Gresham Harkless believes that the secret to happiness is different for everyone. While money and material things are essential to some extent, pursuing happiness has less to do with money and more with personal connections and meaningful work.
Gresham perceives someone more committed to the business could improve control and productivity.
He utilizes technology to stay efficient, relying on tools like Basecamp for project management, and emphasizes time management and prioritizing essential tasks.
Gresham started his business through BNI (Business Network International) and still values the relationship-building aspect of networking.
He discusses the importance of knowing your target market and selecting the right platforms based on your goals.
Gresham shares his experience with hiring through platforms like Upwork. He advocates bringing people on board before you need them, allowing you to refine your leadership skills and make better hiring decisions.
Podcast Link: Send it Rising Internet Marketing
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Transcription:
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Gresham Harkless Teaser 00:00
I think it's just really understanding each of the different nuances. Like you mentioned, it says so well, it's knowing the decisions that you're making and being strategic about them.
Not necessarily being the expert or the go-to all the time if you're going to hire somebody, but at least have some lay of the land.
So, okay, this makes sense. Or even if this person tells me that I need to be doing this and my target market's not there, maybe that's not the best advice. And maybe that person doesn't know what it is they're talking about.
Intro 00:26
Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast. And I wanted to share with you one 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. One 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 want 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 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 to 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 Gresh signing out. I hope you enjoyed this I AM CEO special episode.
Kellen Kautzman 01:19
All right. So what is the secret to happiness?
Gresham Harkless 01:22
How the secret to happiness is different for everybody. But I will tell you this, sometimes as we were you were kind of talking about, I think sometimes we think that it is about money and about things in the banking account.
And I think to a certain point, you definitely want to be able to, of course, pay for certain things and take care of all those things.
But I think the constant pursuit of happiness doesn't really have a lot to do with money. And I think that's something that we were kind of alluding to before you even got started with the show.
Kellen Kautzman 01:47
Yeah, that's so true. My kiddos are just invaluable. Obviously, I feel like a lot of fathers and mothers have that. We just celebrated Father's Day. Happy Father's Day.
OK, so as an agency owner for 9 years, you've kept it lean and mean, which is to say you haven't gone the W2 route, but you're feeling pressure to start doing that now.
Do you think that's something that you're going to do in the next few years, few months, few days?
Gresham Harkless 02:18
Maybe in the next few years is something that I'm definitely thinking about. I think that you kind of get to a certain point where you have the contractors and you lose.
I think some of the connection and kind of, I don't want to say control, cause that sounds like I'm saying, you got to do this, you got to do that.
[restrict paid=”true”]
But I think you want to have somebody that's a little bit more, has more skin in the game, maybe in the business.
And that's something that I'm kind of looking forward to with me potentially like working on other projects, like who would replace me? It's not probably going to be a contractor.
So not to say I wouldn't still be involved, but I wouldn't be as involved in the day to day as I have been.
So that's what's kind of like maybe making me think about, okay, this is probably something I need to do not holistically for everybody. But you might want to have that key person that could be that kind of point person, so to speak.
Kellen Kautzman 03:05
Yeah. How do you juggle sales and operations?
Gresham Harkless 03:10
It's hard. I mean, I'm very virtual. I'm very much a very efficient person, I think. So I lose a lot of technology and that helps save a lot of time as far as reaching out to clients, keeping track of things.
Like I use a tool called Basecamp that I swear by. And those things have helped me be extremely efficient and not only me, but also people on the team to where I haven't need to hire an employee.
So I think that helps out from an operations standpoint. And my job has kind of always been just to kind of make sure the trains are running, make sure things are being done, but also to kind of be the face, go out and get opportunities.
So it's a fine line. But I think because I do most things virtually even before the pandemic, I think I'm really kind of cognizant of time, what's essential time waster and just how to kind of hone in on the time that I do have and try to leverage it as much as possible.
Kellen Kautzman 04:06
Is it relationships that are driving the revenue? Is it BNI groups, networking? How are you doing it?
Gresham Harkless 04:16
Combinations. So I have been networking really since day one. And I really enjoy people that's why I love, all the work that you do.
And what you kind of talked about as a foundational element of your show is really get to know people to connect with people and hopefully, build those relationships over time.
So that's something I've always tried to do and I started my business actually in a BNI. So it's something I learned there as far as like more of the mechanics of it, but I still feel like even knowing the formula, you have to be able to kind of execute the form.
You have to be able to like people for lack of a better term. So you can't really just follow a system in order to do that.
So I think learning what networking is, learning what business was, was definitely something that I took from BNI and being in a BNI and learning.
But I think at the end of the day, between that and then I've taken a lot of the digital tools that I've used, like the podcast and stuff like that, and the blog and hopefully have it as a way to kind of network as well too.
It's just want to buy big drivers for doing that. So it's kind of a different way to network, kind of like you're doing, but at the same time, it kind of compliments that more, I guess, traditional networking.
Kellen Kautzman 05:23
Yeah, I miss my in-person BNI. I was the chapter president last time, which pays incredibly well. I don't know if you've ever been a BMI chapter president.
Gresham Harkless 05:33
I haven't, but I heard.
Kellen Kautzman 05:35
Oh, fat checks, fat checks. So let's pivot a little bit just to marketing strategies in 2021 and what seems to be working and what doesn't. Give me the 10,000 foot view.
Gresham Harkless 05:46
Yeah. So I'm really big and I know I've been in business for 9 years, so marketing has definitely changed tremendously. I have my whole marketing philosophy, which kind of extends into all the content that I create and we work on.
I say everybody's kind of like in the media business. And I call it, you are your own media company.
And I think the biggest piece of it, and because each of the different platforms, and as you were kind of saying in the news pieces, each of the platforms is becoming its own kind of marketing channel.
Like digital marketing is just what Facebook is in and of itself in addition to all these other things.
So they're so robust now that I'm really big into like understanding your target market, understanding what your goals are, and being honest about your resources and then figuring out what are the essential ingredients for that to happen for you to reach whatever your goal is.
I think so many times you'll hear marketers because this is in their wheelhouses, this is a thing that they do.
They'll say, you need to be on TikTok or you need to do SEO or you need to have a podcast or write a book or do whatever.
And I consider those to be, I call them ingredients. So I'm really big on picking 1 or 2 ingredients, just like if you're going to the grocery store, depending on what it is you're trying to create.
And I think so many times when you understand that and you really understand your target market, you can continue to kind of change with the times.
But I think so many times people are like, you know, so and so said, I have to be on TikTok.
So I have to be on TikTok, even though you might be selling to like 70 year old, that may not necessarily be the best place for you to spend your resources.
So I think it's just really understanding each of the different nuances. Like you mentioned, it says so well, it's knowing the decisions that you're making and being strategic about them.
Not necessarily being the expert or the go-to all the time, if you're gonna hire somebody, but at least have some lay of the land.
So okay, this makes sense, or even if this person tells me that I need to be doing this and my target market's not there, maybe that's not the best advice.
And maybe that person doesn't know what it is that they're talking about. But that's my big kind of marketing philosophy is just like understanding those nuances, understanding the 1 or 2 ingredients.
And then really focused and drilling down on them from there. Cause you kind of have to be very, very active.
And you have to know a lot about the platforms that you're going to be. It's really hard to know about all the major platforms unless you have a tremendous budget.
Kellen Kautzman 08:10
I like the analogy of ingredients because just because a dish has 15 ingredients, doesn't make it better than a dish that has 6. So that's good.
And that's some ancient sort of Taoist wisdom condensed, lessons more. I went, I had some noodles yesterday at my friend's house. So Choi is her name.
We're watching the Vegas Nights game. She comes over, she says, do you want spaghetti? I'm like, I was thinking in my head, just spaghetti. You know what I mean? Just plain spaghetti noodles.
And I'm like, no, no, I don't want spaghetti. And then this is my ignorant showing. And then she goes back and we're watching the game and all of a sudden the house smells delicious.
And I'm like, oh no, I made a terrible mistake. What have I done? And as she feeds these kids, I'm looking at these noodles, I'm smelling the house, I'm like, regrets.
And she looked at me and she sees the regret and she goes you want spaghetti I'm like no no I couldn't, I couldn't possibly you know I did the whole and she's like I'm making you spaghetti.
I'm like ah so she ends up making like the most delicious soy sauce, garlic, spaghetti with red pepper flakes. Just, ah, so good. I still taste it.
Gresham Harkless 09:29
It was amazing.
Kellen Kautzman 09:30
Ah, so good. So it just goes to show that, as agency owners, we live in this weird paradox of what works for us does not work for our clients.
Most of the time, we have to be out in front of folks, we have to be building relationships, we have to do networking with business owners, we are B2B.
And B2B marketing is not B2C. It's definitely not national B2C. My sister who owns a cosmetic and wig company will pop on TikTok, get half a million views and make $40,000. We don't have that luxury.
People on TikTok are not business owners. We just live in this different world. And it's so funny to me that our internet marketing skill isn't necessarily a benefit to us as much as it is to our clients.
Gresham Harkless 10:16
Right. Yeah. That makes perfect sense. And I think that's, like you said, part of knowing your target market, what you're actually doing, what you're actually selling, where your target market is, because B2B is definitely different from B2C.
But I think there is always, and that's why I say the resources thing is really huge because I think there's a place for being there before other people are being there.
But you have to know that you're doing that. Like if you're going to start doing TikTok because you want to be a first mover, that's a lot different than saying I'm getting all my clients here from TikTok.
And I'm gonna spend all my resources there versus like, okay, I have an intern that I just hired, for example, and I want that intern to kind of see if there's some B2B, maybe not even networking opportunities.
But maybe just relationships or networking that can come from TikTok. So it's just like looking at things differently.
And seeing that even though the platform may not be where your target market is, you wanna kind of be there as possible, right before it happens.
But if you have to spend a little bit of time and get that experience there, then there might be some opportunities that come together later.
Kellen Kautzman 11:20
Yeah. And I do enjoy, because I started going on TikTok and my first video was 500, then 600, then 700, then 50, then 160. And like, I'm like all over the place.
And apparently, TikTok will always give you 500 views on your first video because they want you to get really excited part of the algorithm.
And so it may not be the best platform for us long term, you can take your TikTok and automatically feed it to Instagram, which is what I've been doing.
But I'm also doing it because I want to be at least somewhat knowledgeable when I talk to clients.
I wanna understand the platform. I want to have made a few I wanna be in the trenches a little bit.
It's one of the reasons I wrote a book. It's one of the reasons I do this podcast so that I can go to my clients and say, you really should have a podcast.
Well, why, how do you do it? And then I'm like, well, I'm on episode 251. So, link building alone is a fantastic reason why you should have a podcast.
If you have a live show and you use re-stream or some other simulcasting platform, you can get a link from Twitch, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn, that's 5.
And then you put it on Buzzsprout, which syndicates it on all the podcast platforms, and that's another 14, 15. So you can build 20 links an episode. That's good SEO.
Gresham Harkless 12:43
That's excellent SEO. And I think a lot of people don't realize it because they don't understand the nuances of it like we've been talking about.
It's just if you're understanding, like even, I say even having social media platforms, even if you say, I'm not going to spend time on Facebook, for example, but you have a Facebook page for one, nobody can get whatever username or whatever handle you end up using.
But two, you have those SEO benefits from sites like that, different podcasts that you're doing, YouTube, which is a huge search engine in and of itself.
So just understanding all those nuances, it just, sometimes business owners don't see all those different pieces.
Kellen Kautzman 13:20
Yeah. So maybe you can educate me on having like an Upwork staff, because I don't go down that path. Obviously, we talked about that.
So what are the benefits of working with folks on those sorts of platforms? Price, obviously, right? It's cheaper, I should say.
Gresham Harkless 13:38
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of, obviously, you want to hire somebody, and that's a big part.
By no means am I an expert at doing, I've been able to kind of bring people on the team through Upwork.
But I think for me, I was able to, from day one, I kind of knew that I wanted to build a team. I didn't want to be the person that was doing everything.
So I wanted to bring on people before I needed to bring on people. That's probably the absolute biggest thing is because you get that opportunity for one, I got to work on my leadership skills.
But also two, you get the opportunity to kind of vet certain people on certain, on projects, then maybe if it doesn't go as well, the person isn't exactly who you thought it was, you can still kind of do some of the work.
So that's the biggest thing I would say, probably hiring in general, is if you can bring on somebody before you need to bring on somebody, that's just gonna make it a little bit easier.
You're gonna make better decisions. You're gonna be able to kind of I won't necessarily go slow in the process, but make sure you're going through each of the steps to make sure you're hiring somebody.
And for Upwork, specifically, I think there's resources you have to spend on obviously bringing somebody on, but you also have to spend resources on attracting talent.
That's where Upwork kind of gives you that kind of cheat code if you can find the right person, where you have loads and loads of people from different parts of the country to even in the states as well too, you can make that decision and that you only want to hire people in the states.
You can select all of that. You can figure out like how much you want to pay. So to me, it's kind of a little bit more of a quick or easy way to be able to kind of at least vet through talent and find somebody that potentially could be a good hire.
But I think just like, with everything else, everybody you hire isn't necessarily always going to be those great hires.
Whether it's say you have a kiss a few frogs before you get to who you want to be. So a lot of that is still true, no matter what process you go through. But I feel like it does cut down on time a little bit if you can find the right person.
Kellen Kautzman 15:32
Yeah, and then you don't have to deal with governments, like if you W-2 someone and they don't work out, you still got to deal with that state for quite a while.
And the letters and the nonsense and just avoiding all of that makes so much sense to me.
Outro 15:43
Hello, 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 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, a little bit more about us as well too. This is Gresh signing out. I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.
00:00 - 00:26
Gresham Harkless: I think it's just really understanding each of the different nuances. Like you mentioned, it says so well, it's knowing the decisions that you're making and being strategic about them. Not necessarily being the expert or the go-to all the time if you're going to hire somebody, but at least have some lay of the land So you know, okay, this makes sense. Or even if this person tells me that I need to be doing this and my target market's not there, maybe that's not the best advice. And maybe that person doesn't know what it is they're talking about.
00:26 - 00:50
Intro: Hello, hello, hello. This is Gretch 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 could 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
00:50 - 01:16
Intro: a lot more of our content, a lot more 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 Gret signing out. I hope you enjoy
01:16 - 01:18
Intro: this I am CEO special episode.
01:19 - 01:21
Kellen Kautzman: All right. So what is the secret to happiness?
01:22 - 01:46
Gresham Harkless: How the secret to happiness is different for everybody. But I will tell you this, sometimes as we were you were kind of talking about, I think sometimes we think that it is about money and about things in the banking account. And I think to a certain point, you definitely want to be able to, of course, pay for certain things and take care of all those things. But I think the constant pursuit of happiness doesn't really have a lot to do with money. And I think that's something that we were kind of alluding to before you even
01:46 - 01:47
Gresham Harkless: got started with the show.
01:47 - 02:17
Kellen Kautzman: Yeah, that's so true. My kiddos are just invaluable. Obviously, I feel like a lot of fathers and mothers have that. We just celebrated Father's Day. Happy Father's Day. Yeah, thanks. OK, so as an agency owner for 9 years, you've kept it lean and mean, which is to say you haven't gone the W2 route, but you're feeling pressure to start doing that now. Do you think that's something that you're going to do in the next few years, few months, few days?
02:18 - 02:43
Gresham Harkless: Maybe in the next few years is something that I'm definitely thinking about. I think that you kind of get to a certain point where you have the contractors and you lose, I think, some of the connection and kind of, I don't want to say control, cause that sounds like I'm saying, you got to do this, you got to do that. But I think you want to have somebody that's a little bit more, has more skin in the game, maybe, you know, in the business. And that's something that I'm kind of looking forward to with me potentially
02:43 - 03:05
Gresham Harkless: like working on other projects, like who would replace me? It's not probably going to be a contractor. So not to say I wouldn't still be involved, but I wouldn't be as involved in the day to day as I have been. So that's what's kind of like maybe making me think about, okay, this is probably something I need to do not, you know, holistically for everybody. But you might want to have that key person that could be that kind of point person, so to speak.
03:05 - 03:08
Kellen Kautzman: Yeah. How do you juggle sales and operations?
03:10 - 03:42
Gresham Harkless: It's hard. I mean, I'm very virtual. I'm very much a very efficient person, I think. So I lose a lot of technology and that helps save a lot of time as far as reaching out to clients, keeping track of things. Like I use a tool called Basecamp that I swear by. And those things have helped me be extremely efficient and not only me, but also people on the team to where I haven't need to hire an employee. So I think that helps out from an operations standpoint. And my job has kind of always been just to
03:42 - 04:05
Gresham Harkless: kind of, you know, make sure the trains are running, make sure things are being done, but also to kind of be the face, go out and get, you know, opportunities. So it's a fine line. But I think because I do most things, you know, virtually even before the pandemic, I think I'm really kind of cognizant of time, what's essential time waster and just how to, you know, kind of hone in on the time that I do have and try to leverage it as much as possible.
04:06 - 04:15
Kellen Kautzman: Is it relationships that are driving the revenue? Is it B&I groups, networking? How are you doing it?
04:16 - 04:41
Gresham Harkless: Combinations. So I have been networking really since day 1. And I really enjoy, you know, people that's why I love, you know, all the work that you do. And what you kind of talked about as a foundational element of your show is really get to know people to connect with people and hopefully, you know, build those relationships over time. So that's something I've always tried to do and I started my business actually in a B&I. So it's something I learned there as far as like more of the mechanics of it, but I still feel like even
04:41 - 05:09
Gresham Harkless: knowing the formula, you have to be able to kind of execute the form. You have to be able to like people for lack of a better term. So you can't really just follow a system in order to do that. So I think learning what networking is, learning what business was, was definitely something that I took from BNI and being in a BNI and learning. But I think at the end of the day, between that and then I've taken a lot of the digital tools that I've used, like the podcast and stuff like that, and the blog
05:09 - 05:22
Gresham Harkless: and hopefully have it as a way to kind of network as well too. It's just want to buy big drivers for doing that. So it's kind of a different way to network, kind of like you're doing, but at the same time, it kind of compliments that more, I guess, traditional networking.
05:23 - 05:33
Kellen Kautzman: Yeah, I miss my in-person BNI. I was the chapter president last time, which pays incredibly well. I don't know if you've ever been a BMI chapter president.
05:33 - 05:35
Gresham Harkless: I haven't, but I heard.
05:35 - 05:46
Kellen Kautzman: Oh, fat checks, fat checks. So let's pivot a little bit just to marketing strategies in 2021 and what seems to be working and what doesn't. Give me the 10, 000 foot view.
05:46 - 06:17
Gresham Harkless: Yeah. So I'm really big and I know I've been in business for 9 years, so marketing has definitely changed tremendously. I have my whole marketing philosophy, which kind of extends into all the content that I create and we work on. I say everybody's kind of like in the media business. And I call it, you are your own media company. And I think the biggest piece of it, and because each of the different platforms, and as you were kind of saying in the news pieces, each of the platforms is becoming its own kind of marketing channel. Like
06:17 - 06:46
Gresham Harkless: digital marketing is just what Facebook is in and of itself in addition to all these other things. So they're so robust now that I'm really big into like understanding your target market, understanding what your goals are, and being honest about your resources and then figuring out what are the essential ingredients for that to happen for you to reach whatever your goal is. I think so many times you'll hear marketers because this is in their wheelhouses, this is a thing that they do. They'll say, you know, you need to be on TikTok or you need to do
06:46 - 07:12
Gresham Harkless: SEO or you need to have a podcast or write a book or do whatever. And I consider those to be, I call them ingredients. So I'm really big on picking 1 or 2 ingredients, just like if you're going to the grocery store, depending on what it is you're trying to create. And I think so many times when you understand that and you really understand your target market, you can continue to kind of change with the times. But I think so many times people are like, you know, so and so said, I have to be on TikTok.
07:13 - 07:40
Gresham Harkless: So I have to be on TikTok, even though you might be selling to like 70 year olds, that may not necessarily be the best place for you to spend your resources. So I think it's just really understanding each of the different nuances. Like you mentioned, it says so well, it's knowing the decisions that you're making and being strategic about them. Not necessarily being the expert or the go-to all the time, if you're gonna hire somebody, but at least have some lay of the land. So you know, okay, this makes sense, or even if this person tells
07:40 - 08:07
Gresham Harkless: me that I need to be doing this and my target market's not there, maybe that's not the best advice and Maybe that person doesn't know what it is that they're talking about. But that's my big kind of marketing philosophy is just like understanding those nuances, understanding the 1 or 2 ingredients and then really focused and drilling down on them from there. Cause you kind of have to be very, very active and you have to know a lot about the platforms that you're going to be. It's really hard to know about all the major platforms unless you
08:07 - 08:09
Gresham Harkless: have a tremendous budget.
08:10 - 08:47
Kellen Kautzman: I like the analogy of ingredients because just because a dish has 15 ingredients, doesn't make it better than a dish that has 6. So that's good. And that's some ancient sort of Taoist wisdom condensed, you know, lessons more. I went, I had some noodles yesterday at my friend's house. So Choi is her name. We're watching the Vegas Nights game. She comes over, she says, do you want spaghetti? I'm like, I was thinking in my head, just spaghetti. You know what I mean? Just plain spaghetti noodles. And I'm like, no, no, I don't want spaghetti. You know?
08:48 - 08:54
Kellen Kautzman: And then this is my ignorant showing. And then she goes back and we're watching the game and all of a sudden the house smells delicious.
08:55 - 08:55
Gresham Harkless: And I'm
08:55 - 08:57
Kellen Kautzman: like, oh no, I made a terrible mistake.
08:57 - 08:58
Gresham Harkless: What have I done?
08:58 - 09:04
Kellen Kautzman: And as she feeds these kids, I'm looking at these noodles, I'm smelling the house, I'm like, regrets.
09:04 - 09:05
Gresham Harkless: And she looked
09:05 - 09:15
Kellen Kautzman: at me and she sees the regret and she goes you want spaghetti I'm like no no I couldn't I couldn't possibly you know I did the whole you know
09:15 - 09:15
Gresham Harkless: and she's like
09:15 - 09:17
Kellen Kautzman: I'm making you spaghetti I'm like
09:17 - 09:18
Gresham Harkless: ah So
09:18 - 09:29
Kellen Kautzman: she ends up making like the most delicious soy sauce, garlic, spaghetti with red pepper flakes. Just, ah, so good. I still taste it.
09:29 - 09:30
Gresham Harkless: It was amazing. Ah, So good.
09:30 - 10:04
Kellen Kautzman: So it just goes to show that, you know, as agency owners, we live in this weird paradox of what works for us does not work for our clients. Most of the time, we have to be out in front of folks, we have to be building relationships, we have to do networking with business owners, we are B2B. And B2B marketing is not B2C. It's definitely not national B2C. My sister who owns a cosmetic and wig company will pop on TikTok, get half a million views and make $40, 000. We don't have that luxury. People on TikTok are
10:04 - 10:15
Kellen Kautzman: not business owners. We just live in this different world. And it's so funny to me that our internet marketing skill isn't necessarily a benefit to us as much as it is to our clients.
10:16 - 10:42
Gresham Harkless: Right. Yeah. That makes perfect sense. And I think that's, you know, like you said, you know, part of knowing, you know, your target market, what you're actually doing, what you're actually selling, where your target market is, because B2B is definitely different, you know, from B2C. But I think there is always, and that's why I say the resources thing is really huge because I think there's a place for being there before other people are being there. But you have to know that you're doing that. Like if you're going to start doing TikTok because you want to be
10:42 - 11:12
Gresham Harkless: a first mover, that's a lot different than saying I'm getting all my clients here from TikTok, you know, and I'm gonna spend all my resources there versus like, okay, I have an intern that I just hired, for example, and I want that intern to kind of see if there's some B2B, maybe not even networking opportunities, but maybe just relationships or networking that can come from TikTok. So it's just like looking at things differently and seeing that, you know, even though the platform may not be where your target market is, you wanna kind of be there as
11:12 - 11:20
Gresham Harkless: possible, right before it happens. But if you have to spend a little bit of time and get, you know, that experience there, then there might be some opportunities that come together later.
11:20 - 11:53
Kellen Kautzman: Yeah. And I do enjoy, because I started going on TikTok and my first video was 500, then 600, then 700, then 50, then 160. And like, I'm like all over the place. And apparently, TikTok will always give you 500 views on your first video because they want you to get really excited part of the algorithm. And so it may not be the best platform for us long term, you can take your tick tock and automatically feed it to Instagram, which is what I've been doing. But I'm also doing it because I want to be at least
11:53 - 12:21
Kellen Kautzman: somewhat knowledgeable when I talk to clients. I wanna understand the platform. I want to have made a few, you know, I wanna be in the trenches a little bit. It's 1 of the reasons I wrote a book. It's 1 of the reasons I do this podcast so that I can go to my clients and say, you really should have a podcast. Well, why, you know, how do you do it? And then I'm like, well, I'm on episode 251. So, link building alone is a fantastic reason why you should have a podcast. If you have a live
12:21 - 12:43
Kellen Kautzman: show and you use restream or some other simulcasting platform, you can get a link from Twitch, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn, that's 5. And then you put it on Buzzsprout, which syndicates it on all the podcast platforms, and that's another 14, 15. So you can build 20 links an episode. That's good SEO.
12:43 - 13:13
Gresham Harkless: That's excellent SEO. And I think a lot of people don't realize it because they don't understand the nuances of it like we've been talking about. It's just if you're understanding, like even, I say even having social media platforms, even if you say, I'm not going to spend time on Facebook, for example, but you have a Facebook page for 1, Nobody can get whatever username or whatever handle you end up using. But 2, you have those SEO benefits from sites like that, different podcasts that you're doing, YouTube, which is a huge search engine in and of itself.
13:13 - 13:20
Gresham Harkless: So just understanding all those nuances, it just, Sometimes business owners don't see all those different pieces.
13:20 - 13:38
Kellen Kautzman: Yeah. So maybe you can educate me on having like an Upwork staff, because I don't go down that path. Obviously, we talked about that. So What are the benefits of working with folks on those sorts of platforms? Price, obviously, right? It's cheaper, I should say.
13:38 - 14:03
Gresham Harkless: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of, obviously, you want to hire somebody, and that's a big part. By no means am I an expert at doing, I've been able to kind of bring people on the team through Upwork. But I think for me, I was able to, from day 1, I kind of knew that I wanted to build a team. I didn't want to be the person that was doing everything. So I wanted to bring on people before I needed to bring on people. That's probably the absolute biggest thing is because you get that
14:03 - 14:26
Gresham Harkless: opportunity for 1, I got to work on my leadership skills, but also 2, you get the opportunity to kind of vet certain people on certain, you know, on projects, then maybe if it doesn't go as well, the person isn't exactly who you thought it was, you can still kind of do some of the work. So that's the biggest thing I would say, probably hiring in general, is if you can bring on somebody before you need to bring on somebody, that's just gonna make it a little bit easier. You're gonna make better decisions. You're gonna be able
14:26 - 14:56
Gresham Harkless: to kind of, you know, I won't necessarily go slow in the process, but you know, make sure you're going through each of the steps to make sure you're hiring somebody. And for Upwork, you know, specifically, I think there's resources you have to spend on obviously bringing somebody on, but you also have to spend resources on attracting talent. That's where Upwork kind of gives you that kind of cheat code if you can find the right person, where you have loads and loads of people from different parts of the country to, you know, even in the states as
14:56 - 15:21
Gresham Harkless: well too, you can make that decision and that you only want to hire people in the states. You can select all of that. You can figure out like how much you want to pay. So to me, it's kind of a little bit more of a quick or easy way to be able to kind of at least vet through talent and find somebody that potentially could be a good hire. But I think just like, you know, with everything else, everybody you hire isn't necessarily always going to be those, those great hires. Whether it's say you have a
15:21 - 15:31
Gresham Harkless: kiss a few frogs before you get to who you want to be. So a lot of that is still true, you know, no matter what process you go through. But I feel like it does cut down on time a little bit if you can find the right person.
15:32 - 15:43
Kellen Kautzman: Yeah, and then you don't have to deal with governments, you know, like if you W-2 someone and they don't work out, you still got to deal with that state for quite a while. And the letters and the nonsense and just avoiding all of that makes so much sense to
15:43 - 15:43
Gresham Harkless: me.
15:43 - 16:12
Intro: Hello, 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 to 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
16:12 - 16:17
Intro: course learn more, a little bit more about us as well too. This is Grass signing out, hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.
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