IAM382- Special Episode

• Progreshion.com
• CBNation.co
• Blue16media.com
• Youareamedia.company
• http://progreshion.ceoblognation.com/2013/09/17/web-hosting/

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Transcription

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Intro 0:00

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 0:09

Hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and this is another special I AM CEO podcast just because this is a solo podcast where I want to talk about some strategic things that I think you should do to be effective and efficient. But you're also going to get some insight into what makes me tick, I guess you can say a little bit more about my background what led me to get started, and all those things that keep you going and keep you motivated as a business owner. So with that being said, I wanted to start out with a CEO story and my CEO story, as I talked about, how there are different aspects to everybody's story. And I've touched on a little bit with each of these episodes so far. And here's what I wanted to start out with, and there's something called Mini Character of Virginia.

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And if we've met face to face, I usually have bands on my wrist, usually for different organizations and causes that I try to support. One of them that I very rarely take off. And one of the reasons I have so many of them is called Mini Character, Virginia, it was probably the first official organization that I launched, my friend from middle school, actually, Travis Mayfield, if you're listening to this shout out to you, actually joined a society, I think it would be the right term called a Mini Character.

And then we decided when he came here to start something called Mini Character, Virginia. And the goal for it was really to help young men to be successful. In a lot of different ways, I think we want to do and we were really ambitious with some of the things we wanted to execute on everything from doing service projects, with young men, and then also to help prepare them for school and things that they wanted to do to be successful.

So we really had a lot of ambitious plans to execute with a Mini Character. And we didn't necessarily, I would say, reach the level that I hoped we would have, however, we were able to give some scholarships out, which I really am proud of, because I think that one of the things we wanted to do wish to be able to give back I think, at the heart of it. And I don't want to speak for Travis. But I think that's really what our goal was, is to do that and to make a tremendous impact on the world.

So that was one of the big things that I started and you always look at those entrepreneurial ventures just to see if those things were what and who you are as a person. And I think that that was one of the things that made me really excited. I feel like I worked harder on that than I worked on. A lot of things at that time, I was super passionate about, and I poured myself into it definitely was disappointed. It didn't necessarily go the way that I wanted it to go.

But it flipped kind of a switch in me that made me know that I really love creating things. So everything from creating a Facebook group at that time and, doing a lot of community building I think was really what resonated with me. And it stayed with me more than anything else. So that was really what I tried to focus on Mini Character, Virginia, myself, and my buddy, Travis Mayfield, we launched that venture and that was probably the first official organization that I started.

And one of the big things we were able to do is because I think I was turning 20. And I think Travis might have been turning 20. Sometimes at that time, we had a cutoff date for a grant, we were trying to apply for a youth venture grant. And hopefully, I'm pronouncing this correctly. I think it's a Shaka. They do a tremendous amount of things for young entrepreneurial entrepreneurs.

And we were able to secure a youth venture grant from them. And we had to do it in a very quick time. So there's nothing like having a timeline to force you to make sure that you get things done. But we were able to get granted a youth venture grant which is where some of that scholarship money went and also went to fundraising like these bands that we did to raise revenue for the organisation.

But that's really what it was all about. Just giving back and trying to be of service and try to make a huge impact on the world. And I think that that has definitely directed me today as I do, again, the web design and SEO for Blue 16 Media. Really the real big goal is to drill down and figure out who a person's target market is the resources that they have, and what their goals are, and really work backwards from there. And we really draw down and specialize in WordPress web design, because WordPress is the best.

And I have a whole podcast related to that if you want to look through the CEO chat, podcast, and I'm saying that with some seriousness, but with the other reality that is not necessarily always the best fit for everybody. So understand that. I'm just saying that but as I talked about with our company, make sure that you understand the strengths and weaknesses of each of the different platforms that you have at your disposal. But also understand that there is necessarily there's not necessarily a one-size-fits-all in your specific, specific situation.

So make sure you approach it strategically, you just understand the lay of the land and everything that you have to use. So that is basically what we focus on. And our secret sauce, the secret sauce, I think for CB Nation is really that we try to take the SB Nation approach to entrepreneurship and business. If you've ever been on SB Nation, if you're a sports fan, definitely go to the site, if you have not heard of it. The idea is that each of the different sites has its own psychology flavor, its own philosophy that speaks to that specific sports team.

So that's what we really try to do with CB nation is really break down each of the different aspects of entrepreneurship to a smaller degree just to test the concepts related to entrepreneurship. So this is everything related to socio-economics, the type of business, when I say the type of business, I mean, industry stage a business type of goal for going to the podcast. So whether that be to learn how to videos going to teach a CEO, or really to hear about hear profiles, from entrepreneurs, and business owners.

So that's why each of the sites is broken into its own. And each has its own name, and philosophy flavor, because just like SB Nation, the idea was really to showcase the different aspects of entrepreneurship, and how diverse it is related to just some of those aspects, that I kind of talked about locations and other big ones, we have our DMV CEO site as well. So that's really the goal.

And what I think makes us unique, and what is the secret sauce for everything that we're doing is really drilling down to get really crystal clear on what that target market is, and trying to provide valuable content for them. So definitely something you want to check out.

And I wanted to switch gears in presenting to you two CEO hacks. The first one is Basecamp, I have an entire blog post that you should check out in the show notes related to Basecamp. And why I love Base Camp and why Basecamp has absolutely saved my life, as a business and as a team. I am the only employee, we have contractors.

So that's how I've decided to grow the business how I wanted to grow the business, and wanted to scale out and make sure that we had a viable business before we brought on employees, that's always been the goal. As long as possible, try to keep it as a scalable business and Basecamp has been an absolute game changer. Honorable mention to Asana if you have not heard of that, and that is a project management system that we used prior to using Basecamp. But it literally allowed us to be super organized with all our products, or all our projects. So every single project that we have is within our base camp.

So everything from a hosting client all the way up to SEO to web design to whatever we're doing with a client, we create a base camp. And that is basically an electronic file folder related to that project. One of the reasons that we switched when I decided to eventually switch from base camp, from Asana to Basecamp is because there's a feature called client side, the client side allows you to do is to be able to see and communicate with clients through the actual platform, and it's the project management platform.

So rather than having to send an email and copy this person and copy that person, you can literally go into the base camp, you can send an email to the client if we need to. And we can also see all the tasks and those two things. Now, as the time of this recording can be combined it used to be two separate ones.

So we usually lean towards keeping it separate. Rather than keeping it integrate it. But the whole idea is again, just that you can keep everything in one place. It's not caught in my email, it's not quite in the teammate's email, because we're working at different times of the day, different hours of the day. And sometimes I'm out and about throughout the day. So we want to make sure that we keep those things in place.

And the other small little hack that I wanted to talk about is Fiverr. If you have never heard of Fiverr I would even say Upwork Those are great places that you can get help for some of the projects that you're working on. I think that our team has been really built around upwork. It's been beat, working with different members of the team. But also, I've leveraged Fiverr as well to get certain things done. But that's two hacks that I would say if you're looking for stuff to get done. But check out Fiverr. Also, check out Upwork as well.

And last, but not well, second to last but not least, the CEO nugget. Again, we've been talking about the recipe, we've been talking about the URL mini company, the acronym, and the acronym is the Recippeee. And we're gonna talk about two of those p's. So the two p's are actually going to be picked and prepared. So make sure you select one or two of the ingredients that are central to your overall strategy.

So before in the last episode, we talked about all the ingredients that were available to you and at your disposal, what do you want to make sure that you do now pick the one or two ingredients that are central to your overall strategy when I talked about before, is really understanding that you have all these different ingredients that are at your disposal, which you only pick one or two, you really want to drill down on one, maybe two of these ingredients and really own those, and then you can start to add in other ingredients.

So that's really the big thing that you want to try to keep in mind is going back to the ever read or have heard and listened to the podcast. For our listen to the audiobook, I should say for the one thing you understand that the whole question, the crux of it is the find the one thing that by doing it, everything else is easier or unnecessary. You want to do that from your digital marketing perspective, you want to round out the one thing that you can do that everything else you do is easy or unnecessary. So it might be digital products, it might be SEO, it might be Facebook, it might be Instagram, if you're like a health and wellness guru, it might be face-to-face networking, like joining a networking group.

So it can be many things, but find the thing that by doing it, everything else is easier or unnecessary. And from there, you want to focus on that. But don't, I would say you probably want to try one other thing. So if you found your thing, you're competent, what your thing is, your one thing is maybe you try something else related to that so that you can also use something else that's central to your strategy.

So that's the overall big thing that you want to try to keep in mind is the two P's, pick it and prepare, pick and prepare the ingredients that are going to help you to be successful. And last but not least, one of the big definitions of being a CEO that has come up during these interviews is the idea of being in charge. I think that a lot of times you'll hear people say the buck stops, starts finishes in the middle with you. So the buck starts to stop with you.

And a lot of times you're in charge, and you have such a huge responsibility, you have the freedom to direct things how you want them to go. But the big thing is just being in charge, you make those decisions. Now you definitely have your your shareholders, if you have investors, you might have that you have your clients, you have your teammates, you have all those things, but at the end of the day, you're in charge so you make those decisions.

So it's one of the big things you want to try to keep in mind about being a CEO and one of the greatest things that you want to remember. So this is Gresh signing out. I hope you enjoy this episode. As always, you could leave us a review so that we can continue putting out great content as much as possible. And as always, you can find me at the progression of funky spelling progression that's @progreshion.com. You can find me at Blue16media.com And you can find me at CBnation.co. Thank you and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Outro 13:57

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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