IAM2483 – Mastering the Art of Polite Urgency

In this episode, Gresham Harkless reflects on reaching day 159 of his journey as a Franchise Broker, sharing powerful insights about growth, discipline, and staying committed through the long game. He introduces the concept of “polite urgency”—a balanced approach to driving action by being assertive without being aggressive.

Gresham discusses how many people lose momentum by being passive or indecisive, and how simply following through, communicating promptly, and honoring commitments can set you apart in business.

Gresham also points out that strong customer service—like picking up the phone and replying to messages—can make a bigger impact than most realize, especially when combined with a solid product or service.

Despite feeling overwhelmed at times, he stresses the value of staying focused, taking consistent action, and treating each day as a step toward long-term goals.

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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 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's day 159 of the Franchise Broker journey, and I'm knocking on the door to like five or six months.

It's crazy again, just to kind of think like, going this far along. I was listening to some of the times I was around like 60 days or so.

It's been 100 days since then. Which is wild, because you feel like you're kind of in the same space, but you're not in the same space, but you have people that are tapping out.

But in the same sense, you're going through the process. You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you get a princess or a prince, depending on your proclivities.

So with that being said, one of the things I wanted to talk about was a coin of a phrase I just coined called a Polite urgency.

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Polite urgency is this thing I say of saying, hey, let's get this done. Let's be aggressive. Let's get it done.

You don't have to be mean about it. And I think sometimes with even people, sometimes even myself, it's just like, OK, let's just get it done. Let's get it done. Let's be direct, OK?

If that's what you want to do, let's do it. I think a lot of times in life, we have this kind of nature where we're just kind of meandering through life.

And things are just happening and flowing, but it's like, okay, if you want something, you have to kind of go after it, you have to get it.

And I think even, sometimes, stating and getting going after what you want is something that you won't necessarily have to be abrasive or rude or anything about that, but you can say that, hey, I want this and

I'm going to go after this and I'm going to make this happen. And if you want this to, then let's go do it.

And I think for candidates, but, frankly for anybody, I think you want to make sure that you are being direct, being polite about everything, but creating this urgency.

Like, hey, you want to get this done by this time. You wanted to get it done yesterday.

So let's put the things in place to make that happen. And it happens a lot of times with clients where, I see this in the digital marketing business where it's like, hey, I'll get back to you tomorrow.

I'll get back to you next week. And they don't. And I think a lot of that seems to be like part of unfortunately, the human culture.

I know that people get busy and things get busy, but I think that Being a person that says that you want to do something and they go after what it is that you want to do ends up being really powerful.

And I think that it's a rarer thing from what I've seen of people that say, hey, I want to reach goal X and I'm going to do whatever I have to do to go after that goal.

And so that's kind of like where one of the things I seen, observed, and definitely, want to kind of tap into is like being able to say that, hey, I want to go reach this goal.

And I'm going to do whatever I'm going to do to make that happen. How does that make sense for a business standpoint?

How does that make sense from a franchise standpoint? I always say like from a customer service standpoint, I feel like you can get ahead in any industry by just answering the phone and replying back to people. Sounds crazy, but so many people don't do that. They don't answer the phone.

They don't answer emails. They don't do those things as well. And, I struggle myself.

I have, I'm definitely not in box zero, but a lot of when I don't reply is not so much because I'm not reclining just because I sometimes just get overwhelmed with things.

Frankly, it's the amount of emails, inboxes and things that I'm juggling. It's just a lot.

But I think the reality is that when you get to the point where you're doing customer service, you have a good to great product or service and you're excellent at what it is that you do.

Sometimes just doing what you say you're going to do also takes you to an entirely different level where you probably.

And I'm just throwing out numbers, but you probably get over 95% of people just by doing that, which is kind of a sad state of like where we are in the world.

But it's very realistic that if you're excellent or great at what it is, or even good, I think, at what it is that you do.

If you're able to tap into that customer service where you're listening to people and you're operating from this sense of like learning and paying attention to them.

And thirdly, you're doing what you say you're going to do. I think that that ends up being really powerful and you're adamant about doing what you say you're going to do.

So with that being said, I'm just really looking into, these things seeing what's gonna pop up next for me.

And then both we got to go from there but trying to take it a day at a time honestly just doing that and see what happens from there.

Please let me know if there's anything I could do to help and of course looking forward to giving you more and more updates.

Outro 06:40

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.

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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