IAM2449 – Lead Generation: The Ultimate Strategy

Gresham Harkless discusses his journey and mindset around lead generation as a broker, emphasizing the importance of warm and cold markets.

He shares his evolving approach—initially avoiding leveraging close personal connections in favor of proving himself in a cold market, but now recognizing the value in his existing network.

Gresham explains the importance of experimentation in the early stages of a brokerage, the power of relationship-building, and how platforms like BNI and networking can create lasting opportunities.

Additionally, Gresham recognizes that he has built a diverse skillset that can help others—he just needs to better understand how and when to apply it.

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Transcription:

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Intro 00:01

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:28

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast. And this is a special episode of our I AM CEO Podcast.

And this is actually going to be a snippet of a snippet, so to speak. I'm just doing an intro because I've been starting to document my journey into starting what is now called Blue Star Franchise.

We're also going to do a kind of sub site within CB Nation called Franchise CEO. So you'll see some links in the show notes related to that.

But just wanted to give you a little bit more insight, give you a little bit more color in some of the aspects of why I'm actually doing this.

Because one of the things I was doing as I was going through training to start up this new business was realizing and hearing from the founder of FBA, the Franchise Brokers Association, that it'd be really cool to document your journey going through and building this out.

I think it's something that would be super helpful, obviously for people that are looking for and thinking about starting franchises.

But frankly, if you're starting anything, any type of business, I think it's really cool to kind of just even see the journey and how it's been going from there.

So I'm going to share a few of those snippets from the, from the first couple of videos that have been created.

But definitely, of course, subscribe to our YouTube, check out a lot more where I figure out exactly where we're going to post this.

So I'll have that information that's available to you. But regardless, if you're a builder, continue to keep building, continue to do your thing.

The world definitely needs exactly what you're trying to build and needs you to be your unique self.

So make sure to run your own race, because nobody can run your race like you. This is Gresh signing out. I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

That's one of the things that is kind of coming into my mind with trying to purchase lead situation.

I think everybody, every broker kind of goes through it. I think one of the things that is kind of at my advantage is that you always kind of have to look for leads.

You always have to look for opportunities and just ways to kind of drive revenue. And I think, I touched on a little bit about this.

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But I think within those first six months to a year, you're just kind of fully experimenting to see what's working, what's going to be, what your brokerage is going to be.

You see many people approach it in different ways. I know there's one broker, he has a lot of different agents.

I'm not sure how they all generate leads, but I know one kind of underutilized opportunity.

And I remember one of the things he said was during training, that your first deal is going to probably come from somebody that you know.

So, it's funny cause the person that's on my team, he has two deals from the person, a person that he knew and knows very well.

And I feel like I haven't really cultivated that opportunity as much posted a little bit just to see then get myself out there.

But I feel like there's a lot more opportunity that's there. With that being said, it's just purely looking into what this could look like, what this could be.

And I think that one of my things that I do to my detriment is I always don't want to get it from the person that's close to you.

And the reason I say that is for most businesses and things that I've started, I prefer to go like out into the wild.

I guess you could say, and see what type of leads you can get, what type of opportunities, because that's really going to tell you what the business could be.

Because I think there's always going to be a point by which you're not going to have.

Well, I guess you're never really going to have people that you don't have a warm connection with if you have a lot of relationships, connections, you've been building that over the years.

So I take everything I said back. Maybe I do need to focus more on that warm market and focus more on the people I know.

Just let them know what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, how I'm doing it and asking, you know, for referrals or opportunities and see if they might know anybody.

So that's something I really, really want to focus on probably going into this next year.

But I'm still very interested in a completely cold market. I think that there's a tremendous opportunity just to be that bridge and connect people and being the connection broker, as I started to use that phrase a little bit more, it's going to be huge.

And I think that that connection happens in many different ways. It's going to happen from, obviously, a franchise brokerage standpoint.

It's going to happen from a CEO hack standpoint. is going to, of course, happen to from just like facilitating connections and relationships, you know, with the one to one.

So what I'm looking to do is kind of like I'm really big and always been a proponent of BNI because I think it teaches you a lot around how to build business, build relationships in order to build your business.

And those relationships can, fulfill them or can create, you know, tremendous opportunity.

So it's me kind of looking into that and cultivating that and understanding like I have done a lot of networking and things to help out people and to promote people and things like that.

So it's just like bringing all those things together and doing more is ultimately what I'm looking for.

So it should be exciting times. I think if I remember one of when I was at the yellow book.

One of the senior brokers, he I think he kind of built me up or talked with, talked about me to somebody.

And I was of course there. And he said something along the lines of this, this young man has a lot of things in his arsenal or in his, or in his, in his bag that he can help out with.

And I think he was doing that from a yellow book standpoint. I didn't have all the things that I have now.

So I think that I have to kind of really understand that a lot of the conversations you're having are really structured around understanding what people are looking for.

And I think that's part of what I've learned from the brokerage business.

But it's also part of like how there's many things I can do and probably pull out and make connections for that can help a person to succeed.

It's just a matter of like understanding exactly what that is. So I'm excited about that, excited about all the opportunities and yeah, really looking forward to kind of taking those next steps.

But it's leads, leads, leads, leads, leads. That's still what I'm focused on, seeing how I generate these opportunities and connections and just need to find the one person and make that deal.

And then things will kind of go from there. So that's what I'm looking forward to. And we take off from there.

Please let me know if there's anything I can do to help. And of course, looking forward to giving you more and more updates.

Outro 06:40Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by CB Nation and 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.

Check out the latest and greatest apps, books, and habits to level up your business at CEOhacks.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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