IAM2552 – Simplify Your Life: Refresh and Recharge

In this special episode, Gresham Harkless is re-evaluating his direction after realizing that his current goals, including his 12-week plan, may not align with what truly needs his attention.

He feels that he has a large network of relationships and leads that he hasn’t fully leveraged and now sees the importance of focusing on cultivating those existing connections.

Gresham points out that operationally, things have improved with a stronger team and better systems in place, which allows him to focus more deeply on core growth efforts.

He also reflects on the disappointment of the Blue Star franchise not scaling as planned, but he sees this year as foundational—an opportunity to simplify, experiment, and rebuild.

Gresham is transitioning into a phase of clarity and intention, centered around rebuilding through focused growth, meaningful connections, and a streamlined approach to strategy.

• 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 00:01

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 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.

I don't know if it's thawing or distilling down of what the essence of what it is that I need to do.

I think even my 12-week goals are completely off. They didn't seem like they're the right thing to do.

I really have to take all of the connections, all the relationships, all the leads, all the people we feature, just all these things, and start to really drill down on that.

It's wild, I think, the amount of potential connections that I may have, and I haven't even cultivated those.

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So, what I really want to do is be honest about what my next goal is. I really want to get the, I want to say 12,000 or maybe three to four more leads related to SEO, approximately, and PPC. And then just kind of lean into that.

I think that from there, you get that to a place, you have a little bit more structure and ability. I get it basically to where it was, maybe about, wow, like maybe a year and a half ago, which is wild.

And then from there, just try to rebuild everything. I think one of the hardest things to do was to pause everything.

Because when you pause everything, that means that when you pause everything, that means that you…

Yeah, so when you pause everything, that means that you are basically saying you're not gonna bring on more, and you're bringing on more, you're stunning your growth.

When you stunt your growth, you're saying that you have to wait for other things. So, I feel like operationally, we're in a little bit of a better space on the marketing standpoint, but I think I just need to really, hopefully, knock it out of the park this upcoming month.

If I can knock it out of the park this upcoming month, get the three to four new clients, what that'll do is that'll open up so much more for the business as a whole.

And if I'm able to open up more for the business as a whole, all that is going to basically do is allow me to spend more time continuing to tweak and improve the digital market. I mean, the Blue Star franchise.

But I think I've been split between two things, the Blue Star franchise not taking off like I wanted it to, and because it hasn't, I have to take a step back now.

However, some of the things that I was working on weren't working, so I think if I look at this year as strictly laying the foundation, I'm able to scale back some of the things I was doing, the way that I'm approaching it, it's going to open up a lot more in the future. It's going to give me the opportunity to experiment and just make things better.

But I think it only happens if you identify what the one thing is. You've leaned into that one thing.

Now I'm able to do that one thing a little bit more because they have a better team and better systems and processes in place. Now that I can say that, I can start to look at those things and improve it.

So, I think definitely moving into what is going to be a pretty impactful opportunity to scale and to grow.

And I think that's only going to feed every part. So, if I can really, really, really, really do that within this next month, it will change a lot of things because it allows me to hit not even the goal that I had for the lead generation system. But it allows me to ultimately be able to say, hey, we created this.

Now we can really experiment a lot more with Blue Star, and I can take that to another level. So, I'm looking forward to that, seeing what happens.

And then, we kind of take it from there. I'm going to hold off on joining the BNI chapter.

I think I'm going to pause my application there. That's a whole other conversation. But it just doesn't seem like it's the right fit for a lot of reasons. So, we'll just ultimately see what happens.

And then we kind of take it from there. but I'm still probably gonna join an organization, that's for sure. I just have to find the right one that's a good fit.

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 06:03

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.

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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