IAM384- 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, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. And this is the final of the seven podcasts that I did as solo podcast. So there was no guests other than me talking about my background, well, let me get started. And everything that I've been doing with CB nation Blue16 Media. And when I wanted to do I usually start out the show by asking for a CEO story getting an idea of exactly what it is that I've done to get to this current spot and what my background looks like. And I delved in a little bit deeper on some of the failures that I had some of the things that I feel like I did well, then definitely, there's a lot more than what I talked about in these episodes, and I hope to share that over the airwaves in a lot of different ways over the next. Next, hopefully, latter years, I'll be able to do that. But what I wanted to do was talk a little bit differently about something about the CEO story. And I think that a lot of times, we lose perspective on what story we're writing on a day to day basis. And the reason that I wanted to touch base on this is because a lot of times when we're trying to figure out what to do or what not to do, we don't think about that story, we don't think about what we're trying to do and what we're trying to accomplish and who we want to be and what our story should be when it's ultimately written. And that's something that I tried to do. And I recently was talking with a friend about the exact same thing where, you know, asking yourself, what story do you want to be written? How do you want to be remembered? What's your legacy gonna be. And when I think you get on that perspective, it allows you to make certain decisions about what organisations to be a part of what what things to do, what things not to do, what things start, so on and so forth. And I think that's really something that resonated with me. And I wanted to just kind of share a little bit about what I'm hoping to do with this blog with this podcast and, and everything that we're doing from a service standpoint, and I touched on this a few times about how passionate I am about the journalism industry and how I know that industry is going through a really difficult time. And one of my goals was really to create a business model, a sustainable business model, and a really successful business model in the journalism industry around content around creating content, and to do it and not have it fully be dependent upon advertising it if you are aware, you know, a bulk of journalism is basically a bulk of the advertising revenue is basically spent through Google and Facebook. That's where most of it goes. And I shouldn't say most, because that implies, I guess, over 51%, I think is about 30% 30 40%, you hear different numbers, but about 30 40% that I've heard consistently, as far as like where most people are spending advertising dollars, and they have essentially, somewhat close to a monopoly on the industry. So what I want my story to really be about and what I'm hoping to stand for, and I want people to remember me by is really hoping to combat and create a model that is sustainable around the journalism industry, not just for bliss, 16, MIDI and CV nation, but for other entrepreneurial ventures as well. That's what the goal really is. And what we're trying to accomplish with everything that we're doing is really to, to nail that and to do that on a a really high level to be to be successful. And I think that's one of the big things that I want to be remembered by, but also just empowering people and motivating people to really be entrepreneurs and business owners to create ventures and create products and services to do what you were called here to do on this earth. And I think that I want to play a part as far as like pushing people towards that, and helping people to really crush their goals in order to make that happen and provide the visibility and a platform by which they can do that. And the motivation sometimes that people need or the kick in the butt to make that happen. And that's really some of the things that I want to stand for outside of you know, being you know, a family man and being a man of God. I really want to stand for those things that I want people to not only say those things about me, but I want my work to be in alignment with that. So what I wanted to do with the CEO story This time was not necessarily just talk about things in the past, but to talk about how I see everything online and where I see myself being as if to write your own, I guess, obituary, or autobiography, so to speak, so that people so that, you know, everything you're doing is alignment with that and making sure everything you're doing is alignment with that. So it reminding yourself of why you're doing everything that you're doing from a day to day basis. And I think that's something that we all have to remember. And I wanted to make sure that I use this last of the seven to really drill down on that idea and that concept. So with that being said, as I talked about, we provide web design and SEO services for entrepreneurs and business owners who believe Blue16 media, CBnation is essentially a b2b brand, where we hope to increase the entrepreneurial success rate, the business success rate. And we try to focus on doing that in two different ways. We tried to provide visibility for entrepreneurs and business owners. And then on the second part, we really try to provide resources to help our business owners and that's providing resources, but also providing availability to certain resources as well, too. So I think that's something that's really important, you know, for people to do. And I think that that's something that I really, you know, hold on, to everything that I'm charged with trying to execute on to be super successful as well. And with that being said, I really wanted to take some time to really talk about what I feel like the secret sauce of what it is that we're doing. And it's I think it's that higher calling when you're tapping into that higher calling, you understand what you're wise, you understand what makes you reverberate in this world. And that helps everything to go into alignment with that. So that's something that I definitely wanted to do. And I wanted to share really quickly some some some things that you can do to be effective and efficient as well. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And what I wanted to start out with was a CEO hack. And again, another one that I swear by most of these apps whereby I think they're phenomenal hacks and the one that I want to talk about was Evernote, and Todoist. Evernote, ie literally use as my digital journal, I guess for lack of a better term where I literally write everything in there. If I'm having client meetings, I'll put them in there. I usually do a combination of Evernote and Basecamp depending on what exactly I'm writing, but because I have a note, phone and then I also have a lot of different platforms that I can write with physically, I usually have those upload into Evernote so that they there so I swear by my Evernote, I literally put everything there. Definitely a phenomenal I think hack. Another hack that I usually touch on is called Todoist. And to do this is basically just like a to do list, I used to use my Evernote for my to do list but then I switched over to using to do this after somebody from the podcast, I mentioned that it was a great hack. So I said, let me try it out. I tried it, I didn't really like it. And then I started to get more comfortable and used to it. So I use my to do to do this for everything literally write down everything that I have to do related to any task, whether that be personal professional, business related, working out whatever goes into my to do list, and I keep track of everything there. And then to kind of finalise everything with the URL media company, the last E, the acronym for recipe again, we created our marketing strategy, we put our crust or foundation or website or blog in place, we've added the ingredients that are necessary. We looked at all of them went to the grocery store, we looked at those ingredients, the social media, the SEO, the networking, the flyers, networking groups to be a part of email lists all these different things that we have to choose whatever ingredients we want to we pick and chose. Are we picking and prepared to have those ingredients. So they selected one or two of the essential ingredients that are to help us reach our overall strategy. The last P we put it in the oven. And then last but not least, you want to enjoy the final product project in the product that you created. Keep working to perfect it but enjoy the process. At the end of the day. It always comes down to you know execution and being able to execute on those things that you're doing. So you want to be able to execute on it, but continue to work on it over and over again, understand that the final time or the first time that you create that product or execute that marketing strategy may not necessarily go the way that you want it to go. But you want to make sure that you're always tweaking it and improving it and in taking it to another level. So that's probably the absolute biggest thing is keep working to perfect it but enjoy the process and understand it may not be exactly how you want it from day one, but understand it's part of the process. And then last but not least See a defined is all about execution that's really the definition that has come up so much over the episodes. For you know what mean the CEO means to you defined is really all about execution if you're able to execute on whatever it is that you're doing, it's not always about not doing things it's about actually getting things done rolling up your sleeves and making things happen. So, I think that's one of the definitions that has come up consistently. And I hope you definitely enjoy these seven podcasts that have focused specifically on different aspects of entrepreneurship, some of the hacks that I absolutely swear by I use on a consistent and daily basis, I hope that you really look at the URL Midi Company mindset and the philosophy and you start to execute that on a regular basis. And then I hope you have your own definition of what being a CEO means to you and you share it with us so that we can also get a more robust definition from different people and different types of entrepreneurs and business owners on what being a CEO means to them. So with that being said, this is Gresh signing out, as always, you can find me my personal site progression.com, as always, you can find me on blue16 media.com and then as always, CB nation.co always find me there. Thanks. And this is Gresh signing out. I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Outro 11:28

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