IAM2555 – Is Franchising Right for You?

Gresham Harkless shares a powerful reflection on his journey through entrepreneurship, using an early sales training lesson—”I'm not a onesie” as a metaphor to emphasize that entrepreneurship is not one-size-fits-all.

He points out that while some individuals thrive by building businesses from scratch, others are better suited for structured, proven systems such as franchising.

Gresham explains that franchising is ideal for people who are coachable, system-oriented, and ready to take action, with opportunities available across nearly every industry.

Gresham wraps it all up with a powerful reminder: the path to success begins with self-awareness and alignment, because when you run your race, you can’t lose.

• 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 00:01

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 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 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.

One thing I'll never forget from my early days in sales training, back when I worked at Yellow Book, which eventually became Hibu, was something my trainer used to say. “I don't fit everyone. I'm not a onesie. I'm not everybody's cup of tea”.

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And interesting enough, entrepreneurship isn't a onesie either. At the time, I thought she was just trying to be funny, but honestly, she was right.

Entrepreneurship isn't one-size-fits-all. It's not something you slip on and magically everything fits.

Some people want to create something completely new from scratch. Others want a proven model that they can run with, and that's where franchising often comes into play.

If we haven't been introduced, my name's Gresh. I'm your connection broker. I'm the host of the I AM CEO Podcast, founder of Blue 16 Media, Blue Star Franchise, and lots, and lots of other ways that we try to help to improve and increase the success rate among entrepreneurs, CEOs, business owners, and just people as a whole.

Over the years, I've created a ton of content, over 1,600 podcasts, 6,000 blog posts, hundreds of pieces of video, all to help CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business owners to succeed.

We want to help to increase the success rate of CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business owners.

So, what is a franchise? It's essentially a business where you buy into a system that already works.

You're investing in the brand, the training, the processes, and the playbook to be successful. You're still the business owner, but you're not alone.

You get to skip a lot of the early mistakes and focus on execution more than anything else. If we really think about it, it's similar to sports.

Not everyone wants to be the general manager or the head coach. Some people want to just get in the game, run the plays, and then score, or pass, or shoot, or shoot half-court shots if you're Steph Curry or something like that.

And that's what a good franchise offers, a playbook and a support team so you can hit the ground running.

If you've ever watched The Founder on Netflix, the story of how McDonald's was scaled, you've seen what systems and a replication of that can do when it's done correctly.

Now, franchising is great for a certain type of people. Think of those people that are coachable, action-oriented, comfortable working within systems.

You'll find franchises for nearly every industry you can think of, food, fitness, home services, home repair, car repair, B2B marketing, B2B brands, all these types of businesses.

And essentially, what we do at Blue Stars we help match people with franchises they never knew existed.

And we have a deep inventory of over 800 different concepts across close to 40 different verticals.

But let me be very honest and very clear, franchising is definitely not for everyone.

And one of the reasons that I really wanted to step into this is to get a little bit more awareness around franchising so that people can, if they consider it to be a good fit and something that they want to increase their likelihood of success, they have that opportunity to do that.

So, if you want creative control, you love building everything from scratch, you don't like following anyone else's process, this may not be your thing.

And that's okay. The key is finding what works for you. Because as I've learned across 1,600 podcasts and across 6,000 blog posts, it's not always using and executing the same way that somebody else does.

Sometimes it's finding your own way that's in alignment with who you are. And that's why one of the things that we have is a free entrepreneurial assessment.

It's a quick tool to help you figure out if franchising could be a good fit for you based on your personality, your goals, and your stage of life.

And I think one of the really beautiful things that you find within franchising as well, too, is there's different types of franchises. There are franchises that are a little bit more emerging brands, and there's more established.

And those more emerging brands might be better for more entrepreneurial type people, whereas the established brands are going to be those that maybe aren't great for the pure, pure, pure entrepreneurial type of person.

That's where we figured that out during that assessment. The beauty of this first step is it's not necessarily about selling you a franchise.

It's actually where we spend, I think, a bulk of the most valuable and impactful time is understanding more about you, your background, your goals, and your aspirations.

It's about helping you make a clear, confident decision on your next path forward. Because, as I always say, and I always live by, if you run your own race, you can't lose.

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 06:01

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by CB Nation 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.

Check out the latest and greatest apps, books, and habits to level up your business at CEOhacks.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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