The Journey and Vision of Blue Star Franchise
Gresham Harkless introduces this content as a special episode and a “snippet of a snippet,” detailing his ongoing journey into starting a new venture called Blue Star Franchise. This new business will be accompanied by a related sub-site within CB Nation called Franchise CEO. Harkless's central vision is to document this building-out process—a realization inspired by the founder of the Franchise Brokers Association (FBA). He intends this documentation to be super helpful not only for individuals thinking about starting franchises but also for anyone starting any type of business, allowing them to see the entrepreneurial journey unfold. He encourages listeners to check out the related videos and subscribe to the YouTube channel to follow along.
The Central Lesson: Not All Franchises Are Equal
The speaker emphasizes one of the biggest things he has learned on day 349 of his franchise broker journey: not all franchises are created equal. He points out that when most people think of franchising, they immediately picture quick-service restaurants like McDonald's, Chick-fil-A, or Subway. However, he notes that in reality, there are many different types of franchises, some really great and others not so great, including many emerging brands about which success is less clear. This inequality is why having a franchise broker becomes highly advantageous, as the broker helps clients evaluate the best brands and look beyond the obvious choices.
The Importance of Guidance and Quality Questions
Because franchises are not equally built for success, Harkless identifies his role as a broker as being crucial: to help guide people through the process. This involves asking the necessary questions to truly understand what a person is investing into. He asserts that what success looks like is dependent on each individual person. Therefore, it is vitally important to have conversations, talk with people, and understand exactly who you are and what makes a great fit first, and then try to find the brand from that perspective. Ultimately, the quality of the investment decision rests on spending time understanding the pros and cons and asking the quality questions that reveal the true value of a franchise
Previous Episode: https://iamceo.co/iam2674-how-the-franchise-disclosure-document-provides-a-better-idea-of-your-investment/
- 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:
Gresham Harkless 00:00
As you start to learn more, you start to get more embedded into what's happening in the franchise business. You start to really be able to understand that there are not an equivalent amount of franchises that can help somebody succeed. But frankly too like, what success looks like is going to depend on each person. So it's even more important to have those conversations, talk with people and understand exactly who you are, what makes a great fit, and then try to find the brand from that perspective.
Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I Am CEO podcast and this is a special episode, episode number 2287 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 for 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'll 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 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 her Glennard post is. 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 you're a race like you. This is Gresh signing out. I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.
Gresham Harkless 02:04
Day 349 of this franchise broker journey and just wanted to speak on how like all, not all franchises are created equal. I think that's one of the biggest things that ends up becoming really advantageous to have a franchise broker, largely because you don't necessarily know what might be the best brands or the best things to kind of look into, to do and to evaluate. And I think that that is a process in and of itself. And a lot of times when we think of franchising, we think of your McDonald's or Chick fil A's, your 7/11, your subways, and those are the go to brands. You sees the quick service restaurants and those type of restaurants end up being the only ones that people think about. But in reality there's so many different other types of franchises and there's some that are really great, others that are not so great, and there's that, you know, a lot of times they're not as they're a lot more emerging brands. So you don't necessarily have as much of a idea on like what makes them successful. But at the end of the day, it's all around having those conversations. It's all around really like kind of got, you know, for my, my position and what I'm supposed to do is really to help guide people through the process, to be able to ask those questions, to understand truly what you're investing into. And that's why not all franchises are made equal. Like a lot of people say franchises are this or franchises of that. You could probably say the same thing around business, like business is this or business is that. But a lot of it comes and is around like how you approach it and what it looks like and how you're stepping into that. And I think it becomes vitally important that you're able to kind of understand exactly what you're getting into, understand that there's not great franchises, there's some that are great franchises.
Sometimes it's around asking the quality of questions that you're asking. So that's one of the things that I do is I don't got people to like these really great franchise, not be some great franchise. It's not just me like figuring those things out, it's having those conversations, but frankly it's also listening to other people, brokers, those that have been in the business a lot longer. And to see like what are their preferred brands, what brands are they looking at, what brands should, you know more than others. And I think that's what makes it really interesting is that as you start to learn more, you start to get more embedded into like what's happening in the franchise business. You start to really be able to understand that there are not an equivalent amount of franchises that can help somebody succeed. But frankly too, like, what success looks like is going to depend on each person. So it's even more important to have those conversations, you know, talk with people and understand exactly like who you are, what makes a great fit and then try to find the brand from that perspective. So that's a lot of, you know, what the process ultimately looks like. So, you know, just going through some of the things that I've learned. The biggest thing that I've learned to talk about was that all franchises are not created equal. So it's so important to make sure that you are spending the time understanding what are those franchises, why are they not equal, what are the pros and cons of each so that you can make the best decision you can for the amount of money that you're trying to invest. So that's it. Scratch signing out. And yeah, remember now, franchises are equal.