IAM2651 – The Art of Rebooting: Day 294

In this special episode, Gresh reflects on recent setbacks that have forced him to “reboot” his business. He admits that operational weaknesses, inconsistent momentum, and a lack of traction from a recent program have contributed to the slowdown.

Recognizing that the responsibility for fixing these issues lies entirely with him, he outlines a plan to tighten operations, improve digital‑marketing efforts, and rebuild the culture he envisions for his company.

Gresh also highlights the value of the extensive content he has already created—particularly the numerous podcasts he’s produced—comparing it to an immutable credential like a degree.

By leveraging this body of work, he aims to shift toward a stronger personal brand, gain greater control over his ventures, and ultimately turn the current challenges into a growth opportunity for himself and his audience.

• 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. Grist 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 subcite 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'm in this place of like literally rebooting everything that I've done. A lot of times when you reach failure, it shows a lot around failure or, you know, you don't fail completely. You just learn.

But that was an extremely powerful learning opportunity. And I think that's ultimately like where I'm at, where everything that's kind of built hasn't gone the way that I wanted it to go. And I have to make a huge shift and change. This franchise broker journey is one of those things.

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I'll probably end up recording throughout this because it probably will end up taking me about two months or so to get everything back to where I want to. But I think it's going to take some massive work for me in terms of sales, getting things out there.

But I think what I'm going to be doing is protecting the operational part a lot more and a lot better. So I think that's something that, you know, from a digital marketing perspective, more or less, it's going to be big.

But I think there's so many other aspects that have allowed things to get a lot more loose and goosy than it should have been. So it's going to be on me to start to tweak these things.

It's going to be on me to start to make these changes and start to create the culture that I want to in the business, create the culture that I've wanted to, that I've had for myself, honestly. And I think that somehow along the way, I've, you know, lost the momentum in terms of doing that.

But one of the things that I think is really cool about what I've been able to do is the number of podcasts I've done. You can't take that away. You can't take away the sheer volume of podcasts that I've done. And, you know, it's like very similarly to my parents always used to say, you can't take away your degree.

You can't take away your diploma. You can lose a job, you can lose this, you can lose that, but you can't take those things away. I feel like when you've done something for such a long period of time, you've accrued so much content, so much information, no one can take that away from you. So it's just a sense of like, how do I now step more into what I think is going to eventually be more of a personal brand focus.

I think I'm going to have a lot more control, a lot more ownership over the things that are happening. And we're just going to adjust it from there. I think that it's been kind of a slap in the face the way things have gone, but I feel like everything is definitely my fault and it's definitely on me and it's definitely in the decisions that I make and things that I've done.

So I think in this opposite side, it's on me to make sure that I am doing the things that I need to to be able to kind of rebuild this.

So it's not going to be on anybody else to come through and fix this. It's going to be on me to fix this. As I'm rebooting a lot of things, as I'm looking at a lot of things that are happening, I'm really evaluating what's working, what's not, where I am, where I'm not, and just kind of moving from there. So I signed up for this program, and I think it's been almost two weeks, and I haven't seen much traction, if anything, at all.

So that's another red flag, so you just kind of pause from there. You continue to move forward with the things that are happening. So we'll see what happens. I'll continue to take a step at a time, and then we'll go from there.

But you sign up, you see what happens, and then you just take a step after that. So we'll see where I'm at, and yeah, we'll go 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 05:15
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. 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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