IAM1967 – Creating Space In Order To Move Forward

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Intro 00:00

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 I'm super excited like I've been mentioning over the last few episodes we've been drilling down on where we've gone where we are now and where we're planning to go with these podcasts on these special episodes to drive home and ease us out into 2023 and welcome us into 2024.

Like I mentioned on all these episodes, we took some time away to really lean on the things that we thought could be really effective for CEOs, entrepreneurs and business owners. And we try to recalibrate and see what that looked like. And I took an entire year and we took an entire year as a team to try to figure out exactly what that would be.

But just want to give a shout out to Mercy, to Jasper, to Dave just because without having a team, it's really, really hard to do some of the awesome things that we've done, but things that we're even going to continue to do. So I think us as a team, we're really looking forward to hopefully providing more and more valuable content to you as CEO's entrepreneurs and business owners.

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And we really started to focus on the builders, the people that are looking to try to build and go to a next level that might be within their first couple of years in business or looking to try to take that next step or even before the first couple of years in business at that.

What I wanted to do in this first half of the recording, this is going to be split into two is focus a little bit more on the things that I learned from pausing and how that's going to benefit us moving forward into this two year, this next year. And I think even beyond, so.

The very first thing is that you can actually work strategically, but sometimes you're so close to the things that you're doing, you might have to take a step back for that to happen.

Even on a daily podcast, I go back to number 12, which is one of our business pillars, which is that the systems will set you free. And I'll probably hammer home this one over and over again, which is number 16 which is that it sometimes takes time to Create space in order to move forward, you have to go away from the things that you're doing on a regular basis sometimes to create that momentum.

So for us to think strategically on how we can leverage our superpower and create more and more content, it required that pausing. Honestly, I think that we were in a very somewhat good flow, but I felt like we didn't necessarily have that direction as much as I would have hoped.

So amOngst me, talking about some other things that happened a little bit later on personally, it was important for me to say, okay, we've reached this number. This number is personal to me just because that's the reason that we have Blue 16 Media. So 1600 while it isn't 16, it's 1600. It still is something that I felt was important.

And the fact that it happened literally at the end of the year made me say, okay, maybe this is just that's time that I do take that pause and really look at where we are going to go. And I think when I came back to the podcast and I really thought, how can we be effective, efficient and be very strategic with the type of content that we're creating? So that's one of the reasons we're 75. Or even 60 to 90 days ahead of of of the podcast going live.

And it's something that I think creates a little bit more levity for us as a team because we have that kind of built in time to be able to be, more effective with the things that we're doing. But I think it's been absolutely huge to be able to think strategically. If I was going to continue to improve the podcast, how would I do that?

And how would I do that for myself, but also for the guests and also the people that are on the team so that we can make the best possible product best possible podcast, the best possible conversation. And that's really what went into the things that we're doing.

So that's one of the big things that. So I thought about from a podcast perspective, having, gone through the journey of doing 1600 episodes, doing it over five or six years, it makes you say, okay, what and how would I approach this differently? And you do things differently than you would have in the very beginning of the podcast. I felt like I have a little bit more control over how the episodes are going to flow and how they're going to go.

So I, I thought that was going to be one of the big things that I learned from the podcast and big things that you can even take away as a business owner is by taking that pause, you can think more strategically about like, how are you going to execute the things that you're doing?

What's more essential, what's going to be more important for you to do right now versus, later on and vice versa. So. That's number one.

Number two. There's this little thing slash big thing slash maybe enormous thing, depending on how you look at it called AI that has emerged. It's been here for a while, but I think it's something that popped up as we were pausing the recordings literally around the time that I think we pause the recordings.

That's when AI started to Chat GPT specifically started to make a little bit more headways. And obviously we're a lot further along in that journey of what that looks like there. But I think. One of the big things that we always try to focus on whenever we are thinking about these business pillars Is that number nine, I'm in, I'm a technology company that does dot, dot, dot.

When you have that mindset or mentality of being like a technology first company, which I think most of us should really think about. And that doesn't mean that it's over people, cause I think people are your most valuable part of everything that you do. As I took the time to shout out all the awesome people that are able to make this possible.

One of the things that we want to try to make sure that we do is that we understand the importance of how technology can be a partner to the people that are within your organization and even amplify the things that they're doing because it can allow yourself as a leader, but also the people that are on your team to spend more time there.

It's going to be phenomenal. There are so many different technology tools that are out there. You can find many of them on our CEO hack site and many, many more. We're going to continue adding in, but I've been really geeking out on all these different tools and apps and softwares and different ways of doing business.

Again, that I think can only amplify the things that we're doing. So I think it's important to make sure that you look at AI, you look at the people on your team and how you can empower them, with the power of AI to continue to improve and continue to be better, overall. But I think it's something that I definitely would look at definitely lean into, and definitely we are doing that as a team.

Keep that in mind that number one, our number one pillar was there's no I in team. There's no I in team because as I mentioned with all of the awesome people on our team, in order to go farther, you have to go together. And I think one of the big things that I wanted to do when pausing the podcast was to look at how can we be in a little bit more alignment?

How can we. Be more impactful with the superpower that we had, like one of the things just to give you a little bit more behind the scenes that we did for guests that were on the show is we did a website audit. The reason that we did the website on is because we had a digital marketing company that was powering everything that we were doing.

But as this has shifted and changed, not so much the digital marketing or the fact that we're doing webs design and web support, mostly support and maintenance more than anything else. But it also has changed and evolved as far as what our primary goal is. And that's where the CEO hacks came in and that's where that took a little bit more prominent overall.

So the reason that I bring that up is because when you are thinking about how you can do things strategically, you have to take all of these different factors into account and see how you can effectively execute a plan for yourself. Self, your team, the listeners, the readers the guests on the show.

You're trying to create as many win win-win opportunities as you can. And I think when looking at how you can go farther is not letting your ego letting the thing that could derail everything be so much of a priority that it blinds you from the opportunity to really make an impact.

So that's one of the really big things that I thought was awesome, with the show is to being able to lean more into that and see how we're going to do that even more as a team and as a group in an organization.

So, one of the reasons that I love the, there's no I in team is because if you listen to one of my favorite documentaries during the pandemic, which was the Last Dance it talked a lot around Michael Jordan saying there's no I in team, but there is an I in win. And the reason that became prominent was largely because of the pandemic.

But I think even before that, I was definitely somebody who has to remind myself over and over again that you have to put your oxygen mask on first. So you don't put your oxygen mask on first because you're selfish. You put your oxygen mask on first because it allows you to be more impactful and effective.

So, taking time out was really a way that we were able to move forward. But one of the big reasons if you don't know is I actually got married while, while I was recording these interviews and as I started to ease into a different part of my life, it was an opportunity for me to say, okay, personally, I also maybe need to pause just so that I can build the found the group, the foundation I want to have even within my marriage and now being a bonus dad.

So all these things were happening, very quickly moving being a bonus dad having a wife having a four-legged puppy or four legged kid as well to for a baby as a say and as many of us paw parents would say we're always trying to figure out like how we can make sure that we are being as present as possible.

So all those things were happening at the same time. So as much as I wanted to take some time away to really think strategically on the business, I knew myself, I myself was at a different. So I was looking at things differently but I wasn't really sure on what exactly that would look like.

But now having that pause and opportunity just even personally allowed me to lean more into digital marketing, but allowed me to also experiment and see what might be the next steps and how those steps would align with the vision that I had for the organization.

But also I think lean into the superpowers of everybody on the team. So how can you take all these Different parts and bring those together. And it really took pausing. It's understanding that there is an I win. So in order for me to win, how can I basically help myself to win, help, to improve myself so that all us on the team can win as a whole.

So that took a lot of time and I think that it's an ongoing kind of journey and ongoing kind of battle, but that was one of the really big things that we wanted to focus on, with the podcast. And one of the things I learned from pausing is that it is literally okay to pause and not even just, okay, it's necessary to pause.

So make sure that you are taking care of yourself. And that's one of the things that I want to continue to hammer home with the team, but also continue to hammer home probably even more so than anything else with myself.

And then the last thing that I wanted to focus on is that you can delegate to people, but you can also delegate to technology.

I think I touched on this so many times and you hear me say it over and over again. It's not people or technologies, people and technology is technology and people. It's how these two really valuable opportunities and valuable resources and, can come together to really do some awesome things.

I don't think the technology, especially as I was talking about AI is necessarily all the way there. And I would probably argue, I don't think it's necessarily always going to be all the way there. And I think if you really have people and their superpowers and they are able to really execute on the things that they do better than anybody else.

They're a world class at X, whatever that is, not to say that technology can't improve or amplify that. But I think there's a certain amount of creativity or a certain amount of things that are opportunities that I think the individual has a little bit more of a pulse on. So I really want to, as a leader, make sure that we are leaning into these CEO hacks.

We are leaning into the things that I'm going to touch on in part two. But I also want to make sure that we don't forget about the human part of business. And that's number 14. Don't forget about the human part of business. If we forget about the human part of business, we are forgetting about why we're doing all the things that we're doing.

And I mean that from people that are literally on your team that are around you, but also your clients, the customers, your investors just asking people, how they're doing. Just brings up that quote of people don't care how much till they know how much you care.

So as we lean more into these CEO hacks, we don't lean into the CEO hacks so that we can ignore the people part. We're actually leaning to this so that I feel like we can amplify the people part. We can be more effective and efficient. We can do more things along with technology or even managing or delegating to technology.

So of course, don't forget you can delegate to people. I think one of the things that we're seeing with all this growth in technology is that we're also going to definitely delegate to technology as well, too, and see what things that we can do together to really make the biggest impact that we can.

So like I mentioned, we're going to lean a lot more into CEO hacks. So look forward to that being in this part two of the podcast. But again, I want to wish you a happy 2024. I don't know even if in this recording, I've already said 2023, but either way I look forward to the challenge of seeing how long it will take me not to say when we actually get into the new year.

So have a phenomenal day, have a phenomenal start to the new year, have a phenomenal 2024 and beyond. And we'll talk with you soon.

Outro 13:43

Thank 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.

Want to level up your business even more? Read blogs, listen to podcasts, and watch videos at cbnation.co. Also, check out our I AM CEO Facebook group. This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless, Jr.

Thank you for listening.

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