IAM2540 – Speed Up Your Franchise Journey!

In this special episode, Gresham Harkless reflects on the importance of maintaining momentum and acting with speed in business.

Gresham shares insights from a recent call with a potential client tied to a traditional franchise brand, which highlighted major gaps in digital marketing and innovation, areas where many franchisors still fall short.

This experience emphasizes a clear gap in the market and reaffirms Gresham’s belief that there's a real opportunity to support and add value in this space.

Gresham recognizes that staying active, testing ideas with low risk, and leveraging networking groups are essential steps forward.

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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 00:29

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.

Day 202 of the Franchise Broker journey. And today is like a reminder of making sure that I'm moving faster.

I think that so many times when you get in a place and sometimes things are working, sometimes they're not working, you get in this like, uncertainty where you're not sure what action to take and that's why it's really cool to see something related to franchising.

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But I actually had a call with a potential client who has a franchise who actually came across largely because of this.

And this is one of the benefits that I thought I saw from being able to kind of be in this space a little bit more and learn a little bit more or even from a marketing perspective I feel like there's a there's a gap there.

Unfortunately, this brand is very old school it seems and that was kind of disheartening to ultimately see because they may not allow the innovation amongst the franchisees.

So this Zor, from what I looked at, doesn't invest a lot into digital marketing is not really there.

And I think looking at what I've seen, from my perspective, they're, they're not doing really well there.

So it's going to be of the utmost importance to try to leverage, things like social media, try to also be able to leverage other parts, because just on a quick look, I saw that there was a tremendous amount of gaps, from the brand standpoint.

But, I'm continuing to kind of look and see, what this looks like from a franchise broker standpoint.

But I think the thing and the revelation that I've had more than anything else is that you have to move fast in business.

Like, I don't care if you're a Zor, I don't care if you're a Z, I don't care if you're a business owner, you want to move fast, that that speed is going to be super helpful.

And to be able to do that at a low risk standpoint is going to be the biggest thing.

So if you can do something, you can move fast and you can hopefully gauge how things go and then move on from there.

That's going to be the best opportunity for success. So with that being said, I'm super excited to kind of just see how everything comes to fruition and what it ultimately looks like.

I definitely want to continue to kind of build relationships and connections with people.

I think by going back into the networking groups, it's going to allow me to give that foundation.

And based on the pivot that I want to make, I wanted to try to, get some things rolling. They haven't rolled as fast as I thought they would.

But I think definitely, at this standpoint, I would have been looking into maybe going through training, probably would have been finished maybe by the end of the month at training if I was starting, a little bit later and then just kind of go from there.

But, I'm continuing to kind of see what can be done, what I can ultimately do, where the opportunities lie.

But I think that speed is definitely the name of the game, as John Madden used to say on the Madden game. The more you can move fast, the more you can make adjustments quicker, the better off you're going to be.

So that's kind of like where I'm at. I need to get back to doing that a lot more. I kind of got, a little bit stuck in where I was and we'll see how everything goes and just ultimately kind of take it from there.

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

Outro 04:52

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.

Want to level up your business even more? Read blogs, listen to podcasts, and watch videos at CBNation.co. Also, check out our I AM CEO Facebook group. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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