IAM2455 – Letting Go: Accelerating Your Franchise Success Story

Gresham Harkless reflects on Day 56 of his Franchise Broker journey, noting the emotional weight of the process despite having zero sales so far.

He's been engaging with candidates and recently had a promising conversation with a Google Ads lead, emphasizing the importance of building rapport and treating these talks like podcast interviews—conversational, yet intentional.

Gresham also shares a personal pivot: he's pausing his weekly inspirational text messages, which included Bible verses, due to limited feedback and the need to reevaluate.

He acknowledges the challenge of releasing old habits and digital clutter but emphasizes regular review and de-cluttering as essential for growth.

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Transcription:

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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 00:26

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.

All right. It's day, I want to say 56 of the Franchise Brokers Journey, which is crazy to think about that it's been 56 days since I started.

It seems like it's been so much longer, but I think that's just because I'm always like, hey, I need to have this and this and this and be accomplishing these goals and do all those things.

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But needless to say, I'm still zero sales, but still kind of working through those things, having those conversations, have a really good candidate that I spoke with yesterday.

Actually came from Google Ads, which was pretty exciting have a really great initial conversation.

But I feel like I built a strong enough rapport, which is one of the biggest things.

We went through training, we learned a lot around how to structure those first conversations.

But honestly, I feel like I learned what I learned. And then I took a step back and said, hey, I'm just going to go back and like relearn all those things and re-listen to all those things and see how I can get better.

But I'm just going to approach it like having a podcast. So I'm just going to have a conversation.

I'm going to try to cover, of course, those overall granular big things like being able to understand exactly what the candidate is looking for, what their aspirations are, what their pain point might be.

Then also look into understanding a little bit more about who I am.

And then, of course, being able to kind of have those planned advances and set up the next step, which is probably the most important thing.

Because even if you don't cover everything in the first conversation, hopefully you'll be able to do that in the next conversation, the next conversation.

And start to build that rapport, trust, and hopefully a relationship to help a person get to where they ultimately want to be.

With all that being said, I actually have been sending out text messages to kind of encourage people on a weekly basis.

And those messages, I'm actually winding down. So I actually just did a video myself, just basically telling everybody I was winding down, why I was winding down, and those things.

And definitely it's hard to kind of let go of those things. But there's a book that I've heard about years ago, never read it, but I'm going to check it out.

It's by Seth Godin. the dip, when to quit and when to stick. I think it's a really powerful conversation because I think so many times we have this ability or reminder of resilience of continuing to fight through and continue on.

But frankly, there's not always a case. And I think that whether we're talking about potential leads or opportunities or we're talking about relationships or we're talking about business ideas or ventures that sunk cost bias, which I talked about, funny enough, during a podcast this past Friday or yesterday, talked a lot around that.

And I wonder, how we navigate those things. Because remember, to swing on the jungle gym, you have to let go of that previous run to get to the next run.

And so many times, we don't give ourselves space and time to really be able to do that.

So with that being said, it's just like a conversation that's really been coming up for me really been trying to figure out what things do I have to let go of as I'm starting to purge or get rid of stuff and understand that these things I don't need going into my next season.

And I think one of the things that I really stuck with is like having a constant review time because I am kind of a digital pack rat where I love to keep stuff.

You never know when you're going to need it. And I think digitally, it's not necessarily in front of your face, so it doesn't bother you as much.

But I feel like any time we're holding on to stuff, we are kind of holding on to those things, either mentally or emotionally or things like that.

So that's why I've been trying to make it a point, you know, to regularly, do that review of things and kind of get rid of things that need to be.

And it doesn't necessarily have to be really long and in depth. It can be very quickly, especially if you're doing it on a regular basis.

So while you're while I'm going through those things, I felt like with the text messages that I was sending out, I was keep my brother from Bible verse, and it was really something that was going to be used to help hopefully men be able to kind of have a space for positivity that came at least in their inbox once a week.

Things might be going terribly, but there might be one thing that's in your inbox.

Well, I got some, good feedback. I didn't really get a lot, a lot of radio silence.

So I basically said that, hey, maybe I am going to at least pause this and maybe pause it indefinitely, but I'm going to at least pause it and I'll evaluate and see what I want to do from there.

Maybe it's to create something new or to do something different. The reason I bring this up is like so many times when we're going through our life.

Especially if you're thinking about starting a business, you might have to go through a similar experience where you have to say goodbye to things that were there before and then move on to those next things.

So it's a process. I'm going to take out the book, The Dip, because I think it's just really powerful.

And yeah, again, going through these steps, letting go of the things, testing out things and just kind of going through and seeing like how I can hopefully make that impact.

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

Outro 06:24

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.

Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and everywhere you listen to podcasts. Subscribe and leave us a five-star rating. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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