IAM2585 – Entrepreneur and Best-selling Author Helps Clients Build Successful Brands

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Haris Reis Teaser 00:00

Yeah, so now I have a consultancy where we help high-net-worth individuals solve very, very complex problems.

Sometimes, those solutions we use as spinoff companies, because if we solve the problem for one company, we can usually solve it for more. There's a local trucking company here, I helped them generate dozens and dozens of leads.

And now you know, 95% of their business all comes from social media, which is crazy, because they've been trying to do it, but they couldn't.

Intro 00:27

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 00:55

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Haris Reis of BIH Media. Haris, it's awesome having you on the show.

Haris Reis 01:05

Super pumped to be here. Thank you for having me, Gresham.

Gresham Harkless 01:07

No problem. Super excited to have you on. And what I wanted to do was just read a little bit more about Haris, so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing.

And he is a two-time national award-winning entrepreneur, two-time national best-selling author, keynote speaker, and digital marketer.

He previously was the co-founder of Changing Lanes International, which helps authors, speakers, and coaches build their brands online.

He took the company to a six-figure business in 10 months. He was previously a growth hacker at VaynerMedia, building Gary Vaynerchuk's personal brand.

He's built SyncSumo, a SaaS solution with customers in 30-plus countries, and now runs a consultancy, which has generated millions of dollars for clients, a social media agency, and has a handful of personal clients.

Haris, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Haris Reis 01:54

Oh, I am pumped. I've heard about the community. I am super excited to share some value, and hopefully they get a lot out of it.

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Gresham Harkless 02:01

Yeah, I definitely think we will. And to kick everything off, I wanted to hear a little bit more about your background and what I call your CEO story. What led you to start your business?

Haris Reis 02:09

Yeah, man. So, it's been a crazy journey. So, I'm from Bosnia originally. I was born in Germany.

My parents fled Bosnia. My whole family was born in Bosnia, really small town called Banja Luka. They fled to Germany.

My dad got offered to play soccer. He was amazing at soccer. He played on the national level. He offered to go down there to play.

So, they go down there, and then I happened, and my dad tore his ACL, and he went back to yeah for like the third time.

So, he said I have family, I gotta take care of them. I went back home to Bosnia, we spent time in Croatia, and then they started giving paperwork to come to America.

Fast forward, you know, 2001, we come to America out of all places, Omaha, Nebraska, which is a great place.

Don't get me wrong, but the cold six months out of the year, not my favorite. It can be. So, we came here, and then I saw my parents. I always had everything I wanted to.

So, I don't want to preface it by saying, like, oh, I never had anything. I always had everything I wanted.

But my parents were working all the time for it. I rarely saw them. They were working 18-hour days, four jobs each.

So, I was like, okay, I want to help them. So, at 12, I got my first job. I was officiating soccer because I played soccer.

My dad's really good at soccer. My cousin's a FIFA ref. I was like, okay, I can maybe go down this path.

And it was good income. It was, I was 12, making $25 an hour, which doesn't sound bad at all back in 2001.

Yeah. It sounds cool. So, I, the second part of the story is I only repped one game or two games a day.

So, I say, I made $25 a day. People don't go, Oh, that's great. But you say $20 an hour because the game's an hour.

Gresham Harkless 03:51

Yes.

Haris Reis 03:54

So yeah, I did that. And then I realized, man, I'm only paid when the soccer teams are playing, and when they need an official, I can't control that.

How do I make money where they're if I'm sleeping? I can make money if I'm awake; I make money.

It has no other factor on anything besides, I want something online. So, I built like an online shopping mall and then that failed, and then hundreds of other businesses.

And then I had changing lanes, which was like my first success. But that was kind of the path was just a bunch of companies, um, trying a bunch of different things.

Gresham Harkless 04:30

Yeah, it seems like a lot of times when you peel back the onion of success and entrepreneurship, a lot of it is trying a lot of things and testing things out, seeing what works and what doesn't work.

And I appreciate you for doing that, and continue to try those things out. Because I think a lot of times the perception is that you wake up, roll over, create something, and then you make a million bazillion dollars. And that's often not the case.

Haris Reis 04:54

Yeah, man, it's weird. I thought I was just, I launched, I bought a domain and then I went to bed and I did not wake up being Mark Zuckerberg.

Gresham Harkless 05:02

What is going on with the world?

Haris Reis 05:03

I emailed Facebook supporters, saying, Guys, what the heck?

Gresham Harkless 05:07

Exactly. I watched The Social Network and everything. So, I wanted to hear a little bit more about what you're doing now.

Can you tell us a little bit more on what you're doing to kind of support the clients you work with?

Haris Reis 05:16

Yeah. So now I have a consultancy where we help high-net-worth individuals solve very, very complex problems.

Sometimes, those solutions we use as a spin-off companies, because if we solve the problem for one company, we can usually solve it for more. Um, there's a local trucking company here helps them generate thousands and dozens of leads.

And now, 95% of their business all comes from social media, which is crazy cause they've been trying to do it, but they couldn't.

Gresham Harkless 05:43

Right.

Haris Reis 05:45

Yeah. And that's a very profitable industry. I've generated in under four months, 16 and a half million for them, and it was great. Yeah.

So, I did that, and I do a handful of other projects. I do social media management and marketing.

I help people build their own personal brands this year, Gresham, I decided to build my own personal brand instead of doing it for everyone else always, which is hard for us entrepreneurs, especially as CEOs, where we always want to help others.

And we do a really good job, and then we forget about ourselves. You come to me and you're like, Haris, I want to build my brand. Okay, great. You're in the hundred steps we need to do it.

And we just know how to do it. It's like, okay, we need a picture with this. We need a video doing this.

We need this, we need that. It's just easy. And then you flip the coin and you're like, okay, Haris, I want to build my own brand. Okay. Well, I know what I need to do, but it's a little tricky.

Gresham Harkless 06:37

Yeah. That makes perfect sense. It's like Calvary's kids, so to speak.

Haris Reis 06:42

Yeah, it's tough. I'm doing that. I'm building my own brand. I'm documenting my journey of going from 500 to 50,000 followers on Instagram.

One thing in business, especially as CEOs, we just want to be in the dirt, kind of going clouds and dirt will carry the analogy, which is going to be going, where I've realized that's not good.

And I invest money into mentors. So, I know Facebook very well. I know social media very well, but there's others who know it way better than I do. So, I want to build my own brand.

I know the steps, but I still hired a mentor who crushes it on Instagram specifically to help me understand that channel better. So that's what I'm doing. And then, handful of other personal just projects.

Gresham Harkless 07:28

Nice. Well, I definitely appreciate that because a lot of times, you forget that in order to be successful, as we kind of touched on a little bit too, it also you have the opportunity to tap into the expertise of so many people.

You can do that by having mentors, you can do that by reading books, podcasts, so many different ways.

And this is a awesome time just because you can tap into so much as far as like how to be successful at whatever big goal you have, or even little, small niche goals that you might have.

Cause there's somebody that probably is an expert at it that has created something.

Haris Reis 07:58

Right. And one thing that we never can lose, even if we become successful in one field, because I've become very successful on the Facebook and paid media side, it's becoming complacent and saying, okay, cool.

I have that figured out. It's over. Like I won where that's a very bad mentality where I wake up every day saying, okay, what's the next trick in Facebook?

How can I figure this out? Okay. 95% of one client's customers are all coming from Facebook.

How do I make that less and generate more on other platforms? Well, I've got to learn other platforms more.

Okay, who can teach me these other platforms instead of me trying to learn on my own?

Yeah, we can become complacent as some entrepreneurs, not everybody, but sometimes we become so, robotic, where we just, we just know our industry, we want to stay in it.

But you got to be hungry for the next, what's the next thing, especially in social media. I mean, we all saw it a couple months ago, where Facebook and Instagram just shut down for a day. Everyone went crazy.

Gresham Harkless 08:55

Yeah, it was anarchy. Definitely just because, yeah, when you don't have that at your disposal, but you're absolutely right.

So, would you consider that to be like your secret sauce, just your desire to continue to kind of learn more and to push the envelope? Do you think that's what sets you apart and makes you unique?

Haris Reis 09:11

Obsessive, obsessiveness to learn. Cause the more I learned, the more I learned, I don't know much.

And then the other part is just being, I have a way, and I'm not the only one. I know that you have viewers too, that are probably the same way, but we're very naive in a bad way.

I also do MMA and jujitsu, and Muay Thai. And I just think I can beat everybody, like, and then I'll get beat, and then, if I want to get to Taylor Swift on Instagram, I just think I can.

And I just figured out how, versus a lot of people want to want to, oh gosh, I need to work with X, Y, Z, or add my lab.

He's big in the entrepreneur business space. I want to work with my lab, but man, he has a million followers. I have 50.

I don't have a big business. How do I work? I can't do that. I'm just from Omaha or small town, Virginia or Florida.

Like I can't do that. Versus, like, yes, you can. You just have to figure out your right angle.

Cause there always has to be something in it for them. So, you just have to figure out your own angle. So being naive is a big in business thinking. Yeah.

Gresham Harkless 10:31

Yeah, absolutely. Because there's always a reason why you cannot do it, quote-unquote.

But to be able to have that different mindset shift and that change to understand why you can do it and how you can make it happen is something that a lot of people don't realize they can tap into.

So, I appreciate you for sharing that with us. I appreciate you definitely for obviously doing that as well.

So, I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack.

And this might be an app, a book, or a habit that you have. But what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

Haris Reis 11:00

Working out, and that might be a little cliché, but it does help. I actually do it twice a day.

It's the first thing I do when I wake up and the last thing I do in the day. Jiu-jitsu, I don't, I mean, that is a workout, but it's kind of like fun.

Gresham Harkless 11:15

Yeah, that's my big saying is always make sure your oxygen mask is on first before you try to help out others.

And I think that that is right in the line with it. Because a lot of times, you know, you think that by taking the 30 minutes to hour to work out, you're missing out on 30 minutes to an hour.

But in reality, you might be giving yourself more energy that you can add on to three hours to whatever you're doing that you couldn't do otherwise.

Absolutely. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget, and this is a word of wisdom or a piece of advice, or if you could hop into a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Haris Reis 11:45

Yeah, great question. What would I tell myself? It was actually a mental hack to myself, and I feel that a lot of others can relate to this, where before I started building my own personal brand, I said, why would people listen to me?

And granted, by this time, I was 20 or 25 now, and I just decided to do it. But by the time I turned 25, I've already built a six-figure business, which most haven't.

I've already invested probably over $250,000, if I had to estimate it, into my own personal growth.

I worked with Gary Vee, I have a resume that most don't, I have amazing testimonials from people that are Shark Tank, founder of the Dollar Beard Club, or Dollar Shave Club.

I have all those, all of these assets, and then I can never make myself go, build my own brand.

I always said, oh, I can't, I use that bad mentality that you should never use. And then I mentally, the nugget, the wisdom thing was why not me?

If Forbes, Greg Cardone called me years ago, good example. And are you familiar with this power player show?

Gresham Harkless 12:48

I think so. I think I seen it on Instagram or YouTube shopping.

Haris Reis 12:52

One of those shows where he brings on guests and interviews. He obviously has a huge audience.

Years ago, he invited me to be honest, I was like, the audience, I don't know how much value I can bring.

I just didn't do it. Horrible. Today, if Grant Cardone or Forbes or whoever calls me, they call me who else they're gonna call, the mentality is like, who else are they gonna call?

Like, telling yourself, you're actually like this. I'm on many podcasts and a lot of shows, getting a lot of calls.

And people are posting on LinkedIn saying, there's one thing that hearts, I was on a call with hearts, there's one thing really stuck out with me.

And it's the way I'm going to think for the next coming years, and I was like, oh, my gosh, and I'm helping a lot of people just by doing this.

So that mentality shift was great. Telling my younger self, just as cliché as it sounds, but just believe in yourself, you can help everybody.

Gresham Harkless 13:50

Absolutely, and that mindset shift and just say, why not me? Who are you not to think that you're great?

Who are you not to be great? Who are you not to be the person that can give so much value is something that's huge that we all can kind of tap into.

And I think something that we, there's always that imposter syndrome that I think a lot of founders and entrepreneurs kind of deal with, but to be able to kind of tap into that, to realize that you're greater than sometimes you may give yourself credit for is something that can level up everything.

Haris Reis 14:18

Yeah, yeah. The greats knew they were great before anyone else did.

Gresham Harkless 14:22

Exactly. Well, Muhammad Ali says, I told myself I was great before anybody else said I was.

So, a great reminder. And now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO.

And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So, Haris, what's being a CEO mean to you?

Haris Reis 14:38

The highest of highs and lowest of lows, because the CEO, you're at the top, right? Quote-unquote, the top. but the top means that everyone's problems come to you.

The top means you're responsible for everyone else's paychecks. There's a lot of stress cause they rely on that.

So, you have to bring in business. And, the biggest thing as a CEO is everything comes down to you.

There's no one to blame. If you're number three or four or five down the chain, you can always blame the person above you, right?

Oh, it didn't work. Cause uh, you know, some guy named Nate didn't do his job. Okay.

Well, if you're the CEO, if it didn't work, ultimately, it's your fault.

Regardless, if this Nate guy messes up who hired Nate, what you did, who pays Nate, what you did, who's managing Nate. Well, you are, everything comes down to you.

Gresham Harkless 15:31

I truly appreciate your time, and what I wanted to do was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and listeners know.

And then of course, how best they can get a hold of you and find out about all the awesome things you're doing.

Haris Reis 15:44

Yeah, just think whatever you think is possible. Just think a hundred times bigger. And that's kind of cliche, but it's the grand total of 10x everything.

People that want to follow up with you, what's the best way? The best is Instagram. The handle is at Haris_Reis.

Gresham Harkless 16:01

Nice. Well, we definitely appreciate your time, and we definitely, you know, follow you as well too, to add a little bit to that number that you're at now.

And we'll have those links in the show notes as well, so that anybody could follow up with you, but definitely appreciate you appreciate your time. I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Haris Reis 16:15

Thanks, you too. Thanks for having me on.

Outro 16:17

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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