IAM2679 – The Franchise Execution Model: Why Franchising Isn’t About Reinventing the Wheel

The New Venture: Blue Star Franchise and CEO Evolution

Gresham Harkless opens this special episode by documenting his personal journey into starting a new business venture called Blue Star Franchise. This endeavor will be complemented by a sub-site within CB Nation called Franchise CEO. His motivation for documenting this process came from the founder of the Franchise Brokers Association (FBA) , who suggested sharing the journey would be “super helpful” not only for potential franchisees but also for anyone starting any type of business. Harkless is currently on “day 352 of this franchise broker journey” and reflects on his personal evolution, advising listeners to keep building and to “run your own race” because the world needs their unique contribution.

The Core Realization: Execution Over Invention

Gresham Harkless discusses a major shift in his business perspective, moving away from his digital marketing agency's struggles with defining a niche toward embracing a model of pure execution. This new mindset is heavily influenced by the nature of franchising. He highlights a crucial realization for prospective franchisees: “you're not going to reinvent the wheel”. The wheel, representing the business model, systems, problems, and challenges, has “already been created” by the franchisor. For a franchisee, the primary task is simply to “execute”. This understanding has placed him in a “completely different mindset” than he had 12 years ago.

The Freedom of Focus: Niching Down and Being a Broker

The realization about execution has made Harkless rethink his approach to his digital marketing business, leading him to accept the necessity of niching down and achieving product market fit. He notes that this focus is incredibly “freeing” , as it moves him away from trying to “do all the things” and say “yes to everything”. He is now stepping more fully into a “connection broker mindset” , where his goal is to connect people with opportunities and options. This focus allows him to spend his time working on the things that are most productive, like connecting with people interested in franchising, rather than being drained by day-to-day operational issues.

Previous Episode: https://iamceo.co/iam2678-the-importance-of-quality-questions-in-franchise-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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Transcripion:

Gresham Harkless 00:00
I always believe that people that want to be franchise franchisees want to step into this business. One of the realizations is that you're not going to reinvent the wheel. The wheel has already been created. You're just going to execute. What is the wheel, the problems, the issues, the challenges the franchisor has already gone through. And when they're handing the business off to you, you want to just be able to go to execute. So that changed my perspective. It's like for this specifically, I'm in a completely different mindset than I was know 12 years or so ago.

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 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 your race like you. This is Gresh signing out. I hope you have a phenomenal rest of day.

Gresham Harkless 02:05
So it's day 352 of this franchise broker journey. I'm actually in my 13th week of the year, my 12 week year and I'm actually just trying to take it a little bit easy. I have no idea like what I'm going to do as far as my 12 week goals. I'm trying to get clarity on those. But I think I want to have three goals when I have one easy, one medium, one hard and difficult. And I think that I want to have them mix around. You know, some are going to be personal, professional, maybe spiritual, just like a combination there. But overall like one of the things that came up for me is society of product market fit. So I actually been or had, I don't know if an epiphany is the right word, but just had like realization that I really wanted to build what is I think a better business. And as I'm doing that from a digital marketing perspective, from the digital marketing agency, it's made me kind of rethink how I'm doing that, what that looks like, how I'm going to make that happen. And I realized that something that I've been pushing against doing is really niching down. And the reason I haven't let niche down is because I like the creativity. But it's funny because now I'm at a point where the creativity that I want to have for clients I now want to have internally for the projects that I have. So with that being said, it makes you rethink like how you're doing the agency because what it needed to be is not necessarily what it is now. So now it's like getting to a point where you find something that is a potential offering and then you find that product market fit as much as possible you try to execute on that. It's like kind of where I'm at. So it's very interesting to see like how even like again when I say you build a business, you're also building yourself. But how that evolution has changed and how I look at the business is less of being me doing all the things and working in the business now. And like I needed to tap into my creativity and need to do these things and that things. And it's become less of that, more of like, okay, let's build a really great business. And with that change in the perspective that I have, getting a niche down and finding product market fit and all those things become something that is definitely on the table. Not because you don't have that creativity, but because you're just trying to execute so that you're trying to create an Environment for people to execute. So how does that come back to the franchise brokerage business? I always believe that people that want to be franchise franchisees that want to step into this business, one of the realizations is that you're not going to reinvent the wheel. Wheel has already been created. You're just going to execute. What is the wheel, the problems, the issues, the challenges the franchisor has already gone through. And when they're handing the business off to you, you want to just be able to go to execute.

So that changed my perspective. It's like for this specifically, I'm in a completely different mindset than I was 12 years or so ago. Thirteen years might have been even when I started everything, which I think was back in the 2012 or something. 2011, 2012, it's probably about 2013, so might be around 10, 12 years or something like that. But with that being said, it's just, it's. It's huge to kind of be in this place where you start to have that realization of where you are. And I think one of the best signs of it is that it becomes very free, becomes very freeing because I'm not trying to do all the things, I'm not trying to say yes to everything. It becomes saying yes to only one thing, one type of client, one type of customer. But it becomes means a really huge shift. I think part of like what has evolved with me is that I'm now stepping more into this connection broker mindset where it's just like, how can I connect people with the opportunities they're looking for, the options? And that's what's really exciting to me. I went to the franchise broker broker expo, met some people, have some people that could be on a podcast, maybe have a few people that I reached out to that could potentially be candidates. Nothing major, but I also got a realization that there were a lot of people that were interested in hearing more about franchise. So it's also like, how can I spend my time there and not spend my time doing these other things, like, you know, trying to reset passwords or trying to get clients not to, you know, do these things or that things. And it just becomes so. It becomes so draining because, you know, you should be doing something else and you just can't get you. It does don't have IT field, but you also don't have the operations set up in such a way. So it's really a time where it's just like everything had to maybe start falling apart so that it could be built together in a better way. So I still want to keep that creative arm with the digital marketing business, because I think that's where the labs and the opportunity come from. But I think to be able to kind of really laser focus on a niche which can, of course, leave you vulnerable, but at the same time, same time, if you do have it as part of The Greater Blue 16 media, just like franchise, Blue Star franchises, it becomes a piece of it, not all of it. So looking forward to continue to kind of, you know, delve into that, see where this is going to go, and then, you know, take it a step at a time. But again, it's hard to believe, like, we get close to that. One year, when I first started doing all these recordings.