IAM1100- Special Podcast Episode with Gresh: The Progress

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Transcription

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00:29 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast, and this is a special episode, episode number eleven hundred of the I AM CEO podcast. Super excited to have this episode as an opportunity to get a chance to be on the mic to talk a little bit about what we're doing, what I'm doing, and what, we hopefully hope to do to put a ding in the universe, so to speak. And as with each of these episodes, one of the big things that I try to do is to hear everybody's story, hear about what it is that they've been able to do. And if you don't already know, one of the reasons that I started all of this was because I've been crazy passionate about entrepreneurship and business before I even knew what that was. So I decided to start what was then the Hearpreneur blog, which eventually became CEO Blog Nation, which started with a CEO chat podcast and now became the I AM CEO podcast.

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As this evolutionary process continues, one of the things that I'm excited about is one of the hopefully new offerings that we're gonna have for people, who have been featured on the site, people who have been featured on the blog, or the podcast, maybe had a video interview or potentially just might be visiting the site. And I'll talk a little bit more about that. But, with that being said, one of the big things that has always been near and dear to my heart is content. Of course, content has become a huge thing for people now, but it wasn't something that was always at the forefront of what everybody was doing.

So my story, I usually say, starts a lot when I was ten years old and I started a family newspaper. That family newspaper was a way for me to connect. Well, my father went to a different country while he was in the military serving in the Air Force, and it was an opportunity for me to get the opportunity to let him know about all those things that were going on in our family. And in turn, I took that family newspaper and sold the subscriptions, for a very affordable price, and had that way to start what eventually became my entrepreneurial journey. And I was that creative kid. I had beads from MJ designs and created necklaces that were sold on the playground, potato chips, all of those different things, that I did to try to get my name, out there at a very young age and just be who I was.

So that man has manifested itself into Blue Sixteen Media, which is now more of an umbrella company that focuses on, basically, technology and media and using those to help impact and change people's lives. So lots of media and properties are hoping to grow and to expand within that. But one of the big things is CB Nation. CB Nation first originally started as just a shorter version of CEO Blog Nation, but now has become what I'm excited about, which is a lack of a better term, an online content-based chamber. What that means is that we're trying to use content as a way to build connections and relationships, provide resources, and visibility, and those connections that I talk about to lead entrepreneurs, CEOs, and business owners to success.

So Cbnation.co, if you go to that site, which you'll see is a way for you to join the community. You can join the community completely for free and there are different opportunities and ways that you could add to your experience whether that be a paid podcast, whether that be paid blog posts sponsored posts, or lots of other, opportunities that we have across our different sites. But one of the things that I really hope to do is to bridge and provide that opportunity for the community using content as a way for that to happen. And that's one of the things that I'm most excited about from these last 9-10 years, and definitely from the last three years or so with the podcast is getting an opportunity to take content and use it as a way to network, build relationships, and connections with people.

And I think having that freemium model from a chamber standpoint at CB Nation, you need an opportunity to create an account and then add on whatever, other services you may or may not need or products that you wanna look into we'll provide a very great basis, to be able to make that happen. But with that being said, one of the things that I always ask about is the secret sauce. Usually, I try to figure out, what might be the secret sauce of the company and often I'll talk about the way that we have our philosophy as a bedrock of everything that we're doing, which is being the media company creating content and information so that you hit your goals, connect with your target market, and do all of the above.

But one of the things I really wanna focus on a little bit, more, for me is probably just the grittiness, and challenge that I have personally to see things through. It's it could be frustrating, and I think so many times, especially in business, you feel like there's not that opportunity to see your goals come to fruition, to reach them, to meet them, to exceed them. But I think it's those people that are the greatest that are the people that actually will happen. And I've heard people say you can say many things about me, but, I will not stop. I am relentless. I  continue to my goals my mission and my vision.

And I think that's something that is part of my secret sauce. And I think also, as part of what we try to do as a company, whether it be figuring out why there might be an issue on a WordPress website to figuring out, like, what we can do to help solve and create a new business model in the journalism industry or potentially figuring out how best we can design, you know, something from for a potential client. So it manifests itself in different ways, but that relentless nature, that ambition, that desire to see things through is something that I feel is part of what I like to call my secret sauce. And as always, I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to introduce to you, what I call a CEO hack.

And this hack is gonna be a little bit different because it's gonna be an aspect of our site that I think is tangible. We're advised of a tremendous opportunity for people to grow. Within the CB Nation community and the site, you'll see there's gonna be subgroups quote, for lack of a better term. I won't they're not subreddits, but they're the same concept where we're hopefully gonna cater to certain niche audiences, whether that be African American, black entrepreneurs, or people in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia area, or some of the sites that you see, health and wellness and fitness CEOs, healthy CEOs as I like to call them, really a niche that caters directly to them, in many different ways.

So with that being said, you're gonna be able to go to different sites at CB Nation. You're gonna see there's some of these niche, audiences and niche content that you're gonna be able to leverage that will drill down to your target market. And we try to do it around the demographics, around the location, around interest, stage of the business, industry that you're in. So really having those as foundational pillars as far as how people will want that content is one of the big things that we're hoping hopefully, try hopping in trying to do, within this time. But with that being said, make sure you go to Cbnation.co, go to backslash join, and you'll see an opportunity for you to join. When you sign in, you'll be directed directly to this page that has all of those different, sites.

But for example, if you wanted to go to dmvceo.com, you'll see that there's a premium member resource that you can go through. And the reason that I bring that up as a hack is because sometimes it could get overwhelming trying to find all of the information. So rather than sometimes distilling down that information, we try to do that for you. We're not as much creating a networking group to go to, but we're trying to consolidate that information. So if you're in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia area, you don't know what networking groups are out there or even what networking groups to go to. You'll be able to get that resource and get that information all in one spot, very handy and very easy to to navigate.

So with that being said, that's my CEO hack. My CEO nugget is along the same lines, and really what it focuses on is just understanding exactly, where your zone of genius is and being very clear on that and trying to get as many people, places, automation, whatever it is in place so that you can spend more time there. I think that one of the beauties of the CEO hack is that it doesn't necessarily change the world, but it allows you to spend more time, on the things that are your zone of genius, all the things are on the things that you do best. And that's one of the biggest things that I think that you can understand, as a business owner, as a CEO, is being able to let go of things, being able to delegate things, being able to automate things, do those things so that you can focus more on your zone of genius.

And that's one of the things that I've learned and continue to learn and continue to do better with. But I think it's also something that as you start to build that trust in systems or trust in people, it becomes a lot easier to be able to swim in your lane or as I like to say, run your race because you can focus on the things that you often do best. And the more time you spend there, which may not necessarily be all of the time, but the more time you spend there, the more you're setting yourself up for success. And last but not least, my absolute favorite question, is the definition of what it means to be a CEO.

And for me, being a CEO is really about that leadership and that ability to see the forest for the trees, but also see not in twenty twenty-one when I'm talking about this, but thinking about twenty-thirty, twenty-forty, twenty-fifty, and what steps you can take or what things that you can do to set yourself up to be in the right place at the right time when that year or that time or that disruption or that opportunity presents itself. It's reading. It's understanding. It's being knowledgeable about your industry. It's connecting with people before sometimes you need to build those relationships. And understanding that as you do that, when those opportunities come up, you're ready, you're prepared.

And I remember reading something that Mark Cuban wrote in his book where he talked about how sometimes the best thing that you can do is get smart about what it is that you're gonna do. If you know your industry front back, side to side, and all around, and you have that industry knowledge, doesn't necessarily mean that exactly when something's going to happen. But when something happens, you're ready to jump on it. And I think that's where opportunity meets preparation. That preparation, you might be preparing for months, years, or decades to get to where you wanna be. But I think being a CEO a lot of times is having that mentality to think of what can I do today that will benefit me 5-10, twenty years down the line, and how can I plant those seeds for that to happen?

So having that foresight, having that vision, but, of course, executing it daily is that balance beam map act of what it means to be a CEO, but something that we all can kinda take into account. And as that being, as I've closed out, truly thank you for listening to this episode. This is episode number eleven hundred again, and excited about some of the other opportunities that I have that are gonna come about from this podcast. But, even more excited about CB Nation and what that's going to become because I think that's gonna be our hub for everything that we're doing, and it's gonna allow us to innovate and create a lot better.

So if you ever need any help with anything, if you're looking for sponsored content or ways to promote your business, through our site, please set up a time. Sign up for Cbnation.co/ join. You'll see it in the show notes as well too. Great opportunity for you to become a part of the community. And I look forward to growing and connecting and doing so many things in the next, year and a half, two years. Thanks, and have a great rest of the day.

12:23 – Outro

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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