IAM2478 – Navigating Life’s Challenges with Clients

In this reflective episode, Gresham Harkless emphasizes the importance of staying attuned to the human side of business, especially during unpredictable and challenging times.

Gresham shares real-life examples, such as a candidate needing to postpone meetings due to a family emergency, to highlight how “life-lifes” often disrupts even the best-laid plans.

Gresham recommends embracing these moments with empathy and flexibility, reminding listeners that business isn’t just a mechanical process but one deeply rooted in people’s lives, emotions, and evolving circumstances.

Gresham points out that being a beacon—offering consistency, understanding, and support—can be a powerful force amid market uncertainties and personal setbacks.

• Blue Star Franchise: http://bluestarfranchise.com
• Browse the Franchise Inventory: https://bluestarfranchise.com/franchise
• Is franchising right for you? Check this out to see: http://bluestarfranchise.com/assessment
• Franchise CEO (A CBNation Site – coming soon) – http://franchiseceo.co

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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.

The regular thing that I usually say is to have life-life's that's my go-to. But on the podcast, I don't say that as much.

I used to say that we can't forget about the human part of business. And the reason I bring that up is because I had a candidate who had a family go to the emergency room, so I had to cancel one of our second or third meetings.

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And I think that anytime you start looking at things like four to six months out, you always say that, OK, that's one week off.

So that one week off means that everything's going to be pushed out.

And you always want to kind of make sure that things are kind of aligned as much as possible.

But the reality is that life lives and things happen and things pop up. I myself have had a lot of things pop up, even as soon as this last couple of days.

So I think when we start to kind of realize that It allows us to hopefully plan better.

But I think we also get to be a little bit more human in the things that we're doing.

And we get to have a little bit more of an understanding of the processes, the steps and things that we want to happen.

So while we're going through the journey and the steps and all of those things.

It's insanely important for us to make sure that we are being very dialed into that human part of business, the human part of life that being I'm being very empathetic.

And I want to kind of keep that in mind because especially like during a time like this where so many things are changing.

There's a lot of disruption that is happening, markets are dropping and there's so many things that seem certain that aren't certain anymore.

I just want to be very, very attuned to the, the effect that being a beacon, being a strong force can end up being.

And one of the things that, we went through, I think a nine week series at our church where the pastor talked about, being a love and how love kind of fuels faith.

And I think sometimes when you have these topsy turvy times and disruptive times and lots of things are happening.

You want to try to be the beacon of light, because that's what you were made to be.

And I think that while people go through challenges and changes and life, you want to be that.

But more than maybe everything else, we don't forget about that human part, the human side of business, the challenges, the frustrations, the sickness, the roadblocks, the setbacks, all those things come about throughout people's lives.

We can sometimes look at business as if it's this, machine that you're supposed to run.

But it's very much so fueled or I don't want to say overly dependent, but it is, there is a huge human component that needs to get, mature that we're putting at the forefront.

So, I just, I just wanted to kind of bring that up as something that like has come up for me.

I even think I have another candidate that just, we're switching gears in terms of the types of franchises we're looking at with him because I don't think he's able to get financing because of the size of the franchises that we're doing.

But that size of the franchise also came up and came about because of the amount of money he was willing to invest.

And because he didn't want to do the other ones, me we'll ultimately kind of go from there, but yeah, this is another day, another day of life, lifin'.

And, but I am definitely dialed into that human part and trying to be very empathetic.

But frankly, I'm just trying to roll up my sleeves and work and do what I can do to try to make some people's dreams come true and do the things that they ultimately want to do.

So I'm looking forward to that, looking forward to what'll happen and then, I'll have a great rest of the day.

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 06:33

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 at ceohacks.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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