IAM2468 – Embracing a Fresh Mindset: Day 151

On day 151 of the Franchise Broker journey, Gresham Harkless kicks off the second day of a new 12-week year, using it as a chance to step back and re-evaluate his systems, especially around lead generation.

Gresham emphasizes that most of his successful connections reaching the “Zore” stage came organically through Facebook outreach, highlighting the strategic value of personalized direct messaging.

In contrast, leads from Google Ads have been less fruitful, producing a few quality leads but mostly low-quality ones, prompting a need to refine that channel.

He also sees potential in LinkedIn but hasn’t tapped into it effectively yet.

Moving forward, he's focused on building a lead-gen system starting with a newsletter where people can opt into what they’re looking for.

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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 00:26

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.

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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.

And just like that is day 151 of the Franchise Broker journey. And today is day two, actually, of the new 12 week year.

One of the things I like about the 12 week year is you can sometimes get in this flow like this is my yearly goal.

You can go, go, go, go, go and not make any tweaks or adjustments. So for me, that's ultimately what this is.

I'm looking at all the things that I have in place and I'm looking at where there's definitely gaps, opportunities, things that could be insanely improved.

And when I look at that, I just see that it's definitely in, you know, the lead generation.

The lead generation is gonna be everything related to business and not everything, I shouldn't say that, but it is a lot related to business.

And I think if you're able to kind of execute on that, it'll make everything better.

So I feel like my, I feel like I just reflecting most of the people that got to being introduced to the Zores came from Facebook, Organic Facebook Outreach, and just kind of DMing people.

And doing it kind of strategically, but deeming people, asking them if they don't want to sit at meetings.

I would say all of the people that I had that got to the Zore stage came from Facebook.

I had one quality lead, I think, that came from, well, two that came from Google Ads that got to presentation.

One goes to me, the other one almost goes to me, but she eventually said she didn't want to continue on.

So with that being said, it tells you what? It tells you that You know, you definitely want to do something around Facebook.

But I think you also got to see if there is some opportunities with Google Ads.

And I think that's what we'll be finding out a lot this month. And if we niche down, if there's more opportunities to get quality over quantity.

Because I think we're getting a lot of like low quality leads that are coming in through Google Ads.

And it's a matter of adjusting that and seeing what can happen.

I know there's a lot to be to be done and said around around LinkedIn but i haven't really gotten a lot there so I'm curious to just see like how these next steps go what that ultimately looks like.

And then just take it from there because i think ultimately more than anything else you're going in the right direction.

But It's just, not all the way, you know, where you want things to be. So with that being said, you continue to kind of work through the process, work through the things, see what ultimately can happen.

But I think with the start of a new year, new 12 week year, it allows you to make some tweaks and changes.

And I've been looking at like a lead generation system and what that ultimately look like if it's just like a newsletter.

I think that's going to be the foundation of it. And I think there will be offers that will be added in from that newsletter.

But I think the ultimate thing is to have people be able to sign up for a newsletter and be able to kind of self-select between what they're ultimately looking for.

And I think if, when I'm able to kind of get that up and going, it should be, something big to ultimately kind of do.

So with that being said, this is where we're at. This is some of the things we have to do, and we'll just adjust from here.

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 05:03

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.

Don't forget to schedule your complimentary digital marketing consultation at Blue16Media.com. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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