IAM2357 – Celebrate Every Step: The Journey Matters!

In this special episode, Gresham Harkless shares a personal and professional update while reflecting on the importance of celebrating small wins and staying present in the journey.

He discusses a recent client interaction in which he didn't close any business but learned the valuable lesson of celebrating the progress made, such as having the first meeting.

Gresham emphasizes that even if things don’t go smoothly, it's important to acknowledge and celebrate each step because those early steps are necessary for future success.

Gresham highlights the concept of “planned advances”—setting clear next steps after each interaction, such as scheduling follow-up calls and asking clients to take assessments to gain better insights.

• 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 00:00

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 00:28

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 here from Blue Star Franchise and Franchise CEO and I'm actually doing this recording from Texas.

We actually traveled to Texas for a baby shower. I'm having a son in January, so super excited. Get to spend time with my wife's family and my family got to come along as well.

So get an opportunity to just kind of do that is really going to be cool. One of the really cool things that happened actually Thursday after I did my day and my recording was that I actually had a client that started to go through the process and actually called candidates from a perspective of being a broker.

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But one of the big things is that we often don't celebrate the wins. One of the things that I really took away even from Star and her experience is how we need to stay as present as possible.

As much as I can easily say that, hey, I didn't close any business, I didn't get any opportunities, so I don't need to celebrate.

We really need to celebrate each step of the journey. Those steps of the journey are going to be important because what you end up becoming, the success that you want to have, doesn't happen unless you take those first steps.

You don't run a mile without taking that first step. Run two miles without taking that first step. So every step you take you kind of have to celebrate those wins and what that looks like.

So that's one of the things that I'm really trying to get a lot more present about a lot more. Give me a better opportunity to kind of just celebrate what that is and what that looks like.

Because I am one to say that, hey, I haven't closed the deal so there's no reason to kind of celebrate.

But in actuality there's definitely a reason to celebrate and I'm trying to stay present in that. So that's one of the big things that I really wanted to kind of take away with this video is to make sure that you are celebrating but also making sure that you are filling up your cup.

You're keeping your cup full. I say that so many times how important it is to make sure that you do have something that you can pour from.

As I'm actually tired, we, you know, we got up super early, I think we left it, woke up at about 3:00 to be able to get on this 5:00 AM flight and bing, going non-stop.

Since then I also had, hopped on a call with other brokers where we learned a little bit more around different, different tool that I might drill down a little bit more into in a future video.

But I did really want to give an opportunity and space to say that, hey, when you get that client and that client, you have your first meeting.

Make sure you celebrate that even if you don't necessarily feel like it's going to it went smoothly because I don't feel like it went smoothly.

I definitely feel like I was fumbling over my words and couldn't get those things in place. So something I would definitely want to improve upon.

But you don't get better if you don't take the first step. So no matter how imperfect it was, I still want to kind of get better from there.

But you don't do it unless you get that first step. So I want to definitely celebrate that. There's a lot of other steps, that I want to take. I'm not sure if this is actually going to be a good candidate.

We'll definitely see. I know she mentioned that she would take the assessment. So one of the things that you always want to do, that I learned, and this is good for brokerage, but this is literally good for any aspect of your business, is having planned advances.

Plan advances are the next step. What's going to be the next step after this? What's going to be next step after that? So I set up a future call.

Also, the next plan advance was a commitment to do the entrepreneur assessment so I could get a better idea of, like, her makeup.

So that'll tell me a lot. I didn't know yet. I didn't get the vibe that it was going to be a really good fit.

But again, it gave me an opportunity to kind of flex and work out those muscles, get those reps in.

And I think you only do that by having those conversations. So it was not what I wanted, but I did it. And I think that is something to celebrate.

So I definitely want to celebrate myself for that. And, got to keep going, got to keep trying to get more of these leads and opportunities to fill up that pipeline.

So that's it. This is Gresh signing out from Texas, and we'll probably try to give another update tomorrow, even though it's going to be a light, probably work day.

But I still want to give an update just to kind of tell you a little bit more where my. My head is at, what things are going on as I go through this journey. So have a great rest of the day and we'll talk with you.

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 06:38

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.

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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