IAM2636 – A Day in the Life of a Franchise Broker

In this episode, Gresham opens up about the internal doubts that have slowed his progress over the past two months. He wrestles with the classic “where’s the payoff?” question, balancing paid lead packs against the organic social media tactics that have yielded better results for him.

He also questions the “broad‑stroke” philosophy advocated by some brokers, noting that casting a wide net brings unqualified leads and dilutes focus.

Finally, Gresham commits to a step‑by‑step approach, experimenting with the new domain, building out content, and granting limited access to a partner who can help execute the plan.

He emphasizes the importance of consistency, creativity, and community collaboration, promising regular updates and encouraging listeners who are builders to keep moving forward.

• 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 sub-site 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 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'm not gonna lie. I have these doubts about whether or not I should have been doing this. And I think that that's what's kind of stopped me probably from the last 60 days or so of kind of moving forward how I think that I should. You know, you start spending money, you start saying, okay, where's the payoff?

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And I know that you hear a lot where a lot of times brokers say that they buy these lead packs and then they don't get them to work and you're always trying to balance something else. I remember that was one of the things that a broker told me.

So for me, I'm definitely trying out things, but I'm trying out things in a lower I'm gonna try to lean into what worked, which was like organic social media, Facebook traffic. So now, you know, I think it's just time for me to maybe go with this guy.

I was back and forth about doing it, but I always made me think that I believe in the philosophy. The question was not whether or not I believe in the philosophy is whether or not I, well, I don't fully believe in the philosophy actually.

So I think he talked around like going really broad with everything, but the reality is that if we go broad, That basically means that we go broad. That basically means that we're not going to get the opportunity to hone in on the people that need to be served.

And it means I can get even busier fielding leads and talking with people who are not qualified. And that's also like a hesitation if I don't have like a backup plan.

So I talked about doing a different domain and building a different site there. I think it's something that I probably want to do.

With this site, I think I ultimately want to be able to you know, to build out that, you know, opportunity. And I think maybe I do it on the franchise CEO site.

If I do it on the franchise CEO site, then that'll allow me the opportunity to be able to build that within the whole ecosystem that I want to build. I don't want to give them access to that full site, but That's ultimately what I'm gonna do is to put that in and to kind of ultimately work from there.

So with that being said, just taking it a step at a time, seeing what works, seeing what will happen will be the major thing that I want to do. And then ultimately kind of take it one step at a time. So the more I think through it, like, where do I want this? test to be made.

I think I want it on a separate domain, but I think I want it within the CB Nation ecosystem. And the reason is, is that because if we create a lot of content there, that's only going to create more content for the overall ecosystem. So I think that's the move that I want to make. I'll give him access probably to that site.

I imagine that he's going to need. And then we just kind of take it from there. So we'll see what happens and, you know, take it a day at a time. But I would say there's no problem with having more and more content.

So that's what we do is create that content and just kind of just take, you know, everything to go from there. So again, me, you know, taking those steps and trying to do something a little bit different, a little bit bold.

It came in the time when it came and I'll just lean forward into it and 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 05:08
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. Check out the latest and greatest apps, books and habits to level up your business as ceohacks.co.

This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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