IAM 111- Hard-hitting Serial Entrepreneur Leads the Charge in Helping Small to Mid-size Businesses Catapult in Growth Value

Judge is a hard-hitting, action-oriented serial entrepreneur with a successful track record of growing companies with little to no revenue and selling them for multi- and hundreds-of-millions of dollars. Judge started www.JudgeGraham.com to lead the charge in helping small to mid-size businesses catapult in growth value to create strong legacies or prosperous liquidity events. Judge served as the Chief Marketing & New Business Officer of Ansira, the second-largest independently owned CRM and digital marketing agency in the USA. Judge was a part of the core deal team and instrumental in selling Ansira to Advent International in 2016.

Prior to joining Ansira, Judge was the former Co-Owner and President of Sq1, which he sold to Ansira in 2015. He was also the former Co-Owner and President of Rassai Interactive. Judge has helped hundreds of small and Fortune 500 companies to focus on growth and the ability to identify and capitalize on opportunities to improve revenue and corner markets through the integration of cutting-edge positioning, culture, technology and sales.

• CEO Hack: The money she, a tool in my book
• CEO Nugget: Continue to chase your path or dream
• CEO Defined: High levels of responsibility

Website: https://www.judgegraham.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/judgegraham/
YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1Z_gpSfRln-oRdb1Xe3AkQ/videos
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/judgegrahambusiness 
Linkedin – https://www.linkedin.com/in/judgegraham/ 
Podcast – https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/scale-with-speed-king/id1371679780?mt=2

Full Interview:

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Transcription:

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:27

Hello, hello. Hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Judge Graham of JudgeGraham.com. Judge it's awesome to have you on the show.

Judge Graham 0:36

Thanks for having me, man. Super excited to be here.

Gresham Harkless 0:39

Yeah, I'm super excited to have you and what I wanted to do was read a little bit more about Judge so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing he's definitely rocking and rolling and Judge is a hard-hitting action oriented serial entrepreneur with a successful track record of growing companies with little or no revenue and selling them for multi and hundreds of millions of dollars. Judge started JudgeGraham.com to lead the charge and help small to midsize businesses catapult in growth value to create strong legacies or prosperous liquidity events. Judge served as the Chief Marketing and New Business Officer at Ansira.

Judge Graham 1:13

Yeah, Ansira.

Gresham Harkless 1:14

The second largest independent own CRM and digital marketing agency in the United States. Judge was part of the core deal team and instrumental in selling Ansira to Advent International in 2016. Prior to joining Ansira, Judge was the former Co-Owner and President of Sq1, which he sold to Ansira in 2015. He was also the former Co-Owner and President of Rassai International. Judge has helped hundreds of small and Fortune 500 companies to focus on growth in the ability to identify and capitalize on opportunities to improve revenue and corner markets through the integration of cutting-edge position, culture, technology, and sales. Judge, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Judge Graham 1:14

I am. Yeah. What an intro. Thank you so much.

Gresham Harkless 1:18

No problem, no problem. Definitely attend to us there. But I wanted to actually hear a little bit more about your CEO story and what led you to start your business and all these different opportunities you've been working on.

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Judge Graham 2:12

Yeah, so I've been a serial entrepreneur my whole life. So, ever since I was a little kid man, in second or third grade. My mom was an art teacher. And she would get these really cool pencils on her, no one even uses his pencils anymore, right? Do you remember, the cool pencils that were decorated? And they were thicker? Well, she'd bring a box of those home. And I'm in second and third grade. And she said, Hey, I'm gonna give these to you. And at that moment, I realized that I was in sales. I said, Well, wow, I've got 30 pencils.

And what am I going to do with all these pencils, I would sell them for $1 to $2 at school. And so that automatically just when I was a little kid and went from pencils to watches to beepers to, selling knives door-to-door to home security systems. So, I've always had this entrepreneurial bug, right? And my first company, I started in college, and literally grew that company and almost didn't graduate in it really never looked back.

Gresham Harkless 3:07

Nice. And yeah, for me, it was a potato chip for you as pencils. So, I appreciate that entrepreneurial story. And it's awesome to hear kind of how that light just switches on. Once you get that opportunity. You just kind of do whatever is natural to you.

Judge Graham 3:19

Yeah, totally 100%.

Gresham Harkless 3:20

Awesome, awesome, awesome. I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper and hear what you have going on on your website, and you're doing a lot of things to help out a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners. So, could you drill a little bit deeper and tell us how you serve the clients you work with?

Judge Graham 3:30

Yeah, so I just wrote a book called Scale with Speed in that book is meant to help entrepreneurs, and business owners really cut through the bullshit. Alright, there's so much noise and books, and there's so much theory, and you'll listen, I'm a real guy, right? I've had huge mistakes. I've had huge failures. I've been at the lowest lows, and I've been at the highest highs, and I know what it's like to chase the mailman for a check. I know what it feels like not to make payroll, I know what it feels like to take huge risks, to have to manage your family and get support to go through those kinds of things.

So, after I reached this level of success that I've reached, I wanted to go on a mission to help, right I believe that the backbone of America is small businesses, right? And entrepreneurs and we're in such an exciting time more than ever, that there are so many entrepreneurs in technology has allowed us to move so fast and have so many opportunities that I want to be kind of a Sherpa or a shepherd along this path to help individuals go from zero to 10 people to 20 people to 1000 people and I want to use the real practitioner experience I have to help them address those things.

Because there are a lot of entrepreneurs that stay up late at night they can't sleep right and they have friends or they have family that is supportive but they don't get it right. I want to be able to talk to say, Hey, listen, I know exactly where you are this is the mistake I did. And this is how you should look at it. And I want to help them grow and scale. So, that's what I'm doing.

Gresham Harkless 5:08

Nice and I definitely appreciate that it is definitely for somebody to reach their level of success and be able to kindly say, I want to help pay it forward, I want to try to help other people out. And you write that book and we're definitely gonna feature that on our CEO bookshelf. So, definitely, looking forward to hearing a little bit more about how's that for you doing with some of those hacks that you have for us. So, I wanted to ask you now for what I call your secret sauce. And this could be kind of something that you feel kind of distinguishes you or your organization. So, do you have a secret sauce for us?

Judge Graham 5:35

Yeah, I think the secret sauce for me is speed. I mean, what my book is about, I mean, when I move so freaking fast, I tell a lot of people all the time, I've got a really good EQ versus an IQ, right? I'm not the smartest guy. But I make decisions fast. So, as I look at doing something at my level of execution and decision-making, I'll make 15 decisions before the normal person may make one or two. And even if I make half of them wrong, I'm still going to be so much further ahead. Because of how I'm operating with urgency and speed.

Gresham Harkless 6:08

I love that. I love that. And it's funny, I used to play Madden all the time. And anytime somebody would burn somebody like a wide receiver he would always say Speed Kills. And it does, because you can get so much more done in the short amount of time that somebody else might take 10 times as much time to do.

Judge Graham 6:23

Yeah, totally 100%.

Gresham Harkless 6:24

Absolutely. So, now I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And this could be an app, a book, your own book, or a habit that you have something that would make people more effective and efficient as business owners.

Judge Graham 6:35

Totally. And this is in my book. And it's a free tool that you can get on my website. It's called The Money sheet. I've got a bunch of hacks and different things. And I've created this and I made it silly, right, I made it kind of in your face, I've got another hat, that's a huge dollar sign. But it's called The Money Sheet. And what it does is it allows you, it focuses you to spend 75% of your day on the top six to eight priorities that you have to do that day to get you closer to your monthly revenue target, right? People spend so much time on non-revenue generating activities, whether they're looking at social or they're doing what I would call busy work, or, Hey, let's call a meeting to have a meeting. People need to focus on revenue, right?

And so my hack is I don't care if you're selling freakin popsicles, phone cases, consulting, whatever it is, you need to get your revenue, right, you need to get yourself and everyone in your organization to spend 75% of their time on it. And so I created it, you can download it, it's a digital version. It's a physical version. And it's a minimal tangible reminder every day to get your money right.

Gresham Harkless 7:45

There you go. And it's a quick kind of reminder that you forget that you're in business usually to buy or to make sales essentially. So, you want to make sure that you get really focused on those certain things, I definitely appreciate you for creating that so that people can kind of remind themselves of that, and even the hat so that they know and incorporated it on their head. So, now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice. Or you can jump into a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Judge Graham 8:10

I would tell my younger business self and even my older right continues to chase your path. Your dream, right? I mean, I know everybody says that. But what I mean by that is, you know, when I was younger, I cared so much about what other people thought, right? And you start to surround yourself with who you become, right?

So, advice would be if you're seeking advice, make sure you're seeking it, right, because people love to give it without seeking it, right? And make sure you're getting advice from someone who has either done or exceeded what you're wanting, right? And anything else besides that is noise, and you got to push it away. And I think that's even for the younger audience out there. That's so hard because of social media. Haters, to me, are a sign of success.

And I've got a lot of them, and it's tough reading some of those comments and seeing people say certain things and advice, or trying to give advice, but you got to push through that you got to believe in what you're doing. And you've got to seek out advice in listen to people that have done what you have or more.

Gresham Harkless 9:16

Absolutely, that makes perfect sense. You got to make sure that you put blinders on so that you're so laser-focused on your goal that nothing else, whether it be the haters on social media, or whoever isn't going to get in your way as far as reaching your past. So, I think that's a phenomenal CEO nugget.

Judge Graham 9:29

Yeah, it's so important. I mean, so many people seek advice, right when they should be seeking counsel, right? Big difference. counsel was somebody that knows it and can help with advice. Anybody can give it to you.

Gresham Harkless 9:42

Yeah, that makes perfect sense that you again, you know, walking in the path of somebody that's done it. So, if you want to be like this person, you're going to read their book and listen to their videos, you're gonna listen to their podcasts, do all these things so that you can continue to kind of go down the path of what you're trying to do.

Judge Graham 9:55

Yeah, and I believe mentorship is so important, whether it's following a guy like me there are 1000s of people, right? I think to find somebody that you can just even if you can't pay him, and they're giving out free videos as I do, listen to those nuggets, take them. And implement them. It's really important.

Gresham Harkless 10:12

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Awesome, awesome, awesome. So, Judge now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different, quote-unquote, CEOs on this show. But I wanted to ask you specifically what being a CEO means to you.

Judge Graham 10:26

It means a heightened level of responsibility, and what that means for me is I believe you're not a real company. And so you have a team, right? You can be a solo entrepreneur, you can make a lot of money. But when you become a real CEO, you have this responsibility of customers, team members, and fiduciary, and somebody like me, I take that with a lot of gravity. And I think it's really important. When people say, hey, it's sometimes it's lonely at the top, it can, it can be right. But you have a responsibility to grow and do right for your customers, you have a responsibility to grow and do right for your people.

So, I think to me, it's a heightened responsibility that you got to take seriously and it's so much fun, right? If you're passionate about what you want, you do, and you love it. And you love building people and you love building a product or a service that is actually doing something great. It's an amazing journey.

Gresham Harkless 11:22

Yeah, absolutely. It's like kind of when the stars align, and everything just kind of goes specifically, right, you're following a path that you want to go out. You're doing something that you love, and then you have a team in place. That's kind of rockin' and rollin', as well as definitely like a special moment.

Judge Graham 11:35

Very much. So, yeah.

Gresham Harkless 11:37

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, Judge, I truly appreciate you for taking some time out of your schedule. What I wanted to do was pass you the mic just to see if there's anything additional, you want to let our readers and our listeners know how they can get in touch with you to get a copy of your book and all that great information you have.

Judge Graham 11:49

Yeah, great. Thank you again, for having me on. The best place to go is judgegraham.com. And you can find all my social handles are pretty much @judgegraham. Also, my new book Scale with Speed is at scalewithspeed.com or judgegraham.com. And listen, the book is a game changer. 206 pages. I literally wrote it to be a practitioner's guide. I have 8 to 10 supplemental downloads that come with the book like the money sheet and a bunch of other things that literally as you read a chapter, you can dive in and start taking action, right? The whole book is a formula it's called speed, right, which is to start with your end game, pick your niche, execute with speed, energize your culture, and dominate your top priorities.

And if you follow this formula and put it into practice and create a habit, you will get successful. So, get the book and check it out. It's easy to read you can read it on a coast-to-coast flight or I created speed reads you can read it like on a Dallas to Houston 45-minute flight.

Gresham Harkless 12:47

Nice, awesome and I have a copy as well, too. Not a have but I definitely have my copy. So, make sure you go and pick it up. Again I appreciate you, Judge. I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Judge Graham 12:56

You too, man. Have a great weekend. Thank you for having me on.

Outro 12:59

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co

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