IAM2518 – Day 192 of Becoming a Franchise Broker: What I’ve Learned

In this special episode, Gresham Harkless shares an update on his progress, challenges, and realizations. After connecting with classmates, he realizes that while they’re each on unique paths, they share similar uncertainties.

Gresham expresses a growing sense that he needs to shift directions, choosing what feels true to him rather than following the traditional or expected route.

Gresham also emphasizes the importance of being intentional, setting plans in advance, following up consistently, and refining his outreach. Despite the frustrations, he remains committed to improving his approach and continuing the journey with a clearer sense of direction.

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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 192 of this franchise broker journey. I actually connected with some of my classmates yesterday.

We had a regular call that we get on maybe about monthly or something like that.

Kind of seeing where all of us are at. And we're all kind of in different places, but at the same time in the same place.

I think at the end of the day, what we, what I feel like and I express to them is that again, I feel like instead of going right, I need to go left.

I need to do what's true to me and what may not be true to what everybody else is doing.

It's important to kind of keep this in mind. Like a lot of times when you have a franchise, you have kind of a set system that you have to execute.

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This franchise brokerage, is not in this case of actual franchise itself, it has a set system, but it doesn't have an actual franchise.

So I have to be very aware of the things that you're doing. And that you do have the opportunity in this space to innovate.

You do have the opportunity and space to tweak things and improve things to get better.

And I think that's where. you start to look at what's happening.

And I think I had a six month kind of like, hey, where are we at? I wanna be better off in six months than I was before.

And frankly, I don't feel like I actually am. I do feel like I have more knowledge and information.

But I think by not having the amount of people get over, the actual being awarded part, that is something that's very, very interesting to me.

Ultimately, I think that when you look at everything I, one of my classmates didn't actually get started yet.

So he's going back to training. Another one of my classmates, he said that he's not doing the leads anymore.

He's in a program with FBA that allows them to get leads and opportunities. So he said, he's just going to focus on that.

So he's not generating his own lead. So I think with that being said, it's interesting.

I feel like when you don't have a lot of clarity around what to do, sometimes it's just honing in on who you want to work with the most.

Sometimes, and maybe not so much as this in a franchise world, but in a business world, sometimes you're just trying to figure out… who's going to be your client, who you want to work with.

And a lot of times it just starts from the vision of understanding who is your ideal client, who do you want to try to work with, even though you may not have that client or candidate at the time.

And for me, I think what's coming up, the reason I'm breathing hard is because I just finished a workout.

But the reason I lean more into those existing entrepreneurs, those existing franchisees, because I think that there's a big opportunity there.

And it's just a matter of kind of working that system. So that's what I fully intend to do, is just to kind of go through that process, go through the steps and see ultimately what that looks like.

I know that if I was to sit down and hone in on that, take the steps there, then some really phenomenal things can happen.

So yeah, I'm just going to continue to kind of take the steps, continue to kind of do the work that I can do, and ultimately see how things end up going.

So we'll ultimately kind of see. I made some missteps. One of the missteps I make is always have a plan in advance.

And I think if you have a set up time for a plan in advance, it's always better than just trying to check in because when you check in that's when you use a side of people.

But that's something that I have to do a better job of improving is like when you have that call you set up the next call let's get in that spirit of ultimately kind of doing that will help propel you forward.

But I've been going through the leads, you know, doing calls, doing the tasks. I haven't seen a lot of headway.

So it's important for me to kind of adjust how I'm doing things and approach it differently and then ultimately see how things are going.

So we'll see what happens. We'll see what it looks like. And then we'll ultimately take it from there.

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 05:55

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.

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Subscribe and leave us a five-star rating. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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