IAM2142 – Understanding the 8 Business Pillars: 8. TECHNOLOGY

Gresham explores technology and highlight its interconnectedness with other aspects of business, particularly ethics. He explores into the significance of AI in the current landscape and how it is already transforming the way we live and do business.

Gresh emphasizes the importance of incorporating technology into these areas to improve efficiency and mitigate risks. Creating a positive customer experience is another crucial pillar that is explored in-depth.

Gresh explains how technology can enhance the overall experience for customers, ultimately leading to business growth.

Additionally, he urges listeners to focus on these 8 pillars to level up their businesses, and believes that investing in these pillars will make a significant impact on your organization, regardless of your available resources.

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Transcription:

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Intro 00:00

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast, and this is a special I AM CEO Podcast because we're gonna be focusing on the 8 business pillars. I hope you get to enjoy taking a lot of these different pillars that came from the 1600+ episodes we did at the I AM CEO podcast, which became the 16 themes, which eventually now became the 8 pillars that can help you level up your business.

And, really, what we're trying to do is increase the business success rate, and this is going to eventually become a course. So you hear some of these snippets actually be in that course in that library of content and information we're gonna put together to help you level up. So sit back and enjoy this special episode of the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:38

Pillar number 8. So I struggled with where to put this. When I first thought about and looked at the pillars, I said there's 7 pillars. I looked at things like the E-Myth. I looked at personal MBA, EOS, just all these different aspects to say, okay. These are what are going to be the aspects of business. And one of the things that, there's always other things that could be added a little bit more. For example, ethics is one of those big things that came up. But I strongly felt ethics could be part of your strategy. It could be part of understanding entrepreneurship. So I felt like some of these things align with each and but this pillar was one of those that I felt was literally in every aspect of business.

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It was something that I felt was the best definition, best reasoning for why these pillars are not isolated. They're very much so interconnected, and they're very much so intertwined. So don't get me wrong. Things like ethics, you can literally look at ethics in all different aspects of what it is to do. But I felt this pillar was probably more impactful than almost everything, and that pillar is technology. And the reason I say it's impactful because a lot of times you'll listen to a lot of these huge, companies, and they're saying, we're a tech company that does dot dot dot.

And that's what we've had as a theme throughout a lot of the content and when we go a little bit more in-depth with technology. If you are, at this current time listening to this, AI has been a huge thing. Not necessarily because I think it is going to replace things, but it is definitely going to change things. It is very disruptive, and it will you can stand on either side of where you what where and what you think about technology, and especially around AI and artificial intelligence and what that looks like. But I think that at the end of the day, we are already using it whether you know it or not.

If you just look at your smartphone, you probably are already using if you have smart speakers. If these are things that are going to, change the way that we're living life and even change the way that we're doing business. So it's gonna go back to that that human part, go back to that entrepreneurship, the strategy, and things around that standpoint. So with that being said, that's why pillar number 8 was something that I had to add on. I was at 7 and I was like, I have to add in technology. You can't I can't not have technology in this because of how transformational it is and how much we have even talked about it and how I've even seen especially during the pandemic, you take things like Zoom.

That changed literally the way that we did life. And it doesn't necessarily mean that it replaces the human part, and that's why I wanna make sure that this was also a pillar, the human part and the people part. And could even argue that's the most impactful part because everything comes from that. But if you were to lean into one thing that could potentially give you a tremendous amount of growth in your business, technology could be that thing. If you are not leveraging certain softwares, for example, I touch a little bit upon operations and project management software, adding technology and that hack, to what it is that you do could be an absolute game changer.

I know even me on a very, very small level just for the podcast, just having a scheduling link has been an absolute game changer for people that are in different time zones that have different considerations. Just being able to send them a link that will automatically update based off of where they are has been absolutely huge. So with that being said, that's that's going to be pillar number 8. What I wanted to do, if you haven't been listening, we've gone through had over 1600 episodes of the I AM CEO Podcast. From that podcast, we came out with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hacks and nuggets. These hacks and nuggets were things that could help you to level up, to help you to be better, whether with tangible things like the hacks or the nuggets that were just, like, very much so advice driven. Every single episode had that.

So what I really wanted to do when I took some time out from episodes to really just repurpose those episodes, and in re-purposing those episodes, what I ultimately did was came out with 16 themes. I originally called them pillars because I felt like they were pillars, but the more I started to pay attention to business and especially around EOS and start to understand the different aspects of business, I realized that there were certain pillars within business. Could these themes support those pillars? So that's where it became from 16, it became 8. 8 was the number of pillars that I felt were the adequate number to really leverage and look at to understand, like, how you can create actual change within your business.

The themes, while I love them, were something that I felt like were a little bit less attached to the actual impact we could take to make builders architects. How can we level up and what does that look like? So when I look at the pillars, I said, okay. I can understand that. If we can invest into any of these, it could make a huge impact on our organization. Now, of course, depending on where your organization is, the resources, the people, just all those things is going to be different on the impact. But I think the important part is that we're saying you have to do this.

But what we're really trying to focus on is understanding holistically what you're doing in business. But secondly, if you can pull one of these levers or multiple of these levers, if we can really focus on one of these levers, what's going to have the biggest impact on your business? And that's one of the beautiful things about breaking these out things down into pillars. You get to see exactly what that is. So with that being said, I wanted to drill down and see each of the different pillars as you listen to the episodes. I wanted to just touch on them, I should say.

Each of the different pillars, if you haven't been listening, number one is gonna be entrepreneurship and journey. Understanding truly what you are doing with business. Understanding the business aspect, understanding what that journey looks like, understanding that the secrets to the overnight successes, it takes ten or fifteen years. Just those things, are gonna be insanely important. Number 2 is gonna be your strategy. Strategy, that could be your business plan, your business model, just all those things, but know exactly what you're trying to do with your business and where you ultimately wanna go and what success looks like, what success doesn't look like.

It's gonna be huge because the way that you strategize within your business is gonna be the way that, you're gonna distinguish yourself, but also gonna be a way that you're gonna be able to help serve your clients and customers. And that leads me to your offering. Your offering is gonna be your products and services. What things are you doing to make that impact? What does that look like? How is that going to be delivered? Just all of those different aspects play a huge part in terms of determining what your offering is going to be.

And then that part that I've already touched on, pillar number 4 is going to be people/the human part of business. Really understanding what that is and what that looks like is probably going to be, I think, one of the most impactful things. Not necessarily because the other things aren't important, but because I think that even when we look at technology, when we think of being more effective and efficient, a lot of that is based off of creating a better experience for the people that are humans. Now, of course, there's always arguments that those people that leverage technology, for example, it is a great opportunity.

We as humans continue to try to evolve because that is a part of the human experience is that evolution. So we also have to tap into that as well too. Number 5 is gonna be your operations and your legal part. You could even argue that maybe the ethical part can can go under here or could potentially, go under your strategy as well too. But understanding how you're going to create that experience for the people, that you're trying to serve is gonna be absolutely huge. And, of course, that legal protection is gonna be important, for many ways. It allows you the opportunity to protect yourself, but it also allows those that are already doing things to be protected as well too.

So operations and legal, such a huge part of everything that you wanna do. And the name of the game is being found. So number 6 is visibility. Your sales, marketing, advertising, public relations. How are you getting your name out there? Who knows who you are, what you do, why you do it, how you do it, and all those things. How are you getting that out there? And that's going to be an absolutely huge thing. And then number 7, we focus on the financial, part of business. Knowing your numbers, knowing exactly the story that it's telling, allowing you to make a strategic but also very risk understood decisions about how you're going to take that next level is going to be absolutely huge.

And number 8, like I touched on, technology. How are you leveraging technology in this digital age to make sure that you're staying ahead and staying updated? And it is changing and it's changing rapidly. So really what you wanna understand, and I believe this is one of the best things that you could do when you're looking at technology, is not necessarily seeing technology as this external thing. But like I mentioned, it's a very interconnected pillar. How are you gonna use it to impactfully help support you and the people within your organization?

I think that's one of the most beautiful things. Being able to take the information and the data to be able to look at things in a different way. It might be something that's going to fully support your financial for you to be able to understand those stories or maybe you do leverage technology to be able to get your name and information out there or maybe you start to leverage different systems to create better operations within your organization. Maybe you start to create a better experience, with the people that are on your business or the people that you're serving largely by leveraging different technologies.

Or maybe your product or service, you're able to, fully understand what that looks like because you'll be able to leverage technology or maybe, frankly, it is technology or includes some type of technology which is happening more and more and more. And then maybe it's helping you to strategize maybe from just a very low level. You're able to think outside of the box, darcy, because you're not thinking outside of the box, but because you're having that perspective of technology. And then you just have an idea of what entrepreneurship looks like, what that journey looks like, and how that it changes and looks different based off of the way that technology has been impacting.

And so with that being said, know that there's definitely digital transformation strategies that happen as a result. So understand that there might be an opportunity to really transform your business by tapping into technology. But you really wanna look into things like e-commerce, online presence as well too. Cybersecurity is such a huge thing, making sure, like I talked about, from a financial standpoint, it's minimizing your risk. Also try to minimize your your risk related to technology as well too. And then you're exploring emerging technologies.

AI is one of the things that I mentioned, but there's so many other technologies that are out there that we're on the cutting edge of. It could be AR or so many other aspects that we've touched on on our blogs that see issues. There's just so much out there that you wanna be aware of what that looks like and what that looks like for you and your organization, block-chain. Just these things are things that you wanna be aware of, and I'm not necessarily saying and I don't know yet anybody's necessarily advocate.

We have a lot of people that are advocating that you should be doing this and don't get me wrong. There'll always be that. But my really big goal with technology, but also all the pillars, is to bring greater awareness around all the aspects of business. So when people hear how many businesses fail within the first year, the first 5 years, and the first 10 years. It is crazy. And the reason that it is so crazy is because I think that people don't have an idea of what business entails, all the aspects of businesses, what it looks like, what it takes to really make a business succeed.

And that level of success can depend. Like, the way people define success is gonna be completely different. One business that somebody has might be a complete failure versus somebody else. So it's important to know what you're in and what you're doing and where you're at. So I just pulled up some quick figures because I wanted to make sure that I share this. If you haven't heard the number of businesses that fail and succeed, I wanted to just share some of those. And, I did a perplexity search. I'm gonna make sure that I have that in the show notes so that you could check that out yourself.

But know that around 20% of businesses fail within their first year. Around 50% of businesses fail within their first 5 years. Around 60-55% of businesses fail within their first ten years. Only 25% percent of businesses make it beyond fifteen years. The failure rates vary slightly different sources, but the general trend is clear. A significant portion of businesses around one in 5 fail within the first year itself. By the fifth year, around half of business failed. By the tenth year, nearly 2/3 failed. And that is that's crazy. That's crazy to me. That's insane to me. Having talked with a lot of people, I think that this is could be a whole different episode talking around the concept of failure and what that looks like.

You don't fail until you quit. And even if you pivot, that's not failure in my eyes, but I know I'm not sure how that's the final what that looks like. But the point is that a lot of times, people are getting into business, and I don't think they necessarily know exactly what they're getting into. Frankly, when I started my business, I didn't really have an idea of what exactly what it is. I know I wanted to do it because I've always felt like I've had that DNA within me, but I don't think I fully understood all the aspects. So really drilling down this 8 pillars has been really phenomenal for me because I really thought about myself then and, frankly, myself now.

And what are those different aspects of business? Because business doesn't become just one thing. However, if you can find that thing, you could be really, really, really good at it. It could allow you to invest in the other things. One of the reasons that I love the book, The CEO Hack the One Thing, is that the whole concept is that what's the one thing that by doing it, everything else is easier and necessary. And when you're able to figure out maybe what that pillar is or the aspect within that pillar, you're able to lean more into that.

Maybe it could give you an opportunity to be that insanely successful business. But I would argue that if you were to only focus on one thing, one pillar, and only be really great at that one thing, you might be within those businesses that don't succeed, which is why it becomes such a challenge to be able to make sure that you're successful. So I really hope that you get to check us out in our community. I really hope that you get to check out our library where where we drill down more about that, what that looks like. But I just wanted to share some information with you here just so that you can hopefully increase your likelihood of success at the very least.

Hopefully, if you're on the fence, if you're a builder and you're thinking about starting a business, you have a better idea of, like, what that looks like. If you are a lot more seasoned in business, whether that be within that first 5 years of still a builder or further along, maybe you do look at that in a different way. So with that being said, this is Gresh signing out. We definitely want to increase the business success rate. That's why we're doing all of this. So if there's anything I could do to help, please, of course, let me know. But I hope you have a phenomenal rest of you rest of the day, and I hope you have a phenomenal start to your business or continuum of your business journey.

Outro 16:03

Hello. Hello. This is Gresh again, and I hope you enjoyed that special episode of the I AM CEO Podcast. Just like I mentioned in the beginning, we're really trying to laser focus on these 8 pillars and show you as a builder how you can leverage these 8 pillars and really level up there so it helps you level up your business and organization.

So hope you enjoyed this episode, and definitely please check out the show notes so you can learn more about the pillar, learn more about the person that I guested on, their episode, and, of course, learn more a little bit more about us us as well too. This is Gresh signing out. Hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

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