IAM2254 – Embrace Your Unique Journey, Be the CEO of Your Life

In this episode, Gresham Harkless emphasizes the importance of understanding your unique path in entrepreneurship, stating, “If you've run your own race, you can't lose.”

Gresham highlights that setting limits can enhance personal responsibility and allow genuine self-expression.

Gresham emphasizes that entrepreneurs must recognize their motivations for starting a business, whether for flexibility, structure, or other reasons.

In addition, he shares insights about franchising as a viable option for those looking to start a business, helping them align their goals with existing opportunities.

Related Links:

• iam2176-if-you-run-your-race-you-cant-lose
• bluestarfranchise.com

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Transcription:

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Gresham Harkless Teaser 00:00

I think some of the most powerful definitions and perspectives on being a CEO actually don't drill down specifically on what the job titles are.

They understand that human part. They understand that it is not a 1 set way. They understand that it's very much so intertwined with your life and that it's hard to be a CEO of anything else if you're not a CEO of yourself.

Intro 00:24

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 00:52

One of my favorite quotes is that if you've run your own race, you can't lose. And I think one of the other really big things that I've learned is that if you what would you is to ask yourself what you would do if you couldn't fail.

These are really powerful questions, because I think so many times we get so lost in what other people are doing or trying to fit in or potentially trying to emulate what people are doing that we lose sight of what makes us our best selves.

How we can show up to really make that impact. And as I start to learn a little bit more around franchising and then I go through that process.

It becomes even more clear to me exactly how I'm looking to hopefully do that for people that are looking to go through the franchise around or frankly, even to try to start their business.

I think so many times I've learned a lot more about franchising than I've known in the past. And I think for those that are interested in franchising, it becomes very quickly that opportunity to know about how to start Chick-fil-A or Subway or whatever the common brands are going to be McDonald's, whatever those stored brands are.

But what I started to realize as I've had conversations heard from people that are much further along in the journey than I am, is that it really just depends on what your race is.

So when you're thinking about starting anything, starting a business, starting a franchise, whatever that might be, is you owe it to yourself to understand what your race is.

You understand that this is where I want to be and this is how I want that to come to fruition. But I think so many times we don't actually sit down and have those conversations with ourselves or sometimes even the people that are closest to us.

So it just leaves us in a place where we aren't ultimately committing ourselves to running our race.

And as I go through this, one of the really cool things that I was able to do is I had a phenomenal interview.

And during this phenomenal interview, we talked a lot around what your race can be and what that looks like.

And it's going to be episode number 2266 and had a return guest that's on the show. And we talked a lot around, boundaries and how important boundaries are.

And the more I thought about it, and it's with Cheryl Green, who was on the podcast before, we talked a lot around how we can realize that boundaries are actually the opportunity for us to be more responsible.

I think so many times when we think of boundaries, we think of saying no and what does saying no mean?

Saying no means we might lose relationships, we might hurt people, people might not like us, whatever that might be.

But in actuality, if we really start to go deeper into understanding what those boundaries provide, it provides that opportunity for us to be very responsible about who we are.

And I'm a real big believer in like us having gifts and us having a responsibility to be able to share those gifts for the betterment of the world and society.

And whatever might be your ultimate beliefs around that, I do feel like we all individually have very specific gifts.

It's not to say that we can't work and cultivate certain talents and opportunities, but I think that we do have certain things that does, that do come naturally to some of us than others and vice versa.

They have something that comes more naturally to them than they might to us, than they would to us.

So when I bring all that up, the reason I say that is because I think it becomes a responsibility for us to make sure that we do understand what our race is.

We do understand what those boundaries are within our race, because so often you'll get the people that are literally running all the way across all the lanes rather than staying true to their lane.

And I think that happens, especially in the very beginning of entrepreneurship and business, or it can happen.

But I think that's where those guardrails, those boundaries end up playing such a big part in terms of giving us the responsibility to stay true to who we are.

And during that episode, we talked a little bit around how your self-confidence can play a big part in terms of that.

But I think one of the things that we really have to realize is that first and foremost, we have to define what our race is. And then secondly, we have to be confident enough to show up as that.

And that's really where I like this opportunity of learning more about franchising, learn more about what that could mean and look like for many people is because so many times we're not sure exactly like what our race is.

Like sometimes people are not the true, I'd say the true entrepreneur, but they're not the most purest sense of entrepreneurship. They might have different reasons for why they even want to start a business.

Even the pure entrepreneur might want to have other streams of revenue, or potentially that they've always wanted to start a business, but they want a little bit more structure around how they're starting a business.

So it's just understanding each of those avenues and none of these options or opportunities are right or wrong, they're actually all right.

They're not wrong because they're saying true to you, but it's only, I think, right if it is true to you, if you only know what your race is, if you know ultimately what you wanna be.

So Maybe you're entering into entrepreneurship knowing that you want to keep your 9 to 5 job.

Maybe you're entering entrepreneurship and know that you do want to have a little bit more guardrails into how you're building and scaling a business because you want to spend more time with your family.

There could be many different reasons why you're looking into going into this entrepreneurial venture.

But I think the biggest thing that I've really loved about learning more about the franchise and what that could look like is that you start to figure out how you can meet people where they are so that you can help them to go where they ultimately want to go.

But it's very important to be able to kind of have those conversations and be able to kind of unlock a lot of like what people can ultimately do and what that looks like.

And I think a lot of that comes when you are like having that dialogue, that unique conversation so that you can see what the options are.

But frankly, you help guide people where they ultimately want to go. And I think that's what's really exciting about everything I'm looking into now.

And ultimately, where I'm hoping to go is that it's bringing up entrepreneurship in very much of a different way.

I think so many times when you think of entrepreneurship, you think of just starting a venture, but sometimes it's buying into someone who has already had some type of success and being able to understand that this is ultimately what I want to do.

And this is going to increase my likelihood of success by me knowing what my race is, how do I stay locked into it. And this is how I'm going to make that happen.

So exciting days definitely are ahead. And I'm super excited about, you know, all the opportunity that we have to really serve people that are entrepreneurs, CEOs, and business owners, but do that in a way that is in alignment with who they are.

And if you have listened or heard from the I AM CEO Podcast, on of the biggest things that I always ask at the end is everybody and how they define what being a CEO means to them.

I think some of the most powerful definitions and perspectives on being a CEO actually don't drill down specifically on what the job titles are.

They understand that human part. They understand that it is not a one set way. They understand that it's very muscle intertwined with your life and that it's hard to be a CEO of anything else if you're not CEO of yourself.

And understanding what that is and what that looks like is, unfortunately or unfortunately left up to us.