He had to make necessary, albeit unpleasant, decisions for the health of his business, which involved drilling down into the numbers for each micro-business or “pod” and resetting expectations.
The core issue was realizing that he was working hard to generate more revenue just to maintain existing overhead, only to have opportunities “fumbled” due to a lack of his own presence or execution. This prompted a massive effort to restructure and reboot the entire system.
The restructuring led to the crucial realization that not all business “pods” are worth growing, which requires a new focus and clarity. Specifically, he is rethinking his franchise brokerage business model. Instead of guiding clients through the entire process himself, he is considering pivoting it into a lead generation machine, handing off opportunities to more experienced brokers for a split.
- 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 Jr. 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 subsite 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 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.
So I didn't work out at all really last week. It was my first workout, getting back into the Flash 15. Butt got kicked, sweating, all those things.
But one of the things that I really try to do a lot is to or have been recently is really like kind of reflecting on like, how did I get here? Like, what happened? How did I get here? How do I, you know, fix any issues or change things or do whatever?
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And a lot of times it doesn't just happen like over one decision. It's never that. It's usually a progressiveness of getting off path and not realizing where there's opportunity and where you need to make changes, sometimes difficult decisions. So I had to go through a lot of that over the last two weeks probably.
And those difficult decisions are obviously things that you don't want to do, but things that are necessary for the health of the business. When I started to look and drill down a lot more into the numbers and things that are happening there, I create basically an expectation for each pod or each micro-business. Maybe I'll use the word pod. So each pod needs to make this amount.
But you also start to realize that a lot of times you have overhead. And you work to get more so that you can stay in the overhead. But the reality is that when you do get the opportunity and it's not executed well enough because you're not there, then you start to ask yourself, why am I getting more to have it be fumbled and just get kind of get into this process?
So that's where you start to really look at why you're doing the things that you're doing. You start to restructure, reboot. That's a lot of what I've done. And it's a lot of work, honestly. It's not fun work.
It's not something that I've been looking forward to, but I have known that there is better way to do the things that we're doing. And I think that's where we get a little bit more in depth with kind of where we are, you know, how to measure those things and what steps to take.
So this kind of a very pivotal part and point that I'm in right now, and you want to continue to kind of work through the process, work through the steps and see what can ultimately happen to get better. But I know overall, we want to continue to maximize the opportunities that we have before us.
I think the reality is that with me taking on a lot more than I have in the past, it's going to require more efficiency because I'm not, I don't have all the hours in the day. And because it requires more efficiency, we're probably going to lean on more technology anyways.
So it's going to be something that I think is going to be better built, but better built also for me to step back as well too. And to be able to understand like what's happening, to look at those things and evaluate those things.
So definitely not, you know, where I want it to be again, ask myself, like, how did I get here? It's like one of those questions. But I think once you start to realize, These are the pods that you can grow. These are the pods that are slow-growing.
These are the pods that shouldn't grow at all. And you start to be able to kind of have an ebb and flow every quarter on what that looks like. It's going to allow you to be able to put resources and resources and time energy into certain places.
And I think once you start to look at that a little bit more, it gives you a little bit more clarity and you got a lot, you have a lot more focus towards getting you to where you want to be.
So it's definitely a time of change. Again, not some place I'm, I'm, I'm excited around the opportunities, not excited around how I got here.
And I think that's been the frustration for me, but specifically for the franchise brokerage business, I definitely see, as I start to evaluate each of the pods, I see it potentially being more of a lead generation than a guiding somebody through the steps of the process.
So even with me joining BNI. It ends up being one of those things where I start to look and say, hey, maybe what I do is change the way that I'm approaching that business model. And if I can generate more leads and opportunities and I can hand it over to a quality agent, a quality broker, why am I not doing that? Especially if I could do like around a 50-50 split or something along those lines, or even a higher split. I don't know.
I know that, you know, I wanted to go through the process and I still think it's important for me to go through the process. But I also know that it might be even more important to be able to kind of generate opportunities and be able to kind of lean on the expertise of a more knowledgeable broker.
So we'll see what happens when I get there and I start to evaluate that business. But that's a little bit of more where I'm thinking, like the structure, how it affects Blue Star.
It may change to start franchising to another big 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 06:47
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. 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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