IAM2638 – The Struggle and Strength in Change

In this episode, Gresh shifts to the challenges he’s faced in his existing digital‑marketing and franchise‑brokerage businesses. After years of relying heavily on his own involvement, he realized the models had hit a ceiling and required major pivots.

He discusses how his original target market for the brokerage didn’t generate enough traction, prompting him to rethink prospecting strategies—using LinkedIn to focus on people with clear pain points, such as those affected by layoffs, and reshaping the business foundation to become more scalable and less dependent on him alone.

The conversation ends with a personal metaphor: Gresh recounts training for a 10‑mile run and adopting the Galloway run‑walk method to build endurance despite limited time.

He parallels this fitness adjustment with the business pivots he’s making—recognizing when a current approach no longer works, breaking things down to the “studs,” and rebuilding from the ground up.

• Blue Star Franchise: bluestarfranchise.com
• Browse the Franchise Inventory: bluestarfranchise.com/franchise
• Is franchising right for you? Check this out to see: bluestarfranchise.com/assessment
• Franchise CEO (A CBNation Site – coming soon) – 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 subcite within CB nation called 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 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 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. A challenge of change. I think that when you go through a process and you start to realize that everything is not going to go how you want it to go. And I think a lot of times you have to really pivot to change.

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And sometimes the pivots don't end up being enough and you just have to start anew. And I think that's ultimately kind of where I'm at because With the digital marketing business, I've had to make some really big changes.

Changes that I was trying to pivot from, but I think sometimes when that foundation needs to be rebuilt, that's what you kind of have to do operationally. I thought I was ultimately doing it, but it's still not ultimately there.

And I think that It becomes a challenge when you say that these things aren't working right and you have to fix and change them. I think when you go through any type of process and you look at it and you say that, hey, this is not it, that's what that ultimately looks like.

And I think that's kind of like ultimately where I'm at, what's happening. It affects the franchise brokerage business because those were the two, three things that I was really focused on.

I think as you start to build these things and to grow and you start to see that maybe you've hit somewhat of a ceiling, sometimes it requires you to pivot and change.

And same thing that has happened in the broker business where I had a specific target market and I focused on that and that didn't get as much traction. And it was hard to find the people. How do you find somebody that is maybe having an existing business and wants to add on another one or interested in entrepreneurship and business and try to find that.

You start to really gauge things you start to to really understand you know how you can target you know using LinkedIn and it's people that work they don't because they have a pain point.

When you have a pain point, you're more likely to move versus someone that might be a little bit more comfortable and then want to adjust from there. But people that have layoffs and have experienced those things end up being those people.

And I think that's where you have to really gauge where you're at and really explore how you can set things up from a better position.

So overall, it's been really interesting. And the reason I wanted to talk more about this is because I went on a run today. You know,  I talked with perplexity, which is one of those CEO hacks. I learned from somebody that was on the show.

And one of the things that I learned in chatting with that is that,  I want to run, you know, I want to do a 10-mile run. There's no question about that. I want to have endurance to be able to do that 10-mile run. But the reality is that.

I don't necessarily have the time to do a 10-mile run at the pace that I'm doing. And frankly, I think even if I was hitting it at a higher pace, it would have been still, it's kind of hard to do that.

So how do I simulate a 10-mile run? That's what I asked to get the same endurance that I want to build, to build, you know, strength, maybe not strength as much, you know, for the run, but you want to do those things.

But having the stroller, being able to kind of push while also running and doing 30 seconds sprints and then a minute, resting and I did walking today was a really good cadence. It did give me a little gas.

We'll see like how it kind of affects my overall body because I think what has always been a challenge to me is actually to keep going. So we'll see like how my body adjusts to this.

I don't feel The wear and tear that I usually feel on from nonstop running actually feel a lot better. Who knows, like if I start doing this over a period of time, if my pace gets better, that would be awesome.

But I learned when I did the 10 miler, actually training for that, there's a Galloway method and it would have you, I think it was run for a minute and then walk for a minute. and then run for two minutes and then walk for a minute and then start to build up your endurance from there.

And from week to week to week. And I think that's ultimately, you know, what I ended up doing a little bit today. So I rested longer, just ran for 30 minutes. And I think if you could take that 30 minutes, make it 40 minutes, you know, 50 minutes and move on and up.

Then you start to realize that you're doing a minute of running, a minute of jogging. And you just start to build up your cadence. And there's actually a place that I actually did most of these over by the pool. that allow me to do it just in the street without things in the way.

So that was really good. But I think overall it just reminded me is that sometimes when you get to where you want to be, you can't do it the way you've been doing it. You have to adjust. You have to continue to pivot.

And frankly, you might have to break everything down from the studs and start to rebuild over. And I think sometimes it calls for that. I think looking at 12 years in the digital marketing business, it probably calls for that. Too much of a reliance upon me, but I understand why, because this is how I built it.

And that's ultimately where I got a little bit of adjustment there. So we'll see how everything goes, but that's the plan. 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 06:42
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 imceo.co. I AM CEO 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 I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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