IAM2421 – Embrace the Run: Focus on Progress

In this special episode, Gresham Harkless shares how he’s using ChatGPT to help him work through business ideas. He calls it his “CEO hack,” noting that it serves as a virtual sounding board for brainstorming and coaching.

He discusses recalibrating his 12-week goals, realizing that some earlier targets weren’t as realistic or achievable as he thought.

Gresham also recognizes that while securing sales, building a strong lead-generation foundation is critical for long-term success. He mentions experimenting with both buying leads and focusing on generating his leads.

Gresham explains the difference between lead measures (actions you take daily that drive results) and lag measures (the delayed results, like sales, that come after).

He discusses the reality of a long sales cycle in the franchise industry, acknowledging that it can take several months (or even a quarter) to convert a lead into a sale.

In addition, Gresham highlights the importance of staying accountable to his goals and regularly checking that his lead measures are working.

• Blue Star Franchise: http://bluestarfranchise.com
• Browse the Franchise Inventory: https://bluestarfranchise.com/franchise
• Is franchising right for you? Check this out to see: http://bluestarfranchise.com/assessment
• Franchise CEO (A CBNation Site – coming soon) – http://franchiseceo.co

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Transcription:

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Intro 00:01

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

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

Gresham Harkless 00:28

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh. And I believe it's like day 38 or something like that. To be honest, I'm not up on what exactly the days are, but I have used my, I call it my CEO hack, which is ChatGPT.

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And I upgraded my upgrading. I was able to do that kind of like coaching sessions, which is actually pretty cool.

We can have a back and forth kind of conversation with ChatGPT, just to think through ideas.

I think having that sounding board is such a huge thing as an entrepreneur, CEO, business owner.

So you're thinking about different ideas, different ways to go. I think obviously if you're something like a franchise or a networking group.

You can always create space and time for people that are in those organizations or in that group so that you could kind of just kind of spitball, just different ideas and just see what kind of help goes from there.

So I was playing around with ChatGPT. And when you upgrade and you could do like this chat, which I think is actually pretty awesome to have a back and forth conversation.

If you're thinking about ideas or want to sift through things or wanted to even remind you of certain things.

One of the things that I did was I wanted it to make sure that any time we have some type of conversation that if you try to put it into a place that is a task, by putting it into a place that is a task, then we have some type of action item to go forward with.

But sometimes even like this morning, it was pretty much like, hey, let's just go through different ideas.

So the reason I bring all that up is I wanted to kind of recalibrate some of my 12-week goals.

The reason I wanted to recalibrate my 12-week goals is because I don't think I was being honestly, quote unquote, realistic about what I wanted to achieve and how I wanted to achieve it.

And too, like I think as you start to, especially for this business, one of the big things that I wanted to focus on and what I need to focus on is generating different kind of ways to generate leads.

That's one of the most foundational things I could do. I forget that within that first year, of course you want to get the sales, but you get the sales by building the foundation.

And when you have these lead sources that are put in place, what it does is it allows you to be able to ramp up or slow down any of those type of leads.

So one of them I've been doing is buying leads. We had leads that were set up through FBA, and I can understand specifically why they would do that from their business standpoint.

But I also understand like why it's important, because what you don't want to do is go through training.

And then just you're just kind of sitting there because you don't know necessarily how to generate leads.

The good and bad of that is I also feel like it creates kind of like this dependency, upon buying leads, rather than spending time and space on generating leads.

So that's something that I'm trying to do differently. Like I mentioned in another video, I'm up and down or back and going back and forth as far as like, should I buy more leads or should I just really put the emphasis on generating leads?

And I think that's something that I'm really kind of fleshing through and thinking about and seeing what I can make happen.

But I think a lot of that focus is really just saying, hey, let's Let's realize that while there's lag in lead measures, your lag measures are going to be the ones that you don't necessarily control as much of the production of whatever result you want to have.

In this case, it would be having a certain amount of sales for Blue Star Franchise. Now the lead measures are the things that you're doing on a daily basis.

And one of the things that I've noticed, and this is with all my 12 week goals, is usually I'm really good.

I won't say great. I can be a little bit better, but I'm not perfect. But I have like maybe a week or two that I usually lag off a little bit.

For the most part, I'm executing at a pretty high level because I prioritize those things.

The first things I try to do in the morning. Even me doing these videos is part of those lead measures that I'm putting in place to try to reach whatever that goal might be.

The lag measures are something that are not always aligned. So there's usually like different ways to process that.

If your lag measures are not getting ultimately where you want to be for all your goals, then that potentially means you're using the wrong lead measures.

And that's where you have that weekly kind of accountability time to see what works, but also to like maybe it just takes a little bit longer.

This has a long sales cycle, longer sales cycle. So you're looking at at least maybe a quarter to actually get somebody to that is a candidate to potentially like purchase a business.

So It's also understanding that, which means that you sometimes have to adjust what you're doing.

So it's just understanding those things and seeing what I might have to do. So I'm looking a lot more at my lag measures, my lag goals, and tweaking them to make sure that they are realistic and something I can actually accomplish.

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

Outro 06:40

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by CBNation and Blue16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

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

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