IAM2597 – Keep Jogging: Embrace Your Journey

In this special episode, Gresh reflects on the past year, noting that his original focus on the franchise‑broker business has been pushed to the side as unexpected demands arose in his digital‑marketing venture.

Despite the shift, he remains optimistic, pointing to early signs of opportunity. He uses a marathon metaphor to describe the entrepreneurial journey: there are fast‑paced stretches, moments to pause, hydrate, and refocus, but the race never truly ends.

This mindset keeps him motivated, especially after a recent workout that reminded him of the constant nature of progress.

• 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 IAMCEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:30

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the IAMCEO podcast. And this is a special episode of our IAMCEO 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 a franchise CEO. So you'll see some links in the show notes related to that.

But I just want 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 who 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 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. It 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.

The barrel of it being a full year, which is wild to me.

That's really wild to me. But anyway, I still need to stay present with where I'm at.

I'm going to be presenting to other franchise brokers and people in the franchise industry, my digital marketing business.

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The broker business is something that has definitely taken a backseat. I didn't expect it to, didn't want it to necessarily, but there are just so many things that are coming up, even with the digital marketing business, and it ended up being a trying year.

However, I am happy that I started it when I started it, because I still feel like there's fruit that's to be had.

There's an opportunity to be had. I had one introduction to somebody who might want to franchise their business.

Not sure if that's going to be a viable movement there, but I wanted to make sure that I do that.

I want to do some other things, see, like I have a call hopefully this week, but I haven't got the person's phone number, so we'll see what happens with that, but I do have her email, so I just need to get her email and her phone number.

I mean just to set that up but I didn't see that she accepted it so just a matter of setting these things up and then ultimately going from there so again just trying to take it step at a day, a step at a time, and I feel like my mindset will be completely different if I sit today with day one versus day 248. I'll be like, OK, I'm getting started.

The excitement will be there. But now the doubt has crept in. And I think that happens sometimes, like in your business.

So, as I was just finishing a workout and a jog, you're just reminded that this is a constant journey.

It's a constant marathon journey. Sometimes you're going to go fast. Sometimes you're going to have to stop. Tie your shoes, grab water, do whatever it is.

But this analogy for it being a marathon will help you to kind of understand, like what you need to do to keep going and make things happen.

So I'm excited about that, excited about what I'm going to see, for my health as well. I had a party for Greshy, a half-day party, half-birthday party. So there was that. And yeah, we're just continuing to march along and do the things that I can do.

And we'll ultimately see what happens from there. But yeah, I'm looking forward to the next step and a step after that. And we'll just see, like, where everything takes us. But I'm really pushing towards being better.

I'm really pushing towards leveling up in all aspects of my life and definitely in this broker business.

And I think the best way for me to do that is really to leverage these opportunities that I have.

So we'll see what happens, see what experiments I can put forward. We'll just take it from there.

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

Outro 04:56

Thank you for listening to the IAMCEO podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. IAMCEO is not just a phrase.

It's a community. Don't forget to schedule your complimentary digital marketing consultation at blue16media.com. This has been the IAMCEO podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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