IAM2464 – Unleash Your Potential with the 12 Week Year

In this special episode, Gresham Harkless reflects on personal and professional growth as he kicks off a fresh 12-week year, marking day 64 of his overall franchise broker journey.

Gresham set three focused goals: adding $5K in recurring revenue (mainly through CEO Hacks), generating 300 new leads for Blue Star Franchise, and completing a year-long Bible reading plan.

Gresham emphasizes the importance of lead measures—daily, controllable actions that drive results over time, particularly for building a sustainable lead generation system for Blue Star.

Amid personal losses from the previous year and the joys of new fatherhood, he’s using this season as a reset—to plant seeds, instill strong habits, and build his business “brick by brick,” with both resilience and long-term vision.

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Transcription:

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Intro 00:00

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, 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.

It is day 64 of the new 12-week year actually. So it's day 64 of the franchise broker journey, but it's day 2, I guess, technically of my 12-week year.

Usually I really begin on Mondays, but of course, Sunday is the time to kind of figure out what you're going to do, finalize that and kind of go into it.

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So I have my three different goals. First of which is to increase or have about 5k in additional recurring revenue, mostly probably be coming from CEO hacks.

And the next thing is going to be getting 300 leads from Blue Star franchise, which I'll be talking about leads, leads, leads, leads, leads more and more and more.

And of course, the last is to read the Bible in the year, which I've had at the beginning of the year last year.

So, I'll get to kind of do that again, which I'm super excited about. I have my co-host here.

He's over here and wrapped up and swaddled in and just kind of hanging out here, watching daddy do a podcast and he watched me do a workout a minute ago, which is super exciting.

Again, trying to plant those seeds or trying to get as great habits as we can.

But I'm excited about this 12-week year. I'm excited of getting some time just to to recharge, getting some time just to say, OK, let's I don't want to say throw away last year.

Because obviously we're blessed with a with a baby boy, but losing grandma, losing Star and even losing my uncle, not too long ago, those were all kind of heavy things that happened in a short period of time.

So it was definitely on me to be able to learn what you can from the year, because it definitely did take some things away.

But I think sometimes when you just have those seasons, you just say, OK, let's just start anew.

Let's turn the page. Let's get back into it. And let's go. And I know those things don't happen over a period.

One of the reasons with the 12-week year goals I wanted to do is actually create, there's lag in lead measures.

And I talked about this a little bit, lag measures are the things you don't see, the lead measures are the things really you're tracking on a daily basis.

So for the leads, because especially for Blue Star franchise is because it takes long to kind of get through that sales process.

So what I wanted to be really focused on is like the number one thing, which I think is to, to create leads and opportunities.

That's going to be the biggest challenge I think there is in this business, is how do you generate leads on a regular basis?

And can you do those things internally? And that's something I just want to master.

So I have an idea, some blends of some things that I kind of focus on the last year, my swoweek year.

But I think I'm really focused on, like my goal before was to get two deals last year and I did not do that.

But I started to realize like, hey, the real challenge is to be able to generate a revenue a lead generation source.

Because no matter if you get, the realization the light bulb was on for me, because you can generate a tremendous amount of deals.

You can get 50 deals. But if you're paying such a high price for those deals, your expenses are so high and then you're kind of beholden to these lead generation companies or you're not able to generate these yourself, then you're kind of at a disadvantage, I think, long term.

So, having this mentality of building a house over a long period of time, brick by brick, and means you're going to start to build those bricks and start to move forward.

And so my little one is my co-host is like wanting to do something and get out.

So I'm going to close this out, Gresh signing out, and my co-host Greshie, and I'll talk to you soon.

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 05:26

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by CBNation 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. Want to level up your business even more? Read blogs, listen to podcasts, and watch videos at CBNation.co.

Also, check out our I AM CEO Facebook group. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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