IAM2645 – Day 291: The Return to Networking

• Blue Star Franchise: bluestarfranchise.com
• Browse the Franchise Inventory: bluestarfranchise.com/franchise
• Is franchising right for you? Check this out to see: bluestarfranchise.com/assessment
• Franchise CEO (A CBNation Site – coming soon) – franchiseceo.co

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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 00:28
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 subsite within CB nation called a franchise CEO. So you'll see some links in the show notes related to that. But I just want 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 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. It 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.

And I think it's day 291 to be here. I'm just not sure what day it is, but I know this at the end of the day, it's all around doing trying to execute as much as you can in the steps that I plan on taking even though the results haven't come in as much as I wanted it to.

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So funny enough, I said that I wanted to create a lot of content, create more content, you know, with the franchise broker and the franchise space. And then I also wanted to rejoin You know a networking group, and I went to different networking groups, I decided to pull the trigger on a BNI chapter. This BNI chapter is actually really flexible. You can miss up to 12 meetings per quarter.

I believe it's per quarter, might be per, no I don't think it's per quarter, it might be per six months. So you're figuring there's 26 weeks, you miss 12 of those weeks, you get subs and or you know, have, you know, people come. But I think that's a really powerful thing just because most BNI chapters are not like that. And this is probably atypical from what I've seen.

And it's something that I decided I wanted to kind of lean into to kind of see, to be part of the BNI chapter, but also to be part of the greater overall BNI, you know, process, community, and the network that's there.

So definitely feel you know wanna lean in lean heavily into like the podcast as a way to try to get people to be guests in the show i think that that's going to be a big way and then also you know, build out the franchise brokerage business.

You know, I don't, I'm not joining necessarily to get more digital marketing opportunities, although if those opportunities come and they're the right fit, I would explore that. But I think right now we're restructuring a lot, you know, related to the digital marketing.

And yeah, we just got to, you know, do a reboot there and just see what happens. But I'm excited about going back to BNI. I'm also like, hey, I'm kind of like in the same place because I think while I executed the steps that I had planned and wanted to probably save that I wanted to do within a year, it's taken longer. I've probably paused for maybe two months or so just to kind of focus a little bit more on the digital marketing.

And I'm realizing that you know, it's still how do you grow? How do you create this, you know, multiple streams, multiple opportunities to generate revenue?

And I think that's so necessary in this day and age. And I think by having affiliates along with the digital marketing, along with the franchise brokerages, the high ticket sales, that flow and combination is going to be really, really powerful.

So it's just going to be me kind of spending time in the B2B space. I really like the affiliate opportunity and the CEO hacks just because With that, it allows this opportunity to be able to scale out some of those relationships. software services, things that can be useful to other people.

So while, you know, thinking through that and having those conversations and being able to kind of build those things out, I think it's extremely, extremely, extremely important to be able to continue to kind of take those steps to see that continue to develop.

So that's what I'm going to do. You know, taking a step at a time, continue to develop what could be and cultivate these relationships and, you know, just go really. It's funny because I wanted I wanted to create a membership around the seal hats, but I actually think that that's probably not the right space. You know, actually what I think I need to do is to offer it for free and just have it as a sign up.

Potentially, you know, it doesn't have to be something that's paid is something that could be for free. And I think that, you know, because I'm trying to generate affiliate revenue, I want to get more and more people to kind of join that. I think it's just like understanding the different business models and understanding how to lean into those a lot better is going to be huge. So what I'm going to do is, you know, obviously we're not going to offer the digital marketing for free.

I think with having these things combined, what it allows me to do is not to say, like, I don't feel bad or I'm charging around the digital marketing because I'm offering so much free stuff and in other ways, like the videos and the blog and the podcast.

So with the franchising, I think getting into that franchise space I don't have to charge for the podcast and that's a whole different topic because I don't feel great with that. I've tested it out a little bit, didn't feel in alignment with what I wanted to do, but it allows me to build relationships, hopefully get people to subscribe to my newsletter, just all to do all those things. So I'm looking forward to seeing what these steps look like and how that takes and how it ends up developing.

But going back to being I think is a really big thing that I need to do. And, you know, glad I have a little bit more stability and then we can start to build from there. 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 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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