IAM2296 – Gresh’s Shares About the Importance of Harnessing Collaboration in Business

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Intro: Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I am CEO podcast and I wanted to share with you 1 of the episodes that I was a guest on for someone else's podcast. I always talk about how important it is to build a media company. 1 of the next best things you can do is be on somebody else's media company. So I had the pleasure of being a guest on this podcast and I wanted to share a little snippet with you because it would help support the 8 business pillars. We've really been trying to focus on with

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Intro: a lot more of our content, a lot more of the solo episodes that I'm doing. So make sure of course that you subscribe to our podcast, but of course you take some time out, check out the show notes and subscribe to the podcast that I've been featured on as well too. And get to learn about some of those 8 business pillars and how you can continue to kind of leverage and build that up. So you can go from builder to architect to a course at Rockstar and Luminary. So this is Greg signing out. I hope you

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Intro: enjoyed this IMCO special episode.

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Valarie Angle Roberts: I love that you brought up the collaborative aspect because for me, like that's the most fun part of business is being able to collaborate. And there was like the aha moment for me when I realized like, oh, like, I don't have to do everything myself. I can actually outsource delegate or whatever to other people who love doing certain aspects because there's certain things that I don't love doing that still need to get done. And, you know, it's like, oh, it's okay to partner with experts and let them take that load off my plate. It doesn't mean

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Valarie Angle Roberts: I'm lesser of an entrepreneur. Actually, it means I'm smarter at that, right, for delegating?

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Gresham Harkless: Yeah, absolutely. It's so funny you said that. I remember listening to, I think I was talking with a coach or something. And they said that a lot of times when we go on vacations, or we're able to step away from the business while we can kind of sometimes feel guilty and feel like, you know, we're not doing everything. It's actually a really big sign of having a healthy business. And I think probably even being a healthy person because once you start to understand who you are, your superpowers, you start to realize you don't fight all the

02:01 - 02:16

Gresham Harkless: crimes, you don't do all the things, you try to collaborate with people so you can have the super friends and you can, you know, take on the world, not because you're doing everything, but because you know who you are and you're able to find the people that can do the things that you may not be as strong with or don't really like to do.

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Valarie Angle Roberts: Right. For sure. My background is education. And I started out teaching, then went into coaching and administration and all that stuff, but I can remember in my very early days, 1 of the strong things that stood out in my mind was, my instructors would say, you'll know you're a good teacher when you can walk away from your classroom and, or take a vacation and your room runs itself. That's when you know you've made it. And it's so much like that in business when you know that you have figured out like systems, marketing, collaboration, teamwork, and you

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Valarie Angle Roberts: don't just crash and burn if you wanna walk away for a week or 2, it's still going, you know?

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Gresham Harkless: Yeah, it's a powerful place to be.

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Valarie Angle Roberts: It is, it's a wonderful place. You know, and you talked a little bit about that. You have all the education, you have all the letters behind your name and the degrees and things like that. And you still weren't necessarily locked in on like, I'm gonna be an entrepreneur. When, how did you know, when did that creative spark? Cause I think that's what it is for an entrepreneur. It's like, it's not enough for me just to go do what you want me to do, I need to like do some of the things that are in my heart

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Valarie Angle Roberts: to do and follow my creative website. When did you kind of know that that was what was for you?

03:42 - 04:08

Gresham Harkless: Yeah, I think that's a really great question. It's always like difficult to know exactly when but I know when I entered into undergrad, I feel like everything happened too fast before I knew I was graduating and I didn't go far, but I feel like I still wasn't home. And we were talking a little bit before about getting away from the nest. So getting away from the nest was definitely a transition, but I came into undergrad and I came in as an undecided major because I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do, who I wanted to

04:08 - 04:34

Gresham Harkless: be, just all those things and the heaviness of trying to make a decision on your major to decide what were you going to do for the rest of your life, like really weighed on me. And I know there's a lot more more difficult decisions you have to make on a daily basis now, but then that's what I really felt. But for me, I actually went back to like who and what I did when I was a kid. So I mentioned a little bit about being like the military Brad and not moving around a tremendous amount. But

04:34 - 05:04

Gresham Harkless: 1 of the pivotal moments I remember in my life is my dad was in the military. So he's in the Air Force and he got restation when I was 10 years old. So he went to an entirely different country and I honestly boohoo cried like a baby because that was my partner in crime. That was my basketball buddy, just all the things. And when that happened, it of course changed our lives a lot. And we couldn't and didn't have like all these things that we have instantly at our fingertips of being able to FaceTime, Zoom, Skype,

05:05 - 05:34

Gresham Harkless: all those things. So at that time, we used to send emails to my dad and just let him know what was going on in the family. But I also had this idea of starting a family newspaper. In that family newspaper, I started to collect a lot of the stories that were going on in our family. So everything from a squirrel that got into my grandma's house to a wedding that was planned but didn't necessarily happen. I left that as a cliffhanger, of course, But I did and collected like all these stories and we used to send

05:34 - 06:01

Gresham Harkless: that Medicare package to go over to my dad and he would put honey buns and all his favorite sweets and all those things But when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do who I was frankly, I went back to that story now Don't get me wrong I did other things Like I sold potato chips on the playground and got my parents to go to MJ Designs and get beads so I can make necklaces and sell those and did all those things. But I felt like that story was a little bit more unique

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Gresham Harkless: than the rest. I didn't know a lot of people that had family newspapers that they did for 2 years, and let alone my mom kept them all as well. So I was able to kind of go through and was like, where did I come up with this? And of course, if my mom's listening to this, she gets all the credit. I'm supposed to give her all the credit, but in reality, I felt like that was a little bit more of me hearing who I was. So, you know, fast forward a lot of years, you know, I

06:23 - 06:49

Gresham Harkless: decided to make decisions a little bit more in align with what I felt like was my calling, the thing that I should be doing. Not that I decided it, but frankly, I felt like it decided me was chosen for me. And I started started to make decisions based off of that. So I definitely feel like I'm a lot more aware of who I am. And I'm constantly like always trying to understand more and more and more about what that entrepreneurship looks like. But I always put that through a filter of like, what would a 10 year

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Gresham Harkless: old Gresh journalism media company magnet that's creating the family newspaper do? And that's a lot of like high filter everything through.

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Valarie Angle Roberts: Super cool. That's a great story. I love it. And kudos to your moms for cheering you on, supporting you and giving you all the tools that you needed to do that. Because I think when we're doing work that resonates with our soul and our vibes with our life and it's just in alignment with who we are as a person, It just feels so good and like, that's the sweet spot of life. Like not only do I love what I'm doing, doesn't mean it's not hard sometimes or stressful or you know, all of that, but when I'm

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Valarie Angle Roberts: doing what I love and I'm having fun doing it and I'm being fully myself, like that just, it's like, ah, that's what I'm here for. So it sounds like that's the path you're on. And that's what we want to do for so many people, especially in the holistic entrepreneurship realm, is give them the tools and the beliefs. Let them have that belief to hang on to that, you know what? Yeah, you can have this life that you dream of. You can do what it is that's in your heart that you're passionate about, that you love. There's

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Valarie Angle Roberts: so many people out here to support you and here's your toolbox. Like here's how to get started. Here are the people who are going to help you on your way. So that's what we're doing in I Am The Brand. But tell us more about, you know, your business, what you're doing now, who you help, and how you do that.

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Gresham Harkless: Yeah, absolutely. So I kind of have 2 things that keep me busy. So I have Blue 16 Media. We provide a lot of website design support, SEO services for CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business owners, really creating that foundational aspect to make sure that you are able to get your name out there. You're able to talk about the things that you do. But a lot of, I think, what is setting us apart is my marketing philosophy, I always say, is everybody's in the media business, whether they know it or not, you are a media company. And so our

08:45 - 09:15

Gresham Harkless: media company is CB Nation. And to kind of give you a little bit more insight, I love that you said that so many times that we think that we need things externally to be great. And don't get me wrong, we can always improve and we could take steps forward. But even these holistic entrepreneurs, like you often are looking externally to say, I need XYZ, and A, B, and C. And don't get me wrong, that can help amplify you. But don't forget about the things that you have. So for me and for us, a lot of what

09:15 - 09:44

Gresham Harkless: we kind of talk about and recommend the clients and preach is really around understanding that you can build that media company. And the media company we look at is a lot maybe broader than sometimes people give credit to. So we have things like blogs, podcasts, video content. We have social media platforms, all these things that are at our fingertips that give us the opportunity to be able to connect with our ideal clients. But you just have to be, and want to be a lot more strategic about it, because as much as we want to do all

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Gresham Harkless: the things and be everywhere, it's really challenging, and it's also very expensive to be able to do that. And I think there's even a saying that if you're, if everybody is your client, then nobody is your client. So you want to try to hone in as much as possible to do that. So what we really do is We help people to build their media companies. CB Nation is our media company. So we have a daily podcast that have done over 1, 600 episodes, blog posts, video content, all to help CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business owners to succeed.

10:13 - 10:33

Gresham Harkless: And that's a lot of what we kind of recommend the clients, maybe not that much to an extreme, but really to understand that you have this media, these opportunities that are literally at your fingertips to be able to help change and impact the lives of the people you wanna serve the most. So how can you strategically do that? And that's where we try to help people navigate that question and answers.

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Valarie Angle Roberts: Amazing. And so how can people find out more? Of course, if you guys are in the accelerator, you're going to be able to find Gresham's guide and find how to connect with him inside there. But for those of you who are just tuning in and seeing this maybe on YouTube, how can they find you and learn more about what you do?

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Gresham Harkless: Yeah, absolutely. Like you said, the best place, if you are in this group, I definitely would love to see you there. I think it'll be phenomenal just myself and so many other phenomenal people that are doing awesome things. But you can, of course, go over to my site, iamgrash.com. I have lots of different resources as well there. Also say a link to get back to the Accelerate as well. So really trying to make sure that you get to learn from myself, but so many other phenomenal people. But that's where I have links to kind of everything

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Gresham Harkless: that I've been working on, but really, you know, helping you to kind of hone in on what can help you to make the impact that you were really called to do.

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Valarie Angle Roberts: Perfect. That's awesome. But what are you excited about, Gresham? What are you looking forward to sharing? And I know you're enjoying getting to know the other experts in there already, but what else are you looking forward to?

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Gresham Harkless: Yeah, I think that 1 of the beautiful things about getting the opportunity to collaborate is you get, of course, to have those ideas. You get to learn from each other, which I think is really beautiful. But I think so many times we can get locked in on the things that we know. And when you see people doing their, I always say if you run your own race, you can't lose. But when you start to see people running their race and you start to say, that looks really creative, it starts to, I think, help to amplify who

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Gresham Harkless: you are. Not necessarily you copy them, but you get the opportunity to see those creative juices going. You're like, that's really cool. Maybe I can create something that's different or unique or some aspect of that. And I think that's really where it gets really, you know, it goes to an entirely different level is to be able to kind of see those things. And of course, be able to collaborate in so many different things. But I think, what's the phrase is, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. And

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Gresham Harkless: I think when you start to see yourself win, but you also get to see other people win, That's when it's just like a phenomenal environment. So I love everything you're doing. And I think everybody will have a phenomenal time there.

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Valarie Angle Roberts: Thank you so much. Yeah, so many, you said so many keywords there that like ring my bell, right? So like that, I feel like you have done the groundwork to contribute to this for sure. But like this, our generations here, this group of people, you know, doing business online in the world right now, we're really creating a powerful shift toward collaboration, win-win scenarios, empowerment, inspiration. And just like you said, it's not about, oh, you're doing this and it's working, so I'm gonna copy that, because that doesn't work. But it's like, you're doing this and it's working,

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Valarie Angle Roberts: so I'm inspired to now do what I is in my heart to do and now I'm motivated, empowered and inspired to do that. So that's what it's all about like finding those people who want to help you light that fire and take you to the next level. And I promise when you find the community that you vibe with and you're willing to learn from, you know, put your pride aside, bring a little humility to the table, be like, I really am not good at that, or I don't know that, or I'd rather delegate that, whatever it

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Valarie Angle Roberts: might be. That's when you're really gonna elevate and accelerate your business. I love everything you said there. Thank you so much.

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Gresham Harkless: Absolutely.

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Valarie Angle Roberts: Well, we are open for business in the IAM Brand Business Accelerator. If you are in there, hop over there now. Jump in and introduce yourself if you haven't already. If you haven't joined yet, go ahead and do that today. Iamthebrand.info. It's $111. More than worth the investment. You're going to get so much more return back on that than you're putting in financially. And we promise that we're going to deliver the motivation and the inspiration. So jump on in there and join us. And Gresh, I want to give you the last word here before we wrap it

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Valarie Angle Roberts: up. Any last thoughts or words that you want to share?

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Gresham Harkless: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it's an incredible opportunity, so I love and I appreciate you again, you know, being able to provide that. But 1 of the things that I always kind of keep in mind that and I told myself, especially in the beginning days, and I still tell myself to this day is, you know, don't tell me the sky is the limit when there's footprints on the moon. And it's 1 of my favorite quotes, because I think So many times we don't realize what's possible until we start taking those steps. And we also don't

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Gresham Harkless: realize that when we take those steps, we don't have to take them by ourselves. So being able to kind of see like the possibilities are infinite and what you can create. And if you just take those steps, maybe not be comfortable and take those steps, then that's only going to give you the opportunity to make an impact and do what you were ultimately called and created to do. So don't allow the noise to affect you in such a way where you don't take that step. Just could take that step. Do it scared. We all have done

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Gresham Harkless: it scared. We still are probably scared in some ways, but just remember to keep taking steps and continue to try to go forward. And at the end of the day, I look forward to seeing you

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Valarie Angle Roberts: there. Amazing, I couldn't have said it better myself. Thank you so much, Gresh. You have a wonderful day.

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Intro: Hello, hello, this is Gresh again, and I hope you enjoyed that special episode of the IMCEO 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 to 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

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Intro: a little bit more about us as well too. This is Grass signing out. I hope you have a phenomenal rest of day.