IAM2639 – Unlocking the Mystery of Day 289

In this special episode, Gresham uses a vivid analogy involving his newborn son learning to crawl. He describes a recent moment at a restaurant where the baby’s frustration and determination mirrored the challenges he faces as an entrepreneur juggling a newborn, a digital‑marketing business, and the launch of his franchise.

He reflects on the inevitable setbacks—crying, yelling, feeling stretched thin—and emphasizes the importance of patience, honesty, and realistic expectations. By acknowledging that progress will take longer than hoped, he encourages himself (and listeners) to keep taking incremental steps, learn from each attempt, and avoid discouragement.

• 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 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.

I think it's day 289 or something like that, and I have the little one sitting in my lap. We just got done trying to get him to crawl. So funny, we were at dinner, or actually at breakfast, brunch, I guess you could say, yesterday, and there's a waiter there whose kid was seven months, no, six months, and he had been learning to crawl. He said he was a chunky baby, so it was the food that actually got him to move.

So we started to, well, he started to show some signs, Gretchen's been showing some signs of starting to crawl, but he gets frustrated. He starts crying and doing all the things, and it's such a parallel between whenever we're trying to do something, I'm new and we're trying to figure it out and try to understand how best to do it.

We get frustrated but we don't usually just cry, we yell, we scream, we take it out on others. Like all these things start to happen and when we're doing that. I have a quote somewhere and it says, No one tells a baby that walking isn't cut out for you, or no one tells a baby that crawling isn't cut out for you. It's like, hey, we do the same things to ourselves on a regular basis.

And as I go through this journey, it's like, hey, I'm almost one year in. And it's like, maybe you're not set out to be a franchise broker, but I would just say that, hey, I went a certain route, and that route was gonna be harder, and I knew that.

And as I thought I would be able to kind of hit it out of the park because I felt like no one has really looked at it from a marketing perspective as I feel like I have. And I feel like I know the things that I need to do, but honestly, I just haven't had the bandwidth.

And I think that that's just me being honest about it. And I think you can be hard on yourself and have those expectations and the challenges and at the same time, be realistic and say, hey, you have a newborn, you have a newborn, you have a digital marketing business that you're maybe having to restructure.

Just all these things are happening at the same time. And it makes it a little bit more challenging to kind of continue to do the things that you want to do because you are a stretch in many ways.

So I think it's just the realization that, hey, it's going to take longer. And as much as I don't want it to take longer, it will take longer. And thank you, baby, for that. So I just have to continue to keep working at it, continue to keep realizing that just like we teach the little one how to crawl and to do the things, we're also kind of going through this same process ourselves and so as we start to make changes.

And adjustments and tweaks and do things it's important to realize that we are you know doing typically whatever we're doing for the first time in this very specific way so even if you have seven kids and this is your first or it's your first kid that maybe you know takes longer to crawl or maybe you know crawls quicker or whatever it is it's all new you know It's a different time. It's a different stage. Take advice from somebody.

They did it a week ago. The week is different. You live in a different location. There's all these different variables.

But I think that's what makes it really awesome is to get the opportunity to do that as my son starts to take over the microphone. Yeah, just take it a step at a time to try to get better. and just go from there. But don't get discouraged.

If things aren't going the way you want it to go, I'm trying to talk with myself about that as well, too. It's just making sure that I stay true to the steps that I'm taking and the things that I want to do, and just take it one step at a time. So that's it on whatever day it is, 289, I guess, maybe 290. And we'll take it four more days 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 05:24
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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