at your disposal, and then you make decisions based off of that. So it's really the most robust of all the steps. And again, go and check out the CEO chat podcast, I literally break down. I will say every single digital marketing tool that you have at your disposal, but I break down a lot of them a bulk of those episodes of the 26 year show that I did were related and devoted to the ingredients that you have at your disposal. So definitely make sure to check that out. And then to close everything out. I always ask what does being a CEO mean to you? It is a good question on this podcast. And one of the common definitions that has come up has been freedom. And I remember I had an intro call with a potential guest. And he was saying that he didn't necessarily think that freedom would be something that would come up. But I think that when I've heard people say freedom, they're not saying freedom, like you could do whatever you want, whenever you want, which I guess you can, to some degree, it's the freedom of making that decision for yourself. So if your business should go left instead of going right as everybody else is going right, you get to make that decision, you have the freedom you have the responsibility, I guess you're just in charge, so you can make those decisions in order to do that. And that's freedom, it's not freedom to say that you don't have to do anything, it's freedom to say that you can basically direct the ship in the best way that you see fit. And I think that goes from strategic planning. But it goes down to also like your day to day perspective as well. Two is something that we definitely don't try. We don't keep in in mind as much as possible. But it's something that's very, very true. So understand that one of the common definitions that has come up is like being a CEO is all about freedom and the freedom to be able to direct your path to freedom to be able to make an impact on the world. And do it in the way that you see fit and do it in alignment with sometimes what your strengths are is really what being a CEO might mean to us. So definitely check out all the information that I talked about, check out those links in the show notes. You can find me@progression.com. You can also of course find us at CB nation that code that has links to the blogs, the podcast, the videos, and as always, we are powered by Blue 16 media, always go to Blue 16 media for your web design and SEO needs so this is Greh signing out. Hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day. Take care.

Outro 15:11

Thank you for listening to the I am CEO podcast powered by blue 16 media tune in next time and visit us at I am ceo.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@www.ce o gear.co. This has been the I am CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless Thank you for listening

Transcribed by https://otter.ai