IAM2503 – Conquering Day 180: Winning Mental Battles

In this special episode, Gresham Harkless opens up about the mental and emotional weight that comes with building a business from the ground up.

Gresham discusses the internal battles — self-doubt, exhaustion, and the fading excitement that often follow the initial momentum of launching a business.

Despite investing time, money, and energy, he feels behind where he thought he’d be, especially while juggling personal responsibilities like parenthood, marriage, and managing a 15-person team.

Gresham emphasizes the importance of self-awareness and personal accountability, questioning not just whether he has done the work, but whether he has been operating at his full potential.

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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.

And just like that is day 180 of the franchise broker journey. And wow, it's been an exhausting one.

At this point, I feel like one of the things that we went through during training was talking around the mental challenging aspect of starting this brokerage or what that looks like.

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And just frankly, starting a business or starting anything. There's the kind of warring of the mind, the challenges, the can I do this?

Did I make a mistake? Got to be the only one failing. There's all these mental things that kind of come into play whenever, anytime you're doing something challenging.

And I'm starting to hear a lot of those voices and wonder a lot of those things. And as time starts to melt, start to really be in, I always use the analogy of looking up from the sled and saying, how far have I gone?

How far is it? How long has it been? And that's where you start to stop. You don't have the momentum. the energy is just not as exciting anymore.

So when you're in that point and in that spot, it's just really like understanding that where you are.

And a lot of times you just have to keep going. And it's not always going to be the big promise to say, hey, you push one more time, you're going to get to where you want to be.

Honestly, you don't know. And I think when you go through these challenges and you're unsure of what's happening, you're unsure if you did the right thing, you start to question yourself. You have to question the decisions that you make.

You start to doubt yourself and you lose a lot of that momentum. And sometimes that's the worst thing that you can have happen.

So as we're edging in on that 181 or 180 day of the broker journey, it's just crazy to kind of just think about like how far that I've come, how little I feel like I've accomplished and just the challenge that it is.

It is hard starting a business. It's one of the hardest things I've ever done. And one of the reasons that you never ever want to kind of like jump on and do it again is sometimes because you know how hard it is.

And there's the startup, the mental part, the emotional part. And on top of that juggling newborn baby, assistant son, marriage, just all those things.

It ends up becoming a lot. You have a team of people, I think almost like maybe 15 of us that are on the team.

So there's no shortage of things that have happened this past week, we lost a person I thought for sure was going to be able to kind of step into the position.

So it's like, wow, you're just taking, it feels like L after L after L. But I think ultimately what you do is you continue to kind of bring peace to yourself.

You continue to kind of watch your thoughts, watch how you're speaking to yourself, watch what you're doing and continue to kind of sharpen the saw and do better.

And I think the more that you do that, the more you can kind of put yourself in a great light and have a great opportunity to really excel.

We'll see ultimately what happens. We'll see where things go. But I want to continue to kind of like, work at it, continue to kind of do the things.

And I'm actually traveling tomorrow. I'm going to Dallas for a Discovery Day with one of the brands with Neighborly. So I'm excited around that.

But I'm also like very much so like, I feel like I haven't even earned the right to go.

But I set this up so long ago, I think back in January. that the time came up fast.

And by now, again, I thought I'd be further along in the journey. But at the end of the day, I can honestly say I'm doing the best with what I have.

I think that there's another level that I can unlock, but that other level to unlock is just me being me.

And I think that's probably one of the honest truths that you have when you go through the process and ask yourself, not have you done the work, not have you done the thing, because I actually absolutely have.

Not have you invested the money. I've done that. But the question comes, have you operated in the way that you should operate?

And I think when you start to really answer those questions, it doesn't mean that you beat yourself up or you shouldn't beat yourself up. It means more or less that you say, I could do this better.

So that's kind of where I'm at. And we'll see how everything goes. But yeah, another day. Not another dollar, but I just continue to kind of chop up that tree to hopefully see it fall.

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 06:19

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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