IAM2569 – Daily Marathon Training Adventure: Day 225 Highlights

In this special episode, Gresham’s reflection reveals a deep personal understanding of his franchise broker journey as a long-term process, much like training for a marathon.

Gresham shares how trying to push himself too hard — whether running close to four miles or in his business — led to physical and emotional burnout, reminding him that pacing and patience are essential.

He acknowledges the importance of continuing to build skills and relationships without feeling pressured to force results.

He’s mindful about spending on marketing and wants to generate genuine opportunities rather than just quick fixes.

Additionally, Gresham plans to join a networking group to cultivate connections and maintain momentum over time.

• 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 00:02

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 00:29

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.

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Day 225 of a Franchise Broker Journey. And two weeks or a week ago, I actually went running and I ran about four miles, close to four miles.

I think I got all the way there, but I was right at four, 3.9 or 3.8, something like that. And the baby, I started crying.

So, I was like, hey, I got to cut it short, but I would have gotten a four, no doubt. I was literally like, a couple of steps away from probably doing that.

But with that being said, my body was destroyed. I did that, and I did like VR boxing that week.

So that weekend, my body was like, what are we really doing? Like what's really going on up there? Oh, we're really in there, probably.

But with that being said, one of the things that I was reminded of is like I did a 10 miler and I did a 10 miler. I did it with this non-profit; it's a non-profit ad.

Run coach. I did the run coach program, and it was really cool to get the opportunity to do that.

I was featured in like their magazine or something like that. But with all that being said, I think the biggest thing that I took away was when we did the run program, we were building up.

Now, I'm the type of person that says, hey, I'm gonna keep going until I can pass out, for the most part.

And even if it doesn't feel good, I'm gonna keep going. I'm gonna try to hit the four miles, try to hit at least three miles.

But today I went running, it was about two miles, a little over two miles.

And I think the thing that I kind of took away that I sometimes forget is that when you're running a marathon, you wanna take it step by step by step.

You don't train to run a marathon by going out and saying, I'm gonna run the full marathon. You don't do that.

You actually build up to that. And I think that it's a process and you have to respect the process.

So, I bring all that home with everything with this broker journey, just because it's been a process to try to understand what are the things, what are the steps, how to make those things happen.

And I think that there's been a really big adjustment and change is the understanding that it is a marathon.

This, and even me taking a step back and saying, hey, I'm going to redo this in a different way is me understanding and acknowledging that it's a marathon.

I started off wrong. I won't say I started off wrong. I just could have started off more intentionally.

And I think that it's about halfway through, about four months from being a year, which is wild.

But the reality is, is that collectively as a class, we've had two deals. One of the deals was one of my classmates was able to get a friend, and the other one was himself.

As a class, we're about halfway there. We're past halfway. I don't know yet I have any prospects that are getting down the pike.

He has some, but he said that they haven't really converted. It's a process to really go through those things.

When I talked with the coach, he was saying, hey, you should just buy these or, you should do anything to kind of get the ball rolling and have a conversation.

I understand that. I understand that, you know, you continue to get your reps. You don't want to lose.

You don't focus on what you want to do. But I also know that I could probably work on generates. We'll see. I'm going to work on some things and see what happens.

But I don't want to be in a place where I feel like I have to throw money at something in order to get reps.

And that's I won't say that's a mistake that I made. I learned a lot about Google Ads.

We have some data that we have ourselves, but we really want to take another step to see where we can take things to go to another level.

I think some of that is going back to say, hey, I'm not going to run four miles. I'm going to run two miles.

I'm going to run a mile. I'm going to walk around the block. I'm going to do whatever I can do today, not so that I can run a marathon, but so that I can take the steps to run a marathon.

So, that's something I feel like I didn't do well. calibrate and do differently. I feel like when you're going through the process, you're always worrying with yourself about where I should be.

The expectation, I should have already closed multiple deals right now. And when you're worn with yourself, you feel like you're already further along than you should.

But sometimes it just makes sense to kind of go back to the drawing board and restart and just reevaluate things.

So that's ultimately where I think I'm at. That's where I think I'm pushing this back to being that number three on the list of things, the digital marketing is being ramped up again.

That's probably number two always, but definitely a higher focus.

And then I think it's number three, but it's something that I want to join a networking group because I want to approach that marathon mindset. And that's how I would do it. So that's what I'm going to do.

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 06:44

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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